TSG2 After Action Report

[pleventi]

This is my first HOF / GotM. This site is awesome!

Anyway, this is an unofficial since I re-started this once a few days back and hopelessly screwed up by being way too passive... I was afraid of King difficulty, not realizing how easy it really is. In attempt #1, England settled a few cities in the midst of my empire and then got mad and attacked me. Monty joined in for giggles. It was not pretty. So I knew a little bit about the world I was in when I tried again a few days later. Oh, and it crashed around turn 252, so I reloaded from 250 to continue.

Basic approach: beeline for horsemen, 4 horsemen (thanks to a lucky unit from nearby friendly CS), kick the crap out of India, then England, then France, and then finally Monty. I puppeted all but the dumbest of cities, then slowly annexed as happiness permitted. Then beelined for space victory. I started one tile south-east of the starting position. 2nd city was near the 2nd marble.

Mistakes:
- I didn't spam cities after taking control of the continent. This slowed me down in the mid-to-late game.
- I didn't specialize my cities early enough. I had a wonder city, a production city, and a specialist city, but my other cities were generalized. Left me cash-poor for a while in the middle ages until I fixed things.
- I was caught low on happiness for a long time in the late game; not much impact since I didn't need much more population anymore anyway.
- I screwed up timing on the Great Scientist pops -- should have held back a few and used them on the pricier techs.
- I didn't notice I needed the top portion of the tech tree for the last SS component... thought I was one tech away when I popped, ended up having to use the GS for a tiny tech.
- I didn't use great engineer to help complete my last SS component (assuming you can). For no good reason.

Things That Went Well:
- Horsemen rush really caught computer with its digital pants down.
- Trading away extra luxury resources for cash to buy off city-states.
- Honor -- made my horsemen lethal; Rationalism -- helped with the technology.

Weird Civ5 Stuff:
- I got trade routes from a puppet cities' harbour (I think?), but it didn't put the little trade route icon on my cities. So I built a big road to connect East and West, and didn't gain anything for it (except lots of maintenance and the icons now showing).
- Gotta fix the whole cultural borders vs. line of sight bug (Elizabeth settled in weird places in my first game).
- The other three AI countries sat on their island and didn't try to harass me. All I had were five horsemen to defend my entire continent... AI should be more aggressive?

Looking forward to doing the next one for real!

 

[JungleIII]

Well... I guess I am slow.... I see lots of players finishing much earlier. I will have to alot some time to analyse why and what I should have done better.

My comment would be - let's not do this often. I don't like forced victories in a specific category, but can see why maybe ONCE a year this could occur. I don't like space victories because it is BORING

Third game now on Civ5 and learning all the time, so I was more than happy to try this victory condition... but not too often

Tech/Science Victory 1936 score 2800 turn 356

 

[Half Nelson]

Second CivV game (after TG1), hence my first game on King. The plan was a peaceful beeline-path to the stars.

Spoiler :

I settled N of the marble on turn 3 (having spotted fish with my warrior), then underestimated the AI and lost out on Stonehenge (tried to squeeze in a Settler!!??) and the GL (by one turn). Otherwise teched well beyond the AI (with help of Great Scientists and Research agreements) and settled 2 new cities; 1 to S for horses etc and 1 to N at the nice river mouth.

All seemed to be going well, then made 2 horrendous mistakes:-

Spoiler :

first, settled a fourth city on river between Monaco and Almaty; second, accepted a Monty invitation to war on Ghandi (after a 10-turn build up). Starting with the war:- I was already planning to attack India at some stage, having easily knocked back an earlier attack by them and building up a small but elite melee force (2 swords, 2 pikes, all with appropriate combat / cover promotions) in the process. Supplemented by 2 knights and a couple of Cats, I was confident of victory over Ghandi’s puny units. I marched across the border (melee to fore, Cats behind and knights to flank), to have my melee force totally obliterated at first contact by a smallish group of archers and pikes, backed up by a city barrage. I had expected damage, but not obliteration:- this seemed even beyond the RNG gods. Irate and disheartened by this apparently inexplicable rout, I saved and exited! On returning, I realised from the mouse-over combat screen that Ghandi was getting a 33% “home” combat bonus from Oligarchy! My knights regrouped, routed his troops and took a city. I then sued for peace, having lost my core melee force.

Is it possible to monitor the AI policy status? Given the power of oligarchy (akin to a medieval nuclear deterrent from my experience), it would be very useful to have some prior knowledge before committing to battle (you only see the combat odds AFTER DoW).

