TSG 271 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
- Remember to post a copy of your game ending file

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Turn 295 domination victory. Reasonably satisfied after the game threatened to fall apart a little after encountering Japan's Great Wall, but no super quick timing either. Judging by the fact that this is the first post in this thread, it looks like other people are not having super fast games either. I can imagine a scenario where the Chu-ko-nus just keep marching, and then I suppose a sub-200 is on the cards. Didn't @vadalaz manage something like a T170 in the epic zulu game from a while back?

In any case, as excited as I was about the first 100 turns of play, I did not sustain that level of accuracy for the rest of the playthrough (I anyway find it hard to keep paying attention to the sim while warring). My social policies were all over the place. After tradition I went Patronage (which is useful for domination, although honor might stil have been better), then I wanted to open Rationalism, so I switched to acoustics. Then I switched off from acoustics because I had some turns to spare, and then I forgot to switch back, so I got another policy before renaissance, and opened commerce.

After retreating from Japan, I went to the English/Indonesian island. Indonesia had settled Medan on my landmass. I could easily capture it, and two ranged Chu-ko-nus could shoot Enland's second city from my coast, and I could capture the city with a trireme, gaining a foothold on the island (I did raze that city, and almost all cities I captured). London was wide open to my 3-range units, and even though I did spot a stray longbow, she did not have enough units to put up a decent defense. Similarly, the Indonesian cities were easy to capture.

My army then embarked back to the mainland, to return to Japan. This time, my much bigger force of Chu-ko-nus, knights, and some other random units could make good progress. After liberating M'banza and taking Kyoto I did immediately peace out, because my happiness was very low. In the meantime, Assyria had flooded the lands between Bejing and Honolulu with crappy cities, but by this time I had reached Industrialization, and my range-logistics gatling guns (finally freed from the damage penalty that Chu-ko-nus have compared to crossbows) went like a warm knife through the butter of Assyrian lands.

Only when I encountered Shaka did I start to bleed a couple of units (none of the highly upgraded ones, though). Shaka had not been doing that well, boxed into his corner while Assyria did most of the conquering of India. Still, impis are strong and he had a decent number of them. Finally, onto Siam. He had been spamming wonders in his cozy salted corner (including sameturning me on Taj for which I had faith-purchased an engineer). His elephants were still strong, and I lost another cavalry or two, but ultimately he also presented no challenge, especially since I had just managed to upgrade to machine guns before taking on his final two cities.

To conclude: an interesting game; I felt I started my game very well, and then I lost the plot a little bit (in the mid-game I felt I was just randomly building infrastructure rather than trying to bring forward my win condition), but I was also lucky that no of the AI were doing very well. If Shaka had snowballed and built all the defensive wonders, it might have gone a lot harder (in the end, Japan built Great Wall, in an expand so I did not get it, and Himeji also in an expand after I had already captured his capital). Siam did get Red Fort, but that alone was not enough to mount a defense - my artillery and machine still shot down his cities in two turns.

 

[fiddlesticks]

Domination victory turn 241

I settled 3 cities and went for a full Honour route. Tech path was to NC, then to Machinery, then education and military techs.

Polynesia and Mongolia were target practice with archers then comp-bows. Kyoto was comp-bows too, then they upgraded to chu-ko-nus for the trip south.

Army 2 was a mix of CS units and chu-ko-nus and cannons. I settled an 'I'm going to attack your capital city' right by London, used an extra general and got several cannon shots off after the DoW to take it easily. The travel to Sukhothai and the clean up of blocking units added 9-10 turns after London fell.

Thanks for bringing back GoTM!

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Nice one, @fiddlesticks ! Interesting placement of Guangzhou. I automatically settled on the river, but that city had no production for me.

 

[fiddlesticks]

Thanks @The_Black_Vegetable ! I settled Guangzhou to get the ivory, gold and crabs in the same city, before revealing that Shanghai had an ivory in range. It ended up being a good spot, but I did run caravans to it for most of the early game.

I wonder if anyone else built Petra in Shanghai? I didn't see any desert tiles unless Uluru is counted as one. I thought that was neat. It does kind of highlight what you mentioned about building unnecessary infrastructure. If I'd just pumped out units I bet I could've sent a 3rd army to Siam and sped up the 2nd army campaign. As it was I built markets, workshops, universities, a few wonders (Oracle, Petra, Himeji, LToP). None of these were necessary. For me the slog of marching the units to their location is a disincentive to building more, even when I 'should' for optimal times.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

For me the slog of marching the units to their location is a disincentive to building more, even when I 'should' for optimal times.

