TSG 256 After Actions

[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.

Quick links: Upload submission | Announcement thread | Opening actions

- Did you play peacefully or warlike?
- Were Persian unique abilities useful to you?
- Who was the AI culture leader and how much culture did they generate?
- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them?

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Turn 189 'culture' victory.

I started my wars on turn 132. Although I wanted to get to Siam quickly, I first needed to deal with two Aztec outposts that were too close to my lands. Monty had wiped out India, so I first razed Mumbai (the Kilimanjaro city), but then I liberated Delhi. India was by now way behind in culture, and on a 2-pop capital he was not about to catch up soon, and I could easily bulb musicians into him later if need be. Then my army went further north, razing the Aztec city of Tombouctu (which he had gotten in a peace deal), and then I started to make myself unpopular: I still had a declaration of friendship with Songhai, but I did not want to return later for Gao (Temple of Artemis, Colossus, Stonehenge). Since Gao was Songhai's only remaining city (I captured a settler too), it was then time to face off against Siam.

Even though the Naresuan's elephants can be scary, he did not have enough of them, and my super mobile golden-age army blitzed him before they could do any damage. Polynesia put up at least something of a fight, being allied to four city states, and having some crossbows and longswordsmen defending the hills surrounding Nuku Hiva. Thanks to the Kilimanjaro upgrade, my units could still push through relatively easily (I lost about two units in that war). Then, it was on to Morocco who had virtually no defenses, and my (first) army completed the tour with Brazil. Pedro had built the Great Wall, but he did not have any units to defend his lands. At least, he had no units left. I did see him march an army of about 10 units (crossbows and pikes mostly) past my borders, but he was only passing through, to die at the hands of Aztec musket men (a war that I of course had incited).

My first army consisted of a couple of camels and keshiks, supplemented with a few knights and trebuchets that I had built, mostly from my expands, while the capital focused on infrastructure and culture. For the final showdown against Aztec, I used Freedom foreign legions, and for the final few shots, the range-logistics keshiks and camels of the first war raced in with 6 and 5 movements respectively to deal some extra damage. My usual play in domination victory is to pick foreign legions and them upgrade them to the much stronger infantry, but I did not quite reach that this game. As the screenshot showed, I was just about to engineer Statue, but I was still a few turns off labs.

 

[fiddlesticks]

Culture victory turn 165

My approach was much like @The_Black_Vegetable . In my game the Aztecs didn't take out India, so I was keeping a close eye on whose culture was the lowest as my army grew, with the plan in mind to take them down to one rump capital and wipe out everyone else. The choice came down to Brazil or Askia, and Askia had better wonders, so Brazil (ironically) was the culture victory holdout.

Notably, I was liberating CS workers left and right this game. At one point I had 400+ influence of Singapore, and keeping the military CS's allied went really smoothly. I detoured to Chivalry before Education to pick up earlier Keshiks and Camel Archers.

I built ~4 Immortals and with early CS tribute units and 2 scarchers and a 2 trebuchets, that army took out India, Askia, Siam, and then joined with some other units that took Brazil out to take Morocco and Polynesia. I conquered Rio once, gifted it, liberated it and then kept it as a rump. My 2nd natural GM delivered the winning culture tour turn 165. Another army of tribute units took out the Aztecs with CS help.

Religion was one with nature, pagodas, conversion gold, religious community and texts. I passed world religion on the first vote (there were only 3 civs with 3 total votes at the time, and luckily 2 voted to ban silver, lol). I don't know why I didn't get shared religion even though I converted Rio - maybe because it was a holy city? Anyone know how that mechanic works? I also forgot to send a trade route and faith buy an engineer, but I don't think it mattered much.

 

[qontroL]

Hey guys, this is my first time doing one of these, but the challenge looked quite fun so I went for it.

I was a bit torn on how I wanted to beat the game, since usually when going for a Cultural Victory I usually just clean out the entire map, but instead I decided to go for a clean Cultural Victory only fighting some minor wars (and wiping out Gandhi... he spammed early game Wonders/had early great works and I wanted them)

I'm not used to playing on Standard Speed/Immortal difficulty so a lot of the timings threw me off a lot.
The starting position looked pretty mediocre at first, but after exploring a bit it turned out to be completely insane, with access to 6 luxuries all very close to the starting position. Late game it turned out I had 16 Uranium in my territory, which is wild.

I settled on the Silver. My first expansion was north to grab the Spices, Ivory and more Wine. My second expansion was on the Marble to grab the Salt/Marble and Uluru. My third expansion was east to grab the Cotton. After taking Delhi I founded Tarsus to connect my western area a bit more with the rest.
My religion had Goddess of the Festival, Tithe, Monasteries and I don't remember what the last one was, all the good stuff was taken.

