6otM187 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM187 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.

 

[crocivfanatic]

SV Turn 333
- 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?
Pushing science with campuses and city growth
- 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?
- A lot of extra faith was generated
- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
-see save game
- 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?
- in first game which failed, i picked tundra, but that it seems is unnecessary as you get tons of faith anyway. So in second game went with good old religious settlements instead.
- What governments did you select? What key policy cards did you use? Why?
- Autocracy(to push wonders),Monarchy,communism(to push science), digital democracy
- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
- First one the one which give you no population lose when building settlers, second one which give you science/culture boost.
- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
- Pushing as much is possible alliances, had 3 of them overall. Got 3 dow due having alliance with Korea.
- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
- medieval, renaissance, and information era.
- How did the map affect your gameplay?
- Considering i lost first game, map terrain means a lot . A previous science vc only on deity was much easier then this one.
- Any surprises/frustration/elations you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Yes, barbarians were very aggresive and probably a reason why i lost first game. So in second i went to sweep them immediately.
- Did you enjoy your game?
Yes, temped to spin it off on deity level.

 

[Chrumo]

185 SV

Spoiler t185 :

I always find these strong civilizations to be most stressful to play on GotMs, as I often feel like I am missing out and not using them to their full potential. Even though the victory time seems decent otherwise, I feel like on King difficulty, with such a broken civ (especially with a cold, highlands setup) I should be shattering a sub 150 win or something crazy like that.

On this map, I had two considerations:
1) Which religion belief to go for - Work Ethic seems obvious, however the significant lack of food on tundra could be normalized by the Feed The World belief. Another contenter was Jesuit Education, which could in principle do what Work Ethic would provide in terms of pumping out Campuses, while allowing me to settle more cites off of tundra (since Jesuit Education doesn't sepcifically require a high adjacency Holy Site for production). I ultimately went with the vanilla choice of Work Ethic, which I think was the correct choice, as settling only on tundra was fairly simple on this cold, vast map.
2) Early governors. I was initially tempted to rush out a 4-promotion Moksha (to enable district faith-buying), but that would mean skipping on Magnus, Amani and Pingala. Even among those, I couldn't decide what would be best: Magnus with Provision for massive settling with Monumentality? Magnus with the much needed food trade route improvement? Amani to get some essential Suzs? Or culutral Pingala to get the 2x Holy Site policy card as soon as possible? I eventually went with Pingala, immedietely followed by Moksha, but I think that I should have delayed getting Moksha and squeezed both Magnus and Amani in between. Faith-buying districts in new cities was decent, but not necessary most of the time.

I also messed up the last 30 turns, my endgame governor, tech and builder management was subpar. This game it took me 27 turns from Rocketry to victory screen, but with such a streamlined future era tech tree, I think that this could have been done in 20-22 turns.

No city trading, joint wars or declaring wars to cancel any per-turn deals.

Thanks for the game!

 

[Jovan Kukic]

Turn 203(1420.) science victory, score 1531. I played peacefully.

 

[Xtowers]

Turn 225 CV, Score 2493.

I just can't seem to help myself with finding spots for my great works to go, which I know increases my tourism and gets me further away from a science victory. I did a dance of the aurora and work ethic build, hoping the production would help me towards a science victory, but I was only able to get off the moon landing before all my tourism caught up to me. I went WIDE, too. But, eh, I had fun.

 

[lakeiron]

T201 SV

The usual suspects, Work Ethic for production, Magnus for food from internal trade routes and for the Provision to churn out settlers in Monumentality. After the first Monumentality I went for the Cultural one, then back to Monumentality.
Rocketry to Win screen was 25 turns, which is a great step forward for me, but there is still room for improvement, I haven't left enough stuff to chop at the end.

I guess the biggest takeaway from the past few games is that there is an awful lot of distractions in the game that can alter your focus from the established target victory condition. But good fun...

 

[shoshonte]

T231 SV

Pantheon: Dance of the Aurora to max out the faith from the specialty district, Feed the World due to the very low food spawn. I believe that I also opened Magnus Provision as well and did 3 straight Monumentalities for golden age.

I think also my end game could have used a lot of improvement, I definitely didn't have very many chops for projects by the end although I did get Ruhr Valley, Admundson Scott Research Station, and a bunch of other stacked benefits to district projects. Every single city (except for a couple cities I took late from Georgia and Cinguetti which I also took late) had a spaceport and thus was able to transverse the great divide to settle the unknown very quickly, and had enough power in each city to power each of the project as well as hoarding aluminum with the card.

I also got a little distracted early game with a skirmish with Cinguetti that ended up giving me basically nothing and I'm sure my micro throughout the game could have been better as well.

My fastest win to date, but hoping to improve with future iterations!

Thanks for the game, had a lot of fun!

