TSG 221 After Actions Thread

[vadalaz]

In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state your victory/loss date (preferably in the post title) and describe your path to glory in this post! Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game.

- Did you play peacefully or warlike? Did you use your UU?
- What technologies did you prioritize?
- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them?

 

[Axolaan]

I won a science victory on turn 261. I settled my four tradition cities and went to work winning the "worst neighbor ever" award. I stole a bunch of workers from the AIs around me, I don't even remember which ones, as well as their settlers. Antananarivo was my designated city state punching bag. With my "acquired" labor force I had built all of my improvements by the late medieval era.

My focus was on growth above else: I delayed the national college to build granaries in all of my cities first, and built Petra just for the additional food trade route. I also built both the Hanging Gardens and the Temple of Artemis in my capital, which delayed my nc by yet another little bit. I ended up finishing it on turn 101, which in hindsight was pretty alright.

I was attacked once by Shaka, and he managed to get the health of my northern city down to about half. Fortunately he did not have a very large force, so by targeting his ranged units I was able to kill it before it could take my city. Later I took Alexander's city, which he had planted right in between two of mine. I think I had been at war with half the AI at this point. My last victim was Indonesia, as they were about to convert my capital which had the production from citizens belief while I was building space ship parts.

My tech path was to rush for all of the science techs without any regard for my units, since I was confident that I could defend myself on Prince. I made slight detours here and there to pick up important techs for food, such as sailing. I got a nice head start on Rationalism by building the Oracle, since I guess that's how it works. I picked up Order for the science for the factory tenet and building space ship parts with engineers, as I had decent faith production to purchase them. I ended up building four of the space ship parts this way.

The only part of China's unique ability I ended up using was the gold their unique libraries give, and the chu-ko-nu gatling guns that were nice to have against the barbarians. I ended up falling short a little bit on culture, resulting in me not being able to purchase scientists in time for it to matter. Scouting a bit more to find culture city states could have helped in this regard. Still, this is one of my quickest science victories on the vanilla game ever, especially considering I was basically playing a civ without bonuses.

 

[fiddlesticks]

Spaceship launch turn 226, 1580 AD.

Settled on the river hill to get early production and closer access to the hills to the north and west and an immediate 3 food tile. The broad early plan was to settle one city (Shanghai) then go for the Great Library. I built two other settlers and bought one with peace deal gold, settling 5 cities (4 observatory eligible).

Early actions were:

Build order: scout, scout, worker, archer, settler.

Exploration: T3 - 20 culture, T7 - barb camps, T8 - archery, T10 - 20 culture, T12 - scarcher, bronze working

War: T15 Zulu worker steal, T46 Zulu settler steal and peace deal.

I went for a 3 city NC, followed by two additional cities. Shaka attacked Xian right around Education, so right after hitting education I swung down to Construction and Machinery and then wiped him out with Chu-Ko-Nu's. Ulundi was a puppet for a long time before I annexed it late in the game after Plastics.

On Prince I abuse the AI a lot, declaring war and taking luxuries and gold in peace deals. Once this backfired when Alexander took Bogota, so I had to march an army over there to liberate Bogota, razing Sparta in the process.

I had a late entry into Rationalism after taking three policies in Commerce. This slowed down the key Rationalism policies but sped up the founding of Public Schools and Research Labs.

I hit Public Schools turn 159 (using one GS bulb once all Observatories were up +7 turns). Radio turn 166 and Plastics 189. The Rationalism finisher was used for Nanotechnology, and Oxford finished Particle Physics, my last tech. X-Coms helped tribute gold to buy spaceship parts using the Freedom 3rd-tier policy. I bought 3 great scientists and hard-built Hubble in Guangzhou, my best production city with Petra, a factory and a hydro plant.

Late in the game multiple civ's joint DoW'ed me and I ended up wiping out Kamehameha and Alex.

 

[billybgame]

Uh....I have no clue how fiddlesticks was that far along in turn 159. Turn 169, I just gave up my game in frustration. I spent eons trying to take out Shaka. His Impis were a thorn in my side, killing many of my units. I had his capital down to a thread, but was about out of units. When all of a sudden Kamahena DoW on me from the South! With Kris Swordsmen and a bunch of units near my capital.

