6otm208 AAR (After Actions Report)

[Thorak]

Welcome to the 6otM205 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 did you think about the settings in this map?

 

[CiJay]

SV T281
It took a while until I stabilized. Theodora was attacking me which slowed me down heavily. My stats were just climbing at around T150... Theodora was also pushing to CV so I had to attack here. 8 turns were left when I checked the CV-screen.
Luckily it was quite in time to declare war, take a lot of her cities (with the help of planes) and sent back her rock bands. Fun game.

 

[Gghippo]

SV T210 / Score 1596
Fun game!
Different style for me this game. I'm not very good at domination so have been practicing different tactics to be more efficient.
Established core cities in ancient era.
War with horses in classical era.
Consolidated mid game with internal trade routes / settlers and built necessary infrastructure to get tech/civic boosts where possible.
Then war to increase science via pillaging to close out game using promoted cavalry from classical era.
Had to unimproved several luxuries to avoid winning culture victory due to monopolies at one point.
Unfortunately, tech tree not favorable for me to go sub200. Launched exoplanet expedition well before 200 but still had several techs to research before 'off world mission'.

 

[Jovan Kukic]

Turn 231(1600.) science victory, score 1085. I also settled area behind Phoenicia, so my empire had two parts. Gran Colombia attacked me unsuccessfully, so after long war I liberated Hattusa and increased my science. I met Geneva quite late, and I was in a war for long anyway, so I was able to use their peace bonus quite late.

 

[GaidinX]

SV T273 / Score 1,179

I rolled a Nat 1 on this game start. Gran Columbia denounced me immediately and sent a horde. I barely survived, managed to get peace and settled a 2nd city to the North to try and hold back Dido settling too close. Dido declared war and I barely fended off her attack on the new city. She attacked just after I dropped a Holy Site and ran a single project and during my time defending she ran projects and snatched the last prophet. At least AI gave me Feed the World and it was my cap so it helped with growth long term along with a lot of settlers in the Ren age. Columbia attacked again as soon as Dido was done - I survived and settled my 3rd city to use the chokepoint to the west, all the while having to repulse wave after wave from Columbia including him grabbing Hattusa and La Venta as Suz and levying. I stayed at war with Columbia until the end of the game. I was so far behind after just staying alive that it took till the 150s or 160s before I really started to get going. I was 20 techs behind Dido and only 12 behind Columbia at that point. I was never at a point where conquest was really feasible without slowing my catch-up and when I could do it there was no point.

Strat to win was to settle a bit more dense with almost all cities in range of my capitol with the IZ - Cities built Harbor or Hub and then mixed order of IZ and Campus. Leveraged the trade routes to my capitol to grow my cities with Magnus (Provision) and Japan's bonuses. I grabbed Lady of the Reeds and Marches as the pantheon to get some early production. I placed 2 Entertainment squares for max coverage and covered all cities with one Water Park. I had Magnus upgraded to allow all regional bonuses to apply and along with Mexico City and a few GPs I powered my entire nation with my capitol. I ran a mix of projects to catch up in science and to snag key GP, especially the ones that let you flip or takeover city states as they were a niece shield. I used one on La Venta very late game for some extra aluminum and a strong campus spot.

I managed to snag a couple wonder engineers and got Mausoleum, Colosseum, and Colossus with the double ancient one. I managed to hard build Taj Mahal and then got Estadios and Bioshphere to help with late game. The AI built most others long before I knew they existed. I rarely don't get at least one of the extra card wonders and I definitely felt it when choosing policy cards.

The game was fun and very challenging. It forced me to adapt my usual instincts (conquer neighbor for nice pre-built cities). The star of the show was a slinger that helped save my first cities and then stood in an encampment where he wounded or killed dozens of troops from Columbia - he was maxed out in promotions long before the end of the game when he was a machine gun army. The wounded troops all traveled south to meet my anti-cav wall backed up by a second ranged unit with 5 upgrades. Lost a couple level 4 units in the llanero assaults sadly. I was competing for a culture victory due to the Biosphere but it would have taken a different effort to close as Theodora was quite strong (along with a nearly 4k army rating)

Thanks for the game!

Spoiler The Map :

Spoiler Valiant Defender of the Gap :

Spoiler Japan's Internal Trade is Great - Food is down due to late march chops :