6otM195 AAR

[Eyswein]

Welcome to the 6otM195 After Actions Report (AAR) thread.

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

In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state your victory/loss turn/date (preferably in the post title) and describe your path to glory in this post! Please attach your victory save to your post. Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Please use spoiler tags for any surprise details you'd like kept hidden. Thank you.

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.

Some questions to consider answering.
- 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?
- Where did you settle your capital and first few cities?
- 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?
- 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?

 

[Chrumo]

SV t200

Spoiler t200 :

It was a fun game, although Secret Societies made it exceptionally easy. Playing with the Owls as my SS, I capitalized on their extra envoys and trade routes to build an economic juggernaut with 26 active trade routes. This really ramped up after I met Kumasi and Chinguetti. Although to be fair, I did miss out on Stonehenge in my bid to secure early benefits from Chinguetti, and I ultimately had to convert my cities to the AI's religion to make everything work.

After settling my 4 core cities, I have resorted to settling some islands with at least 2 choppable production tiles and 1 choppable food tile. This ensured I could chop out a Harbour, buy a Lighthouse and a Seaport to make the city productive instantly, and then chop the food tile to get it up to 4 pop for a Saewon. Ancestral Hall was pretty neat for that purpose (due to the free builder).

No scientific CSs made the game drag out quite a bit, and Tech shuffle made it even harder to get to Chemistry, but otherwise, a pretty solid run, the AI was pretty tame and peaceful, supplying me with heaps of cash throughout the game.

Thanks for the save!

 

[Jovan Kukic]

Turn 217(1530.) science victory, score 1363. I played mostly peacefully,but I took some Free cities. I liberated Kumasi and conquered 2 Chinese cities during protectorate war.

 

[Mattila]

I am always amazed by you guys and how you get stuff done in game. I never really go for science victories, but am doing this one. I did look through and read your comments before attempting.
Still looks like a 225 turn or so victory. I am curious. What were the first districts you built in the game and how early you started settling islands if you can remember? I thought it was intriguing
you put diplomatic quarter and government plaza in the same city. Then I saw the amazing 4 food and 3 production from having these in the same cities and building the as first 2 districts. I
failed to get my religion. Had bad luck with the tech shuffle rng and which I chose to build. Thanks in advance for taking the time!

 

[Jovan Kukic]

Chrumo had better result than me this time, so I guess he could give you a better advice

 

[Chrumo]

I am always amazed by you guys and how you get stuff done in game. I never really go for science victories, but am doing this one. I did look through and read your comments before attempting.
Still looks like a 225 turn or so victory. I am curious. What were the first districts you built in the game and how early you started settling islands if you can remember? I thought it was intriguing
you put diplomatic quarter and government plaza in the same city. Then I saw the amazing 4 food and 3 production from having these in the same cities and building the as first 2 districts. I
failed to get my religion. Had bad luck with the tech shuffle rng and which I chose to build. Thanks in advance for taking the time!

So the general strategy is this:
As always, map and settings are extremely important and you should plan your game around them. I kind of fumbled with going double scout before settler at the start, usually with water-heavy maps you are better off with a single scout and a monument/builder.
The first 3-4 cities you should settle as fast as possible. They should all be settled and work on a Monument. Then I usually take a break to catch up on necessary infrastructure - crucial builders (luxes/strategics for trading), government plaza and a government building (usually ancestral hall for science games), available traders. After that initial stage, you start to make as many settlers as you can without getting killed for having no military, preferably build them in the Ancestral Hall city ("Hub city"). From this point onwards, all new cities will focus on getting their ComHub/Harbor district first - since we have Ancestral Hall, the free builder can help out with either improving a lux and selling it away (thus granting money for buying a Market/Lighthouse) or just chopping out stuff to improve production. If possible, you should also keep a single trade route available to be sent from the new city to your Hub city, which should contain your Gov Plaza (+1/+1 domestic yield instead of regular +1), as well as Magnus (+2 food).

Now for the more game-specific comments:
In this game, we were hamstrung by lack of settlable locations, meaning we had to get to Shipbuilding ASAP. Conveniently, we were also playing Korea, which can get their Campuses up rapidly and with a strong guaranteed adjacency yield. So instead of going for my money districts first, I opted to get quick Seowons instead. This essentialy meant going Saewon -> ComHub/Harbor, with the exception of the planned Hub city which went GovP -> SeoWon -> Harbor. Now the plan for the game was completely changed once I met Kumasi and later Chinguetti. These CSs are so game-defining, that you should change your plans when you meet them. With them in the game, I had to divert my trade routes to City States (for Kumasi bonus), which meant that the Hub city was no longer needed since ideally I won't be sending domestic trade routes. It also meant that I had to settle my cities with as many choppable resources as I could, since there would be no assistance with domestic trading. Fortunately, with cheaper Seowons and abundant money from trade routes with CSs and trading with AIs, all I had to do in new cities was to chop out a Harbor (with ~2 chops) and a food tile to get it to ~3 pop. Then I could instantly buy a Lighthouse and a Seaport, which would be enough for the city to be productive enough for getting up a Seowon.