Spoiler Final Stats UI mods only :

 

[shoshonte]

185 SV

Spoiler t185 :

View attachment 708222

I always find these strong civilizations to be most stressful to play on GotMs, as I often feel like I am missing out and not using them to their full potential. Even though the victory time seems decent otherwise, I feel like on King difficulty, with such a broken civ (especially with a cold, highlands setup) I should be shattering a sub 150 win or something crazy like that.

On this map, I had two considerations:
1) Which religion belief to go for - Work Ethic seems obvious, however the significant lack of food on tundra could be normalized by the Feed The World belief. Another contenter was Jesuit Education, which could in principle do what Work Ethic would provide in terms of pumping out Campuses, while allowing me to settle more cites off of tundra (since Jesuit Education doesn't sepcifically require a high adjacency Holy Site for production). I ultimately went with the vanilla choice of Work Ethic, which I think was the correct choice, as settling only on tundra was fairly simple on this cold, vast map.
2) Early governors. I was initially tempted to rush out a 4-promotion Moksha (to enable district faith-buying), but that would mean skipping on Magnus, Amani and Pingala. Even among those, I couldn't decide what would be best: Magnus with Provision for massive settling with Monumentality? Magnus with the much needed food trade route improvement? Amani to get some essential Suzs? Or culutral Pingala to get the 2x Holy Site policy card as soon as possible? I eventually went with Pingala, immedietely followed by Moksha, but I think that I should have delayed getting Moksha and squeezed both Magnus and Amani in between. Faith-buying districts in new cities was decent, but not necessary most of the time.

I also messed up the last 30 turns, my endgame governor, tech and builder management was subpar. This game it took me 27 turns from Rocketry to victory screen, but with such a streamlined future era tech tree, I think that this could have been done in 20-22 turns.

No city trading, joint wars or declaring wars to cancel any per-turn deals.

Thanks for the game!

Could you explain your decision making for a t4 capital settle (seems like the same location where I put my b4). 28 cities is quite insane, I would have thought that you would have gotten diminishing marginal returns with that many cities since I can't imagine how you were able to keep amenities at +3 or +5.

Very impressive final stat line and game, nice work!!

 

[Chrumo]

Could you explain your decision making for a t4 capital settle (seems like the same location where I put my b4). 28 cities is quite insane, I would have thought that you would have gotten diminishing marginal returns with that many cities since I can't imagine how you were able to keep amenities at +3 or +5.

Very impressive final stat line and game, nice work!!

Sure thing!

So first things first, I think the starting position of each GotM is where I spend a lot of time during my runs, often staring at the screen for 5-10 minutes without moving a single unit. There is something really appealing in overanalyzing every minute detail and ultimately deciding on either staying in place or taking a gamble and moving further towards unknown lands - sometimes it will result in a 5 turn setback, but other times it will accelerate the ultimate victory by a dozen turns or so due to a much better captal city.

In this game, the starting location looked like this:

Spoiler Starting position :

Of course, the plan for the game is to make use of Dance of the Aurora, but as I have mentioned earlier, this position screams starvation. There is not a single two food tile in sight! So unless we plan on taking Feed the World, it seems very difficult to get enough population in our capital to pump out 2 settlers (for some starting cities before monumentality is available), get a Holy Site for religion, and a Government Plaza - all of which are my early game goals. There is also not a single fresh water in sight (beside the starting lake), so alternate settling locations are not visible just yet.

What is however noticable, is the "Tundra Ending" tiles in the south. If you look closely, the two tiles in the bottom left are actually different from the tundra tiles elsewhere - they are much sparser in the snow they contain. These tiles are only in places which neighbour at least one non-tundra tile, which means that some 2 food tiles are highly likely in this area. With some farms in mind, these could provide enough food to grow our capital, while the Russia land-grab ability while settling will probably provide us with plenty of tundra for our Holy Site placement.

So the first decision is to move the warrior downwards onto a hill, so that we can get a better look at the land ahead. Here is what we see:

Spoiler Warrior reveals new lands :

Now we're talking! There is both a lake (as evidenced by fresh water and a small beach on the marsh tile) and a 3 food tile itself. At this point, I am thinking that I can either settle the Marsh - which would be good enough - or perhaps there will be an even better tile which is also connected to the lake. Now we have to consider whether we can afford the 4-5 turn settle, we need to rush a high-priority pantheon after all. Fortunately, we are playing on King difficulty, and there is little risk of losing the pantheon as long as we commit to some tundra tiles at the very start.

So after deliberating a bit, we move the settler south. This is what we see:

Spoiler Land south :

At this point, we can see a fresh water 2 food tile, neighboured by a 3 food tile, wheat and some sheep nearby. At the same time, a +6 adjacency Holy Site is still available in the second ring. This is where I decided to settle right then, and this is where you will find my capital city

Hope that helps!

