TSG 282 After Actions

[vadalaz]

In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please attach your final savefile, 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: Announcement thread | Opening actions

- In what order did you conquer the capitals? Who was the toughest foe?
- Were the Dutch unique abilities useful to you?
- Which ideology did you pick?
- How many cities did you have in the end and where did you settle them?

 

[Axolaan]

I won a domination victory on turn 197. My plan for this game was to rush frigates and conquer the world with them and Sea Beggars. I don't remember exactly what my tech path was, but I got galleasses before universities to prebuild them. My first target was England because they had luxuries and happiness buildings I would need, and I hoped I would capture a ship of the line or two. That didn't happen unfortunately, but I was able to take England, Portugal and Paris (more on that later), while a second navy dealt with Spain and Germany. I then converged my forces onto Indonesia, thinking that would be it. Until I checked the victory progress screen and saw that France still held a capital. It turns out that France wiped out Rome before I got to meet them, and I completely missed half of their empire. Once I sent a few frigates, caravels and Sea Beggars, and our peace treaty expired, it was over for them, and I won a few turns later than I should have.
My own cities were honestly more powerful than I needed for a domination victory, and I kinda wish I had made a save early on so I could see how fast I could get to space with this start. The Polders were extremely helpful once they got their gold per turn, as this was the time when I wanted to buy cs and courthouses for happiness. I didn't benefit from the Dutch ability because I met a lot of the civs relatively late, so I had multiple copies of my luxury anyway.

Policies: Tradition 5 -> naval tradition + maritime infrastructure -> secularism. No ideology because I didn't finish my factories.
Religion: Desert Folklore, Tithe, Pagodas, Religious Community, Itinerant Preachers
Wonders built: Leaning Tower, Globe Theatre, Petra

 

[The_Black_Vegetable]

Domination victory T200.
I played a Dutch Deity domination game some time ago, and remember being very impressed with the sea beggars, so for this game I went for the sea beggar route again. Tech path was more or less: civil service, workshops, universities, steel, navigation. Combined with the already slow-ish start to the game, this meant I did not hit navigation until turn 153. At that point I had a handful of galleas, and 3200 gold to buy sea beggars (no commerce yet, I had gone exploration instead).

Until this point I had played peacefully, except I had to defend from Elizabeth who attacked me out of nowhere. Thankfully, she sent most of her troops to Geneva instead of to Groningen which was somewhat vulnerable. After I upgraded my galleas and bought some sea beggars, I was only too happy to set sail for London as Elizabeth had built Temple of Artemis, Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, and Notre Dame there.

After that, I let myself be distracted building useless infrastructure (windmills, factories, banks), instead of pumping units from all cities. Only the heroic epic capital kept building sea beggars most of the time. All that infrastructure could then be used to choose Autocracy for cheaper unit purchasing, combined with Commerce and Big Ben. I achieved this around turn 180, when I had around 5000 gold in the bank to spend on units (sea beggar: 260 gold, frigate 300). Too late to be impactful, but still fun. I can see how this might be powerful in multi-player, if you can immediately buy, for instance, stacks of bombers, but in single player it's often possible to build an army much earlier.

I had fun this game with the sea beggars, but they were not as good as I remembered. After slamming a city twice, the ship would typically be at 40-50% health. The cities also take a lot of damage (and the gold from coastal raider is cute), but I needed a bigger fleet of sea beggars to really take a city quickly. As it was, my frigates still did quite a lot of the heavy lifting (when adapting the map, I might have ensured a bit more iron to be available though).

Below: my unnecessarily large cities, but first: the AI can't take a hint. When making the map, a point of discussion was the lack of easy-to-reach islands for Indonesia. So, I had made sure two islands to the east would be reachable after optics, and added a bunch of fish to ensure the cities would be worth conquering later on. What did Indonesia settle instead? A one-tile island to the west with a single (shared) sea resource.

 

[Bemep42]

Domination victory, turn 179.

I don't like and can't play through tradition, but the high difficulty level and the island map were a good reason to try again to learn how to use tradition correctly. I can't say that I did it well, but it turned out satisfactorily.

