TSG 269 After Actions

[Nizef]

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?
- What did you think about the map type?
- Which ideology did you pick?
- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them?
- Overall remarks

 

[qontroL]

Threw in the towel on my first attempt. America had 22 cities and was completely uncontested because it's a flat earth map and no civ can ever get anywhere near him. I prepared my army to fight him in the early modern era, but midwar every single Civ in the entire game went Order ideology while I had picked Freedom much before. I swapped to Order and ended the war because even if I continue fighting him it's not going to win me the game, there's no way to transition my army anywhere else once I've destroyed his cities. Hate this about flat earth maps, feels too stagnant for me, but it is what it is. I might try again from 0. These ideologies always screw me over when I'm playing against Deity. Usually I pick Order and try to kill everyone around me before they get to choose their ideology, but on the map I wasn't able to do much of anything. Curious to see how other players stop Civs for snowballing. Either way, I researched the Internet and won the International Games and was on a decent pace to get a Culture Victory over the other civs (excluding America), but America currently has 42k Culture and is gaining 900 Culture per turn and I am nowhere near having a proper army to go at it again, so there's no point at this point, if I fight America then Assyria will probably win a Science Victory before I've wiped America off the map, he has cities everywhere.

I probably could've attacked America sooner to never allow them to get any foot in the game because his capital is super exposed, but I didn't expect them to settle 10 cities in the span of 20 turns. I was honestly a bit bored this game. There was 0 interaction between Civs on the map because we're all extremely isolated. If I run it back I'm going to do culture through conquest for sure though.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Cultural Victory T268.

I've heard it say that science victory and culture victory are the same early on, but after this game I am not so sure. My 6-city tradition worked well enough for science; I hit stealth Turn 223, and X-com the turn after that. I think I would have managed a science victory around that time too, had I gone for it. However, my early game tempo was bad, and as a result my timing into the crucial Renaissance era was too slow. Perhaps 4-city tradition with a fat capital would have been better.

After the Opening Actions, my game actually picked up a bit. I sorted my happiness (finally got some more AI lux trades), and I entered Renaissance not through either Printing Press or Astronomy as planned, but through Acoustics to go Rationalism without any filler policy. Maya was the only other civ at Acoustics, so I attempted Sistine in Paris. Pacal was not building it, and just to be sure I had Assyria war him (completely ineffectively, to my surprise). However, with a few turns of building left, Maya engineered the Sistine. In the meantime I had been teching towards Printing Press, and to my surprise I got there first, allowing me to found World Congress and propose World's Fair (I was going to need the culture). I also started Leaning Tower, but William engineered that one too. I had a spy in his capital so I could see he was starting on Globe a few turns after I started on Leaning, but he engineered it in between.

That was the point I decided: right, war it is. With Leaning and engineer from it to take Uffizi, I might have entertained the possibility of a (relatively) peaceful tourism play, by rushing internet and all that, but with so little base tourism I did not feel like it (as an aside, there were hardly any artifacts to dig up, I spotted only one in my entire region, so I was glad I chose the war path). From that point on, it was straight rush to Stealth and X-Com, to steal rather than create works of art. First target was Pacal, who had spammed a lot of wonders and of course was right next door. Next up was culture leader William, though I did make a mistake warring him.

I had been friends with him all game long, and he was sitting on 8000 gold, waiting for me to plunder. I had planned to take it all the turn before our friendship ran out, but then I forgot and could no longer trade his gold. Luckily, he was willing to renew our friendship. I took all his money, bought the key city states, and declared war right away. However, the other civs obviously took a dim view, and as a result I did not have a good trading partner to sell any cities I was razing for good prices.

The warring went Ok, but it was a bit of a slog The AI is quite good at squirreling away their works of arts, so my haul of stolen works was a little disappointing. I was warring both America and the Netherlands, but progress was slow. Also William had picked freedom, and although I can't tell whether he picked "their finest hour" or not, his city were pretty strong (most in the 110-140 range), so my stealth bombers struggled to chew through them. In hindsight it might have been better to head straight to Carthage for Statue of Zeus, because all game long bomber health was an issue.

In the end I only wiped out the Netherlands (and 3-city Maya of course), and I bulbed all my musicians into Uxmal - the third Mayan city that I had traded to Brazil. It was a fun game, and it actually went quite well, but I expect anyone able to pull off a 'normal' Freedom tourism win will be considerably quicker (I don't see anyone doing Futurism here, but perhaps I'm wrong).