 

[shoshonte]

Thank you for writing up your scouting techniques, that makes sense. I am more used to playing on online speed where one cannot afford ever to do that type of thing, but since this is equivalent to a T2 settle on online speed which is sometimes viable, that makes sense.

I did end up going Feed the World and with internals felt like the food and growth was not very challenging (at some point all of my cities had ridiculous housing due to monasteries plus FTW and certain policy cards that I had in place).

Perhaps going Work Ethic would have made more of a difference but I had very high prod throughout due to Russia's inherent bonuses so did not feel like it was necessary.

Maybe I will try a replay with different decisions and see how the game would go!

 

[mad-bax]

SV T233

I played poorly. I'm not very good at science for some reason. I can tech quickly, but it all seems to go wrong from Rocketry onwards.

In this game I settled in place and soon realised there was a very good spot for ToA, which I built.
Religion was Dance of the Aurora, Feed the world and cross cultural dialogue.
I spammed settlers and then workers at Feudalism. I built ancestral hall and then more settlers. I went quite wide. 12 is my usual stopping point, but having built AH I felt obliged to make use of it. In the end I had 22 cities.
I hit all the Golden eras. Monumentality - Free Enquiry - Reform the coinage - Heartbeat of Steam
I built a few Lavras, but went Magnus provision for growth. I built 15 cities, took 2 Cs's and a couple of Tamars cities at the end for her aluminium - which is misspelled as "aluminum" in the pedia for some reason.
I built the colosseum, but still struggled with amenities and didn't really get "ecstatic" until about T150.
I teched quickly. 105 science by T100 and I managed to hit education with enough gold to buy 3 unis in low prod cities. Chemistry was the opposite. When I go there I had no gold to buy research stations and had to build them at roughly 17 turns each at that point.
I forgot to build an encampment in my space centre cities. My IZ's were very low adjacency. I got to rocketry at roughly turn 160 and then it took a further 73 turns to close out the game. I'm obviously missing some obvious boost somewhere. All my science games are like this.

That being said, I really enjoyed the challenge of a low food start. I also enjoyed the way the map was put together. The hut with the astrology boost that everyone would get, the lack of aluminium and the huge starting continent with no rivers. There was other stuff too. So thanks to the creators. A lot of effort obviously went into this scenario. It was great to play.

One day I will get a sub T200 SV. I am determined.

I have posted a screenie of two simultaneous blizzards which in the end took out 17 tiles. Fun times.

 

[enKage]

Pretty dissapointing t224 win, a lot of turns lost to mismicromanagement (forgot fe. to leave Bolshoi at 1 turn etc.) and not observing great people (no great scientist Newton and others).

Settled 1SE from initial lake and went camp pantheon, beacase tundra and work ethics as Russia is like cheating

- 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?
Plan was culture rush for Amundsen, ended up with no building theatre squeres at all Also no convinient place for colloseum


- What were your initial 5-10 builds in the capital or other early cities?
Comparing to usual games I went more scouts and slingers at the begining, just too much space for barbs to spawn. After settling 2nd city I went straight for Artemis


- How did the leader bonus and civ unique ability impact your plan/play, if at all?
I settled a lot of tundra for faith. I skipped usual work ethic and tundra pantheon, as it is like cheating, as mentioned before. I was only farming faith from civ ability, not Lavras adjecency.
Using great writers for fogbusting and scouting - amazing


- How many cities did you settle and/or capture? Where did you settle your first few cities?
2nd city went north west for triple camp of foxes, next even further west, 3rd expansion on the lake. Pretty much prioritising early camps.


- Pantheon chosen and why? Religious beliefs chosen, and why?
Bonus food and hammer from camps, religion choral music first and religious colonisation. Developed to faith from city and amenity building

- Which Governors were most important; when and why?
Initial Pingala and hard on bishop for faithbuying districts

- Was diplomacy/trading useful? How? Relations with other civs?
At king there is very little chance to get gold from AIs. I used joined war against Georgia to farm some gold


- When did you have Dark/Golden ages?
Forever Golden. Monumentality as long as I could.


- Did you enjoy your game?
Moderately. King AI is not challanging at all.

Some screenies xD
Initial cities

Spoiler :

Pretty too late Kilwa city

Spoiler :

Amundsen city (north) and Mausoleum city

Spoiler :

Southern Russia, fun for triple preserve yields

Spoiler :

 

[nufro]

T194 CV.. Whoops!

 

[socralynnek]

Is that even my first submission to a Civ6 GOTM, after a I played lots of Civ3 & Civ4 GOTM and a little less Civ5?+

And then I am even late to the deadline although I finished more than 2 weeks ago...

Anyway, turn 310 Science Victory.

Never tried Peter before, but the advantages were quite fitting to the map.

I had contestants for Science Great People, so in the end I probably only got 1 or 2...
Faith bought a few engineers and merchants.
Still learning some Civ6 mechanics, this game was quite helpful...