TSG48 After Action Report

[ense7en]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 48
Date submitted: 2012-11-18
Reference number: 27714
Your name: ense7en
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1860AD
Turns played: 300
Base score: 1766
Final score: 2943
Time played: 9:12:00


I suck at finishing GOTMs with good times.

This was a rather uneventful game due to being archipelago and prince.

I did not get my religion enhanced in time for Itinerant Preachers, which turned out to be rather annoying.

Spain spent the entire game spreading their faith everywhere, including bombing my cities with prophets numerous times. I kept having to waste faith purchases on Inquisitors and Prophets just to get my own capital and cities back to my religion.

This was like the third time around she'd harassed me with prophets, and i decided enough was enough and denouced + DoW her that turn.
Yup, THREE prophets.
They all got killed the next turn.

Spoiler :

I went all Tradition + Commerce opener + all Rationalism.
Settled seven cities in total, on various islands.
Toward the end, i captured Spain's two major cities out of pure frustration with her ******ed numbers of prophets/missionaries everywhere. I really should have done this way earlier, instead of wasting gold on rush buying ships later on.

I signed i think one RA all game long.
AI was pretty much constantly either very lacking in funds or negative GPT all game long, and as i had a pretty huge tech lead from the beginning, i really didn't feel like having to basically pay the AI to sign RAs that would just help them out hugely.

homefront

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other "homes"

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economics screen

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policies

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tech tree

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religion

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itinerant preachers world domination :\

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[Halcyan2]

For those who didn't sign any/many RA's, don't worry. You didn't miss too much.

I signed an insane number of RA's, pretty much funneling all my extra gold into it. My first wave (signed in late Medieval and early Renaissance) didn't help very much, even with the Porcelain Tower. The later ones were a bit better though.

I don't know if I would have been better off spending all that gold on infrastructure though.

For much of the game, I never really had much gold because as soon as I signed one RA I was saving up for another. And as soon as one cycle of RA's ended it was time for another to begin!

 

[Gamewizard]

Spain spent the entire game spreading their faith everywhere, including bombing my cities with prophets numerous times. I kept having to waste faith purchases on Inquisitors and Prophets just to get my own capital and cities back to my religion.

I don't know if you know this, but if you keep an inquisitor parked in or next to a city then it can't be converted via missionary or prophet. I had to keep one parked at my capital because Theodora camped a Great Prophet there.

 

[Halcyan2]

I don't know if you know this, but if you keep an inquisitor parked in or next to a city then it can't be converted via missionary or prophet. I had to keep one parked at my capital because Theodora camped a Great Prophet there.

I held off a Byzantine Great Prophet with a Trireme, Great Engineer, and Worker.

After about a dozen turns of chess moves, the Prophet went back to her territory to convert one of her cities (which had passively become my religion).

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

well, inq's will prevent your cap from converting but unless you keep one parked at every city it can be expensive faith-wise to keep all your cities protected.

questions for ense7en:
in t269 when you killed her prophets did all of your cities have a pagoda? if they did youd only lose 10% growth since you dow'd negating Swords to Plowshares. i wonder if her religion mightve given you something beneficial by just letting it happen.

i noticed you still hadnt bought a 2nd GS with faith. were you spending all your faith on pagodas and missionaries/prophets?. i almost always get the 2nd GS for 1500 before the one after that gets too expensive (2500). mightve shaved a few turns off the win time.

thanks for such a detailed post on your game. its very interesting to see where your cities are too.

 

[ense7en]

I don't know if you know this, but if you keep an inquisitor parked in or next to a city then it can't be converted via missionary or prophet. I had to keep one parked at my capital because Theodora camped a Great Prophet there.

Yeah the problem is, she had already hit my capital and third city when i didn't have enough faith to get one. So then i bought an Inquisitor, but then she didn't come back for a while, so IIRC, i used it to remove her religion from my cap.
Of course, she then came back again. And she was hitting my secondary and third cities too, not just the cap. I had extremely few lands units around, and so couldn't make walls with them.

I forget exactly what happened with the earlier times, but IIRC i ended up buying two Inquisitors and one Prophet.

well, inq's will prevent your cap from converting but unless you keep one parked at every city it can be expensive faith-wise to keep all your cities protected.

questions for ense7en:
in t269 when you killed her prophets did all of your cities have a pagoda? if they did youd only lose 10% growth since you dow'd negating Swords to Plowshares. i wonder if her religion mightve given you something beneficial by just letting it happen.

i noticed you still hadnt bought a 2nd GS with faith. were you spending all your faith on pagodas and missionaries/prophets?. i almost always get the 2nd GS for 1500 before the one after that gets too expensive (2500). mightve shaved a few turns off the win time.

thanks for such a detailed post on your game. its very interesting to see where your cities are too.

