6otM184 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM184 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), 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.

 

[EdTice]

First, this map was absolutely fantastic and thanks to whoever must be putting insane effort into these GOTM maps. Second, my score needs to be disqualified because I somehow settled off of fresh water by accident and didn't notice for quite a few turns. I was going to try to just continue but then, for reasons I still can't understand, I settled a city near Georgia where there shouldn't have been loyalty pressure only to watch the city flip in eight turns even with a governor. I could have recovered from that by conquering Georgia but I decided to start from the beginning. However, I don't think any of this matters since it's my first GOTM and it took me 323 turns. I'm sure that somebody will turn in a score of half of that.

My plan for achieving the VC was to grab the first religion and select Choral Music and Cross Cultural Dialog so that I could put off building districts and play wide for as long as possible without being susceptible to getting wiped out in an early war.

I'm not very good at naval maps and probably waited too long for naval exploration. I didn't research sailing until I realized that I was completely out of space.

I took Divine Spark just because that's what I take when there is no situationally better pantheon.

I took the pretty standard route of Classical Republic, Oligarchy (when I got DoW by Georgia), Communism, Synthetic Technocracy.

I always consider Reyna the most important governor for science victories and here was no different. I buy the space port and launch the satellite as soon as I have rocketry even if I'm way ahead. I want to have the whole map revealed. Second was Victor who I used embrasure to get spies with a starting promotion. And then, of course, Pingala, although only somewhat useful because, with the Royal Society, I could complete the projects as fast as the research.

I had a classical dark age which, if I was paying more attention, could have avoided by building a ship or something (I had 10 ancient era points) After that I had a heroic age followed by nothing but golden ages. The eras seemed really long. Presumably because the AI seemed to struggle with the map.

This map was hard for me because it's not my usual style. There were many times I wanted another district in a city but ended up not building it because I would have left myself too few tiles to actually work. I got the great engineer who lets you build an extra district and had no use for them. I made the rookie mistake of not fully leveraging Auckland early in the game so my productivity was uncharacteristically low although I think my cities were all nice by the end or at least I think they were beautiful, prosperous cities.

I have been playing on Deity for quite a bit and I usually heavily leverage spies in science victories by siphoning funds to level up, then stealing technology and finally disabling the AI spaceports. No civ built a commercial hub until very late in the game. My first spy I had foment unrest since, as far as I can tell, is the second safest mission. Through sheer luck I got the steal tech boost promotion and was able to use that a few times. However, I was so far ahead of the AI that there was very little tech that I could steal and I had to focus on hitting as many Eurekas as possible.

I didn't build any more spies until I had Victor leveled up so that I didn't have to take as much risk. I was lucky that when I did make the next spy, they had the quartermaster ability and finally some civs build some commercial hubs. Since there were no technologies to steal, I just fabricated scandals and became suzerain of most of the city states which helped me get good enough science numbers to complete the tree pretty easily.

Since the game ran long and the AI wasn't putting up much resistance, I was able to build more wonders than usual. I could play 13 policy cards by the end of the game.

Yes this was one of the most fun games even if was a bit out of my comfort zone.

 

[Xtowers]

Turn 230, Score 2132 CV.

My plan going into this was to use the Kampung to make coastal cities with lots of production to facilitate the space victory. Along the way I'd build campuses in every city and keep a healthy mix of harbors and holy sites, too. I met Georgia early and she declared a surprise war on me, so I took it upon myself to fend off and then conquer all the Georgian territory to give myself a nice early boost to my empire size. I also took out the other neighbor on the starting island, and then Amsterdam to the north. I intended to play a mostly peaceful game, but I managed to get so far ahead of my neighbors that they didn't even have walls, which was easy pickings.

Down to the south is where I plopped my government center - I had intended to build a wide empire so I turned Akhalkalaki into a production hub with Ancestral Hall. Beyond that I knew I wanted to make my capital with Chichen Itza, so I saved those chops, but I did start placing Kampungs early in my capital.

