TSG 253 After Actions Thread

Nizef

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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?
- Final remarks?
 
Science victory on turn 350. I played mostly peaceful. No wars until the modern era, when I declared war on Shaka to liberate Beijing and a city-state that he'd just captured, and I took uMgungundlovu for a puppet. I could have very easily taken Ulundi but I didn't need it, and that might have been the end of research agreements and favorable trade deals with the other AIs.

Social policies were Tradition, Patronage, and Rationalism. Ideology was Freedom(9). Then I opened Commerce to unlock Big Ben.

I settled 4 cities of my own, then took Shaka's best city. There was another good spot for a city on an island to the east by the truffles; I might should have settled that too.

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I had a save from turn 148 so I reloaded it (at that point I just had 3 cities on the mainland) and settled my Petra city and then a 5th city to the east on the tile between the mountain and the truffles. Truffle City was a good city and grew quickly, but it still slowed down my science more than it helped and I won on turn 361. I might should have sent 4 trade routes to it (hammers and food) instead of just one until it caught up.
 
t 299 victory.
I like builder's games, although they do tend to get tedious towards the end on low levels. I was very annoyed with the Mayans, who kept sending GPs to Honolulu, so I had to build GPs with faith myself to reclaim my religion, instead of GEs and GSs. The GPs don't suffer attrition the way missionaries do, so Mayan GPs hang around like bad habits. Eventually I'd had enough and declared war to get rid of them. I thought I could claim truffles with a general from Brandenburg, but I made the mistake of building the citadel BEFORE the Mayan city had burnt down. Had I waited, the borders of Tonga would have reached far enough, but for some reason, my land acquisition disappeared with the burnt rubble.


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Science victory on turn 350. I played mostly peaceful. No wars until the modern era, when I declared war on Shaka to liberate Beijing and a city-state that he'd just captured, and I took uMgungundlovu for a puppet. I could have very easily taken Ulundi but I didn't need it, and that might have been the end of research agreements and favorable trade deals with the other AIs.

Social policies were Tradition, Patronage, and Rationalism. Ideology was Freedom(9). Then I opened Commerce to unlock Big Ben.

I settled 4 cities of my own, then took Shaka's best city. There was another good spot for a city on an island to the east by the truffles; I might should have settled that too.

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Hi, what's with the 8417 faith? Was there no use for such a great amount?
 
Science victory T231. To start with the ending, I misplayed the final ~20 turns. Earlier, I did note that getting the space ship parts to the capital would be tricky (I had not built any roads), but when it came down to it, I finished Apollo way too late, and I did not have enough gold to buy airports everywhere. On turn 226, I researched my final tech, and had the money to buy all the parts, but that was also the turn I completed Apollo, so the parts still had to float to the capital.

Back to the beginning, after tradition I opened Exploration. My go-to filler tree is usually Patronage, and this game I missed the Forbidden Palace, and being to buy city states cheaply, so happiness was short and I used more hammer cargoes than I usually do. The point of Exploration was the extra movement (I had decided on some naval warfare), and the hammer policy for coastal cities. I nevertheless did not rush into galleas. I first went Acoustics, then into Metal Casting, and only then into Compass. Around the turn 130-140 mark I set aside some time to build a fleet of 7 galleas (with two to follow later), and that proved sufficient to conquer the AI. My targets were Washington (Temple of Artemis, Colossus), and Rio de Janeiro (Great Lighthouse, Great Wall, Machu Picchu, Mausoleum, Terracotta). After a short delay, also Palenque (all of the faith wonders, of course) and I wiped the remaining Mayan cities off the map. Even on Prince Pacal managed a decent prophet and missionary spam (he had already converted one of my cities that I had just converted to my own religion), and did not want to bother defending my cities religiously.

I might have resumed hostilities against the other civs for plundering and lucrative peace deals (although Prince AI did not really have enough money for good deals), but I was too lazy for it. Also, despite my warmongering, I could still trade luxuries with Alexander, so perhaps peace was for the best.