Exactly. Petra went late-ish in my game (Siam built it), but I did not consider building it in Shanghai.

 

[sebtanic]

Won turn 299.

Policies: Full tradtition, 4 in Commerce, Rationalism opener, Patronage opener
Religion: Tithe, extra Production. I never spread it, and eventually another religion took over all my cities including the holy city. But my religion did make me some extra gold and hammers for a while.

Path to conquest:
t144 Karakorum
t167 Honolulu (GLH, Petra, Pyramids)
t193 Kyoto (Zeus, Notre Dame) (...btw nice wonders, guys. Thanks!)

Shaka had taken over and eliminated both India and Assyria. There were Impis everywhere, hard work for my Chokos.

I planted a few citadels since I had more GG than I knew what to do with. That helped a little, but at some point Shaka upgraded his Impis to Rifles. My Chokos were slowed down, but kept advancing.

t219 Assur
t234 Delhi

I liberated expos of both Assyria and India, who came to be good friends and trading partners for the rest of the game. I also gifted them some cities I didn't need / took too long to raze.

t252 took a peace deal from Shaka because he offered me 5 cities. I think it said the deal was for 10 turns, but it was actually 15. I was unable to DOW him again until t267. I used that time to heal my units and start building a road from India to the western border of Siam.
Anyway, I couldn't have taken those 5 cities from Shaka in 10 turns. Probably not in 15 either.

t271 Ulundi (Red Fort, + a lot of other largely irrelevant wonders)
3 capitals to go.
I have a road going all the way to Siam, and another one west from my capital to the English cities on our continent. A fleet of frigates is ready to take over London and Jakarta, and I am building a secondary army of mainly Cho-Ko-Nus (and a few cannons) to assist.

t290 London (Great Wall)
t295 Sukothai (Himeji)
t299 Jakarta

Not 100% sure, but this may have been my first deity domination win ever. I was close to giving up at one point when I realized I wouldn't be able to completely eliminate Shaka. He had one last city left, north of Ulundi, which was very hard to take due to terrain. Plus he had a citadel there.

I could have taken it from the sea, but my fleet was far away and also I needed it to take out England which had Great Wall. Shaka was tech leader, and at least 5 techs ahead of me. He had Riflemen, Xbows and Cannons, while I was still at Muskets.

Then I decided to just leave him alive, but stay at war. I built a citadel between Ulundi and his last city, and park 3 range promoted Chokonus in the hills to annihilate anything he might throw at me. The rest of my main army marched north to Siam.

Terrain up there was much more favorable. There were hills everywhere, so I could take out enemy units easily with my range promoted Chokos. Then I sent in my Cannons and melee units to take the cities.

My army of workers built roads relatively quickly to wherever my troops went (even though it still was a bit of a slog on epic). In the screenshot there is one road tile missing to connect Sukothai to my road network.

Once Sukothai was mine I just parked my units there. It would have taken 15 turns to march them all the way back west, even with roads. The western army and navy won me the game on their own just fine.

 

[Notacop]

Turn 230 Domination victory. Picking up from the opening actions thread: My army of ckns just took the Polynesian capitol. I split them up to go east for Assyria, India, Shaka, then Siam. And west for England and Indonesia. East army easily chewed through Assyria who had India's capitol as well. Took both of those easily. Assyria also took Tokyo on the coast from Japan. I ended up taking that city as well, eliminating Assyria. Then the eastern army moved on Shaka, who was a pain. He still had a bunch of impis and intermediate cities, and bought more impis every turn. My ckns had range and march by now so I went slowly, careful not to lose any. After mowing down a dozen impis, I eventually reached his cap and it fell quickly. Then the eastern army started marching north through the mountain pass to Siam. Meanwhile I started sailing a third army across the water from Tokyo to Siam (this is why I took Tokyo). The third army made it to the shore, starting the trek to Sukhothai. The eastern army was close behind, needing to deal with a Siam city in the middle of the mountain pass.