I did get out a religion, and I chose Goddess of the Sea for my pantheon, and for my beliefs I chose Meeting House, for the production, Divine Inspiration, since I was able to put down a good number of Wonders in the early ages, such as Great Lighthouse, and the Colossus, which really helped with my maritime exploits. I also took Religious Colonization and Cross-Cultural Dialogue, since I knew I was going wide. I might have taken Jesuit Education instead, but I figured I would have a decent outlet for faith with already finding Valetta, and I would just use my mass production to build my science buildings the hard way.

As the game went on, and I conquered a few neighbors and really started pumping out the Kampungs for production and really exploiting those yields, I started nearing a culture victory without even trying. I'm not particularly surprised, as it happens quite often, but I thought it was a bit earlier than normal. For reference, at game end my science was 1151/turn and my culture was only 593/turn. However, tourism was 581, which given my lagging opponents was enough to edge them out. Then, relooking through the tourism lens, I realized that all those Kampungs that I build were not only generate huge amounts of food and production - they were also generating tourism! It was a small fact I completely overlooked and didn't consider. Not sure I would have played it any differently if I had realized it at the start of the game, though.

It was fun, nonetheless. Thanks again for a thrilling game!

 

[cetti]

Turn 314 , Score 1382 SV.

This is my first try in GOTM games. I've been a Civ V players for several years and now i want to try to improve my skill in Civ VI.
I've started settling 3 cities, than i moved war to Tamiri and conquered all thier cities. Maybe i should have spawned more cities across the globe. I've settled 5 cities and conquered 2, then i've tried to grown them up and i've reach over 30 level on capital.
For religion, i choose jesuit education but my biggest mistake i think is to have not built science wonders like University of Oxford or University of Sankore.
Anyway i'll continue to try to improve my games with futures GOTM. Thanks to all of you

 

[ISuckAtCiv]

[Replay] SV turn 267

Like EdTice, I got a little too ambitious forward settling Georgia because I'm used to playing w/ Secret Societies and forgot I wouldn't be able to rely on a governor to pad my loyalty so early in the game. Restarted after about ~20-25 turns and then played my 2nd run with no redos.

This one was really fun! In retrospect I probably could have won a domination victory almost 100 turns sooner, because Jongs are hella overpowered on King difficulty.

My favorite strategy for science victories is expansion via military conquest for the first ~130-150 turns and then a pivot to focus heavily on science, culture and production for the rest of the game. In this case, I wiped out Georgia by about turn 70 or so, and shortly after that unlocked Jongs and went after China. During my war w/ China I realized my navy was trapped with no access to other civs, so I also took out one of the military city states so I could settle a canal city to let them through. After that I was able to take out France and Mali by about turn 165. (Probably took 20-30 turns longer than necessary because I was pillaging as much science and gold as I could along the way to feed my future science victory.

In the meantime, while warring for expansion I was also getting harbors and campuses up in most of my core cities. I underestimated how much culture I needed to reach Communism in time, which probably cost me ~20 turns.

Thanks for the game!



.

 

[tarafran]

SV 243
settled turn 2 south ,2 more cities (one with religious settlement)and killed Tamar right away with 3 archers and 3 warriors.
Went for religion first : feed the world and religious colonization .
Magnus X 2 for 7 more settles .12 cities total
All golden Age
Still working at getting better with SV, DV would of been ridiculous with the Jonks
Thanks for the game

 

[shoshonte]

SV 378 (First game ever of Civ 6)

Settled in place, got aggressively forward settled by Georgia (such that I could not leave the starting isthmus for a while. Was unaware of the Loyalty mechanic so had my second city by the horses to the south in between Tbilisi and Gori (Georgia's first two cities) which then flipped to them via Loyalty. Founded a third city on the Copper and then (eventually) conquered Gori and my second city back from Georgia.

Did not go for religion and did not actually research the tech (Astrology) required to build Holy Sites until after I was done with all of my other techs. Did not really see much use in faith although I think that was probably a mistake.