I was like, are you fricking kidding me? Exit game.

I had a far easier time in the last King Diplo game, to be honest. 1000% times easier.

Again, how on earth were you to making Public Schools 10 turns before this for me? I only had 6 cities plus the taken Zulu city. Not like I was killing my empire. So not sure. I guess I've never gotten Science victories before 1900 AD much, besides maybe on Settler. So maybe I'm ignorant on something.

But yes, I don't game the game by stealing workers from C/S or early wars. I doubt that's the only difference. But you said you got luxuries out of it too. Still, I would have to look, but I had just researched Chivalry, so thinking I was far, far, off from where you were turn 159

If I can replay from start save, maybe I'll retry....as this was abject failure on Prince. I am reminded now and again why I play Warlord usually.

 

[Volcanon]

Ok so I had a lazy Victoria Day so I gunned the game all day today. I usually play immortal and didn't play optimally. And, oops, conquored the world instead of launching a spaceship.

So I settled Beijing on the nearby hills. Got two scouts (one using money from ruins). Found Lake Victoria to the south. The other good natural wonders were too far, taken, or bad. Built stonehenge to try to get a religion. In the meantime I got forward settled by Hiawatha and Shaka. The map got pretty crowded. I only ever built one city, Shanghai, near Lake Victoria.

Shaka had five cities and was right beside me so I went for chu ko nu. But he got impi before I had my army together, so I conquored everybody else instead. Built no seige until artillery, just a couple of melee units and chu ko nu. Shaka was the only credible threat. He attacked twice while I was conquoring the rest of the world but never got very close to taking Beijing, at least not by the time I got some army back there.

Basically worked the map counterclockwise. It was a pain in the butt to get to Athens from the south, but Alex gifted me a city beside it for peace so that problem was solved. I had to later kill Alex off for good as he had a city blocking me from taking Onandaga (then owned by Arabia) and was allied with half the city states. So I wiped him out and then, with only Ulundi left, massed a bunch of musketmen, chu ko nu and artillery and took Ulundi. Impi suck to fight against with a mostly renaissance army.


After the first attack I took one of Shaka's city with my defense force and he gifted me two cities. Burned them down. Second time he gifted me another city, which put me at something like -15 happiness, so I gave it to Egypt since it would have taken a long time for it to burn down.

Shaka unhelpfully took my money to declare war on somebody but never sent her army away so I had to slog through a million impi to take his capital.

 

[Tiberiu]

I finished this game with a turn 249 SV. I am not very good at getting things right it seems as I exceeded the needed science with 100.000+ at the end (7 scientists) and not using Oxford at all...

Reasons for this bad timing is that I wasted 2 policies for no good reasons on Oligarchy and Aristocracy instead of using them on Patronage for CS Science, or Commerce for discounts.
Also all my cities wanted Crabs which nobody ever had so no WLTK almost all game.
Also, I captured Jakarta for their Collosus, but this city did not spawn a Scientist so it was an overall negative.

I took Order as my ideology and finished 1 part with an Engineer. At the end I had Liberty 6 Tradition 3 Commerce 3 Rationalism 6 Order 9

Edit: At the end of the game I can 100% say it was a mistake to not buy the shrine and get first pantheon when I had the chance very early game, Messenger of the Gods pantheon wasn't worth it and I founded my Religion super late. This flawed approach must have cost me 5-10 turns too.

Spoiler :

 

[billybgame]

I tried this again, just to get the pleasure of taking out that bastard Shaka, after he ruined my prior attempt. Not going to submit as I quit out on first effort. But I certainly enjoyed elimination of the Zulu from the world. He declared on me, but this time, it wasn't until I had my Cho Ku Nus or whatever they're called. He plied for peace many times but I would have none of that. My economy and happiness suffered for awhile, but I got it stabilized. And the entire world hated my guts for eons and eons.

But I had a far flung empire with close to 20 cities. Very strong. Science victory on turn 391. With as strong as we were, not sure how others are 100 and more turns faster. I obviously have some learning to do on how to do faster science victories. I assume wider civs are better but maybe that's wrong? I figure more cities, more citizens, more beakers. The only time I get science victories before around this time is very easy difficulties, so I am obviously missing something.