TSG112 After Actions

[Wild_Woojsha]

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 2010AD
Turns played: 430
Base score: 1629
Final score: 1894
Time played: 8:29:00

This took way too long... Someone's gotta come in last though right? I almost completely filled out the tech tree while waiting for my gunboats to ally all of the city states. Should've finished this up 100 turns earlier, but didn't prepare for autocracy gunboat strategy until well after. So much stuff to do over, but oh well guess I will try harder on 113.

 

[debese]

First Game of the Month for me. Saw the link on Facebook, it looked like fun...and it was!

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1991AD
Turns played: 411
Base score: 2547
Final score: 3106
Time played: 3:06:00

Describe any significant Diplomacy benchmarks: Techs, Policies, etc that shaped your vote-gathering strategies.

Focused on economics primarily to buy the votes in addition to various cs quests. I went for AoE and GL early, and was surprised by the number of wonders I attained, including the Colossus, Stonehenge, Oracle and Hagia Sophia - all of which gave me some distinct advantages.

Were you first to the World Congress? If not, explain why.

No. I didn't push it. I intended to own the voting by the atomic era.

Did you use culture from Moai to your benefit? If so, how?

After the first 100 turns or so I placed my workers on auto. They built a Moai or two, but I didn't included them in my general strategy.

Describe any terrain challenges to shape your strategy.

The general lack of luxury resources in my vicinity was annoying early on, but by the time I had started allying with CS that ceased to be an issue. I did employ the lake for some secure trading with antwerp and seville. (The colossus helped make that decision)

In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?

I wasn't pushing for speed since it was my first game, but I wasn't taking my time either. I missed an opportunity to win one voting cycle earlier because I forgot to update the status of a cs that had recently dipped below ally.

 

[guslaet]

Your name: guslaet
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 2006AD
Turns played: 426
Base score: 4623
Final score: 5438
Time played: 19:17:00

It was my first Game of the Month.

Describe any significant Diplomacy benchmarks: Techs, Policies, etc that shaped your vote-gathering strategies.

Focused on growth. At some point I started gathering the Policies related to City States. But I only need to spend money 3 or 4 times to keep them allied to me. Most of the support from city-states came from completing quests.

Were you first to the World Congress? If not, explain why.

No. I wasn't even worried of getting there first, really. Maybe I should have focused more on the tech tree. But I usually get the cheaper tech, to get them faster.

Did you use culture from Moai to your benefit? If so, how?

Moai were priority (except when there was special terrain features). As I gathered all the resources I need from city states I really just used resources for money. There was a particular tile with Alluminum where I built a Moai, because I couldn't sell those 8 Al, and the culture bonus was more interesting.

Describe any terrain challenges to shape your strategy.

Terrain was ok, really. The fact that there was Killimanjaro on the vicinity, was very helpful. I would make all my units pilgrim to there to get the bonus. It helped a lot in war.

In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?

I wasn't pushing for speed since it was my first game, but I wasn't taking my time either. I missed an opportunity to win one voting cycle earlier because I forgot to update the status of a cs that had recently dipped below ally.

Just played my usual way focusing on growth to get science and gold. Maybe I should have optmized my research though to get to United Nations faster, but I'm not sure. One thing for sure is that I ended up spending money in stuff I didn't really need (like Barracks and their expansions) and lots of aircraft.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

It was my first Game of the Month.

Welcome to CFC and GotM! Thanks for playing and posting about it!

HR

 

[urras]

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1862AD
Turns played: 301
Base score: 1533
Final score: 2555

This is only my second Civ5 game so I spent forever micromanaging and learning about concepts as I had to make decisions in the game. I knew from my first game a mountain means observatory so I settled my first city next to it.

I settled 4 cities (a very alien concept to me... used to massive sprawling empires in previous versions of Civ) and the only war I was in the whole game was a brief attack from Germany around turn 65. I never built units after warriors and archers just relied on donations (and gifted many of these away).

I left a couple of important techs too late, I didn't know how Oxford Uni worked so I wasted it on a useless tech (literally), and I only realised the power of research agreements very late. Also I founded a religion thinking it was important to be able to have these CS missions but as I only dabbled and started late it was a bit weak and could not spread.

I also found a very annoying bug whereby the governor reassigns your workers and won't let you lock them (lost several turns of growth or delayed building by a turn due to this).

CS were easy to get on side and keep there from quite early on, making the game a straight dash to the information era. I realise now that I could have stopped building stuff a while back and focussed on research only. I got 25% research bonus from Order and 10% from rationalism which definitely helped.

 

[mtt9999]

Civ5 GOTM 112
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1842AD
Turns played: 291
Base score: 1729
Final score: 2981

What a great game. Thanks for organizing. In spite of a terrible start - in particular bad ruins (maps and upgrades) - I was able to secure victory as planned! Founded World Congress in exactly 1000AD and the trickle down effect began there. Had most of the CS allied throughout the game and was able to pick off the remainder of them toward the end.

