6otM175 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM175 After Actions Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory date and score (preferably in the post title) and if you played the Krampus Challenge, as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory!

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed and submitted your game.

Please attach your victory save to your post.

- What was your plan for achieving the VC? What are the major steps you planned to take? What events, if any, changed the plan in execution and to what new plan? Any interesting decision points?
- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
- Early order for technology/civics? What did you prioritize for technology/civics?
- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
- What were key production/purchase focuses? Military units / Civilian units / Districts & city development / Wonders / Civ Unique Unit & Infrastructure? Most critical or interesting?
- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
- How did the map affect your gameplay?
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
- Did you enjoy your game?

Please use spoiler tags for any surprise details you'd like kept hidden. Thanks.

If this is a replay, please indicate 'REPLAY' at the top of your post. If you conduct regular restarts, please indicate 'RELOADS' at the top of your post. More posting helps us all get play better as we understand the methods of others, but want to clearly distinguish between a first run through without reloads and other submissions as it is much harder to recover in game from the mistakes we all make.

 

[Chrumo]

SV 292 (Krampus Challenge)

Spoiler t292 :

Wow... what a game.
First of all, hats off for GotM staff for putting together such an amazing scenario, I haven't had that much fun (and seen that much late game) for a very long time

Enabling Barbarian Clans was a great way to manage otherwise unmanagable Archipelago pirates, which usually put me off to continue playing (because of routes cutting and coastal pillaging). In this case, barbarian clans allowed me to root out all the naval camps, while keeping the land camps online. This prevented mid-late game piracy problems.

I expected a very difficult game, so I didn't rush settling my Capital, I went up a bit north and settled on the slightly better spot at t5 or t6. I think the best spot was on the south though, maybe someone will be lucky enough to wander there at the start. Still, barbarians were probably the most serious issue - my game start was delayed by about 50-70 turns, because 3 Barb camps spawned in the corners of our little island. I literally had to reroute my second settler back home, and stayed there untill I got shipbuilding to even get out. At that point, Maya was already at my island, and I had to search for any opportunity to settle a not-horrible city (and I mean ANY).I rushed Defensive Tactics to get a Spy, who then proceded to get murdered on their very first mission. And there went my Leader bonus

I managed to get a great Heroic Age around turn 150, which kickstarted my settling (hic sunt dracones + monumentality + coin reformage). I settled 21 cities, 18 of which were yield-purposed, 3 were purely for strategics. I traded absolutely everything for good profit for the entire game, and went for a Harbour, Campus and eventually an IZ in each city. I befriended everyone as soon as I could and never got so much as denounced. I believe around turn 200 I managed to finally catch up to the AI, and because of that I had to witness what I have never yet seen, all the godly end-game space-race great scientists and engineers. Wow, they are strong, 2x100% to space race projects is insane, also I completely forgot that there is an admiral that gives 2 free full techs! His naval expertise proved to be invaluable for discovering the intrinsics of offworld missions The end was a very old-school, no-chop, trade-route supercaptial project grinding

Thank you so much for an amazing experience! I hope there will be some other interesting submissions, I am very curious how others did

 

[Planktonic]

Sci Vic, turn 359 (Krampus Challenge)

It's always a little intimidating to come to the AAR thread and see Chrumo has the first post. It usually means he was able to figure out something I missed, and therefore got done a lot faster than me! As was the case here.

I settled 1W so I could have access to the fish tile and a better harbor. In science games I usually want high faith so I can faith-purchase spaceports, so I usually go for a religion, and did so again here. I wanted to get Feed the World, as the adjacency for Work Ethic was terrible, and with no city states there was no need to reach Globalization, so Choral Music was also less attractive. But being Deity, I had no chance, and three religions were chosen before I got my Great Prophet.

But wait! Maya took FTW and promptly started converting the whole world. This actually worked fine for me- I let all my cities get converted and used the shrines/temples to grow them. I also used Liang with the fishery promotion liberally. So in most cities I went holy site, then harbor, then campus, then IZ. Eventually Maya had converted everyone except Peter, and was threatening a Religious Victory, so I felt compelled to act. With a lot of cities established, I then finally activated the Great Prophet and instantly converted almost my whole empire. I took Jesuit Education and Cross Cultural Dialogue, later finished the religion with Stupa and Scripture. Initially I thought I would use faith to convert cities from other civs, but ended up using most of it to buy universities and research labs.

Was friendly with most civs for most of the game, although Peter denounced me for much of the game and Trajan was also unfriendly for a long time. The major ally was Hammurabi, with whom I struck an early Cultural Allyship. Later I made Rome a Scientific Ally and Mali a Religious Ally, but that was pretty unimportant. I also lost my first 2 spies. Later spies did prove quite effective at stealing Tech boosts, but then it got to the point where I was the Tech leader and there were no more techs to steal!