 

[fiddlesticks]

Cultural victory turn 224

Picking up from the opening actions thread:

Wonders: Sistine, Uffizi, Eiffel (engineered), Broadway, Porcelain Tower

War with the Maya - captured Palenque turn 171 (4 great works - helpfully 2 medieval great artworks that went to Sistine so I could place three themed French artifacts in Uffizi.)
Later on I finished the Maya off after everyone disliked them for some reason and got two more great works. Selling Mayan cities to Assyria boosted the economy which helped buy city states and key buildings with the order 1st tier savings on buildings.
Everybody except Carthage went order too which meant the 2nd tier order tourism policy really helped. I only got to propose a world congress vote on the third round so I never got to IG. Helpfully another civ proposed WF in the 1st round and winning that helped speed through aesthetics and finish rationalism.
Two bought and one natural GMs finished the game off after NVC and Internet were online

 

[Bol]

Peaceful culture victory T238

Picking up from https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/tsg-269-opening-actions.698183/post-16826213

Change of plan with respect to religion: I figured the Mayan religion was too good to pass up, so on T104 I enhanced into Hermitage tourism, planning to keep Bolism only in the capital.
Soon after that the Mayans ran two Prophet into my territory, so I happily dowed and captured, planted one, and used the other to slowly convert my cities as soon as I had enough faith to buy Mosques and Monasteries. I bought about half before Rennaissance and half after, with only 1 Monastery in Industrial.
(at some point Orleans was converted to a religion having Pagodas, so I even bought a 600 faith Pagoda before flipping it back).

Empire development was smooth, other than gold issues (since my Tithe income was gone); I had 5 Universities before T120, hit Secularism T149 (with one "filler" into Aestethics) and a great 80 pop for 5 cities on T150.

There was, however, one glaring issue: wonders.
Oracle went super early, it would have been good but not that big of a deal.
My Rennaissance path was Acoustics -> Observatories -> Printing Press because I wanted to prioritize Sistine (imho the best culture wonder by far)...which OF COURSE went T134 (I was due T137).
Pisa went T139 (I had started it T136) and Globe (which I'm not a fan of, but it's better as France) went soon after on T143.
At this point I kind of panicked and rushed Uffizi before PublicSchool in the capital (which I couldn't buy because of gold issues) (NB: I hate Uffizi)

Why did I have gold issues (other than having lost the tithe income)? I had to pay a lot of bribes!
Dido the backstabber was friendly as she always is but was clearly sneaking on me, so I had to bribe her 4 times: ~T150, ~T175 (I bribed Pedro to war her as it was cheaper), T192 and T215.
Williams also decided to move an army towards me after forward settling me without shame so I had to bribe him as well on T172. Thankfully he later went Freedom, so at least he was a friend to the end.
Overall, not great for my coffers.

Other than not having Coal, things went well into the industrial era.
I Oxforded Radio T165 to open Freedom, and finished the 5th Public School around T170 (a very good time, I think).
On T176 I won the World Fair (~950 hammers to ~750 2nd place) and got Free Thought, plus cheap culture building (which I was mostly delaying) the turn after.
I got tier 2 freedom T187 after a detour to Exploration for the Louvre, which I completed T191 (which I hate almost as much as Uffizi, but at least it's good as France, and it is thematic).

Eiffel Tower went T184 (never seen it disappear so quickly), but at least I faith-engineered Broadway T186, and I already had 2 musicians ready for the immediate theming bonus.
Plastics T199, borrowing money from a friend to buy a Lab in the capital, and I built a 2nd Lab in Troyes.

In the meantime, I had started to build an army of Archeologists. However, dig sites were nowhere to be found: none in my territory, none in the empty land to the south, none near the 3 city states to the north.
This was less than ideal, since I had planned to build 13 (5 museums, Louvre, Palace slot); to make things worse, moving archologists on this map is a pain in the ass, with all the mountains and narrow passages.
In the end I managed to get 12 artifacts: 1 on the border between Carthage and Brazil, luckily in neutral territory; 1 from Pacal, 1 from Assyria, 1 from NL, 2 in the corner from America, 1 on the border between England and NL, again lucliky in neutral territory (everyone complained, nobody retaliated);
2 from the far, eastern city states, and finally 3 easily accessible between Cape Town and Jerusalem.
I also had two scouts ready on 2 english artifacts, but open borders ran out, she started hating me (I was friend with Williams, who I had earlier paid to war her) and never gave me open border again. Oh well.

The late game was ok, but rather slow.