Hit every major milestone. Founded World Congress. Got Fobidden Palace. Had every CS as my ally. In fact, as I imagine was common for most people, I had enough early influence with CS that I was able to pass World Ideology before any other civs had even chosen one. Was also able to pass World Religion even though my religion had spread only to CS. Had Globalization with 5 spies as diplomats. Won World Leader with 45 votes - all my own.

The game was relatively peaceful throughout. One funny thing happened. The Iroquois went deep to the south to take out a city-state and found an additional city. I was allied with this particular city-state and did not want them to conquer it, so I bribed (or so I thought), another Civ to attack him. Turns out I wasn't thinking clearly and had them bribe ME to attack the Iroquois completely unexpectedly!!! OOPPPSS

Luckily, I had a huge science lead and was able to raze one of their cities and pillage their capital without taking it for war-mongerer penalties... after the requisite 12 turns they begged and begged for peace. Perhaps pillaging their capital wasn't such a great idea, while weakening them the remainder of the game, they were unable to give me anything in return for peace as they had negative gold and no lux!!!!

As a side note, as this was a city-state dependent victory condition, I was trying to maximize my quests. I tried a strategy of building a road, getting the influence, and then pillaging the road in hopes that they ask for a road again... turns out they do not, or atleast did not in my game. Either way, I retained the influence and was able to reduce road maintenance costs!

- Describe any significant Diplomacy benchmarks: Techs, Policies, etc that shaped your vote-gathering strategies.
Honestly this was pretty straight forward. Just slowly gained CS votes throughout the game.

- Were you first to the World Congress? If not, explain why.
Yes.

- Did you use culture from Moai to your benefit? If so, how?
Yes. I was trying to achieve a lot of culture in this game to increase gold, science and CS influence. Used them along the eastern shore and founded another city to the south the connect this culture... Plus wanted to use them because this was the only time I have played Polynesia and thought it could be fun. Plus they look cool.

Spoiler :

- Describe any terrain challenges to shape your strategy.
Not much coastline. I was dissapointed that the nearby water was a lake, so less Maoi than I had hoped.

- In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?
I would have focused even more on science early on. Other than that this went pretty easily.

 

[mtt9999]

A late ToA and an uncontested Hanging Gardens

I've seen a few posts like this. How do we check to see if other civs are also building what wonders?

 

[mtt9999]

I also wasted 6 archeologists, at least. I had not done any of the tourism stuff, so as soon as I got the tech I spammed a bunch for fun. I kept hoping something other than "great works of arts" would come, but never did. I eventually figured out I had to build museums. There were a lot of random culture sites, for sure. It is pretty dumb that the game doesn't let you do anything else. Why couldn't I sell the archeologist sitting on an artifact to another culture?

A strategy that I employed, which is marginally effective unless you need a diplomacy focus, is you can send your archeologists into other civs territories (if you have open borders) and work the archeology site. When complete, turn it into a landmark and you will receive a diplomatic modifier. You can also perform this action with city states which provides a big boat of influence. Unfortunately in my game only one City state had an antiquity site.

 

[Olodune]

I've seen a few posts like this. How do we check to see if other civs are also building what wonders?

- Wonders create doodads on the world map once they have begun construction. Some of these are very easy to recognize even in their partially built form (eg Stonehenge), while some are a little trickier (eg Sistine Chapel). You need to see an AIs capital, usually through an Embassy, and then do some pixel art staring. This is an odd feature for a modern game.

Here are two wonders under construction.

Spoiler :

Know these wonders?

Spoiler :

The Red Keep and the Globe Theater.

- The HG is locked to the Tradition tree so if there are no AIs with policies here it's likely that they don't have Tradition opened. (The opener is not visible in the Diplomacy screen so there is some guesswork involved). All my AIs went for Liberty/Piety/Honor so I knew the Hanging Gardens were very likely to be uncontested.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1888AD
Turns played: 314
Base score: 3598
Final score: 5803

- Describe any significant Diplomacy benchmarks: Techs, Policies, etc that shaped your vote-gathering strategies.
Patronage. Defeating Germany and Brazil.

- Were you first to the World Congress? If not, explain why.
Yes, by a mile.

- Did you use culture from Moai to your benefit? If so, how?
Built them in one location for fun. I got a chain going in unused land and had the end of the chain in a city. Just for fun as I don't really
value the Moai.

- Describe any terrain challenges to shape your strategy.
None really. Polynesia cope well with lakes.

- In hindsight how would you have played it differently (if at all) for a faster finish?
Research agreements and completing Patronage ASAP.


An enjoyable map.

I got three cities up pretty quickly and completed Tradition. At some point I invaded Germany as they had an impressive military, nice lands and were invading city states.

After that, it was just a matter of trying to move through the tech tree quickly.