I rushed Gandhi with Chariot Archers/Immortals to get to a comfortable 6 cities with Tradition, after which the entire rest of the game there was a lot of tension with Songhai and Siam who wanted to attack me until they eventually decided to kill each other instead.
Honestly after reaching the Industrial Era the game became a bit stale because I had leaped too far ahead of the others in terms of tech and I mostly just spent my time waiting for Internet to overtake Brasil, while watching the election night.

I won the World's Fair and sadly the International Games came immediately after (before I had Tourism) though I won that too. I ended the game with the Tradition, Aesthetics, Rationalism and Order completely filled out.


Thanks for the challenge! This was my first time doing one of these, I'll be on the lookout for the next one!

 

[leif erikson]

Hey guys, this is my first time doing one of these, but the challenge looked quite fun so I went for it.

Welcome to CivFanatics and Game of the Month!

Thank you for sharing your game!

 

[enKage]

Very happy about my first ever cultural victory on immortal, turn 354.
Religious Liberty approach, 40 tourism from buildings to secure sacond level in everybody's land except Brazil (I had exotic in Brazil only), so quite happy some civs went my Order ideology.

I was declared once only by Monte and Siam, but no real problems (Siam never entered my land, and I had vary defensive position near gem mountains, so even being behind in military techs and numbers was not a big deal.

Brazil run away with wonders, stole my Eiffel and was clear they must die, but I waited for flight (they had great wall and technological leader). At least I took 2 great tourism cities. I should have saved many turns and declare second war on Brazil earlier, especially that in the meantime Pedro settled some distant lands, but even though I was befriended to Gandhi, my diplomats claimed Gandhi will attack me..

Montezuma was killed by coalitiion and basically all his land except one city for Askia and one for me (because he stole my Machcu Picchu ) took Gandhi and became a real monster. Luckily common order ideology and its tenets + musician did the job despite grat firewall.

A lot of faithbuys: completed Rationalism and later Esthetics

Could be better, but I was never good at Civ5 anyway.

 

[Rhodro]

Won at turn 246. I nearly won about 6 turns earlier. I had to declare war on Siam so I could move my musician into his lands, but the concert was just like 10 tourism short. The birth of a new musician finished it off.
I went for hotels + futurism, without public schools / rationalism. I used the cult of personality tenet (50% tourism boost when fighting common enemy) to quite a big effect. Literally the whole world was at war with aztec, so I got a boost with everyone until I wiped them out in the last turns.
The reserach timing was difficult, if i had gotten printing press + radio a tiny bit earlier... I did bulb 1 GS for printing press and 2 GS + oxford for radio. 1 GS for hotels.

Spoiler :

 

[sebtanic]

I won turn 251. I didn't want to eliminate all the other civs like in the last game. However both Brazil and Siam had very strong culture, so I ended up taking them out. It was a lot of fun with the extra move in golden ages, and toward the end of the game I was permanently in a GA.

Key moments were capturing Rio de Janeiro t197, which had the Great Wall, Uffizi, GL, Notre Dame, and 4 Great Works. I then took another Brazilian city to the north because it was on the way to the Siamese capital. Took Sukothai t222, which had Chichen Itza.

I proceeded to wipe out Siam, and afterwards Brazil. I got the chance to liberate a lot of Moroccan cities, bringing Morocco back to life. As a result I had almost no warmonger penalties.

Brazil was gone in turn 243, and with the help of 2 faith bought GMs I won in turn 251.

Oh and I settled my capital by the sea for food trade routes. Maybe wasn't the best strategy since others had much faster win times. But then again I also didn't go for a completely military cultural victory.

 

[raider980]

CV T307. It was actually a pretty easy win. Only like my 5th culture victory. And apparently my first with Persia because I got the award for first victory on any level with Darius. Not sure why or exactly how it happened so easily. I did have better science than I normally do so I was able to get 3 key wonders; Sistine Chappel, The Louvre and Uffizi and theme them all.

Played totally peacefully except for the one war early with Askia to secure Mt. Kili. I did get several Keshik and was tempted to accept the many offers to join in wars (Monte was hated by everyone) just to use them but I decided not to since the game was going so well. War often tends to be a negative to my game in many ways. One funny thing did happen: two CS captured cities during wars; Valetta captured Jenne from Askia, and Almaty captured Teotihuacan from Monte. The bonus from the Persian UA didn't come into effect since I was peaceful the whole game; although I guess the longer GAges helped in other ways. Immortals may have kept me safe early and Satrap's Court is nice.

Did 4-city Tradition so stayed on the original territory the whole game. Finished Aesthetics with detours to Rationalism and Freedom Ideology. In the end I had some in Patronage and opened Exploration for The Louvre and also Commerce.

Morocco was the culture leader but I actually became Influential over him before a couple of others because I sent my GM's to bomb him a few times. The last one I had to overcome was Brazil and I bombed him for the victory.

Spoiler Cultural Influence :

 

[Skiff49er]

Hi, new here!

Culture Victory turn 310.