Yeah i actually played it very poorly, i know.
The war was an exasperation move, and really, i was so far ahead in tech, it was a pretty hilarious battle i decided to do.
Battleships and sub and Ironclads vs. Galleas and Pikemen/Conquistadors/Tercios.

I should have just let her take over as the only real loss was Tithe (fairly noticeable due to my tall cities, but not really the end of the world). I think i only bought one Pagoda (very bad choice of belief, which i realized in the In Progress thread).

I should indeed have bought more scientists with faith.

At the end i had four scientists saved to bulb, got two more from Rationalism finisher, two more from Hubble, and one from Oxford.

I think one of my biggest mistakes i always make is not saving more scientists instead of planting so many. I planted a total of seven academies. Two of those were from Pisa and Porcelain Tower.
I suspect should have saved another couple to bulb later or possibly to bulb to Research Labs sooner?

I don't know what i do wrong, but in general i can rarely finish much before t300 for science games which means i am doing something pretty wrong.
I imagine it's also because i'm not signing tons of RAs too since i find you usually have to sink so much gold into them due to having a large tech lead. (Or on land maps having few friends to to proximity issues.)

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

yeah, i forgot about tithe. thats usually a dependent part not worth sacrificing.

well, you could try some different approaches. going into order for the factory bonus can be enlightening. you can also buy some factories with the money you mightve spent on RAs. and opening Order will let you buy 1 GE for 1000 faith to rush Hubble. GSs are usually too expensive by then. but it will probably mean not finishing rationalism but ive found it can be worth it. spending early gold on maritime CSs can make the growth quicker for the benefits from libraries and public schools. and timing is generally a big deal. i do agree with the settling too many GSs part. i now only try to settle 2-3. I will spend some early GSs to get to eras earlier (Ren for Rationalism and Ind. for Order) or for techs for science buildings (or Scientific Theory) but they can also create nice long-term walls around my cap to prevent a missionary touching the tile.

these things helped me get to sub t250 science wins (emperor and under) but it would still take quite a different approach to get to sub-t220 or 200 like some of the pros do. tommynt has a youtube video showing his maya sci-vic in one of the GOTMs. it can be hard to follow but he gets a sub-t200 sci vic and its pretty darned impressive.

 

[apocalypse105]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 48
Date submitted: 19 /11/ 2012
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1903 AD
Turns played: 323
Base score: 1106
Final score: 1743
Time played: 3 Hours and 2 minutes


I moved my settler off the coast so I can work the cows directly big mistake took me a little bit longer to meat other people.

Spammed a lot of missionaries and converded siam so he became a usefull alyy

Used the :
Religious Community
+1% Production for each follower (max +15%)
Believe its amazingly strong on archipelo maps



How did I use my UUs?
Used the Unique building for getting a lot faith and early pantheon for extra wonder production So I can get national college faster.

How did I use religion?
Use production bonusses because on archipello production is rare.

How did I use spies?
Use them as counter intelligence killed a lot of spies of the huns and getting and protecting a lot of city states a lot of culture ones... Proparly needed to this because tthere was only 3 coal on a small island with not much on it.

 

[Gamewizard]

I forgot to mention how annoyed I was that it took my CS allies FOREVER to get the tech required to mine coal. I had hydro plants before factories.

 

[TheGreyHex]

I planted about 6 great scientists, signed about 7 research agreements and didn't finish teching until turn 310.

My national college went in at about turn 60 and I didn't time Rationalism quite well as I had to spend one policy into Commerce.

Also I am seeing that saving GS is the way to go but how does one know when not to plant them anymore and save them for bulbing? And what are we waiting for when you save your GS, do they bulb more as you enter each era?

I think I ended up with 1200 bpt at the end of my game, but my question is how much of a difference does it make if you get into rationalism asap, as well as throwing up all your science buildings. 60 turns is alot - I thought I played decent, but in fact it wasn't that great at all. Got lots to learn.

 

[lymond]

^^^Only time I ever plant a great scientists is when I play Babylon. I just plant the first one since it comes so early and provides a nice tech boost on the early techs. I guess you could bulb Philo as opposed to settle, but I think either way is going to get you Philo quick while also speeding through a lot of the early techs. Otherwise, saving GS for late bulbs works well for Space or bulbing Military techs in other games.