While this was going on, my western army was dealing with Gajah. Gajah had taken London and a coastal York from England, so I could stay friends with Liz which came in handy. Gajah was kind enough to settle a city on my continent, so I took it netting 2 unique luxes, one being nutmeg, his UA haha. My plan was to take York and use it as a staging area for London and Jakarta. I had reached compass and was building Galleasses, but they would take a while to get over to the front. There was a single tile on my continent where I could hit York with a ckn. After a few volleys, I captured York with a Trireme, getting my foothold. Unfortunately, Gajah had built up a ton of units, and with no else to conquer on his lands, he had his whole army sitting there ready to take back York. I was able to retreat my units before he retook it. I hit York again with the single ckn and took the city a few turns later. Instead of puppeting the city, this time I liberated it, giving it back to England. Since I was friends with England and had open borders with them and Gajah didn't, I could land my troops in York's borders without Gajah counterattacking! Thanks Lizzie. This whole sequence made me laugh (at least until I had to take Jakarta). With my army now on the other continent, I easily took London in a few turns, now gearing up to attack Jakarta. It was extremely painful and the longest siege in the game for me. Jakarta was positioned such that I had to be within the first ring to hit it with ckns, or in the second ring of 2 cities. He also had muskets and xbows by now, leaving me with very few safe places for my ckns. My galleasses finally made it over, but the city was very strong at 45 or so strength. It took multiple turns to get my army in position to attack the city, meanwhile his city was hitting me for 70+ damage each turn. Each attack only did 7-9 damage, and I was bleeding units. I lost a bunch of ckns and all of my melee units, I guess it was Gajah's turn to laugh at me now. Luckily I had reinforcements landing on the shore of York, just in time. After many, many turns and only 3 archers and 1 melee unit left, I finally took Jakarta. Now I could focus on Siam.

Siam had the great wall and was surrounded by hills, I was nervous about this one. My third army was on the doorsteps of Muang Saluang. With them was a settler. I planted the city next to their borders, popped a gg for a citadel, and opened a path to attack Muang Saluang. The city fell easily. My eastern army was coming up from the south at the same time and took another Siamese city. These 3 new cities actually plunged me into unhappiness. I went as low as -12 and spawned rebels in my cities, but more importantly I now had an unhappiness attack penalty. My treaty with Shaka was also ending in a few turns, and he was nice enough to surround Ulundi with impis. Needing to go quickly, I forged ahead, sending all my units to surround Sukhothai. Even with the unhappiness penalty, the city fell quickly in a few turns, and victory was achieved. Even with all the rough terrain I still had a blast. The western front in particular was very challenging but so satisfying. Thanks for the fun game!

Spoiler :

 

[sebtanic]

Turn 230 Domination victory.

Wow, impressive win time!

I'm curious what infrastructure did everyone build, and did you go for National College before Machinery?

Myself, I went NC first, then Optics to get a lighthouse in my coastal city (this probably could have waited until later), then Machinery for Chokonus.

I'm proud of my first deity domination win, but seeing that you guys managed to do it even faster, I'm wondering how I can further improve my strategy.

One reason I was relatively slow was probably that the Zulu were so strong in my game. They had taken over and eliminated both Assyria and India, had tons of Impis, lots of cities to build even more Impis each turn, and by the time I reached their capital it was 81 strength and they had riflemen.

Another reason might be that I took Tradition, since I thought we need a good science base. Maybe going Liberty or Honor would have sped things up.

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Optics to get a lighthouse

I did delay optics, though I needed it more to scout England and Indonesia than to build a lighthouse.

 

[Notacop]

Good job on your first deity win sebtanic. Any win on deity is a well played game. As you get more comfortable with deity you'll start winning faster.

I went Liberty, 3 cities. Built a settler before collective rule. Research order was mining, pottery, other lux techs, with AH and archery mixed in. I ended up going philosophy and NC before machinery, I figured the game would take a little longer and I might need to research past machinery. I think going philosophy and NC delayed machinery but probably got me to compass faster, which I needed to take Jakarta. I also built Oracle to get the last Liberty policy, taking a gs to bulb machinery. The Oracle probably saved me 7-8 turns, so it might have evened out in the end. After philosophy I went straight to machinery. After machinery I went up to education, then compass for galleasses and navigation, didn't end up researching navigation because I took London and Jakarta before it finished. I took honor left side and then part of the right side after Liberty, didn't finish honor.

Getting to machinery fast is the main reason for my fast finish time. Ckns are much better then comp bows due to higher attack value and being able to attack twice. The sooner you get them, the faster you can conquer everything. That means eliminating buildings and tech you don't need, like lighthouse. I don't think you need NC and education in this game if you are fast enough, but the terrain plus large map plus ckns only moving 2 tiles made me play it safe and get both. My cities built monument, granary, library, then archers/comp bows/a few melee units. When I had about 12 archers/comp bows or so, I built circus, coliseum, and market. The cities with good production got universities, and any conquered city got court houses. Otherwise it was all military units. You don't need anything else in a fast domination game.