So in conclusion, yeah, the Hub city with both Gov Plaza, Diplo Quater and Magnus can be an amazing and reliable way to get your new cities productive instantly (+2/+5 yield boost is no joke). However, if Kumasi is in the game, it is often better to exploit that sweet Suzerain bonus. The order for your districts should always be Commercial Hub/Harbor -> Campus, unless you go for Faith as your currency, then of course Holy Site -> Campus.

 

[Thorak]

SV t197, Retry

Spoiler :

This was a replay which is a considerate advantage, especially on a shuffle tech map. I wanted to try Voidsinger as I never played a serious game with them. However, on an island map I think Owls is a better choice.
I experimented a lot with the build order, I also started scout, scout settler on my initial try, but later realized a warrior finishes exactly the turn the city turns to 2 pop if moving the working tile to a 3 food for one turn. After that I went for 2 settlers.
After hitting early empire I went for 2 more settlers and let one city borrow squares from the other one as the north was a dry desert. Important choice was pantheon with lady of reeds and marches. I made a mistake in the placement of the fifth city as I thought it was possible to build an aqueduct from an ocean square. Should have placed it closer to the mountain.

After getting these 5 cities I prioritized teching (science district first in the cities) for being able to enter sea with settlers. This is not how I would normally play, but on an island map with little land it's important to be able to settle new islands quickly. Also prioritized getting magnus in a chopping city together with ancestral hall and promotion that prevents city from losing pop from settler. After I hit those 2 I actually had time to finish feudalism for 2 more worker builds (thanks to lucky tech spawn and farms being useful in the flood plains city). Then I built 5 more settlers quickly using worker chops as the capital had insane chopping capabilities. I made a mistake to build a sixth city on the edge of the island with the plan to use fisheries for that city. It slowed down the voidsinger second promotion and also possibility to suz city states (no diplomat) and the city still is not that great and requires a lot of worker charges.

Later I warred Indonesia and stole all their great works in a trade deal right before declarng surprise war. I think I did a few mistakes this game that could be improved:
1) Wrong secret society.
2) Too heavy focus on expansion and too little focus on exploring and building infrastructure.
3) I was very unlucky with the tech shuffle and chemistry (research labs). I would focus harder on getting Alliance lvl 2 for the eureka if I did a tech shuffle again. Generally, I think looking at eurekas for key techs is a lot more important in tech shuffle games.
4) I should have put more emphasis on warring instead of expanding building settlers. In a game like this it's rather easy to capture cities for good land.

The science district is very good but my god it's annoying to avoid other districts one square around it, especially with the limitation of only hills. I always enjoy science games, especially on deity difficulty. Would have been fun to see how quickly this game could have been won if science city states was enabled.

 

[Gghippo]

Thanks for the game… I really enjoyed it. In fact, I did this one twice…

• First time it was turn 233 – Using Void Singers
• Second time it was turn 222 – Using Owls of Minerva

Founded a religion on both occasions using work ethic with HS's stationed around Uluru. The second time I didn’t have a lot of luck… Missed out on Kilwa, Oxford Uni and CS Kasumi was destroyed by China.

I was disappointed I couldn’t break the 200 turn SV barrier. I have achieved this target several times … but unfortunately still not yet on GOTM challenges.

Having read the above comments from Chrumo about using internal trade routes… I pondered trying this challenge for a third time… But couldn’t bring myself to do this one again - sorry…

However, I did find another old deity SV GOTM challenge to try this approach. (Shaka’s GOTM151). Finished up with a 207 turn SV… But upon reflection it was probably a lot closer to that elusive 200 turn barrier… possibly even sub 200… I had an 8 chop space port city ready to fly me to Mars… But unfortunately when Magnus was 1 turn from being established in this city… I kid you not… A blizzard occurs in this city removing 4 builders, pillaging my power plant, factory, research centre and university. The consolation was I got the opportunity to propose a world congress emergency… Thanks Civ! …

Fingers crossed the next game (only a few days away) is another SV deity challenge.