TSG 259 After Actions Thread

Nizef

Emperor
GOTM Staff
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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?
 
It was a slug, but we're here, turn 329.

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I had absolutely no clue how to approach this, so I'm honestly very curious what kind of strats everyone else came up with, and if there's perhaps some way to cheese points. I was really quite unhappy with my choices in the early game, but as the game progressed I realized I may not have made such a terrible choice going into Liberty and discarding Science.

I started the very early game securing some of the early game wonders in my capital until Morocco launched a surprise attack on me, which set my conquest in motion as I cleaned up my own island, while leaving almost all City-States in tact (Melbourne fell on my way over to Assur).

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After securing my own island I came in contact with Germany, who was the ''run-away'' civ of the game, for as much as that's possible on this difficulty. Upon the realization that Germany had spawned completely on their own island I decided to completely wipe them out as well, leaving them with nothing but Hamburg. In the process Wittenberg also fell in my hands as it looked like a good forward city to secure. Berlin ended up being my military base as Germany had built Alhambra there, which I later complimented with Brandenburg and many more Wonders.

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It was at this point in the game where I became able to execute the strategy that I planned to use from turn 1, but was slightly interrupted by Morocco pushing me to build a military. Frigates. I basically used the Frigates to explore everywhere I could and I found the Ottomans being extremely easy to grab. After allowing them to keep Edirne for a really long time I got a bit annoyed I was unable to gain control over the Religion on the island, so I decided to wipe the Ottomans out so toss my own Religion on there.

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At this point I grew slightly concerned about having to prevent a Culture victory before T330 so I took it a bit easy. Egypt's Culture wasn't too bad, but when I explored them I found out that they were on the verge of being taken out by Rome, which would've been a disaster because no other civ had much Culture to speak of. In order to prevent a Culture Victory I decided to delay taking any other cities and mostly just hang back and tech up, leaving Internet as my final tech to grab. I focused on founding cities wherever and whenever, and allied every single City-State in the game to help me grow them. After reaching the lategame I built a pretty decent amount of Stealth Bombers and XCOMs to take everything else right in time for the end of the game. In hindsight I made a pretty big mistake here when it came to taking out the Mercantile and Maritime City-States as my snow cities ended up staving and I probably lost some population because of it. I took out all of Rome/Egypt and left Atilla alone after I had made sure I wasn't going to get a Culture Victory over him. I ended up securing every single wonder in the game (including the Space Station) beside the Statue of Zeus which unfortunately was in Atilla's Court. In hindsight I probably should've kept Morocco alive to give him back his capital lategame to make sure to get every single Wonder.

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I ended up trying to be a bit cheeky and building some very last-minute cities to squeeze a couple more points. In hindsight I should've probably raised more cities to create extra space. But here is my empire, and the only other civ standing tall are the Huns, who were never really a participant in the game.

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I came into the game wanted to rush Frigates, but my plans changed slightly as Morocco attacked me, but in the end I mostly ended up doing what I wanted, which was settle as many cities as possible, using Temple happiness to keep my happiness afloat right up until the very end.
As for my Policies I finished Liberty -> Exploration for Happiness and Production and then opened Rationalism. After that I got Order, and snagged up all the Production Policies before finishing Exploration and then hopping into Patronage, which ended up doing nothing for me. But there's wasn't much else to get. In hindsight it would've been smart to grab Resettlement in the Order tree to get just a few more points.

The final city I settled was called Sillyon, which means I've settled 28 Byzantium Cities, and had a total of 72 Cities.

Upon punching the Next Turn button my point total ended up at 8302. I got 3 achievements out of the game as well. First victory on King difficulty. First victory on Continents. First victory as Byzantine.

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Playing as Theodora, I *had* to go Piety, :lol: but I finished Tradition first. Then full Piety, then Rationalism. I took To the Glory of God for my reformation belief, but I wonder if Heathen Conversion or Evangelism might have been more useful. Jesuit Education was already taken. I only bought one engineer and a prophet with faith, and I could have bought those anyway.

I did build one dromon and one cataphract. The dromon was very helpful dealing with barbs, but it got killed in the war with Assyria. The cataphract was pretty useless.

Starting about the Industrial era, I was concerned about accidentally getting the wrong kind of victory. Culture victory or diplomatic victory was a real possibility (I could throw the world leader vote, but can't do that with culture.)

I started out peacefully, but after Assyria captured Marrakech (and then made peace with Morocco w/o taking Rabat), I declared war and took both Marrakech and Assur and liberated a couple of city states. I never did go to war with Morocco, but maybe I should have because he was annoying. I also left Assyria alive but that wasn't a problem.

Germany was the runaway in this game. I delayed going into the Modern era as long as possible because Bismarck's tourism was so high but I didn't want to take the same ideology (Order). So I entered the Modern era via Flight, and went Autocracy (Egypt had already taken it; Freedom was still available) and immediately built Prora. Happiness was never a big problem; it was a minor problem right after I picked Autocracy until I finished Prora.

