6otM175 AAR

[Gghippo]

SV 319 (Krampus Challenge) Score 1337

Spoiler :

Well that was a lot of fun! Thanks for the different experience. As other posters have eluded… this scenario with no city states levelled the playing field and as a result made it a more challenging game.

Initial Observational Challenges

- Slow Growth (hot/arid)
- Low Production (old world)
- Lack of strategic resources (sparse)
- No city states , therefore hard to get Age Bonuses

Spoiler :

- Babylon (OP barbarians)
- Mali (hoarded all GMs)
- Korea/Maya/Babylon (hoarded GSs)

- Combination of the above made it difficult to get key Eureka/Inspirations and really made it a slow game

Strategy/Plan
- Build Harbours to get Growth/Housing
- Maximise Campus adjacency (reefs/Govt Plaza/mountains)
- Spread out (ended up with 14cities), founded 10, nabbed 2 barbarian settlers and loyalty flipped 2 other free cities
- Use Great Wall of China for culture instead of building theatre squares.
- Try to activate eureka / inspiration boosts where possible
- Given there were no city states. Had a Governor slot free from my usual plug and play Amani. So went Victor for free spy promotion
- Use spies… I have had mixed success in the past. This time I had a lot of success, not sure if it was because I was so far off the pace (didn’t make ground until -t200)… or it was the choice of spy location (if captured they had clear / unimpeded path home, i.e. not travelling past encampments or other cities – not even sure if this is a factor in eluding capture?!? – but it worked this time…) only a couple of spies were captured whole game.

Government Plaza Choices
- Ancestral Hall
- Intelligence Agency
- Royal Society

Wonders Built
- TOA
- MOH
- Forbidden City (GE charge)
- Big Ben (GE charge)
- Estadio do Maracanã (GE charge)
- Taj Mahel (GE charge) - don’t normally build this one, but had a GE charge and had struggled with generating era score.
- Didn’t miss out on any I commenced building, obviously missed out on ones I hadn’t started

Pantheon Selection
Initially I was concerned about where production was going to come from, so was thinking:
- god of the sea (archipelago map)
- god of craftsmen (risky with sparse resources)
- desert folklore with work ethic (risky as I’d need a great prophet), thought there would be plenty of desert given arid game condition

Lucky Breaks
- Relic from first goody hut
- Helped to get one of the first pantheons…
- When I Cleared a barbarian camp which gave me the natural wonder boost… I was certain work ethic with desert folklore was my ticket to production…
- but unfortunately I ended up missing out on a religion all together…
- My build order was slinger, settler, holy site and then settler…
- I was struggling to manage loyalty pressure in my second city located SE of capital due to Maya, so after building a holy site in the capital I then needed to divert production to a new settler and spend all my gold purchasing growth tiles/builder. A farm created on wheat+marsh tile accelerated growth to delay loyalty flip, once Governor Laing was assigned and a new city placed nearby I managed to get positive loyalty on the 2nd city… but this focus meant I lost out on a religion altogether.
- At the same time… I cleared a couple of other barb camps which helped to avoid a classical era dark age.
- In the next era Maya started converting all my cities (Culture shrines/temples)… which was okay… but it didn’t enthuse me to build any more HS until later in the game…
- At Classical/Medieval World Congress I managed to get district Culture Bomb… which helped to take tiles from Maya…. Small retribution… for missing out on the desert folklore + work ethic religion combo… the secured tiles helped additional growth via Laing fisheries and a second horse tile.
- At Industrial World Congress managed to get 100% production for harbour buildings. That coupled with 30% build bonus (policy card) helped mitigate the pitiful production my cities had. Once ship yards were built, inserted 100% harbour bonus card to help accelerate other infrastructure.
- Managed to get space race production GE(Sergei x 2 charges b/c of MOH) / GS (Carl) plus the GA (Gracie) that complete two techs

Age Dedication
- Mostly normal ages early on, so took free inquiry to help get era score
- Golden Age achieved at Renaissance Era… but to get it… had to sell all my luxury resources, my relic and take out loans (never done that before…) to buy units, strategic resources and upgrade units and buy a crouching tiger to get necessary era score… but made it happen with one turn to spare. But it was worth it… as I had a lot of faith to use on settlers, builders and traders. So took momentarily
- Unfortunately followed that Golden Age up with a Dark Age in industrial era. As I focussed 100% on harbour infrastructure.
- Rebounded with Heroic age in Modern era and then a Golden Age in Atomic era

