TSG121 After Action

[golem]

Game date: 1720AD
Turns played: 254
Base score: 1100
Final score: 2200

I did just three cities, Washingtomn on place, two other tu supply food to capital. I did not build single unit during the game (except of two triremes). Just peace all the game.

I went full tradition, then four patronage, full rationalism. I had a lot of money so I tried to buy sci building immediately.

Religion was very good, Barabudur earned money for first Universities, Pagodas controled happines and made 2GS - just in time.

Great islands - I had just problem to find all city states. War would be probaly faster, but I prefer peace for diplomacy.

Thanks for a nice game.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Finished on turn 264 but not submitting because I replayed. One of the most interesting maps I've seen in a while

 

[IDontFinkSo]

Your name: IDontFinkSO
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1862AD
Turns played: 301
Base score: 1390
Final score: 2316
Time played: 4:17:00

- Did you use your UU?
No neither.

- Was your UB helpful? - Ooops, no UB.
A better question would be, if I used Manifest Destiny. Especially in the beginning it was quite useful to grab those two salt tiles quickly.

- Did you use spying to your advantage?
Spies not, no tech steal the entire game. But Diplomats in the end for extra votes.

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
Helped it. Easy turtling and building up my 3 cities.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
Not much at all.

- Was Faith helpful to achieve victory? How?
I had pantheon earth mother and got second or third religion. Sweden was glad to learn the wisdom of my progressive and liberal Faith. We stayed friends all game long.

- What Social Policies did you choose and in what order?
Went Tradition, 2 points exploration (I always to this, can't resist the 3 hammers from coastal cities with a coastal empire). Rationalism, Freedom, 3 Points commerce and after putting 6 points in freedom and finishing rationalism I went patronage. World congress passed cultural heritage and world fair in the first voting, so I had a lot of policies to use.

- Did you conquer your way to Diplomacy or were you nice?
Nice. Maria tried an Invasion. But I popped 2 GS, bought 3 Submarines and ended her lousy attempt of an Invasion.

- How did you like Large Islands?
Enjoyed it a lot.

 

[Jenarie]

I thought I copy/pasted but apparently I didn't so I think I got 1921...

I had a lot of fun with this.

I was never at war.

I made the original three cities on the island and never expanded. I meant to but by the time I found somewhere I wanted to put one it seemed too late so just didn't. All three of them ended up with very high population and I was getting over 1k science per turn by the end so I guess it was ok but I think at least one more would probably have been better.

By the first meeting I had made most of the city states I'd met my ally and I had found and allied all of them long before the vote was eligible which put me at two votes short of a win (uh oh!).

I was about 1.5 eras ahead in tech so I happened to see the tech that lets you get an extra vote for each diplomat in a capital you aren't at war with (I never knew that existed so had been a bit worried on how this was going to work!). So I sent all the spies out and forgave a lot of tech stealing and ended up with 42/40 votes by the time the first vote finally came up.

Basically I spent the game working on science and gold (and city state quests). I built almost no units but for the latter half of the game I was first or second in military just because of the city state unit gifts. I upgraded a few and used the rest as gifts for free favor points.

Before the final vote I made sure I spent most of my gold making sure I had at least 260 favor with every city state so that it would be really hard for anyone to last minute steal one and then crossed my fingers and hoped.

I got the steam achieve for this level so I guess it was my first Emp win too which was nice.

 

[Wild_Woojsha]

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1924AD
Turns played: 344
Base score: 2270
Final score: 3338

Not a good time, but I enjoyed being a monstrous warmonger and terrorizing the map. I attempted to use gunboat diplomacy instead of just piling on the gold and bribing my way to victory. Not a good idea, it ended badly. I eradicated all but three civs, and was at war with everyone most of the game. I ended up missing the first world leader vote by 1, thanks to some sneaky warblocking by portugal and poland. Portugal was eradicated for the second round, and mongolia almost followed after he backstabbed me shortly after helping me eradicate portugal. This game is so much easier with a massive military, but man does it slow you down. I think I had over 12 cities near the end, that couldn't have helped matters.

 

[zxcvbob]

I made the original three cities on the island and never expanded. I meant to but by the time I found somewhere I wanted to put one it seemed too late so just didn't. All three of them ended up with very high population and I was getting over 1k science per turn by the end so I guess it was ok but I think at least one more would probably have been better.

I did that too, but then in the late Renaissance I settled a 4th city (Philadelphia?) on a 1-tile island to the east, close to the Rock of Gibraltar. With all those fish tiles, it grew very quickly. A seaport and factory and God of the Sea gave it almost as high production as Washington. Took it a long time to reach the oil 5 tiles away, but eventually it got there.

It hurt my happiness for a while because it had no luxuries, but it didn't quite go negative, and happiness wasn't a problem after I started getting CS allies.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

@ Vidalas: You speak about a civ to gift captured cities too and that being ghengis.

Is it you want to gift someone those cities so that they no longer cause you unhappiness ?
Does it have to be ghengis because he is the only one who would even talk to you after causing yourself a lot of warmonger points ?

How do you feel about building 2 archers instead of a settler and capturing byblos ? (I used 3 archers in my game, but have by now learned that 2 and a spearman is enough to take an early town on flat land) Two archers costs less than a settler, byblos is on a lux, but on the downside of course youll need a courthouse. I am kind of unsure if capturing Byblos was the best decision i made in my game, or if it (mostly researching archery and later math) has actually slowed me down. Do you have any feelings in general about building archers to take your expansion cities rather than settle them in early game ?