I also benefitted from Great people. I made it a point to load the Invention and Science Foundation cards simultaneously- this allowed me to pick up Korolev from way back in the pack. I also used 7 of my largest cities to run campus research grants continuously until I got Sagan, despite the fact that the leading civ when he appeared was almost 2400 Great People points ahead of me!

I can see that I need to think more about how to approach these games without relying on religion; will try to experiment a little on some older games maybe.

It really was a tough map, but made for a great challenge. There was no warring on my part at all (apart from clearing barbarians), which I believe is a first for me.

Thanks for the game!

EDIT: forgot to mention one thing- did not plan for flooding given that the game went pretty late, so lost (I think) at least 4 fully developed campuses as the tiles got submerged. That definitely dampened my science for a bit- there was no chance to build flood barriers - they require a *lot* of production and you can't buy them. Never have I missed Valletta more!

 

[CiJay]

SV, turn 344 (Krampus Challenge)

Thanks for this challenge Glad that I managed it.

Settled in place and had a lot of problems (as supposed) to keep my empire growing... Originally I wanted to settle to the east and block the mayans. Unfortunately there was a barb camp at the SW of the land mass which was continuously attacking me. So I was forced to settle west but I managed to settle the entire land mass as game progressed.
I also think I made a strategic mistake as I choose pingala as first governor. Didn't think of Liang with here fishing stuff. I think this would have been very helpful for growing the cities.
Food was OK (although very slow growing) after I recognized this. Of course my first spy got killed at his first mission... Actually I thought this could be the key moment to lose...

God thanks that the AI was also making slow progress. I settled some islands afterwards, at the end I had around 17 (not sure) cities.
The turnaround was when I settled the small dessert land mass where I found 6 oil + 1 aluminium. This was very important for my power plants and economy. Then production started to ramp up.
Anyhow my culture was very low until the end of game (187! at the end) and I was continuously lacking of amenities. I started to build water parks / entertainment complexes quite late, but this helped a lot.

At the end I won by taking care of the spies missions. All my spies (except 1) were fully promoted and I had the card in with +1 on foreign territory. I had pillaged babylons / malis campus/spaceports/commercial hubs every few turns.
EDIT: Forgot to mention. I build Mausoleum and was spamming IC-projects to get the engineer with the space race production project. Was able to finish the 2nd and 3rd project with 3 turns. Then I spammed Science-projects to get the scientiest with the 100% towards space projects - this was also critical

So I overtook them at the end

 

[Thorak]

SV, turn 284 (Krampus challenge)

My plan for this game was simple - Expand as quickly as possible. Build Audience chamber. Get Liang with 2 promotions and move him around to build fisheries adjacent to water resources. Get magnus in same city as plaza and use domestic trade routes to that city.
I settled 1w and immediately built a farm there which was pillaged rather quickly when the barbs showed up.

My initial build order was builder, settler, settler. I didn't realize how much barbarians there would be on my Island with no city states. I managed to settle both my settlers for 3 cities before the barbarian horde came along but I didn't manage to clear it until T80 using 1 scout, 1 warrior and 2 archers in total. I made a basic mistake here that I didn't use the barbarian clan to buy units which would likely have been a better option.

My first age was the darkest age I ever had, I had 3 era score at the end of the first era, 3 cities, all improvements pillages by barbarians. The second age was the greatest Heroic age I ever had and this was when the game really started to speed up.
My expansion was slow but steady - Get a settler, start building a harbor, move a trader and send domestic trade to capital (with magnus+plaza) for a quick start of the expansion. Once harbor finishes, buy lighthouse and get another settler for a trade route in the new city and start building Seaport. Repeat. I used a governor in new cities without fresh water in combination wiht Audience chamber to get +4 housing until the city was established.

I had some major setbacks:
- I forgot to buy diplomatic favor from AI for a long time before the AI starts valuing it.
- I forgot in the start that it was possible to buy units from barbarian clans.
- My first spy was captured in the first mission and it was too expensive to release it until much later.
- I got a great admiral to get a luxury for free, but then I realized there were no water luxuries.
- I missed the Forbidden palace.
- The city I designated as my space building city had a antique site on the only tile I could build a space port in the city so I had to build an archeologist in that city (my only city that had a archaology museum). In hte end I built most of space project in the capital instead.
- I have never experienced such heavy flooding as in this game, and many of my campuses and my Amundsen scott research station was drowned in water (I didn't have time to build it but I had a great engineer with a charge to finish it the same turn as it was flooded). Luckily this was rather close to the end of the game. I had forgot to build flood protection building as flooding never is a problem normall in my games.
- I settled a city in the desert island to get lots of oil during a dark age. It revolted 1 turn before I hit a heroic age. Then I tried to take it back using a battleship and 2 caravells, but I failed with 1-2 turns before it converted to Mali. Luckily I had enough oil/coal in other places and I was spamming industrial project to keep my cities with energy.