Spoiler :

This turned out to be a minor error compared to city 4, which stalled happiness/growth, blocked my National Wonder building (read the manual!) and turned out to be a magnet for AI aggressors. I had rather ignored military techs in my race to Scientific Theory and beyond, whilst Napoleon and Monty (both friendly it seemed from their diplomatic interface) ravaged the City States and other AI. Napoleon then turned on me, attacking my cultural ally Monaco with 12 or more musketeers. It fell, but I thought I could stop the advance at that point with Trebs, Knights and Longswords, until muskets were built. The French marched straight onto the exposed plains before my forces:- easy pickings! Unfortunately, the neutral Aztec hordes then wandered straight across the battlefield en route to attack Almaty to the rear, completely blocking my ability to attack (or even withdraw). I was reduced to ranged attack for my turn but, sure enough, the Aztec disappeared for the French attack then a second wave appeared to blunt my counterattack. I lost half my army in 3 rounds of this farcical behaviour, although I did eventually grind Napoleon to a halt at my city gates. With a free run of the battlefield, I would have easily crushed his attack.

How do you stop neutrals from clogging up a battlefield with 1UPT? I could have cancelled Open Borders to Monty, but this seemed a very bad Diplo move against a strong and unpredictable competitor.

At this point, with no cultural City-States left on the map (Napoleon, Monty and Darius had decimated them in general), and all 3 opponents sniffing at my borders, I decided to use this training game to “retrain” for a conquest-based path to the stars. This turned out to be a LOT simpler:- 2 cities only; chop Stonehenge and GL; build horsemen, war-chariots and warriors; crush the AI and puppet their capitals; store up culture for a Renaissance Liberty-bomb; milk City-States on home continent. Result:- Space in 1920 (2610 HOF). I thought the Space Race was supposed to offer an alternative to military-based victory?

 

[CharonJr]

I was currious if I could break the 1600 barrier by abusing research treaties and yes, it is possible.

I didn't abuse them as often as possible, but got about half a dozen techs from forming a research agrement despite knowing that I will attack soon.

Overall I dare to say that without abusing DoW (either for lump payments or research treaties) even a 16XX finish is most likely not possible and with really heavy abuse (keep all nations alive to DoW after forming a research treaty) even a 14XX finish might be possible.

Is anything planed to prevent this kind of abuse if the devs are unwilling/unable to do something about it (research is rumored to be a bug anyway, but I doubt the lump payment for ressources/GPT can be fixed)?

CharonJr

 

[DrakenKin]

Is anything planed to prevent this kind of abuse if the devs are unwilling/unable to do something about it (research is rumored to be a bug anyway, but I doubt the lump payment for ressources/GPT can be fixed)?

They said the insta research agreement abuse will be fixed in the next patch, which will happen in a few days.

 

[vernaldo]

Hola - new to GOTM and CivFanatics. Firstly a couple of points:

• WTH! I was supposed to take notes!?
• Somehow I feel like a noob for taking until AD2000 - you lot are good

Here's what I can remember:

• I set out to not be too aggressive. Also let the AI manage the cities for better or worse
• Monty DOWed me for no particular reason and was easy to handle
• Me and Nap split the continent after taking Monty together. What ever happened to 'brothers in arms' - he DOWd me not long after we dealt with Monty
• I'm guessing it was the close borders - I wonder whether I should have razed a few cities to create a DMZ
• First wave from Napolean was hard - conceded a row of cities and went for the +33% in own borders civic - fought guerilla style. After absorbing the first wave he only sent them in twos.
• I left him with a half dozen cities - but he ended up with all the aluminium on the continent! Doh!
• Two words. CULTURE BOMB. This I like

 

[Grifftavian]

Edna is right, I hate Montezuma!

Tried to play a peaceful game. Expanded too slowly and got boxed in, never had more than 5 cities, and was short on strategic resources, only 1 Iron and 2 Horses IIRC.

Monte was huge in my game. He attacked Napoleon early, didn't kill him off, but reduced him down to insignificant. Took out Elizabeth next (who hated me and mocked me the whole game) and finally turned his attention to me. He also took out 4 or 5 City States.

Not sure if you'll get much from them, but attached are the Replay file, and the Autosave file from the turned before Monte placed my head on a stick.

 

[ssjos]

Won space race by 1630 AD. turn 236.

Strategy is basically to trade for gold from the AI. Bribe martime CS. Settled 2 cities of my own (this is mb not needed). Go on early offence and puppet the enemy. Spam trade posts for gold and science.

This is second time I play for space victory(but first time on this map) and I must say it is a bit too easy. Some things really need to be fixed:

1. AI player military performance (micro mangement and such). I swept all of the AI on my continent (~~12 cities) with 1 warrior, 4 archers and 1 horseman (+1 great general, its kinda imba). I didnt even need to upgrade them or anything.