I began settling to the west on the various islands and once I discovered Oil settled a few cities in the Tundra to the south to unlock Oil.

Went back and forth between Dark and Golden ages, had basically no idea what produced era scores tbh.

Obviously massive room for improvement here, thank you again for the game and looking forward to reading through other player's experiences!

 

[lakeiron]

Turn 235 SV

Great game, the leader is too OP... Look at the yields...
However big mistake that I forgot the Spaceports must be on flatland, and in my first 3 good cities there was none left...
Of course I built up another 3, but it took valuable time.
Very peaceful game, thanks for it!!!

 

[EdTice]

Turn 235 SV

Great game, the leader is too OP... Look at the yields...
However big mistake that I forgot the Spaceports must be on flatland, and in my first 3 good cities there was none left...
Of course I built up another 3, but it took valuable time.
Very peaceful game, thanks for it!!!


View attachment 699301

By peaceful game, you mean fun? Because it looks like you conquered Georgia. Unless you flipped all of the cities, there was clearly some war gong on. Great job. You are 100 turns faster than me.

 

[EdTice]

Turn 235 SV

Great game, the leader is too OP... Look at the yields...
However big mistake that I forgot the Spaceports must be on flatland, and in my first 3 good cities there was none left...
Of course I built up another 3, but it took valuable time.
Very peaceful game, thanks for it!!!


View attachment 699301

Also, can you share what you did to be Suzerain of so many city states? Did you use spies? Did you actively complete quests or just get them passively when you conquered your neighbor? I looked at your map and mine (which was a hundred turns longer) and the two big difference I see are that you had your Kilwin in a better city and you had way more city states. I'm sure there were other things you did better including having put down a Kampung everywhere (which I should have done although I wasn't production limited) That and I think you planned your adjacency bonuses really well.

 

[lakeiron]

By peaceful game, you mean fun? Because it looks like you conquered Georgia. Unless you flipped all of the cities, there was clearly some war gong on. Great job. You are 100 turns faster than me.

Nice catch, you are completely right, I did have an early, rather opportunistic war. I did not want to get boxed in and there was a poorly defended settler to be picked up. It was turn 44, I had already slightly more military power than her. She must have only has a few warrior and 1-2 slingers. It had to be done before she had a wall, so I went in with my warriors and newly upgraded archers and quickly eradicated her military. By turn 60 it was done and she never had the opportunity to settle a second city. But after that I did everything to increase my relationship with everybody. That is the key to later not having to worry too much about military. 1-2 levies and a good relationship will always prevent AI to go after you, even on deity.

 

[lakeiron]

Also, can you share what you did to be Suzerain of so many city states? Did you use spies? Did you actively complete quests or just get them passively when you conquered your neighbor? I looked at your map and mine (which was a hundred turns longer) and the two big difference I see are that you had your Kilwin in a better city and you had way more city states. I'm sure there were other things you did better including having put down a Kampung everywhere (which I should have done although I wasn't production limited) That and I think you planned your adjacency bonuses really well.

I always pay a lot of attention to what the city states want and if it does not cost me too much or does not derail my game plan, then I try to complete their quests. There was an age in this game where I was able to do all of them! The 1st, 3rd and 6th envoys are key, and as soon as I have a diplo policy slot I always go with Diplomatic League. That means if I discover a city state as first, then it is already 2 envoys that I did not have to pay for... When I add an envoy, I alwas try to add the first one, so it counts for 2. I also use Amani as first governor to quickly suze one of the CSs that I discovered first. If there is more than one of those then I alternate among them to get as much era score as possible to secure a Golden Age.

When you have this many CSs, then Kilwa if the most important wonder you can go for, and it is not because of the 3 extra envoys... it is the 15% extra yield to ALL your cities if you are suze of 2 or more of the same type CSs.

With all the envoys I get throughout the civic tree, I am almost always suze of 90% of the CSs.
Oh, and I did not use spies.