I did not have the best transition into Plastics as you might hope for a science victory. Ideally, you would instantly buy research labs in all cities. However, the capital was still building Big Ben, and Samoa was still working on Statue of Liberty (needed for Mercantilism), so I could not start buying labs until about 5 turns after getting the tech, so I ended up buying some and building the rest (anyway I needed to save some money for space ship parts). The slow labs did not hurt my game too much, though, since my 8 cities were already making decent science even without the labs. The final mistake was 'greeding' Apollo and Hubble in the capital: I started building Apollo, then, after my final natural scientist spawn, I engineered Hubble (I spawned one engineer and no merchants, which is pretty decent), then continued building Apollo. I should instead have faith-purchased an engineer (I just fell short of the 2500 scientist before turn 226 anyway), and engineered Apollo as well (you can engineer that, right?).
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Science Victory turn 227

- Did you play peacefully or warlike? Did you use your UU?
Mostly peaceful. I liberated Beijing twice, and the second time conquered the Zulu and gave the cities to China. I took New York in a peace deal and it became my Petra city, and later on took Palenque as it had 5-6 good wonders. The UA and a good selection of cultural CS's meant I didn't need the WF and went straight to the boost for GS's.

- What technologies did you prioritize?
I went Education to Acoustics to Printing Press to Plastics. Proposed Scientists boost and it passed on the first vote.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order? Which Ideology did you choose?
Tradition, opened Patronage, Rationalism, Freedom, Reached Mercantilism turn 220-ish.

- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them?
4 on the main island, NC, then Raiatea (5th) on the silk rather late, but it quickly caught up and surpassed the other 3 main island expands through trade routes. Same with Palenque.
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- I wish I'd settled the truffles island but I kept neglecting it while happiness was tight, but there probably would have been a way to manage it and by the end of the game I had missed so many WLTKD opportunities because no one else had truffles.
 
Won SC at turn 253.
I didn't make any major mistakes.
I did get 2 natural engineers from working all specialist slots for science. With 1 i engineered tower of pisa and got an engineer back. The other engineered wonders was statue of liberty and hubble telescope.
I bulbed 1 GS to get faster plastics because already had the money ready to buy 4 labs.
Compared to the others with faster times its obvious it's the number of cities.

I do feel i was a bit unlucky with we love the king days.
Spoiler :
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I do feel i was a bit unlucky with we love the king days.
Pearls was hopeless so I actually traded it for the shirt om my back and then declared war the next turn. It’s a potential friendship lost, but Research agreements didn’t amount to much anyway.
 
There's obviously something I'm not getting when it comes to faster science victories. I guess you could say even back to Civ 4. To see turns below 250 seems almost incomprehensible to me. We were world dominators. I had to fend of Culture wins numerous times Think had 9 cities in all. Turn 409 science win. But have posted similar before. I didn't go as far flung a strategy as other times. Could have gone for more city spots, but opted not to. Almost all my cities were in 20s and science over 2k in the end. Yet a horrificaly slow game time..
 

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T344 SV. I wasn't going for fast victory times since I'm always slow anyway. I was going for the most Moai possible! Polynesia is one of my favorite civs; the culture can't be matched; and its the only civ I've ever won a CV with on Deity.

I played mostly peaceful, except I did capture Palenque because Pacal kept sending prophets and missionaries out converting my CS, it turned out to be a great city. Yep, used the UU; not for war with the AI but to explore and take out barbs.

Prioritized the tech to get Moai so I could start building them asap.

Went Liberty because I knew I'd have a lot of cities. Then into Patronage, then Exploration when it became possible for the happiness and production from sea resources. Next a couple in Rationalism before going Order, again because I had a lot of cities. I ended up finishing Patronage and Rationalism and having 10 tenets in Order as well as some in Commerce and opening Piety and Aesthetics. I had so much culture from Moai I didn't know what to do with it all.

Spoiler Social Policies :
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I had 16 cities in the end; 15 self-founded plus Palenque. I settled them everywhere that had Moai potential. I even settled normally suboptimal locations just to get more Moai, such as off the coast so I didn't interrupt the Moai chain. And I built Moai on resources, luxuries, anywhere I could. We Polynesians love Moai.

Moai Moai everywhere!
 

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T344 SV. I wasn't going for fast victory times since I'm always slow anyway. I was going for the most Moai possible!
I had 16 cities in the end; 15 self-founded plus Palenque. I settled them everywhere that had Moai potential. I even settled normally suboptimal locations just to get more Moai, such as off the coast so I didn't interrupt the Moai chain. And I built Moai on resources, luxuries, anywhere I could. We Polynesians love Moai.