The empire had good territory, but not great for growth: I stagnated at 108 pop, which is ok but far from great.
This was coupled with a lack of scientists: I didn't have Pisa, and Arts funding got passed alongside World Fair (and even Porcelain went very quickly) so I only managed to get 7 scientists, which I started bulbing T211, reaching Internet T218 (is it a good timing?).
From there though, getting to Airports was very painful, as I only had 2 Labs (I built a very late 3rd) and I only got a 8th natural scientist. I was also quite behind on culture, having had to take Exploration and lacking Sistine, so I couldn't finish Rationalism.
In the end I reached Radar T234, insta-bought 5 airports and faith-bought 2 Musician, timing a natural 3rd for T235; they were worth 7580 tourism each, and I marched north to Pacal as it was the nearest border for a triple concert win.

Another big issue, probably the worst, was the lack of tourism modifiers.
I had a very large raw output, thanks in part to Sacred Sites and to working 18 Chateaus (5 in the capital), but everything else was a disaster: Brazil and Assyria was not reachable via trade routes, and William got embargoed...England wouldn't give open border so I only had the full modifiers with America, Carthage and Maya.
At least I also had the shared religion bonus with the Maya, who had the most culture.
Thankfully there was no culture runaway, almost everyone was around 20k. Funnily the Maya had the most culture, but between having the largest modifier and running 3 concerts into their territory, they were the only civ I was dominant with!

Overall it was fun, I think I enjoy playing peaceful culture more than most players, although this one was quite stressful.

PS: I was very happy to finally build and work a lot of chateaus, which I don't think I've ever done.

PPS: although there is a lot of space south where I could have settled cities to gift to Brazil and Assyria for trade routes and concerts, I didn't because I feel that's cheating, and I don't think I ever will.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Wow, nice theming bonuses, @Bol . I only like peaceful culture when I manage to get a decent haul of wonders, otherwise I get annoyed at the AI and want to take their cities.

 

[Rhodro]

I just gave up on turn 276 when my capital got nuked.
The AI totally snowballed, maya was incredibly fast on science and already built many space ship pieces. My last chance of stopping was atomic bombing his capital. But the other AI really hate me because i have Freedom and they have order. So Dido and Elizabeth just joined in and i was already at war with America. Someone just nuked my capital after I finally captured Maya's capital. They all just caught up in science so fast.

This is my worst game in a long time. So many tactics went wrong. First that petra fail that I posted in the opening actions thread. Then my Eiffel tower got stolen by a brazillian engineer, then I wanted to use the 6 free foreign legion to attack brazil, but i forgot his navy, so he destroyed them when they were embarked

I should have seen this was gonna be a war game earlier, and should not have beelined the internet, but

 

[Megalou]

I seem to remember that there was a Napoleon III who played a rather significant role in history. As for me I had to wait for Napoleon V before reaching some prominence. That's how many attempts it took me to do reasonably well, by which I mean the following:
* having a pop of 30+ on turn 100 as I enviously saw others have in the second spoiler thread
* getting at least one key renaissance wonder (Uffizi)
* getting to a position where I would undoubtedly be able to capture Palenque in my stride --- however, because of an Assyrian onslaught the Mayan cultural dominance was curtailed and after getting all three theology wonders (!) they didn't get a single wonder after that. I suppose they had to build military. Napoleon V captured Palenque about 50 turns from the end which came in the the first half of the 1700s.

I prioritized Internet and barely got to Airports after that, but they shaved off 2-3 turns I think.

This time around it was Brazil who got sacred sites and had the good taste to bring their religion to France. Jesuit education from Maya was briefly on the table, but their main contribution was to enable religious buildings, before Brazil showed up. Actually I didn't build a single missionary or Great Prophet, although I captured a few "virgin" GPs from the Mayans and planted them.

A huge mistake or "accident" occurred when I was holding off moving from the Rennaisance to Industrial. The counter said "Scientific Theory (2)" but a few extra beakers rolled in and it was good bye to the Uffizi theming bonus. But at least Hermitage gave a fat stack of tourism.

Natural wonders were hard to find and I only found the last one, Eldorado, about 10 or 20 turns from the end.

Here is a moderately interesting experiment:

Catholicism with sacred sites being a better religion than Buddhism (in this game that is), I fenced in the Brazilian prophet, hoping that he would eventually spread Catholicism even though he was about to run past Palenque. This did not work - the prophet just stood their turn after turn doing nothing.

Congratulations to those who won on their first try!

 

[elotar]

Failed at turn 299 - Orange got into space with the Washington following.