 

[Chrumo]

185 SV

Spoiler t185 :

A pretty barren start, however Georgia had some juicy real estate right behind the corner. After settling one additional city below the capital, I conquered her lands with 3 wariors of my own accompanied by 3 warriors of Vatican City, which I levied ASAP with Amani. Afterwards, instead of building any more settlers, I went hard into Galleys, hoping to find some easy targets on better land. I eventually stumbled upon France, and conquered their costal cities, soon to be followed with buying some land units in order to get the landlocked cities.

I continued my conquests, until there was almost no one left. All the conquered cities built Harbours and Campuses, in that order. As always with island maps, the biggest annoyence were the barbarians, who required a lot of micromanagement to get around.

I have spotted Chinguetti early on, so I went for a Holy Site as my first district. After additionaly securing Mogadishu and Kumasi suz bonuses, my invulnerable trade routes provided me with tons of cash, faith and culture.
From the turn 140 onwards, it was just a matter of optimizing the rest of the tech tree to get almost solely 1-turn tech researches until the end. The final tech tree was great, requiring only the bottom techs to get to Offworld Mission.

Thanks for the game!

 

[lakeiron]

185 SV

Spoiler t185 :

View attachment 699585

A pretty barren start, however Georgia had some juicy real estate right behind the corner. After settling one additional city below the capital, I conquered her lands with 3 wariors of my own accompanied by 3 warriors of Vatican City, which I levied ASAP with Amani. Afterwards, instead of building any more settlers, I went hard into Galleys, hoping to find some easy targets on better land. I eventually stumbled upon France, and conquered their costal cities, soon to be followed with buying some land units in order to get the landlocked cities.

I continued my conquests, until there was almost no one left. All the conquered cities built Harbours and Campuses, in that order. As always with island maps, the biggest annoyence were the barbarians, who required a lot of micromanagement to get around.

I have spotted Chinguetti early on, so I went for a Holy Site as my first district. After additionaly securing Mogadishu and Kumasi suz bonuses, my invulnerable trade routes provided me with tons of cash, faith and culture.
From the turn 140 onwards, it was just a matter of optimizing the rest of the tech tree to get almost solely 1-turn tech researches until the end. The final tech tree was great, requiring only the bottom techs to get to Offworld Mission.

Thanks for the game!

Wow, 25 turns from completing rocketry to winning, that is impressive... How many chops do you usually calculate with for those last turns?

 

[Chrumo]

Wow, 25 turns from completing rocketry to winning, that is impressive... How many chops do you usually calculate with for those last turns?

I have found that going for 3-4 cities with 8+ chops each (Woods, Deer, Stone or 2xRainforest) is enough to get efficient space launches, as long as you can afford the Faith/Gold to buy Spaceports in these cities with Moksha/Reyna. I have realised in this game that there is a nice optimization regarding Mars Colony out there, so here is how I would approach it in the future, maybe someone will also benefit from my now-formalized bulletpoint list:

0. Get 3 cities with 8+ chops in the 3 ring radius each, the more, the better of course. Prebuild Harbors/Encampents with their t1,t2,t3 buildings in each of them for the future Space Race policy card boost. This can be done ahead of time, so it's nice to start looking for these spots and securing them throughout the entire game. Have your district-buying governor ready in one of these cities.
1. Buy a Spaceport in the first city soon as you get Rocketry, and switch the district-buying governor in that city to Magnus. Place the district-buying governor in second city to buy another Spaceport ASAP.
2. Once you get Satellites and Magnus is settled down, chop down Launch Earth Satellite and Moon Landing, preferably immediately (to get the Culture boost towards Democracy, Space Race and Globalization).
3. In the second city, once the district-buying governor buys the Spaceport, get Pingala in there for his +30% space race boost. Move district-buying governor to the last city to get 3rd Spaceport. In 5 turns, once he buys it, replace him with Magnus.
4. Once you get Nanotechnology, start the Mars Colony immediately in the city with Pingala. You should have the Royal Society already at that point - sacrifice your builders with as many builds as possible each turn to complete. Don't chop now!* (+2 builds card, Pyramids, neighbouring Lyang city or playing China helps)
5. Once you get Smart Materials, start Exoplanet Expedition in your Pingala city. Here, depending on the future tech tree shuffle, you can chop or not, as the Royal Society builders will be very efficient anyway, and getting the Exoplanet Expedition 2-3 turns early often doesn't matter as much as having extra chops for booster projects.
6. Once you get Offworld Mission, chop everything left, preferably now having Magnus in the last city with most chops. Replace empty spaces with solar panels to have energy for laser boosters. Be careful about running out of energy, as it will often deactivate all the laser boosters in that city for a turn.