Moai Moai everywhere!

Love it, sounds like a fun approach!

Did the AI give you a hard time about settling so many cities, or were they cool with it?
 
Science Victory turn 218.

The game was far from perfect, so I'm honestly very surprised by the result. So far, I have not been able to achieve the fastest scientific victory.
In this game, I was unlucky several times - I lost the Great library a couple of tutns before construction and I had to teach philosophy myself when all the libraries were ready, I lost ToA in a few turns and finally I lost Oracle a turn before construction and a turn before studying astro.If I had learned acoustics instead of a compass and astro the Oracle would have been mine. I also lost Terracotta Army to the "half-dead" Zulu and I had to build a 2nd army for Palenque by hand (the 1st was in Greece). Of my mistakes, it is worth noting the stupid theft of a worker from Wellington, after which I got -2 / per turn of influence from all CS instead of -1 (since before that I stole a worker from another CS), which caused problems with happiness in the middle of the game. Before rationalism I discovered commerce and patronage, but when I finally got to rationalism and secularism, I got 7-8 turns of unhappy due to a barbarian horseman near Athens and the untimely capture of Rio de Janeiro. As you can understand, I played very aggressively and captured capitals just to capture. In particular, London (Great Lighthouse, Great Mosque) and Washington only slowed down my science without bringing any benefit, and I also raced Athens, Rio and Palenque only in the last 20 turns. The biggest mistake was buying a prophet for 800 faith for England and America, I just wanted all the cities on the map to be my religion. So it was, but towards the end of the game, AI regained its religion in some cities. In the end, with faith points, I was able to buy 3 scientists and 1 engineer, 1 more engineer can be bought on turn 219. And this engineer was not enough for me to build Hubble. 6 engineers went to build parts of SS, and Hubble had to be built manually, which postponed the victory by 2 turns, since all science was studied on turn 215.

Tradition 5 - Open Commerce - Open Patronage - Rationalism 5/Order 9

The tradition of 4 cities (the capital on river hill, 2 and 4 is our island, 3rd north of Alma-Ata, 3 salts + cotton), actually 5, since before the 60th turn I took Umgungundlovu (4 gold, pearls) for the peace, after NC about 90 turn I took Sparta for peace as a springboard on another continent. I planned the truffle city, but due to problems with happy, I never found time for it, as well as for the silk city.

Religion (75 turn, Mother earth, tithing, church community), strengthening (104, divine inspiration, holy order)

some date : all ancients tech - Optics (65) - Philosophy (76) - NacCol (89) - Metal Casting (94) - Colossus (99) - Civil Service (105) - Education (115) - Astro (126) - PP (141) - Industrialization (158) - Order (165) - Scientific Theory (170) - Plastics (194, 2 GS) - Satellites (206, 3 GS + GW for finish rationalism) - the last GS in capital, Porcelain Pagoda, Kremlin (Pioneers of Space), Apollo (all 212) - Hubble (213).
 
Finished this one on 226 as I got the civ 5 itch. Saw screenshots and cannot resist since have never finished a game with them before. Map was good for Hawaii and many possible strategy. second time around as first time I discovered moai need remove jungle not stack over it :/

went for Trad 4 city before national college, followed by 2 more. abused free embark by settling in nice gold spot (petra) and salt spot before AI. Maya got his settler captured by barbs so otherwise would have settled copper spot. Zulu serve as worker settler GG farm for whole game. happy not a problem in this game even with 6 city.

Just peaceful sim city after that with trying to build as much moai as possible. With WF and moai I thought I could complete commerce but failed. Forgot on prince you need to build the whole thing yourself - 2800H is no joke. hard to say if there are alternatives if you want full trad, rat, freedom 6 + comm 3.

things which did not turn out
- building all them workboats, so many hammer for +1f?? in retrospect should have just use hammer build navy galleas and conquer Maya since own faith was terrible - earth mother with 5 tiles in whole empire... with +faith from WW managed something respectable towards the end.
- focus on moai, put copper city in no obs place because of it. It take 3 worker effort to make 3 culture moai, so lots of opportunity cost.
- very rusty, beginning forget to declare war on AI for GC, end game mismanage science.

I like to thank GOTM staff for posting nice map. Many interesting past maps to try :)
 

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