I have to say this game was Deity++. I consider this civ+leader to the worst in the game by a significant amount. It was a very difficult start with heavy barbarian spawning and difficult to find good spots to build cities. This is probably the longest Civ6 game I ever finished. Very fun to experience some end game content that I rarely experience otherwise.

 

[timof]

SV, Turn 354 (Krampus Challenge: almost, see below)

Thanks for this very special game! This was quite a challenge - playing without any city states was a completely new
experience, and the starting position was underwhelming.

My plan was to try and make the best out of the Chinese / Wu's unique arsenal, which I hadn't used for a long time, so
this was kind of an experiment.
After a _very_ slow start, with hordes of Barbarians attacking (I was close to giving up), things became slowly better, and
some of the unique tools turned out to be quite useful:

I managed to build a nice contiguous stretch of Chinese wall as a source of culture and gold (and even preserved most
of it till the end of the game, except for a few segments that got replaced by districts).

But more importantly, Trajan soon became very strong and remained far ahead of everyone else in science and culture
for much of the game, so he was a prime target for espionage - and the combination of stronger eurekas (China)
and an army of elite spies (Wu) stealing them at a high rate worked amazingly well. I also conducted a few "great work
heist" missions in an attempt to slow down Trajans progress towards cultural victory (I was probably too paranoid here).
Anyway: I'd call Wu the true queen of espionage, far stronger than French Catherine, because Wu can employ Victor
to give all her spies a free initial promotion, essentially adding one aspect of Catherine's ability on top of her own.
Thus, Victor was a pretty impactful governor in this game, as he allowed all spies to act on the level of secret agents
from the start.

Apart from espionage, I played completely peacefully, and quickly got on good terms with everyone except the Mayas who
hated me for settling near them. Somehow I even managed to stay on good terms with Trajan - he killed two of my spies but
kept laughing.
And I also attempted - honestly! - to avoid joining any military alliance; but Joao and Hammurabi kept begging me every other
turn so I finally gave in and allied with Hammurabi, just to stop the nagging.

In hindsight: I need to get better at focusing on one victory path - I invested far too much into culture this time. (on the plus
side, of course, I ended up with a nice collection of great works. Most of the books were stolen anyway.)

Again, thanks for this challenge!

 

[leif erikson]

SV, Turn 354 (Krampus Challenge: almost, see below)

Thanks for this very special game! This was quite a challenge - playing without any city states was a completely new
experience, and the starting position was underwhelming.

Welcome to CivFanatics and Game of the Month!!

Thank you for sharing your game.

 

[cas]

I retired after 30-40 turns. It was clear this game was beyond my Civ6 abilities. lol.

I do appreciate the variety of challenges.

cas

 

[timof]

Welcome to CivFanatics and Game of the Month!!

Thank you for sharing your game.

Thank you for the warm welcome!

I'm playing civ6 for quite a while now, switched to playing deity level (mostly) a few
months ago, but only now discovered this forum.
I never before played with the goal of "winning fast", just "win at all" (and I also enjoy
the empire-building aspect of the game, which can be distracting). But maybe I will
take this challenge occasionally from now on...

timo

 

[isopaha]

SV T357 (Krampus). A really fun game, very different from the usual GOTMs. It was more about "Will I be able to win?" instead of "How fast I will win". I managed to keep my own island clean of foreign settlers, except for one who actually snatched aluminum from me.

I had trouble deciding which pantheon to take and I ended up with the one with strategic resources (before I had any techs for seeing them). It was a mistake, as I had only a single horse the entire game. Lack of strategics cost me a few eurekas and also slowed my production due to lack of powerplants. Finally managed to get uranium via the golden age where I got a very early GDR, which I then disbanded for the free 3 uranium.

Like some other players I lost some vital campuses to sea level rising and I should have used the fisheries, which I never do. I don't usually use spies that much, but in this game they very vital. My science output never reached much higher than 200, but I got eurekas for almost all late game techs, which helped a lot. The no CS setting also enabled using the spy policy almost all game. Wish I'd spotted the largish island in the north-west sooner, it had good spots for 3 cities, but I found it too late to maximally make use of it.

 

[Monthar]

Science Loss Turn 338 Score 1035

I was about 25% of the way to the exoplanet when Japan got there. This is the first defeat I've had in a long time. This game was tough. Thanks for the challenge.

 

[Planktonic]

Science Loss Turn 338 Score 1035

I was about 25% of the way to the exoplanet when Japan got there. This is the first defeat I've had in a long time. This game was tough. Thanks for the challenge.

Your game seems to have moved really fast! In my game I finished at turn 359 and none of the other civs had even finished Moon Landing, iirc. Bad luck....

