6otM69 After Action

[leif erikson]

Welcome to the 6otM69 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 attached your victory save to your post.

- How many cities did you settle, or capture?
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
- What did you build for an Army and Navy and how did it change?
- Did you use your UU/UB? Were they useful?
- What was your most useful unit?
- Was diplomacy useful? How?
- Were City-States helpful? Did any other civ give you a hard time about city-states?
- Did religion play a role in your game?
- What was your strategy, how did you gain your Domination VC?
- How many Dark Ages and/or Golden Ages did you have? Did you have a strategy?
- What effect did Loyalty have on your settling or conquering? How did you mitigate its effects?
- Any surprises 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.

Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Some players like to replay the game, and although we will not record the results from a replay, you can still post your new experiences (please state if the game is a replay). Please refrain from posting videos until the deadline for submission is over.

 

[Vizurok]

T121 Domination Victory

- How many cities did you settle, or capture? I settled 6 cities and obviously conquered a lot more. I focused on getting only the essential foreign cities, so I guess I ended up with about 30.
- What did you prioritize for research and policies? I really dislike Seven Seas as it's nothing but a lie: you usually don't even need a navy to win the map, so I steered away from the upper part of the tech tree. I was going for Iron Working in hope of undertaking a Swordsman rush but after realizing that Korea is my first target and I don't have access to easy iron, I delayed conquest until I beelined Machinery for Warak'aqs.
- What did you build for an Army and Navy and how did it change? I have never played an Inca domination game, so it felt very weird that I had to pre-build a bunch of Scouts for war, but at least it cost virtually no production to set up an army of 8 Scouts. The upgrade cost is quite significant (I had really nice science to the insane mountain adjacencies, so I couldn't get to Mercenaries in tie), so I attacked Korea with 4 Warak'aqs and upgraded the rest of the Scouts later.
- Did you use your UU/UB? Were they useful? The Inca kit is ridiculously powerful! Personally, I don't really like playing with them as I always feel like that I am shooting myself in the foot when I debating whether I should place districts or terrace farms in the premium mountain spots. However, this map was kind enough to provide me with more than enough tiles for both purposes so I was able to realize the insane yields of terrace farms. Qhapaq Nan are almost immersion-breaking given that you can build a pass outside your territory and instantly teleport to it.
- What was your most useful unit? I was not sold truly sold on Warak'aqs before this game but obviously I feel much more comfortable about them as I was able to steamroll the whole map with them. Their abilities with the essential promotions provide a versatile killing machine that cannot be stopped in a turn-based game. However, it should be noted that it's risky to start your conquest against a tech-savvy opponent as your units below Level 3 can be easily burned by enemy Crossbowmen. In this game, I had no choice but to attack Korea and she managed to do some real damage at T70. Interestingly enough, none of the other AIs could put up a fight like Korea, but to be honest, the vast amount of Scythian horses was not super convenient as well.
- Was diplomacy useful? How? Well, obviously I did not have much room for diplomacy, but the early friendship with Gilgamesh came handy as I could channel all my attention to Korea.
- Were City-States helpful? Did any other civ give you a hard time about city-states? I did not meet any of the red city states early enough to have an impact on my game, so I went with a more casual Science/Culture focus. Kumasi was especially nice to have as its bonus helps a lot in building up your culture. Also, due to Hungary's weird location on the map, I had to rely on Cahokia's levied units who easily conquered Hungary supported by two Warak'aqs.
- Did religion play a role in your game? No, I didn't even build a Holy Site until I got Hildegard of Binden. Later in the game, i enjoyed the conquered Holy Sites yields to purchase some units via the Grand Master's Chanel. Jerusalem granted me with an early Settler that helped a lot with setting up the war machine.
- What was your strategy, how did you gain your Domination VC? As I said earlier, I was toying with the idea of doing a Swordsman rush but it turned out to be too risky, so I went with the Warak'aqs. I built an early Encampement and run some projects, so I had an early Great General to support my troops. I used the Survey and Raid cards intensively and managed to seriously boost my units in the Korean war. I settled a city with a lot of chops in the north and rushed Terracotta Army that helped a lot in getting the essential +20 combat promotions. After conquering Korea, I went eastwards and killed Germany, the Aztecs, Scythia and the Zulu with my initial Scout army - my killing machines with 4 movement points were able to go through four civs in 50 turns. After my friendship expired with Sumer, I built up a small Knight army and easily conquered most of their cities that were not walled and defended by War-Carts. However, it turned out that Uruk was a tough nut to crack, so I had to get three Frigates to soften up their defenses for my Knights.
- How many Dark Ages and/or Golden Ages did you have? Did you have a strategy? I finished the game in the Middle ages, had two Golden Ages. Classical Golden Age is super easy to get as the Inca - I deliberately didn't build a Qhapaq Nan until the Classical age to delay era score.
- What effect did Loyalty have on your settling or conquering? How did you mitigate its effects? Warak'aqs allow for a speedy conquest, so poor enemy cities didn't even have time to rebel. The vast Aztec rainforests were a close call but none of the cities flipped after all.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it? I had some calculated luck with the map as my assumptions (no boats required, the army can go east efficiently) turned out to be true. I was honestly surprised with Korea's fighting power as they got to Machinery even earlier then my beelining Inca - luckily enough, they did not have enough production to call up too many units but it was a close call. Also, I did not bother to pre-scout Sumeria when we were friends so I did not learn about their capital not being an easy target until my units got there - I could have spared a few turns if I had sent one unit there.
- Did you enjoy your game? As someone who is not really comfortable with the Seven Seas map and the Inca, I had a surprisingly fun run. I still think that this map type has much more land then it should but this time, it didn't turn out to be a problem. Also, this map is a wet dream for the Inca as the local mountain range provides such a strong backbone that you can't really go wrong even if you don't want to rush the game.