My plan was to try the Autocracy culture victory method where you generate Tourism from great people, because I have never tried that before. That plan failed horribly (due to a very slow game) and by the time I reached that Autocracy policy Brazil already had so much culture to overcome that I would need to generate like 50 cultural GP’s… So then I opted for generating Tourism the normal way and warring Brazil out of existence with him having the clearly highest culture in the game. The other AI fought Songhai out of the game and rest of the civ's were overcome by my Tourism.

Gameplay wise probably everything went as bad as could, very early surprise wars by the AI's on mutiple fronts, lost one of my initial core cities rather soon after it was founded to the Aztecs, turns and time wasted figuring out what is allowed for culture victory and what is not: wasn't sure if warring enemies was allowed or if it was meant to be a peaceful Culture game. Oh, and I decided not to scout west very much, so completely missed Uluru, salts, etc. Missed getting a pantheon and a religion too.

Regardless, it was one of the most entertaining games I played, with lot's of random wars and cities flipping between owners all over the map. Oh, and I didn't know militaristic CS can give unique units! Wow, it feels like you always learn something new...

Game crashed at one point, and I had weird autosave settings with the most recent autosave 10 turns back so had to replay 10 turns, which turned out worse than the original play through. Changed the autosave setting to save previous turn. On a different session after 70-100 turns game crashed again and reloaded from previous turn. But anyway, probably not worthy for submission due to that first mistake with the autosave settings. But wanted to share the story with fellow players anyway!

I documented the game here in this Google Docs:

TSG 256 - Persia - Culture

TSG 256 - Persia - Culture Summary My plan was to try the Autocracy culture victory method where you generate Tourism from great people, because I have never tried that before. That plan failed horribly (due to a very slow game) and by the time I reached that Autocracy policy Brazil already ...

docs.google.com

 

[leif erikson]

Welcome to Game of the Month!!

Thank you for sharing your game.

 

[Megalou]

Well done, everyone. I still haven't gotten the hang of cultural challenges at higher levels (the donut GOTM being the only cultural victory I can recall. Edit: Also won by culture as Askia in the sandstorm game GOTM239). But it makes for interesting games. Here, I was neither efficient enough militarily nor swift enough with the research. Polynesia grew huge and constantly dragged me into modern warfare. I withstood the drama below pretty well, but when they finished Great Firewall before I got to the Internet I abandoned the game.

I did have better science than I normally do so I was able to get 3 key wonders; Sistine Chappel, The Louvre and Uffizi and theme them all.

I bet it was due to the fact that you disciplined yourself and nurtured 4 very nice cities, while I was just a total...er...[M]egalomaniac.

Edit: I forgot to mention the most conspicuous part of my game. I went after sacred sites and got it. But that was not until I had both completed the Traditon branch and gotten underway with the Aesthetics branch. (Two AIs had selected other reformation beliefs as I was wiping out India, the only other AI who were stacking Piety policies.) The 4 policies required to get sacred sites delayed the last Aesthetics policies and delayed Rationalism so much that I never even got the last policies of that tree, autocracy being more attractive.

This experience has convinced me that there is no way to combine a sacred sites approach with a classic "fine arts" approach.

 

[vadalaz]

We'd like to revive the tradition of posting GOTM results on the forum. Please note: This list is generated automatically and only shows games that have been uploaded to the GOTM website.

Results for GOTM #256
Persia / Culture / Immortal / Pangaea

.. Player ................... Turn
1. Bemep42 ................... 161
2. fiddlesticks .............. 166
3. The_Black_Vegetable ....... 189
4. enKage .................... 353

More details can be found here. There were 70 downloads with 4 entries and 0 exclusions for this game.

Congratulations to the trophy winners and to all who played the game. Thank you for sharing your game and participating in the discussions!

 

[Bemep42]

Victory on 161 turn, sacred sites.

Full liberty - full piety. It was a very slow start, but then the game accelerated. from 75 to 120 turn completely captured India (2 cities), Aztecs (3 cities) and Songhai (4 cities). I think it was possible to capture everyone by turn 150, but since culture was the goal, I stopped the wars. I figured that more cities could be built on the already conquered territory than I could provide with happiness. As a result, I built 43 cities before I got the limit of happiness.
On turn 147, I had 4 or 5 Brazilian missionaries on the borderand I declared war on Brazil so that they wouldn't spoil my tourism. On turn 156, Morocco attacked me, and on turn 159, Polynesia and Siam attacked me. On turn 158, I captured Rio de Janeiro, getting -6 unhappy, and on the last turn, I lost the city between Morocco and Polynesia on incense, which I founded for trade routes.

The goddess of festivals, initiation rites, pagodas, cathedrals (2-3 moves before Montezuma took the monasteries) and itinerant preachers. On turn 103, Brazil accepted Jesuit education, and on turn 122, I also reached the Reformation. At the end of the game, I have 340+ faiths and 140 tourism per turn.