*Mars Colony is the only project which has absolutely no priority, as long as you complete it before discovering Smart Materials. I have usually chopped it, but now I think that I can save a lot of chops by simply restraining myself and solely using the Royal Society builders instead.

 

[lakeiron]

Thanks for the comprehensive list, will definitely try

 

[timof]

SV turn 247

Very quickly conquered Georgia's only city Tblisi (which later became my main space city) with a few warriors and one slinger.
France and England followed little later, even before I got jongs (after getting jongs, a quick DV would have been trivial).
All the others I kept for repeated pillaging; that did not work too well, as on this low difficulty setting, the AI civs were pretty
slow at repairing their infrastructure. Maybe conquering more might have been more profitable.

I got the first religion and picked choral music to quickly unlock mercenaries (jong) and mercantilism (privateer), and cross-cultural
dialogue for some extra sience. Here, Vatican city (I was suzerain pretty much by accident) turned out to be surprisingly helpful
with generating more followers.

And I almost made the same mistake as in previous 6oTM183: only a few turns short of winning a CV did I realize that, again,
I generated huge amounts of tourism from monopolies. This time, I barely managed to avoid CV by removing a couple of
improvements, just in time

Fun game, thanks!

 

[EdTice]

SV turn 329 REPLAY

I did poorly my first time through and wanted to see if, based on what I've learned in this thread, I could do better. In order to prepare for a replay, I practiced playing as GItarja on an inland sea map at Immortal (hoping for opportunities for naval victories) and I also practiced religious victories on Deity.

I made a point to research Astrology first because I remembered where the Galapagos islands are and would consider it cheating if I discovered them and got the Astrology boost.

This time through I tried to be more focused on the leader ability using faith to build a navy and also on building better coastal cities and Kampungs. However, I ended up not leveraging well. I wanted to take advantage of being on King (I usually play on Deity) and get to build wonders. I built the Oracle but I regret it. There wasn't much competition for great people and the discount didn't really help. I prepared well making a list of wonders I wanted to build in each era and expected to get all of them. But the Oracle building simply set me back too far and I ended up missing out on some later wonders I expected to get.

One of the frustrating thing about this game. On higher levels there are things you just can't get. On lower levels, you can get them but they aren't as useful. S

Because it was a replay, I went in with some expectations that turned out to be wrong. Tamar forward settled me aggressively (she didn't do that the first time) and one of her cities flipped nearly immediately. I expected her to declare war so I didn't go to war, but she never did. I ended up playing entirely peacefully and ended up with the same number of cities I did the first time and approximately the same win time.

I normally am not much of a warmonger and don't claim to be great at naval warfare. Based on the results of this outcome, I forced myself to play a few games with only domination/diplomacy as win conditions so I had to go to naval war. Hopefully I'll get to make a third attempt at this before the end of the month.

Thanks again for the map.

 

[lakeiron]

SV turn 329 REPLAY

I did poorly my first time through and wanted to see if, based on what I've learned in this thread, I could do better. In order to prepare for a replay, I practiced playing as GItarja on an inland sea map at Immortal (hoping for opportunities for naval victories) and I also practiced religious victories on Deity.