2. AI trade descion making Its really easy to trick the AI out of thier gold

3. Martime CS The food bonus is just to big. Martime CS makes the only viable strategy to go for big empire (puppet is prolly best for happy) with trade posts spam. You dont need to mange city growth really, just get martime CS and food is solved.

4. AI turn processing time This is more of a software bug, but the later turns take around 30 seconds from the point where I click end turn to when the AI is done. The time is way to long and it is really annoying!

 

[MrWhite]

I just post the files now, a story will be told later today...

My download of the initial save was on the day it game out and I just finished it since my laptop barely is able to handle the game.
Therefore I must note that the game crashed a few times and I even lost a save before I changed the autosave to 1 turn. Normally I wouldn't post it my final result, but then all my effort would have been for nothing.

In total I had to reload 3 times with the longest 7 turns to be replayed.

Edit:
Before I started the general idea was that for science I needed population and thus I would want to conquer (puppet) some cities early. Also I wanted to keep AI alive to be able to get research agreements. Unfortunately my playing style kicked in soon: passive, building some city improvements first. Before I knew most early wonders were gone and I hadn't build units to start a war!
Already on turn 42 Elizabeth finished Stonehenge. On turn 61 I have my first wonder: The Pyramids.
Meanwhile my units train a bit on the barbarians giving me influence with some city states. Only on turn 127 I start the war with India. He is gone quickly, unfortunately his last (third) city going to the French (it was close by Paris for some reason... I also noticed AI building cities far away on the borders of other capitals).

Later Montezuma, France and Elizabeth are kept barely alive. Montezuma and Elizabeth fought a long fight together also. In the endgame Elizabeth finished of Montezuma. On the other continent Washington was killing the other players. I played a UN role and kicked his ass just before Arabia was gone, Persia already being gone. This made my empire take epic proportions in the end, leaving Washington just some cities in the center of that continent. And that only with four units attacking!
Another reason for kicking Washington was that I DID NOT HAVE ALUMINIUM!!! I immediately stopped the fight when I finally conquered a city that had some. The aluminium on my continent was in English borders and I didn't think about attacking them, although it would have been a lot quicker. I would have needed a lot more units though, as Elizabeth was almost choking in her own.
What I also noted about Washington was that he was eager to offer peace, but always on terms positive for him even if he only lost cities and units while I was gaining cities and didn't loose a single unit. In the end I still got an even deal, while his empire was decimated (from over 2,000 points, above my score, to around 500 even below that of the English).

I noticed that I need to improve my Social Policies choices... Patronage I didn't use but would have helped me a lot! Also the Commerce tree would have done me very good. Both would have made my victory quicker and smoother.

In hindsight I think I could have grown faster if I would have made less research agreements (especially early in the game) and instead bought a unit or two and started war sooner. It might have given some happiness issues, but I'm sure the profit would have been far greater (especially if I would have sold one or two of the conquered cities! That strategy is way too strong).

In the end my happiness was HUGE and I kept a continuous golden age. Only when coming out of the golden age I was barely losing some money, otherwise it was +200.
Again a lot learned, but I hope that some exploits / too strong strategies are repaired soon as it would make the game more interesting as a whole. Just as me having a new PC would...
BTW I was just 2 turns away from the final tech...

Thanks for all the good reads from your games, it makes me learn a LOT and that is what is the whole point of this thing!!

 

[MrWhite]

4. AI turn processing time This is more of a software bug, but the later turns take around 30 seconds from the point where I click end turn to when the AI is done. The time is way to long and it is really annoying!

I would be very happy if it was just 30 seconds!!!
Still it is not as long as when I first played Civ 4 on my old PC IIRC.

 

[Bob_the_Silent]

sry can't remember much cause I finished the game two weeks ago. The spaceship was launched in 1866AD, ingame score was 1422.

 

[Alraun]

Lots to learn about science victory. Definitely the trickiest victory condition I've done so far. My biggest mistake was whatever went wrong that I didn't get the policy that gives +2 science per Trade Post until right at the end. Not sure if this was because I annexed too much or what. I had a tendency to try to annex anything that started to build something dumb like a Barracks and I think sometimes you just have to let them be dumb.

 

[CharonJr]

Lots to learn about science victory. Definitely the trickiest victory condition I've done so far. My biggest mistake was whatever went wrong that I didn't get the policy that gives +2 science per Trade Post until right at the end. Not sure if this was because I annexed too much or what. I had a tendency to try to annex anything that started to build something dumb like a Barracks and I think sometimes you just have to let them be dumb.