4 cities: 1 on the desert gold, 2 on the KFC (but not on the coast, but by the inner lake - this was a conscious decision so that there would be more hills in the radius, which in the end were not needed. I planned to specialize the city in wonders, but in the end I lost all the races: ToA, Petra and Chichen Itza in 1-2 turns, Oracle and MOM also lost), 3 - in the middle, between the swamps and 4 - on the iron hill.
stole 4 workers from the Vatican and 1 from Brussels. The latter was a stupid thing that ruined my relationship with CS for the rest of the game and created a problem of happiness through out most of the game. Scientific path : ancient techniques, philosophy, guilds, education.
Around 115-120 turn England learned astronomy and my spy went on an important mission to London. Therefore, after education, I calmly learned the MC, compass, physics and half the machinery, after which the spy received astronomy on the 145 turn, and at 149 turn, the scientist completed navigation.

I built 6 galleons in advance, upgraded 4 immediately, and 2 more after 2-3 turns. But I had to wait another 4-5 turns until the first couple of UU were built so that I could capture cities. Since my only caravel sailed away in search of France and Rome. Rome was the only one of AI has iron for sale - as many as 6 units, which I immediately bought. Thus, I was able to build/buy 12 frigates (more precisely 11+1 captured galleon from England) and the 8 UU.
After capturing London (4 frigates and UU, 159) and Madrid (4 frigates and UU, 166), I divided the fleet into 4 parts:
1st - 3 frigates and UU captured York (Petra, 165) and Lisbon (173).
2nd - 3 frigates and UU captured Jakarta (175)
3rd - 2 frigates and 2+1 UU captured Berlin (178)
4th - 4 frigates and 2+1 UU captured Paris (175) and Rome (179)

The main advantage of UU is the "supply", he can heal 3-4 turns standing still while the city and archers shoot him, while how the frigates calmly shoot down the city in response. I lost only 1 UU because of the trireme that was suddenly built in Berlin.

 

[sebtanic]

Won turn 200.
It didn't occur to me to buy Iron from the AI. Good thinking @Bemep42!

After capturing London and reaching Navigation, the rest was straightforward. I got seaports and spammed Sea Beggars in my 3 core cities.

Conquest:
t143 London
t169 Rome
t175 Paris (SoZ)
t184 Berlin (Notre Dame)
t191 Lisbon
t192 Madrid
t200 Jakarta

 

[Megalou]

Congratulations on some well played games. Mine got too predictable, victory in clear sight but not pre-t200, so I decided to quit. Main mistake was probably poor tech focus. Overestimating the AI I played around with bottom layer techs all the way up to printing press before navigation. But I did okay.

 

[Rhodro]

@Bemep42 Nice play by splitting up the fleet into 4! I think that was the key for speedy win.

I won at turn 192 myself. I captured Spain and German capitals with galleas, upgraded them to frigates.
When i was sailing north to france from Germany, England attacked me, she also had some ship of the line.
I had to reroute some of what was going to france to defend my capital. Her attack was very unfocussed though so she didn't cause much damage.
Half of the fleet captured France and then Rome, then pincir attack with the other half on England. She was wonder spamming very hard and her city defense was going up fast, but i should have had more confidence in the power of frigates, because it was still very easy to capture london.
I then split up fleets again going to portugal and indonesia.

 

[FireFree3]

Domination victory Turn 195

It is quite a slow start, except the pottery ruin. I also wanted too much, and split around a lot of different techs. Even can't get Education until late-110.

But one thing -- Unlimited stream of logistics sea-beggar is crazy. I started the war very late, but it ends very quickly. Swarming sea-beggars can wipe everything out in sight.

Happiness is always a problem, I can't really build any wonders (except Petra) until very end. At the end, I can buy logistics sea beggars by only 260 gold (i.e., 2 beggars every 3 turns)! 3 to 4 sea-beggars means 6-8 hit to city and capture it in 1 turn.

I believe that it can be much quicker with better planning of tech.

I built 3 city-tradition, but it's really slow at the beginning.

Kill sequence:

Spain / England / Rome / France / Germany / Indonesia / Portugal