Cities
- ended up with 14
- Had 7 spread out around the capital and 6 west of Russia and Babylon
- Found a barbarian Settler floating in sea alone… in the industrial era… suspect it was Russia or Portugal settler captured by barbarians… this settler helped to get foothold on an island north west of Babylon (culture alliance) that then enabled next growth push.
- Found another barbarian settler… which helped get resources
- Loyalty pressure flipped poorly positioned free cities (Russia / Portugal)

Headaches
- barbarian pillages of my sea resources and harbours
- OP barbarians (due to Babylon)

Regrets
- After Laing fisheries - I then focussed on Rayna/Victor combo over Pingala
- Not really sure why I thought it was a good idea… I feel this decision slowed my science and culture early in the game

Learnings
- I knew city states were powerful, but until this game I never fully appreciated the difference they make… even if they have useless suzerain bonuses, they effectively shave up to 100 turns off your win condition… not just the science generated, but also the GPT and production.
- Just on that… I had seaports in pretty much every city, but the GPT generation was only okay… probably 4x less GPT compared to a game with city states…. I must amid, apart from this game I always build Kilwa, so that could also be an inflating factor
- Thankfully in this game, spies siphoning funds filled that void… which enabled science labs to be purchased regularly

Thanks for an enjoyable and different Civ experience! Kudos to the team that put together this scenario.

 

[leif erikson]

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[arthur486]

Science Victory @Turn 281

So it looks like I've played this game (in Krampus mode, but sometimes replayed some turns) over 9 months, and managed to still finish it. This is definitely a record for me, not sure that a desirable one at that .

The setup was amazing, like others before me have said, I did not get the opportunity to play the modern age for this long ever before. What surprised me was the sheer potential of using spies. I've had multiple Master Spies set on stealing gold from the other rich civilizations (I think this was allowed), and ended up with 17,000+ gold at one point.

As always, thank you 6otM team for this opportunity!

 

[mcladams]

SV 304 - RESTART / RELOADS - KRAMPUS (no wars or pillaging)
Trying a different strategy after leaving the game unfinished in January, about the middle of medieval period. First ever diety win, first science victory where with 50 turns to go I didn't start ctrl-enter a bunch of turns at a time. First game I ever used seasteads and offshore wind farms but only a little before spaceship landed after 17 yrs flight.
I hope images are ok.

Complete restart after 9 months. Settled on the luxury/inlands sea, religious start with desert folklore & work ethic (& religious settlements)... only had 2 cities at the end of ancient, but waiting for +12 production boost with scripture from the holy sites. Medieval was a dark age.
Mid way throuh medieval dark age, T 112:

End of medieval, T 135: , I managed to develop, gov plaza (went with audience chamber), artemis, explored, traded, developed tiles, and built diplomatic quarter for diplomatic favours to trade for gold per turn, to go into a heroic era. AND used civics and luxuries to put my four cities in ecstatic +20 growth which i tried to hold for as long as possible.(other religion beliefs asap were world church for culture and pagoda for diplomatic favors to trade)

Heroic renaiisance era made the game, although it took a long time to build up steam. With reform the coinage, monumentally AND hic sunt dracones, cartography and 100++ income exploded through the islands north west of russia and directly west of rome. I also built rebel barka for the faith (for monumentality) and 6 iron to trade with the ais. And era score. Russia declared war around T 150 but by then I could just buy units, peace was made quickly.
T 166, 10 turns before end of Renaissance, below. For the industrial era golden age, stayed with reform the coinage, heartbeat of steam pointless as still building out harbours and I only had two campus and not building more.

25% faster spy card ran through the entire game and very aggressive mainly siphoning funds, and great works from the culture leaders to sell to the culture poor ais. The rest was micromanagement optimisation. I probably got distracted with simming, building out massive cities all with a habour and 1-2 neightbourhoods each and public transit. Theatre squares only to remove archeological relics from tiles. Prioritised only the civic card wonders and Casa and got all of those.
Towards mid/end of the turn 200's I sold many great works and stopped open borders, and moved to internal trade routes, so as not to trigger a cultural victory.

T 304 SV - 22 cities all larger than size 10 by the end. 7 spaceports to boost the ship with 1-4 laser/lagrange projects each. Each spaceport city with 90-130 production so didn't really need to use workers to boost projects.
The final city report is pretty. Running with a -1 amenity penalty in cities over 10 (all of them) to ban rock music from my lands. Those civic card wonders make a huge diffference.

I need to do one more diety SV, but this time without any reload/restart, have to check the GOTM index. Thanks for a great challenge.