 

[tarafran]

DV-126

- Settled 7 cities
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?-beelined for Wahracks the nswiched to the top of the tree for naval units
- What did you build for an Army and Navy and how did it change?-Scouts to find other civs upgraded to warhaks with a few mele/horse unit to take the cities
- Did you use your UU/UB? Were they useful?Awsome,first time using them,very powerfull on first 120 turns. One of my waraks got to 9th level promotion on my winning turn.I was wondering if it could heal with no more new promo to be had.The zulus Impies were starting to show up on the last few turn.I did some damaged to my Waraks . I don't know if it will survive the counter attack.

- What was your most useful unit?Waraks
- Was diplomacy useful? How? Only at the beginning to sell lux and dip favors .After that every body hated me
- Were City-States helpful? Did any other civ give you a hard time about city-states? Was suzerain of a few ,raised one's army to get to Mattias,
- Did religion play a role in your game?no I use faith to buy workers
- What was your strategy, how did you gain your Domination VC?-
- How many Dark Ages and/or Golden Ages did you have? Did you have a strategy?all golden
- What effect did Loyalty have on your settling or conquering? How did you mitigate its effects? I had to razed a few cities starting around Monty territory
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it? XBows were the only units that were a bother ,I lost a few Waraks to them
- Did you enjoy your game?Very much thanks the map was perfect for the Aztecs

 

[kcd_swede]

DV t271 score 2359

Before t300 is pleasant suprise for me on this spread out map!

 

[Bangau]

T178 Domination Victory

Cheers to the ones above with '120's'' victories, truly impressive!

- How many cities did you settle, or capture?
Settled 7 initially, later on one for the score boost and the horses in the north near Piopiotahi, another one very late game with a stolen settler. Captured 36...

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Towards units and resources, for the rest based on which boosts I had I guess.

- What did you build for an Army and Navy and how did it change?
Set up some cities first with encampments, went for a mixed army of melee, ranged and siege. Did have iron and horses (I guess some of the above posters didn't find the iron slightly to the east above the small lake) and used Magnus' Black Marketeer promotion to build my army mainly from the capital. Was in doubt whether I should use many Warak'aq and decided against it. Reading the above posts I clearly should have. Will try another Inca dom run another time using that strategy, sounds fun!