For Shaka, I bribed him to attack everyone pretty much the whole game. He took a bunch of cities from India and Assyria, but you don't need to conquer all his cities, just the ones in the way. I think him and Siam wittled each other's army down. I worker baited for the impis, and had fully upgraded ckns by the then so it went pretty smoothly. I think I only lost 1 ckn to Shaka.

 

[Bemep42]

Domination victory turn 198.

 

[Bemep42]

A terrible game ) In the beginning, I made a stupid, erroneous strategic decision, and then there were a bunch of small tactical mistakes that I usually don't have.

For a quick conquest, it is always advisable to start this very conquest as early as possible. However, there is always a risk that later astronomy or a complex landscape + the Great Wall will create an unsolvable problem. In addition, I had a desire to try to play science before the machinery (3 cities of tradition), and then start the conquest. Or build a Great Library + National College with one cities and then fight with compbow. In short, before the game, I didn't know exactly how I was going to play.

The capital is on a hill across the river, an additional hammer is required. Then I started learning pottery, but after 5 moves I found it from ruins. And at that moment, I decided that this was a reason to try to build a Great Library. Even earlier I had found culture from ruins and open tradition. To speedup the construction GL the next policy I chose was the aristocracy, which turned out to be just a waste of politics. Of course, in 4-5 turns before finishing, AI beat me to it. In that time, I could have built a settler+. Moreover, there were 2 excellent places to check in. 4 luxuries in the North + Uluru. After the GL failure, I still built 1 settler for Uluru, mostly for the sake of faith. I could have bought 2nd settlers, but changed my mind.The neighbors were close and the presence of Mongols among them did not contribute to the idea of a peaceful game before the machinery. It was possible not to live.

That's why I decided to start fighting right away, despite losing more than 20 turns. After the aristocracy - Full Honor (left, then right), instead of a settler, I bought 3 archers, built even more and started a war with the Mongols. However, by this time they already had horsemen who jumped out of the darkness and dealt 60 damage to my archers. The war dragged on and I lost 2 bows in it. During this time, TA and GW were built in Kyoto. The latter made me happy - no unpleasant surprises in the future. In Karakarum, I upgraded my bows to a compbow. The Japanese had compbow + swordsmen and i took about 20 turns to capture Kyoto. I lost a horseman, a chariot, a warrior, and a scout, and the first 3 as a result of mistakes.
Then my army went east to Siam, except for 2 Compbow, which I sent to terrorize Assyria from my Colombo allies. At that time, the 2nd army was slowly capturing Polynesia, which had no troops at all. Assyria sent 10-15 units in response to my terror During the retreat, I lost 1 compbow, with 140/150 exp (150=radius) due to a stupid attempt to save the general (1 out of 5 or 6). The situation for Columbo was critical, if not fatal, but after killing all the units outside the city, the AI did not attempt to attack the city, but moved its own The army continues towards Zurich and Mbanze-Congo. They had 10+ pikemens for two + compbows and the Assyrian army did not come back.On turn 150, I captured a Siamese city on the coast north of Sukhothai, before that I destroyed another 1 in the tundra, and the 2nd army completely captured Polynesia a little earlier.

At 153, I learned the machinery, upgraded half of the units in each army, and continued the conquest. After the capture of Sukhothai and Nimrud (Assyria), i upgraded the second half. Near the last one, I lost the first upgraded Cho-ko-nu. After Sukhothai, the 1st army moved southeast to attack Umgungundlovu across the Vatican Bay. It was a very convenient shooting range. 6-7 triremes, about 10 impies and the city itself were shot without the slightest risk to cho-ko-nu. A trireme was used for illumination (30 hp left) and a spear (1 hp left, I could evacuate, but I decided that there was definitely no 3-way impy in the only tyle in the gray area. I was wrong again). To capture the city, i had to wait for a fully healthy trireme from Honolulu. Then I was lucky, the hill in the middle between Umgungundlovu and Ugundi turned out to be mine and I was able to establish a fortress right next to Ulundi. River + Great Wall = another shooting range for 5 cho-ko-nu. On turn 190, I captured Ulundi (I could have done it one turn earlier). The last capital on the continent that I captured was Delhi (196), but it happened so late only because I realized that the last There will still be London/Jakarta. After Ashur, I left only 2 cho-ko-nu, who first captured Nineveh (just like that), and then Delhi. I sent two more to the west. If necessary, Delhi could be captured before Ulundi. In general, Gandhi is doing well. He was the first to found the pantheon, chose the goddess of protection, and defended himself almost the entire game against Zulu and Assyria, and even both at once, killing a bunch of their units. Only after 150 turn did Zulu capture 2 out of 4 cities, Completely cleared the territory of India of troops, but did not capture Delhi.

