6otM31 After Action

[daheat43]

I delayed the encampments until the 30% policy ... tho I built one when I noticed it was relatively cheap. How does the discounting work? I thought it was just based on having fewer of that type than the average of other civs. But there’s something about which policies are completed, too?

Good point on the extra culture from works of art. I could’ve used that. I did get a couple early great writers, surely the first one if not also the second, but I didn’t have anywhere to put the art til I captured Xian. Then I popped the second right around then and. Placed it when I captured the Scythian cap. So much for early gain. I had an artist that I held til the Scythian cap, too, and a GReat musician who of course was useless.

 

[Chalcedon]

Just found this great post of Victoria about chopping (and district costs):

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ting-trade-yields.624280/page-3#post-14918177

It explains a lot!

 

[daheat43]

Thanks! Victoria's number analyses always blow me away.

Good to know that district costs are calculated when you PLACE them, so you can build however slowly you want... and not intentionally hold up civics and techs as you build, like I did in this game.

Good to hear adjacency bonuses are not vital, either. I like the idea, but I rarely take advantage... even as Japan. Too many other factors to consider.

Never thought about using (abusing?) other policy cards for overflow, other than Ancient Walls. This would be a good way to get the 2 galleys I never build.

And he chops crabs? This is blowing my mind.

Do people pretty much chop all your forests.. or crabs, quarries, etc? I sometimes chop but actually pretty rarely. I end up placing a lot of lumber mills. Or I chop hills (like in Civ5) and then build a mine on the spot.

This may be a question for Victoria, but what is "playing immersion" that he mentions in a comment below the main post? And why is Pangea an exploit, arguably? (Because the AIs suck at war but can do fairly well at other victory types when left alone on another continent?)

 

[FurionHuang]

Thanks! Victoria's number analyses always blow me away.

Good to know that district costs are calculated when you PLACE them, so you can build however slowly you want... and not intentionally hold up civics and techs as you build, like I did in this game.

Good to hear adjacency bonuses are not vital, either. I like the idea, but I rarely take advantage... even as Japan. Too many other factors to consider.

Never thought about using (abusing?) other policy cards for overflow, other than Ancient Walls. This would be a good way to get the 2 galleys I never build.

And he chops crabs? This is blowing my mind.

Do people pretty much chop all your forests.. or crabs, quarries, etc? I sometimes chop but actually pretty rarely. I end up placing a lot of lumber mills. Or I chop hills (like in Civ5) and then build a mine on the spot.

This may be a question for Victoria, but what is "playing immersion" that he mentions in a comment below the main post? And why is Pangea an exploit, arguably? (Because the AIs suck at war but can do fairly well at other victory types when left alone on another continent?)

My opinion is if you have plenty of hills go ahead and chop forests for critical overflow. Or you decide you would chop all forest/stone and this city no longer needs prod. Otherwise keep some reasonable amount for Lumber-mill/Quarry.

 

[^MeSSiaH^]

Furion:
Good point on faith points and discount on Lavra. Will check it. Same for GW culture boost.
I wonder however, is this efficient? I mean, you will most likely conquer a few cities in early turns, and each of them will have monument - this is enough for mercenaries to hit when needed, isn't it? The question is what is more efficient - repairing the monuments or building lavras. My initial thought was repair - it comes a bit later (lavras need to be early to be effective) and the later you stop building settler/builder/army to build districts the better.

On chopping, for domination victory I'd say chop and don't think twice is a good beginner advice. From there you can start thinking on chop management i.e. overflow cards, science/culture impact. Otherwise, unless you are really hard pressed for any production in a city, just cut the damn trees.
One chop early is lets say 50 cogs. Forest is 1 cog per turn, improvement is additional 1 cog per turn. So you get 25 turns worth of production. Most likely 50 turns, because you will just switch the worked tile to hill. (the city wont be more than 4-5 size anyway)
Given its turn 50 or so, this results in equal total production on turn 100 (oversimplified but lets leave it for the sake of argument) - where it doesn't matter anyway as you are closing the domination game already and you are in more need of gold for upgrades than production.

It's a different story for science victory and the Victoria post is a good eye opener for that (chop waves, alignment with envoys etc.) but the general (again oversimplified) rule in SV is the same - a well played game means you are left with zero trees in the end.

Best,
M.

 

[FurionHuang]

Furion:
Good point on faith points and discount on Lavra. Will check it. Same for GW culture boost.
I wonder however, is this efficient? I mean, you will most likely conquer a few cities in early turns, and each of them will have monument - this is enough for mercenaries to hit when needed, isn't it? The question is what is more efficient - repairing the monuments or building lavras. My initial thought was repair - it comes a bit later (lavras need to be early to be effective) and the later you stop building settler/builder/army to build districts the better.