Yes, most likely, when you try to get seep into Rationalism (for the 2 free techs, too) you are essentially playing a culture game, and there it is bad to annex cities before you reached the desired social policies.

One city is best, puppet the rest till you need to build up your production cities (about 20 turns are usually enough for this if you have a decent gold income´).

CharonJr

 

[Lexad]

18th century win with sloppy play. Not enough agression, blundering in the tech tree, final logistics suboptimal. Annoying puppet-them-all scheme good-for-all.

 

[BSmith1068]

Spaceship Victory – 1995, score of 2356, Turn 415.

Could have been faster if I had not tried for a more peaceful approach in the beginning. Ended up having to conquer my entire continent in the long run. Had I focused on this in the first place, would have been much quicker I think.

Anyway – first Space win for Civ 5 and my first game at this difficulty, so no real complaints!

 

[Alraun]

One thing... why do puppets build worthless buildings? And I don't mean worthless in the sense that we as players don't like them, I mean actually worthless. I've never seen a puppet build a unit, so why would it EVER build a barracks? It's incapable of doing anything with it.

 

[kcd_swede]

One thing... why do puppets build worthless buildings? And I don't mean worthless in the sense that we as players don't like them, I mean actually worthless. I've never seen a puppet build a unit, so why would it EVER build a barracks? It's incapable of doing anything with it.

That's getting patched out in the patch that is supposed to come out this week.

 

[da_Vinci]

@ Half Nelson: not just the +33% for oligarchy, but isn't there a -33% for defending in the open?

@ Grifftavian: Yeah, Monte was stompng everyone early in my game too, so I had to go after him early ... a couple of horsemen and war chariots did the trick nicely. Figured if I let him be, I would regret it. My surprise was Gandhi mounting a surprise attack and actually taking Thebes before I could get back with my army from the English border. Buying a few infantry and artillery pushed back his muskets, pikes and crossbows easily, once I had them.

My story below.

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

I think I settled in place, or on the coast anyway ... settled Memphis SW and Heliopolis SSE (horses at Memphis IIRC). Monte started doing war expansion early, so I eventually had to go after him (horsemen and war chariots) after he captured a few British cities and was attacking Almaty. Took Monty out pretty early, puppeting all. Then took out Napoleon as well.

Settled in for the tech run ... but I had been running the piety track during the wars for some of those benefits, when I went into rationalism, the happiness shock was substantial ... I had to unpuppet and raze a couple of size 3 -4 cities to undo the happy crisis.

Liz declared at some point, I was at cav and cannon, she at muskets and crossbows. I got overconfident and let my horse move up too fast and then be subject to multiple attacks, and lost some that way. We made peace, and I think I hit an unending peace issue, as I could never declare on her again, and she had most of the coal and all of the alum on the continent.

Gandhi declared on me just as I made the piety to rationalism switch, which meant I'd have to fight with the unhappy combat penalty. That prompted the city razing. I lost elephantine, then Thebes before I could recall troops from English front and get infantry and art bought in Memphis. Turned him back and took him out easily once my troops got on the scene.

I don't yet have rapid research figured out (although the infinite small city sprawl, or the mega puppet approach may be it). So it took a while to get into modern era. Then that Apollo program looking like 50 turns to do (got better after iron works and a happy golden age). Could never get alum for spaceship factories, could never re-declare on Liz. At one point, it would not let me build Apollo ... turns out a puppet was building it! Had to annex it to change the production!

Oh, I did build Cristo to help speed the rationalism policies.

As I was getting my first parts built, Darius finished Apollo, and his parts started coming fast. At one point, I decided to buy a bunch of workers (had about 1700 gold from GA running) to make railroads ... 7 TURNS to build!! well, last part would get done and driven from Paris to Thebes in less than that. With my last part one turn away from arriving in Thebes, Darius built his ship.

Here are the pre-loss save, (can't do next turn if you lose), and the replay for the loss.

dV

 

[da_Vinci]

So having missed by one turn, I went back to an autosave about 10 turns earlier and started the worker buy then. Built railroads from Thebes back north. I think I found a way to shave a turn off the Paris part build via MM as well. So I got the part into thebes a turn earlier, and got the win:

Space win T445 2022 AD 1844 in game, 2071 on ranking table, 2071 in HOF.

I am surprised that my score is not different between the win and the loss!

Also the ranking table score and the HOF score now match ... maybe due to being late in the game? They did not match in my TSG 1 game.

Attaching the save and replay from the win one turn earlier.

dV