Until about 170-175, England was absolutely defenseless, 3 cities, tradition + a couple of compbows and warriors. But I didn't have time to use it. The only correct thing I did was take a hint from the topic of the first 150 turns and set Indonesia against England for salt +1 coin. As a result, the Indonesian power decreased by 4 times and became smaller than the English one. All he had left were 2-3 swordsmen. Plus, I was able to sell them resources at the maximum price and agree on open borders immediately upon late acquaintance, since they probably they were unaware of my aggressive conquests. I should have used the territory of Indonesia and attacked York with 3-4 cho-ko-nu, but I didn't figure it out. I had an idea to attack London right away, I started preparing it, but then I decided that even against longbow it was a gamble. I lost time, than attacked Nottingham on our continent with a couple of cho-ko-well, just to level up the latter. And then England got the yeomen, and in 4-5 turns the galleons. And everything became very complicated. I retreated from Nottingham to heal up and began to build horsemen where I could and complete chivalry. With knights i captured Nottingham and only then thought to use Indonesian territory to attack with knights, cho-co-nu didn't have time - they were very slow, and the British had a yeoman in London and York and 4-5 yeomen between them. Trying to cross the strait would be mass suicide. Nevertheless, speed was more important than losses, as a result, during the entire Anglo-Indonesian campaign I lost 4-5 knights and 3-4 cho-ko-nu. After the knights had cleared the area between York and London, it was easy to move on.

 

[Rhodro]

Turn 257 dom victory.
I'm happy this one is over, it took quite a chunk of IRL time

Last post I said i was gonna bribe zulu to DoW others, but that failed the next turn when he challenged me on my troops moving around his borders and i had to DoW.
I was able to take out the Zulu's and resurrect India from them without losing any chokonu's. His impi's are very dangerous and he was using all his production to keep pumping them out. But he was using them very badly, so while i suffered no losses, it was very slow to get trough his first few cities. I also used 2 citadels early on him to the east of Delhi to thin out the amount of impi's.

I made 2 miscalculations invading the mongols with my other army, losing 2 chokonu's to city attack, really dumb. Japan had great wall but i kept a mongol city around to citadel into his lands, so that wasn't hard.
Siam was not difficult with massive upgraded chokonu's, just a bit difficult to get around the mountains and forest areas. Iirc i also started having cannons around that time.

After my whole continent was conquered I went for England, she just had some longbowmen and 1 or 2 triremes, nothing too serious. I think i lost 1 unit that was embarked. I also upgraded to artillery right before crossing the sea. Cavalry was very good destroying her units with all the flanking and honor bonuses. In fact when I went for indonesia they were one shotting 24str musketmen.

Policy wise i completed liberty after left side honor, then completed honor. But i feel i should have just completed honor instead of going back to liberty. The flanking bonus seems nice for knights / cavalry. The happiness from a scout in a city and 2 culture was also desperately needed.

My road network was pretty well connected to the others, most of the time i had workers at the warfront to help with this.

I think i should have created a 3rd army for london and indonesia earlier. I delayed embarkation tech very late in this game in favor of cannons. If i think back, i was building zoo's and banks, but was that really neccessary? I also fumbled 1 great scientist bulb with an enormous amount of overflow lost in the tech tree around chemistry. I don't remember exactly what order of actions triggered it but it was also related to a spy steal.

One thing i'm wondering about you guys, do you annex cities or just puppet? I was getting very frustrated the puppets were not building happiness buildings. But annexing also made oxford university expensive. I also didn't want to give away the random city with machu picchu (a lot of gold) so i kept that puppet even though it was a lot of happiness. I also kept great lighthouse puppet around for a while but much later gave it to india after i found it was very easy to cross the sea.

 

[bc1]

T203 domination victory, using main army and 2nd army:

1. T55 Honolulu
2. T85 Karakorum
3. T99 Kyoto
4. T118 Assur
5. T140 Delhi
6. T168 Ulundi
7. T186 Jakarta
8. T191 Sukhothai
9. T203 London

Main army was in time for sub-200 victory but 2nd army got decimated by English longbows, was 12 turns late and blew it oh well

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[bc1]

do you annex cities or just puppet?

annex useful capital cities, puppet others, and give away turds or late captures to other civs to keep happiness in check (in my case India which I had liberated)