On chopping, for domination victory I'd say chop and don't think twice is a good beginner advice. From there you can start thinking on chop management i.e. overflow cards, science/culture impact. Otherwise, unless you are really hard pressed for any production in a city, just cut the damn trees.
One chop early is lets say 50 cogs. Forest is 1 cog per turn, improvement is additional 1 cog per turn. So you get 25 turns worth of production. Most likely 50 turns, because you will just switch the worked tile to hill. (the city wont be more than 4-5 size anyway)
Given its turn 50 or so, this results in equal total production on turn 100 (oversimplified but lets leave it for the sake of argument) - where it doesn't matter anyway as you are closing the domination game already and you are in more need of gold for upgrades than production.

It's a different story for science victory and the Victoria post is a good eye opener for that (chop waves, alignment with envoys etc.) but the general (again oversimplified) rule in SV is the same - a well played game means you are left with zero trees in the end.

Best,
M.

I think you are right about Lavra. My mind set is more for peaceful play so Lavra for GW is obvious. But with Warrior/Archer/GG taking neighbor's cities (in most cases will have Holy Sites) it might be more efficient. Very good point.

 

[cheffster]

t130 domination victory

- How many cities did you settle, or capture?
22 Cities in the end. 3 Settled myself, 1 from a stolen settler and rest captured.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Archery->Bronze working->Iron working->Horseback riding were priorities. Completed skipped a few techs such astrology, sailing.,Celestial Navigation until much much later and never got Cartography.
I really like Cossaks and wanted to get a nice army of them before it was too late for them to be relevant so I researched Military Science very early on.

- Did you send anyone to the dustbin of history
Very precisely and strategically I conquered each capital one by one trying to minimize any time spent moving my army that wasn't directly towards capturing capital cities, and any turn at war that I wasn't in a good position to finish efficiently.
Against Sumeria/Germany/Rome/Greece wars only lasted 10 turns as I wanted to make use of thee Geneva suzerain bonus as much as I could.


- What did you build for an Army and Navy and how did it change?
Started mostly archers and swordsman. Built a few horsemen and managed to get the first GG and started making chariots when I was close to getting knights.
Around turn 85 or so I upgraded 7-8 chariots into knights.
Around turn 100 when I finished Divine right I swapped government to Monarchy and used ancient walls 150% production overflow bonus to make horsemen. Cities where I harvested stone ended up give me a whopping 3 horsemen per chop with overflow still leftover. Around turn 105 I had about 12 Cossacks immediately after I researched military science from upgrading horsemen.

- Did you use your UU? Was it useful?
Extremely useful!

- What was your most useful unit?
Both great generals helped alot but Cossacks were the main heroes.

- Was diplomacy useful? How?
Very early on I was getting ~50 gpt by selling resources which helped tremendously.

- Were City-States helpful? Did any other civ give you a hard time about city-states?
Didn't have a huge impact but obviously it helped with culture/science/Stockholm GP bonus.

- What was your strategy, how did you gain your Domination VC?
talked about this in dustbin to history question.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Honestly, the only surprise was that Rome let me get first two GGs without any contest.

- Did you enjoy the game?
Very much so. First time testing the monarchy/ancient walls overflow trick to build military units fast.

 

[daheat43]

Well done! 3 units for a harvested stone is tremendous, even with the wall trick. A few of those cities, and you have an instant Army.

Makes me wonder if it might be worth kind of a ruthless capitalist earth exploitation strategy. Found a city, doesn’t have to be a good spot but near some harvestable resources, harvest all the resources with Monarchy/walls for a bunch of units, and sell the city for whatever you can get to the nearest AI. Do people do that? Settlers get crazy expensive, but you could do it with captured settlers, or recoup some of your cost by selling the city.

 

[cheffster]

I've never sold cities to the AI. I grew by capturing some ai cities, but mostly when they were on the pathway towards a capital.
In domination u don't need to make many settlers but for Science Victory per say where you want as many cities as possible I still make alot of settlers. With 50% production card and some chopping I dont find them that hard to get.

 

[arthur486]

DV @ turn 200
So my strategy was to get an early religion, grab the warrior monk belief and go on a faith-based rampage... Below is what actually happened

I managed to grab the first non-Stonehenge religion, waited until 3 cities had Lavras and established it. I also got the warrior monk belief. However, as all other civs were to my west, I had to go through Gilgamesh to get to them. This proved difficult, as he was way ahead in tech (more than double my tech rate) and had beelined musketman. At this point unimproved monks were useless, so I chased Theocracy and attacked with swordsmen/knights/crossbows. It took a long time to win against the muskets, and by the time I did it I already had Theocracy. At that point I just steamrolled everyone else.

Russia was very fun to play, Cossacks are very good and warrior monks are useful, but only if you can train them at tech parity, so they get to be upgraded together with tech advancement. Thanks for the game!

 

[leif erikson]

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