- Did you use your UU/UB? Were they useful?
Warak'aq not so much (alas...), terrace farms all over the place (they are amazing). Qhapaq Nan at strategic places to quickly cross some mountain ranges. Should have used them more often I think to 'teleport' my units faster to the battlefield. Used Grand Master's Chapel to faith buy some units directly on the front line later in the game.

- What was your most useful unit?
I used a mix. All but anti-cav were useful.

- Was diplomacy useful? How?
I befriended and later even allied all but Korea and the Aztecs. Had half the world declare war on Korea in an emergency because she had taken one of Germany's cities. Tried again with the Aztecs since they had conquered Hattusa, but got one vote short so took out the Aztecs without the emergency. While warring the Aztecs all my alliances ended and I started betraying my former friends one by one. The Zulu were even friendly towards me till I surprise warred them.

- Were City-States helpful? Did any other civ give you a hard time about city-states?
Kabul's bonus was usefull and since I had many friends at first I had some DF to sell and use for emergencies. At some point the DF went to zero obviously...

- Did religion play a role in your game?
No, didn't bother with it. My Pantheon was amazing though: Earth Goddess is insane with the Inca, the faith from that combined with Monumentality and later the Grand Master's Chapel means a lot of free builders and units.

- What was your strategy, how did you gain your Domination VC?
This map was just too much for the Simcity player in me. The yields get so incredible that I just wanna keep building up the cities. Really had to force myself to stop improving and building cities and focus on the domination victory. Started by wiping out Korea and then the Aztecs. Then split up the army and went with three towards Germany (was almost done anyway because of previous wars with the Aztecs and Korea)+Scythia, the second towards Gilgamesh and the third towards Hungary. The first and 3rd eventually came together and took out the Zulu. I really feel I'm still to risk-averse with armies: I tend to make too large armies and find myself with units that I barely use. This map was a good reminder for that, I could probably have won with a third less units.

- How many Dark Ages and/or Golden Ages did you have? Did you have a strategy?
I think I got classical golden, normal medieval, golden renaissance and golden industrial.

- What effect did Loyalty have on your settling or conquering? How did you mitigate its effects?
If you keep conquering fast enough it's not a big problem. Did have to move my governors around every now and then, but never had any cities revolt..

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Never had the Earth Goddess pantheon with the Inca before. It's great to have mountains that give 6 to 8 yields instead of 0. And suprised to learn in this thread how good the Warak'aq can be used for domination, didn't think it was possible!

- Did you enjoy your game?
Very much so. The Inca is one of my favorite civs. The map was a bit biased towards them right? Those first few cities really get great fast. Thanks to the GOTM team!

 

[Thorak]

Turn 134, Score 1083

- How many cities did you settle, or capture?
I initially planned to settle 4 cities and then go for capture. But after realizing I had so much space and good land I settled 6 in the initial build up phase.
After 6 settlers I went into the conquest phase and captured a lot of cities and some settlers which I used to build more cities. But my core cities were 6.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
First prioritized things that helped my core cities grow. After that I beelined machinery for Waraqak.

- What did you build for an Army and Navy and how did it change?
I built mostly Waraqak with some support melee units for my first wave. This wave took all civilizations except Sumeria and Hungary.
My second late game wave had a bombard, field cannons and some cavalry. This army was split into two parts to capture Sumeria and Hungary.

- Did you use your UU/UB? Were they useful?
The Terrace farm on this map is INSANE. Extremely powerful and I built it almost everywhere. I have never been able to push past the AI this early in everything. Thanks to them it didn't even feel like I was playing diety.
The Waraqak is fairly good at start. But once you get the third upgrade to ambush and +20 combat strength they are totally insane as well. If I had know they were this strong at the start of the game I would have been able to win much quicker by not focusing that much on improving my cities and instead build a strong army.

- What was your most useful unit?
Waraqak without a doubt.