Actually at the time or even much earlier by very little effort I can win by science as well as by diplomacy (my religion went dominant all over the world so I was flooded with money and has bought nearly all city-states anyway), but not with culture - in my game there was crazy runaway Brazil. Pedro not only got enormous amounts of culture, but also beat the crap out of Cartage and Maya, capturing their cities on the south continent and flooding land and sea with units.

Failed culture wonders, often by turn or two (as have written in opening actions - +production religion should be better in this game). Also I vent with Freedom, all the world except Cartage and Assyria went Order, so got happiness issues for a while.

Only plan I've managed to think of was to influence everybody except Brazil naturally (it went fine after Internet), and just to remove Brazil from the game. Later part may work if I just concentrated in nukes and x-coms (city in the north peninsula was cool as it happened to be only source of uranium in reach), not fulling around with navy and other crap. Brazil got time to make nukes of their own, bomb my packed units in conquered city, so I was forced to rebuild TLDR at the end they still got 5 cities left (terrible terrain not helps either). But till the very end it was fun.

Overall thoughts: warfare is the main entertainment in later eras, we need more of it (x-com are too good, thou). Later eras at normal speed without fighting are too boring. Culture victory is the most fun but also kinda useless other than for the challenge runs or, maybe, with specialized civ (dunno if France counts as specialized, feels not so much), game may be better if it somehow can be made more achievable.

 

[Rhodro]

I did a 2nd try and won at turn 268. I influenced all civs except brazil and carthage that I eliminated with xcom and stealth bombers. Could have won earlier because i had 3 natural musicians, but i was too short to culture bomb carthage. Later i remembered that i could actually faith buy a musician. But at that point Dido didn't want to make peace, all the way down to her last city and even then risisting.
This was without theming wonders in capital except oxford and hermitage. I captured louvre and globe theater in rio de janerio and built sydney opera house in one of my coastal cities. Ended up with 752 tourism. I think most of it came from terrain, the tourism buildings and 3 culture from wonders that i voted in congress.

 

[raider980]

T317 Loss to William of Orange who successfully launched the Dutch Spaceship to Alpha Centauri.

I knew there was no chance of winning but kept playing to see who would win. I thought it was going to be Washinton for a while because he was in the lead tech wise for much of the game but I think he was going for a Diplo win. Then William, Ashur and Pedro all started building spaceship parts so it was a race between those three. William beat Ashur by one part on T317 after a nuclear war with Liz and capturing London.

I was going to play totally peacefully but Liz forward settled me and took a prime spot so I had to DoW her and try to take it back. I was able to capture Canterbury and Newcastle around T160, both cities on the New Mediterranean Sea so that gave me 3 coastal cities with access to the rest of the world. But she would not make peace for anything less than 2 cities. So we battled until like T300 when William DoW'd her and she realized she should've made peace with me long ago.

Mixed feelings about the map type. On the one hand rough terrain is difficult to traverse; on the other hand, its difficult for the enemy to traverse too so that's probably what kept me alive until the end! I did like the water layout; a good defensive water neck to easily defend. I was able to chew up many English Ships of the Line and Privateers with just a few ships and ranged land units. I also DoW Dido to liberate Genoa and then Pedro when the game was almost over just for fun.

I went Freedom only because I was second to last to ideology and Washington picked Freedom and was looking like he was menacing my borders, kept asking for Open Borders. He was really the only AI I was afraid of because he had easy access to my lands. The rest of them would have a hard time getting to me. And Pacal also went Freedom after me and they both had a lot of tourism influence so happiness wasn't a problem.

Had four self-founded cities and two conquered English cities. Everyone else (except Liz) had many more cities.

Deity is always tough and this was no exception. Although I had easily defended land in this one so was able to make it to the end which usually isn't the case. A good fun one that I actually got to finish!

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

@raider980 I know these lands were not ideally suited to growth, but you would have had more options if you had manage to grow them earlier in the game.

 

[raider980]

@raider980 I know these lands were not ideally suited to growth, but you would have had more options if you had manage to grow them earlier in the game.

I even ran food caravans this game which I usually don't do. Don't know how people get such high pop, I can never manage to do it.

 

[elotar]

I even ran food caravans this game which I usually don't do. Don't know how people get such high pop, I can never manage to do it.

I think you answered your own question Food caravans should be a priority.

 

[raider980]

I think you answered your own question Food caravans should be a priority.

But this game even when I did run them the same low pop happened. I’m just destined to be a small civ. I have to admit there’s something I don’t like about the mechanic of food caravans. They’re almost like a built in cheat code. I feel the same about chopping forest for instant free production.