 

[vadalaz]

Yes, you avoid unhappiness by gifting the cities and, just as importantly, you avoid the 5% science penalty. The only problem is that sometimes AIs will liberate those cities you gift them, which is why having Genghis is so good - he's a warmonger with a very low Diplomacy flavor, so he's unlikely to liberate anyone.

Taking Byblos is risky, as you lose 2 potential votes in congress, while the world leader requirement only goes down by 1. For example, if Enrico was in the game and got 2 CSs, you'd need 37 votes to win, making it impossible to win in 1 cycle. In general I'd advise against taking CSs anyway, unless you really have no other expansion spots or the land around the CS is just too good (e.g. it has GBR and you're Spain). Rushing an AI early is fine though.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

thanx, and sorry for misspelling your name

 

[Olodune]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 121
Your name: Olodune
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1590AD
Turns played: 228

Rather funny game. Low 200s shouldn't be a problem. My game would have been about a 210 finish if I'd played correctly. Way too many beakers at the end. Didn't need Oxford, and had an extra Scientist. I think the biggest mistake was just being too cautious with my expected victory time as I was worried about beakers.

I also had some horrible luck.

-3 of 4 attempted coups (@75% odds) failed! Ouch.
-I also lost HG, Oracle, and the Colossus by only a handful of turns.
-After killing all the AIs but Cas and Maria, I got DoW'ed by the Portuguese. They still had a few CSs, so I had to kill her too.

At t139 I've just been focused on building. This is where I should have bulbed to PP already, but decided to play cautiously.

Spoiler :

There is no need to rush the conquest here. I didn't start until around t160. Here is the last assault on what should have been the final AI (I'll have to kill Maria next). There is another Navy to the south.

Spoiler :

Edit: This sounds like I'm complaining more than I mean to be. I really like this map as it forces different play from a small number of initial cities -> something that I usually don't do Diplomacy is actually fairly interesting since so many things need to be balanced together.

 

[Olodune]

The only problem is that sometimes AIs will liberate those cities you gift them.

I haven't been playing around this too carefully. I guess I might have been playing with fire - but I had plenty of time to conquer, so maybe not an issue in my slower (compared to yours) game.

 

[vadalaz]

I'm not sure what affects AIs' decisions in regard to liberating/keeping cities, perhaps Casimir is a safe choice just like the crazy warmonger crowd. All I know is that Greece pretty much always liberates and Attila never does. I thought it had something to do with their Diplomacy flavor, as Greece has the highest in the game, according to http://civdata.com/

I suppose a truly safe way to play it would be to bribe the recipient civ to be at war with everyone else so that they don't even get the option to liberate.

 

[zxcvbob]

When I give cities away, the AI usually razes them. Even really good cities, much nicer than the crappy little snow city that's currently their capital.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Interesting to see your games. So i guess i shouldnt have built those academies after all.

 

[Olodune]

So i guess i shouldnt have built those academies after all.

My thoughts: For peaceful Diplo (or Culture or SV) building an early academy (and sometimes two) is fine even for a Tradition game. I think it is hard to compete with warmongering diplo for finishing speed, however. In this case the tech tree is significantly shortened so anything other than an early Liberty academy just isn't worth it, especially since the timing of key techs (PP, SciMeth, Navigation, Ideology entry tech) is so important to planning out the end game. Building an academy removes your control over tech progression.

Here is a fairly detailed discussion about bulb vs. academy for a SV. There is a sample spreadsheet (made by Acken) if you want to mess around with various assumptions.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=549023

Edit: Spreadsheet link seems to be dead. (In that thread)

 

[Knowtalent]

Interesting to see your games. So i guess i shouldnt have built those academies after all.

An early academy (likely only from liberty finish) in your cap is worth the investment as it will generated 1200 to 1800 beakers and will save you 400+gp over the life of the game. By the time you get your second GS the beakers should be such that you will get far more if you wait and bulb at the end.

 

[Olodune]

An early academy (likely only from liberty finish) in your cap is worth the investment as it will generated 1200 to 1800 beakers

It will generate far more since future bulbs also incorporate the academy science & science giving technologies will be accelerated With reasonable estimates a single academy can generate ~8k beakers for a ~250 victory.

 

[Knowtalent]

I was only looking at the direct value on beakers earned and cost saved. The speedier technology rate is a bit harder to quantify, because of many random factors that might cause a huge fluctuation in when a given technology can actually be put into use. I always plant a fast liberty GS as it will be a huge decrease in time to getting education.

Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk

 

[WackenOpenAir]

An early academy (likely only from liberty finish) in your cap is worth the investment as it will generated 1200 to 1800 beakers and will save you 400+gp over the life of the game. By the time you get your second GS the beakers should be such that you will get far more if you wait and bulb at the end.

I built 4 academies and had i think 3 or 4 GS for bulbing later. I guess it should have been 1-2 acad and 6 or so bulb. I misjudged the tech progress. I see this guy posting 555 beakers around T200. I had a bunch more with my academies. (but finished later not only because i didnt conquest, but also because the bulb proves better than the acads). When i was midgame with 500 beakers per turn, researching techs in 3 turns, i was looking at future techs costing 6-9k. Figured i would never get the 2k beakers needed to get those quickly. But ye.. with lots of bulb GS that doesnt seem to be a worry.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1907AD
Turns played: 327
Base score: 3148
Final score: 4843
Time played: 6:07:00

Initially considered OCC and was able to build the Great Library. However, I saw possibilities on the island with Sweden on it.

Eventually went to war with a large fleet and eventually got to the vote with only two civs still standing. My order of battle was Mongolia, Portugal (they attacked me but my spies warned me) then Sweden, Greece and finally Maya. Sweden was by far the easiest conquest.

I went Freedom, but Order would have been better given the size of my empire.

Should be a decent score