- Was diplomacy useful? How?
Very useful. I befriended Sumeria and Germany early. Milked gold from them most of the game by trading away diplomatic favor and luxuries.
After I exterminated Korea and surprise declared Germany it started getting more difficult but I still managed to milk out some gold from other AIs. The reason being that Korea actually declared a surprise war on me after I denounced them.

- Were City-States helpful? Did any other civ give you a hard time about city-states?
City states were very annoying. This is my first domination victory on diety in civ6 (although I have plenty in civ 1-5). But the AI were constantly overriding me. I should have exterminated more city states and focused on keeping a single one or possibly two. They were very useful early game when I could get free diplomatic favor from them though.

- Did religion play a role in your game?
Nope, none at all.

- What was your strategy, how did you gain your Domination VC?
My strategy was to build 4 cities, get to machinery at the same time as building up my cities. Then conquer some cities from other civs and continue pushing my tech advantage. However, because of the strength of the Waraqak and terrace farms I could have chosen a much more agressive strategy and gobe home with a quicker victory. I also underestimated how much space I would have to build cities so I built more.

- How many Dark Ages and/or Golden Ages did you have? Did you have a strategy?
I had 1-2 golden ages but then I had a normal age. I did almost all of my conquering in this age. Luckily none of the AIs had a golden age so it wasn't that big of a handicap and I think the length of the age was very short which is why I didn't have time to build up to a golden age.

- What effect did Loyalty have on your settling or conquering? How did you mitigate its effects?
I had big problems with loyalty, luckily only after I already had won. Aztechs capital revolted and I had to take it back. Otherwise I used governors and razed cities around capitals to negate the loyalty pressure. Or in the case of Korea and germany, exterminated the civs altogether.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Yeah, the biggest surprise was Korea declaring war on me before I was ready for it. They almost ran me down with an army of swordsman. But after their initial push they were almost defenceless.
The second surprise is because I am used to playing online speed with science victory. I heavily underestimated the gold cost to upgrade scouts to qaraqak's.

- Did you enjoy your game?
One of the most fun games I played. First time playing Inca, and I didn't realize how powerful they can be given the "dream map".

 

[Falabello]

Domination Victory - Turn 243

After a period of no CIV6, I returned having to face a Deity game! Because of area and Iron, I decided to expand some cities and start warring with Knights and RAM. My first war was against Gilga, but to my surprise, the first attack didn’t happen as it used to be . So I discovered the changes about RAMs. This detail delayed my game considerably, so I had to get some help for my Knights… But I didn’t want to give up and went till the last Capital!

As my average dates for Deity Domination was ruined, decided to take all possible cities (leaving few for the AIs) and not only focus in the Capital. Well in the end I even wanted to see the Giant Robot (remaining 6 turns IIRC to create one), but the game was already quite long and the last Capital was about to surrender …

- Did you enjoy your game?
Yup, very much. Thanks for one more game !

 

[Dekrznator]

Domination Victory - Turn 243

Gotta lova that archer in the pond next to modern armor

 

[Falabello]

He told me that he was quietly hunting ducks and fishes in that tranquil lake when he was surprised by an invasion of noisy and heavy war machines. He also said it was pretty scary...

 

[Minou]

Resigned T57

Combined lots of dumb moves with some bad luck to sink my game.

Things started out well with a Builder from a hut. I built a Scout first and he made it over to Korea where he pillaged a few improvements. Since Korea was already at war with Germany I thought I would be able to snowball by sneaking in and hitting them from the west while all their units were at the eastern front. I pumped out a bunch of Archers and a few Warriors and sent them east. Regrettably, my army got completely bogged down by a barb camp just to the east of my second city. Due to the rough terrane slowing movement plus giving the barbs defensive bonuses, and the massive number of barb units, it took forever to clear the camp.