I had to go back to war as Brazil were one civilization away from a cultural victory. My military made very short work of them. Perhaps I should have done that sooner.

One mistake was not fully completing Patronage sooner as there were so many city states to profit from. The best gift from a city state was a Merchant of Venice

Another mistake was not having an AI friends and so not getting to make a single research agreement. Given my wealth, I could have had lots of these. This definitely cost me a huge amount. If I was to play again, this would be the most important change to my approach.

I'm also not certain that Freedom was the best option either. I needed to tech quickly and Order might have been the best in that regard.

Anyway, I'll leave you some pictures and will take a look at this Deity Diplomatic game. I don't fancy my chances at all. I am hoping we don't have Austria, Greece and Brazil in the mix. Those civs are evil.

GG

 

[sebtanic]

Slow game, but not too hard. I'm happy to have won sub t300.

Scouting was awful, I built 3 early scouts and popped lots of ruins, but 3 of them were maps and I think at least 2 were "evidence of barbarian activity". Yikes! At least the last ruin gave me 30 faith and a pantheon. Took 15% growth.

I built 3 cities, then decided to take Berlin as I didn't want to get wedged in between a strong Germany and strong Iroquois. Got DOWed by both multiple times but wore down their overwhelmingly huge armies easily. Taking Berlin was a breeze, but I couldn't afford to take any Iroquois cities for happiness reasons.

Sold off most of my luxuries and had about 3-400 gpt near the end. Was allied with most city states (all of them before World Leader vote). Got world ideology, world religion and forbidden palace of course.

Timing of Telecommunications/UN was an issue, I wasn't aware I need to get it shortly before a World Congress vote for optimum win time. Got UN just after I got world ideology passed, and consequently had to wait 29 turns for the world leader vote I think that's the maximum you can get?

Anyways next time I'll know better

 

[Kendon]

Often I attack but in this game it was Sweden. Brazil was obliterated before I met them. By mid-game if one civ attacked Gustavus Adolphus within a couple of turns everyone declared war on poor Sweden. Usually that happens to me.

I wonder if that's the practical consequence of warmongering. This game I had continuous friends with endless opportunities for loans, usually at ratio of 1 gold per turn for each 25 gold.

Polynesia was first to the World Congress, first to the UN. I hadn't understood how quickly Penicillin and Atomic Theory lead to Ecology and directly to Telecommunications to trigger the UN. That leaves 20 turns to get Globalization for diplomat votes. Tracing back to the Renaissance, Chemistry turns out not to be a prerequisite for Ecology.

When I reached Patronage I had three Moai built so obviously they helped. I was also delighted to have their defensive bonus since Hiawatha had just attacked and I had only four military units, two of them gifts from my militaristic CS ally.

My hammers had been going to infrastructure for faster population growth, since I'm grudgingly coming to understand that's the best route to a faster victory.

Playing Lakes meant I didn't build any ships. Because of the hills my land units all visited Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I'm starting to believe, as I've heard over and over in these discussions, that food for maximum population is the primary influence on a faster finish, at least until cities get unhappy or conquered. I've been setting Citizen Management to Default when I want growth, but I might try setting it to Food.

 

[Knap]

Turn 269 DV

Most of game was played under influence of fine William Chase Gin, and education took an age about t135. I had about 50 years of golden age at end of game and used GS way too late.

1st to World Congress, did not use Maoi and just headed to mountains with 4 city tradition opening.

Non allies CS bought with gold 2 turns from vote.

 

[Coilean]

I started playing this game with every intention of treating it as a tech race, but Hiawatha stymied my plans for a 4th city near Uluru, which clearly meant war. I was forced to declare my (false) peaceful intentions when Hiawatha called me out for having 3 troops on his border, while I was still building up and positioning.

Attacking Hiawatha afterwards turned out maybe not to be such a great plan, despite steamrolling him and taking Onondaga ~t100. However, breaking my word to him caused both Germany and Sweden to DoW me later. This led me to prematurely sidetrack my tech path to Machinery for Crossbows, spend 1k+ cash on purchasing units and upgrading them, and waste some precious hammers in Honolulu on making a catapult and comp bow.

Besides the loss of hammers/cash and diverted research, breaking my word also cost me the ability to sell my goods for any reasonable price, and meant it was nearly 100 more turns before anyone offered friendship to me. Despite these setbacks, I managed to hit the Information Era on t238, thanks mostly to popping 8 scientists capped off by Oxford (I mistakenly finished Rationalism far too early, and wound up wasting it on Navigation), and then waited the 33 turns for the Leader vote to come up.

I find it ironic that my early warmongering decision, while somewhat poor from a pure teching standpoint, was probably the right play, if only I had followed through by conquering all but 2 opponents as Oladune did. Perhaps on a future playthrough, now that I know you can trigger World Leader votes in the Atomic Era, if you only have 2 opponents!