When I researched Electronics, I upgraded my frigates to battleships and built a couple more battleships and sent them, a couple of subs, and a privateer after Germany. I captured Cologne first because it was on an isthmus which gave my ships access to Berlin without having to travel around the top of the continent. Berlin was over 100 strength but i managed to take it with 3 or 4 battleships, a destroyer, AA-gun, and some infantry. Then took Munich in the peace deal. I did not want to wipe Germany out completely just because his culture was high enough to keep me from getting an accidental culture victory. (also Internet was the last thing I researched before Future Tech) I had built hotels and airports to deal with ideological pressure, but now that it was going the other direction you can't sell a hotel and i didn't want to sell my airports. I also never proposed the International Games. If someone else had proposed it I probably would have voted against it.

Turn 300 or so, I decided to capture Istanbul too just to run up the score. It fell pretty easily. Then I made peace with Sulieman; I took Sidon in the peace deal and liberated it. I might should have kept fighting because Sulieman still has the Forbidden Palace, but that would have given me 2 more votes I didn't want.

I finished the Apollo program and built about half of the spaceship parts just thinking they might be worth some points. Apollo might have given some points but rocket boosters (etc) apparently don't. I ended the game with 3179 points, 10 cities, and 39 wonders. And 38 votes in the UN (40 necessary for diplomatic victory) I did have 39 votes but my diplomat just got ejected from Rome on the previous turn.

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Great write-ups, @qontroL and @zxcvbob ! (Mine will have to come later.)
Do you mind sharing your t330 victory progress screens, for comparison?

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I didn't capture any city states at all - stole some land from Ragusa, but they forgave me instantly :c5gold::c5gold::c5gold: - being too afraid to run into unhappiness and stagnation. But I guess I should have captured city states at the very end in order to maximize the score.
 
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Great write-ups, @qontroL and @zxcvbob ! (Mine will have to come later.)
Do you mind sharing your t330 victory progress screens, for comparison?

View attachment 713140
I didn't capture any city states at all - stole some land from Ragusa, but they forgave me instantly :c5gold::c5gold::c5gold: - being too afraid to run into unhappiness and stagnation. But I guess I should have captured city states at the very end in order to maximize the score.
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This is mine, seems the biggest difference is that I neglected Science through-out the early game. My thought process was that I wanted to avoid giving the other civs catch-up Science and have to worry about Space Race while staling out the game, but that ended up not being relevant at all, since no one even got close to even starting the Space Program.
 
View attachment 713156

This is mine, seems the biggest difference is that I neglected Science through-out the early game. My thought process was that I wanted to avoid giving the other civs catch-up Science and have to worry about Space Race while staling out the game, but that ended up not being relevant at all, since no one even got close to even starting the Space Program.
Having a taller civilization benefits science, and here most of all social policies. I was able to chase down all policies that benefit happiness. This was all the more important when unemployed citizens started to appear, which I should perhaps have avoided to a greater extent in the core cities which kept sending food to each other for a long time. While specialists only contribute 50% unhappiness after the universal suffrage tenet, unemployed citizens contribute 100%. Universal suffrage gave over 150 happy faces in the end, but I was still chasing happiness, because I could not build as many Colosseums, circuses, et cetera as you probably did. Here are my social policies/tenets:
GOTM259_330_Policies.png GOTM259_330_tenets.png
First was Liberty, then Tradition, and the rest of the policy path was too winding to keep track of.

Science was also good, reaching above 10K at the end, less than 2 turns per furture tech. But from the comparison it is obvious that you got a lot of points from your number of cities. Civ 5 is so well balanced that things like these sometimes feel like a zero sum game.

Just like you were wary that no AIs should complete the space race, I was afraid to become influencial over my last remaining opponent, Ottomans. That is why I didn't capture their core cities until 1 turn before the end, even though I was at war with them for the last 100 turns or so. It is also the reason I started International games 2-3 turns too late and missed the free policy, wanting to avoid the double tourism. Preparations for the Ottomans probably drew my attention away from the city states, which I could have captured by buying death robots, ships, and radar artillery everywhere.

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Home area Happiness scramble, assigning specialists after universal suffrage

In spite of that mistake, it was rather fun to farm such a huge empire. It was also the first time I went after hidden archaelogical sites. I was very surprised to find... (you may want to discover this yourself if you haven't done so before)
Spoiler :
...a few (3) remnants of ancient writing and not only objects.


Merry Christmas! :lol:
 
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I played it again, with a little more knowledge about what give points. When I got to 5000 points I slowed down and started cleaning up roads and railroads, repairing pillaged tiles, and building lumbermills and trading posts everywhere. It was probably a good thing I didn't capture a few more cities, because I ended just one turn away from an accidental cultural victory. Final score was 5108, and I'm pleased with that. Those of you who scored over 8000 points, how did you *not* get a cultural victory? Or can you JOMT at that point and still get a points victory? (AFAIK, domination is the only victory condition that's not disabled one somebody wins)

I left Morocco and Assyria alone this time until the late game; that might have been a mistake because Buddhism started crowding out Eastern Orthodoxy. Eventually peace-loving Ahmed went on a rampage and eliminated Assyria. As soon as he took the last city I declared war and eliminated him.