Meanwhile I made a big mental lapse. I used Amani to get Suzerain of Geneva for a raid on Hungary (either to pick off a city or just pillage if weals went up) and was waiting to get enough gold to levy their troops and attack Hungary. A few turns earlier, I had popped 20DF from a hut earlier but completely forgot to sell it, which would have been enough for the levy immediately. The two or three turn delay turned out to be a four or five turn delay because Geneva ended up moving several Warriors south and thus farther from Hungary.

My own army finally reached Korea around T50 and just as my units were getting into position to attack walls went up and a Sword entered the formerly empty capital. With no chance of making progress and my Geneva Warriors looking like they would also meet the same stone wall up north, I decided to cut my losses and move onto the Sept 1 GOTM.

 

[isopaha]

DV T235. Inca is great and did not face major setbacks. I had a navy which was supposed to take out Shaka, but battleships turned out to be quite useless against cities.

 

[pahakuutti]

T110 DomV

Rolled this map with just 2 self founded cities.
First priority was to secure earth goddess pantheon, just to take full advantage of monumentality golden age.
Then focused on science, and built 2 campuses with libs. Next in queue was encampments on both cities.
And after that just troops (until new units were unable to reach frontline in timely manner)

This was enough to get warak'aqs up and running just before T70.

Thanks for the game! It was a fun setup.

Spoiler :

 

[seb_schmitt]

T167 Domination Victory

Strategy: focus on Earth Goddess Pantheon for faith buying builders, settlers and later on units; build 6-8 Scouts, upgrade to Warak'aq asap and send 2-3 horsemen along to rule the world.
Surprise: Seondeok having almost no troops left when I declared because of former war against Frederik
Self settled cities before T70: 5 plus 1 from captured Settler
Districts: campus, campus, campus, encampment, government, 2 commercial, 2 harbours, some theatre
Ages: all golden with Monumentality, Monumentality and Reform the Coinage
Policies: Survey, Raid, then focus on envoys and whatever brings gold, science and culture
Loyalty: was a small problem in the mid game, but was always able to recapture lost cities within one turn

Learned a lot about Inca civ, especially Warak'aq and Qhapaq Ñan.

Best game of the month so far this year! I enjoyed it very much. Thanks a lot @leif_eriksen!

 

[WideCoast]

welp, ended like I suspected. I guess I'll go and revisit the post which had tips on Deity domination

I settled like 5 cities and after a while declared war on gilgamesh which was a breeze until their capital so I thought that I'd take other two cities first, but there was an aggressive Zulu and loyalty problems so my conquest stopped there for a while.. Managed to kill Gilgamesh eventually, but at the same time Korea came in with tanks and I had cavalry :shrug:.

Had fun tho! And survived a lot longer than expected xD

Can't wait for the next one.

E: I guess this goes a bit OT so PM's are welcome aswell, but what do you guys do with those cities that you capture? Like I had in one game, after conquering almost the whole world, 5-7 cities everyturn that asked what to do and it started to get irritating... Civ3 wealth was surely missed.

 

[leif erikson]

This game is closed for submissions as time has run out.

You may continue to post here and attach saves if you wish. Results will include games above this post.

 

[FeiLing]

This game started very nice with a fantastic campus and many plantations with the Festivals Pantheon (T26):

However even though I was very happy with my scouting, city placement, the districts and trade routes I once again made the mistake to think that Knights would take Horses... well
and Korea just stealth settled the only Iron tile in reach so I ended up with a bunch of Chariots that didn't do anything for a very long time. When the Germans asked for a emergency
I was hoping to move into Korea with Xbowmen and levied Swordmen, but everything was just oneshot since her cities were already at ~50 CS and of course she suddenly was
building tons of H'wacha too. Tried the next push with Bombards, which was working fine but just that new encampment in Seoul (and a super early spy killing my Victor in Wanuku)
was pushing me back (she'd have pillaged my Encampment there soon and slowed me down a lot. Guess I'm just terrible at war in general, but since I didn't have much time to play
this game (the deadline just ended and T132 is where I am) I'll give up here. I know I could win this but it would take a long time and such a long deity war is really painful.
Wish this would have been a science or culture game.

Spoiler :