I made a point to research Astrology first because I remembered where the Galapagos islands are and would consider it cheating if I discovered them and got the Astrology boost.

This time through I tried to be more focused on the leader ability using faith to build a navy and also on building better coastal cities and Kampungs. However, I ended up not leveraging well. I wanted to take advantage of being on King (I usually play on Deity) and get to build wonders. I built the Oracle but I regret it. There wasn't much competition for great people and the discount didn't really help. I prepared well making a list of wonders I wanted to build in each era and expected to get all of them. But the Oracle building simply set me back too far and I ended up missing out on some later wonders I expected to get.

One of the frustrating thing about this game. On higher levels there are things you just can't get. On lower levels, you can get them but they aren't as useful. S

Because it was a replay, I went in with some expectations that turned out to be wrong. Tamar forward settled me aggressively (she didn't do that the first time) and one of her cities flipped nearly immediately. I expected her to declare war so I didn't go to war, but she never did. I ended up playing entirely peacefully and ended up with the same number of cities I did the first time and approximately the same win time.

I normally am not much of a warmonger and don't claim to be great at naval warfare. Based on the results of this outcome, I forced myself to play a few games with only domination/diplomacy as win conditions so I had to go to naval war. Hopefully I'll get to make a third attempt at this before the end of the month.

Thanks again for the map.

I checked your save and my immediate question is why are the resources not developed? There are around 26 sea resources not having a fishing boat on them. Sorry for being nosey

 

[tarafran]

I have found that going for 3-4 cities with 8+ chops each (Woods, Deer, Stone or 2xRainforest) is enough to get efficient space launches, as long as you can afford the Faith/Gold to buy Spaceports in these cities with Moksha/Reyna. I have realised in this game that there is a nice optimization regarding Mars Colony out there, so here is how I would approach it in the future, maybe someone will also benefit from my now-formalized bulletpoint list:

0. Get 3 cities with 8+ chops in the 3 ring radius each, the more, the better of course. Prebuild Harbors/Encampents with their t1,t2,t3 buildings in each of them for the future Space Race policy card boost. This can be done ahead of time, so it's nice to start looking for these spots and securing them throughout the entire game. Have your district-buying governor ready in one of these cities.
1. Buy a Spaceport in the first city soon as you get Rocketry, and switch the district-buying governor in that city to Magnus. Place the district-buying governor in second city to buy another Spaceport ASAP.
2. Once you get Satellites and Magnus is settled down, chop down Launch Earth Satellite and Moon Landing, preferably immediately (to get the Culture boost towards Democracy, Space Race and Globalization).
3. In the second city, once the district-buying governor buys the Spaceport, get Pingala in there for his +30% space race boost. Move district-buying governor to the last city to get 3rd Spaceport. In 5 turns, once he buys it, replace him with Magnus.
4. Once you get Nanotechnology, start the Mars Colony immediately in the city with Pingala. You should have the Royal Society already at that point - sacrifice your builders with as many builds as possible each turn to complete. Don't chop now!* (+2 builds card, Pyramids, neighbouring Lyang city or playing China helps)
5. Once you get Smart Materials, start Exoplanet Expedition in your Pingala city. Here, depending on the future tech tree shuffle, you can chop or not, as the Royal Society builders will be very efficient anyway, and getting the Exoplanet Expedition 2-3 turns early often doesn't matter as much as having extra chops for booster projects.
6. Once you get Offworld Mission, chop everything left, preferably now having Magnus in the last city with most chops. Replace empty spaces with solar panels to have energy for laser boosters. Be careful about running out of energy, as it will often deactivate all the laser boosters in that city for a turn.

*Mars Colony is the only project which has absolutely no priority, as long as you complete it before discovering Smart Materials. I have usually chopped it, but now I think that I can save a lot of chops by simply restraining myself and solely using the Royal Society builders instead.

Thanks Chrumo I needed that for my science games,I'll try a replay soon