It's amazing how much happiness is available with the Liberty policy "Meritocracy." I think my happiness jumped about 60 points just from that one, even though a few of the cities that I took in a peace deal with Egypt are not connected to my empire.

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I didn't build any hotels or airports and hid as many great works as possible in puppeted cities. And got the Internet as my final tech. Even at the end of the game I was only generating 332 tourism per turn.
I had to save the civ with the strongest culture (Ottomans) even though they were a juicier prey. That’s not counting Germany, of course, whose riches had to be seized for a competitive score. Stowing away great works in puppets sounds smart, but I didn’t want any puppets in the long run.
 
Loss due to stupidity T284. I forgot that a Civ that you bring back to life will automatically vote for you for World Leader whether you want them to or not. But I had to go back and play it to see if I could prevent Rome from winning a SV and to what kind of score I could get.

From Opening Actions, I did end up wiping out Ashur before I met anyone else so I cleared the continent; that was good. And as mentioned in the OA, I used Dromon's to do it and they are awesome! I was right about Egypt being in the game - except wrong that he was the wonder monger; Rameses had gotten wiped out by Caesar even before I met him. It was Bismark who was hogging all the wonders so of course I had to take Berlin.

Spoiler Wonderous Berlin :
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I had planned on playing peaceful after clearing my continent. But because of Berlin's wonders I knew I had to take it for the points - captured it T179.. And then, in the later game, Rome started building spaceship parts, and I feared he would win a SV before T330. So I had to take Caesar out. Egypt was on the way to Rome so I decided to liberate his cities so I didn't incur too much unhappiness. And when the WL vote came up, he voted for me which put me over the top for the win. I even backed off a few points of my own votes just in case something weird happened but it wasn't enough. I should have just put like a couple votes on myself to be the top vote getter.

Spoiler Conquered Roman Empire :
Conquered Roman Empire.jpg


I went Tradition then Rationalism into Freedom. At the end I had a lot more policies though (screenshot below). Ended up with 18 cities total, only 5 self-founded in the core of Byzantium. Constantinople ended up being size 60 - I think that is my largest city ever.

It was a fun game. Just wish I didn't make that stupid mistake. I thought I had a lot of points but I was nowhere near the leaders here. I had 4789. I never thought about taking all of the cities, including CS I see!, to maximize points. I figured the happiness hit would hurt too much. (Heck I even brought Ramses back to life).
 

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Initially, I wanted to skip this game, realizing that it would take a long time, but then I decided to play anyway - and it was worth it! Unfortunately, I won't be able to finish the game on time, however, I don't know when, but I will finish it. I don't want to rush and just press enter. In my understanding, points are cities and populations, everything else is secondary. Therefore, the goal of the game is to maximize the population.

I have 200 turns now, and the fun is just beginning. I have completely captured all CS and AI cities, except capital Attila. Total y have 86 cities, and I'll probably build another 1 on a 1-tile island near Bratislava after an archaeologist digs up a masterpiece from there. I have 84 mosques, 84 pagodas, about 40 cathedrals from my religion, and about 20 monasteries left from the Egyptian one. 925 faiths per turn, and later I plan to accept the Reformation, for the glory of God, in order to transform more than 100k faiths into great people.
In science, I have biology, electricity, factories, fertilizers, but I'll be in industrial for 10-15 more turns until I build all the buildings of faith. I only adopted rationalism last turn, before that I did not specifically force science. I have full liberty, open piety, org. religion, mandate of heaven, open commerce, caravan of wagons, open exploration, +3 hammers in coastal cities, happiness from lighthouses, etc., open tradition, aristocracy, open order, happiness of monuments, happiness of workshops and factories, the party leadership. Still dont use WF.
I built 3 wonders - MoH, Machu Picchu and Big Ben, I captured all the others, except Stonehenge and TA in the capital Attila. Unfortunately, two turns before I built the Taj Mahal, an engineer was born in Berlin and He had just learned architecture. I was hoping he would build Ufizzi and I wouldn't have to open aesthetics, but he stole the Taj Mahal. Then he was ready to build Ufizzi, but I started a war and he switched to troops. There were a total of 14 wonders in Berlin.

points now :

cities 688
population 3860
territory 1059
the wonders 700
technology 192
tech. future 0
institutions 84
masterpieces 64
religion 203

The score is 6850

I plan to at least double the population by the end of the game, build all the remaining wonders, dig up all the masterpieces and learn science to the maximum. The mainthing is not to accidentally win a cultural victory.
 
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Results for GOTM #259
Byzantium / Time / King / Continents / Quick

...Player....................Score
1. Megalou....................8412 :trophy:


More details can be found here. Please note: This list is generated automatically and only shows games that have been uploaded to the GOTM website.

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