 

[lakeiron]

SV T321 Krampus

Great game. I only had 2 barb settlements on my piece of land, once I fought them, I positioned my troops well spread for a very long time to stop more of them spawning. I settled to the east on the desert to activate that tile as well, seeing that there was not much to cook with... I happened to settle my second city to the south, which stopped the Maya forward settle me, but it was - or that time I thought - not the best possible location, but I was afraid of the flipping. In the end that became my best city, finishing all my major space projects, but maaaaaan, it was close to useless for a long time for no production.
I had 2 Heroic Ages, but came at a very nice timing. A lot of the islands at the far northwest and west I settled quite quickly but settling a size 4 town immediately due to the dedication, then buy a settler almost immediately and go on.
I also had use of some really nice preserves that give nice yields with Sanctuary
Had some damage to flooding, but in the end I spammed enough Military Engineers to finish barriers everywhere.
Also by building enough encampments I had 170 Aluminium in stock when I needed it the most in the end.

At the end it felt like a scenario, as I have not seen that much late game only in those...

Thanks for the effort put in it!

Cheers

 

[Beta Centauri]

Since production would be a huge problem, I snagged Desert Folklore aiming for Work Ethic. After scouting across the desert, I saw the very edge of a neighbor's border, so I forward settled south of the desert, with no loyalty penalties showing. Turns out it was Lady Six Sky, and even though I only saw her 1-pop city, the loyalty pressure from what I couldn't see was too much. Within about 10 turns, my second city had 1 pop, -1 amenity, and -8.3 loyalty, with zero chance to get irrigation or a governor quick enough. Game over by turn 38.

Absolutely brutal. I play on deity 100% of the time but sometimes you just go south instead of north and it's -over-. I honestly don't believe people who claim to win random Deity starts consistently and never restart, as good as some people here are.

 

[The Mighty Quinn]

I tried it twice (first time on Deity) and got wrecked by the Mayans around turn 200 both times.

 

[Chrumo]

I tried it twice (first time on Deity) and got wrecked by the Mayans around turn 200 both times.

A bit of unsolicited advice: you can manage most relations by sending a delegation and getting open borders as soon as you meet that civilization. It has to be done on the very first turn you meet a new civilization (e.g. Maya), and will cost you about ~40 gold (25 for sending a delegation, another 15 or so for OB).
You will still get a hefty negative relation difficulty multiplier ("first impressions"), but these will slowly whittle down over the following 30 turns. You should ideally try to befriend them every single turn, even if they are displeased with you, but especially once they go neutral. If it is absolutely critical to have friendship with your neighbour (as is the case with Maya in this game), you should definitely consider gifting them something like 100-200 gold to push your relations even further.

All of it may seem expensive, but this is much less than you would spend on any defenses should a DOW come.

 

[The Mighty Quinn]

All advice is appreciated! Thanks!

 

[fishbackpack]

also I completely forgot that there is an admiral that gives 2 free full techs! His naval expertise proved to be invaluable for discovering the intrinsics of offworld missions The end was a very old-school, no-chop, trade-route supercaptial project grinding

I just found out that Grace Hopper is in the game! She's a badass computer scientist (and apparently admiral???).

Grace Hopper - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

NERSC named one of their systems after her https://www.nersc.gov/about/nersc-history/history-of-systems/ and NVIDIA is working on some new chips https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/grace-hopper-superchip/


In other news, I quit at T298 after a DoW from Lady Six Sky. I am not particularly good so I skimmed the AAR and knew there was someone who would try to settle my crappy land and I knew resources would be really tight, and I knew I would need to keep good friendships (which I apparently screwed up at the end!). I used my warriors to somehow block her from settling my continent until I got sloppy about it on T275 or so. I was just about done launching moon landing, and I had the 2x speed project for mars from votes, so I was probably headed for a T340 or so? I had so many dark ages and the dark age policies were so useless, which was a big disappointment. I got one golden age w/ hic sunt dracones but I only settled 4 cities since I think I was around T200.

Unlike most people here, I had a ton of success with spies, though it seems like the 4% capture rate is still not at all accurate (I probably had 6/15 missions killed/captured). Does anyone know what the real probabilities are? Is the probability changed by counterspies, but not displayed?

Really cool game overall, thanks for putting it together!

 

[nufro]

T 381 SV. Heavy use of spies to disrupt rocketry at the end.

 

[Eyswein]

Unlike most people here, I had a ton of success with spies, though it seems like the 4% capture rate is still not at all accurate (I probably had 6/15 missions killed/captured). Does anyone know what the real probabilities are? Is the probability changed by counterspies, but not displayed?

I haven't seen a single forum that states anything otherwise. It is my conjecture that counterspies are not calculated into the percentage.