Your name: lymond
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1780AD
Turns played: 266
Base score: 1158
Final score: 2184

Wow, looks like a just beat the influx of turn 268 games here...ha This is my first submission in a while since I have replayed a lot of the past VOTMs or not finished them.

I SIP and Aksum flourished in that spot with Hanging Gardens. I settled only 4 cities in the game going tradition. The secondary cities were not exactly fantastic production wise other than grabbing resources. I wish I had settled the island to the south a bit differently but went for settling on a happy resources...spice, I think. I expanded very slow. Instead growing Aksum large while building NC. Plus, there was so little gold available early to buy settlers. My early exploration was unlucky as I went in the wrong directions for a long time. Met Byz very early, and Siam some time later. Spain took quite some time to reach, but did not meet the remaining AIs for a very long time. If only I had gone North instead of East/West.

The real kicker in my game, and it appears that others experienced this well, was just losing out on the Oracle to Spain right as I hit Renaissance. Really a huge loss there, and it was timed to be able to take two Rationalism SPs. Instead I had to dump a SP into another tree. In this case Commerce.

Also, although I did produce quite a few GSs naturally and from the free ones, including Hubble (which I got with a GE). I'm still not totally adept at bulbing near the end. If you don't match things up right, including Oxford, you can wind up having to slow tech something near the end which really pushes the game longer. I did okay here as compared to the past but still needs improvement. Same goes for Research agreements. I bought several but stop closer to the end. In reality, I could have added a few more.

Siam was odd this game. They were Friendly with me from the first meeting, but would never DOF with me and always shorted me on trades despite never having any diplo demerits. Byz were pretty much useless trade wise as they were bankrupt for a large part of the game due to being at war with Hiawatha for most of the game...a war of attrition

Man, the Coups were annoying. Surprisingly, my first encounter with direct coup on my city states. Really sucks when you work hard to get a city state ally only to have an AI run a successful coup that totally wipes it away. So I tried my own coups for the first time and killed 3 or 4 of my own spies...ha

Not a bad game, but I tell ya, this game below a certain difficulty level starts to get pretty uninteresting. The AIs are so passive.

 

[chazzycat]

I planted about 6 great scientists, signed about 7 research agreements and didn't finish teching until turn 310.

Pretty sure that planting too many is what slowed you down. I planted 4 in my game, signed only 2 or 3 RAs, and won on turn 290. That or your pop was just too low.

My national college went in at about turn 60 and I didn't time Rationalism quite well as I had to spend one policy into Commerce.

My NC was about the same, and I spent 3 policies in commerce.

Also I am seeing that saving GS is the way to go but how does one know when not to plant them anymore and save them for bulbing?

Well academies are pretty important, since RAs and Bulbs are both based on your normal science output. But the break even point to me feels like it's around 3 or 4 academies. Definitely under 6. maybe 4 was too may, I'm not sure.

And what are we waiting for when you save your GS, do they bulb more as you enter each era?

Since they are based on your regular science output, you're generally waiting for research labs to be completed, as that is the last significant boost in output.

I thought I played decent, but in fact it wasn't that great at all. Got lots to learn.

Dont worry that's what this is for, most people are probably in the same boat (I know I am).

 

[TheGreyHex]

Next game I'll save the GS and see the difference, I didn't know it was based upon your bpt. Thanks for the replies.

 

[AE_]

I finished the game at turn 244 yesterday.

It was an ok game, but I really failed to estimate how many GS was needed in the end. When I was finished with the research I still had 3 GS and oxford to use. If I had used them to bulb more aggressively towards rocketry instead, I could have won this game 10-15 turns earlier. Maybe I will do a replay for the last 30 turns to see what I can get.

This was a really fun game, I will probably post some screen shots tonight.

 

[Suntechnique]

I forgot to mention how annoyed I was that it took my CS allies FOREVER to get the tech required to mine coal. I had hydro plants before factories.

You can give 200g to CS to get any tile improvement instantly.

 

[ense7en]

I finished the game at turn 244 yesterday.

It was an ok game, but I really failed to estimate how many GS was needed in the end. When I was finished with the research I still had 3 GS and oxford to use. If I had used them to bulb more aggressively towards rocketry instead, I could have won this game 10-15 turns earlier. Maybe I will do a replay for the last 30 turns to see what I can get.

This was a really fun game, I will probably post some screen shots tonight.

Okay how do you bulb at the end precisely?

The part that slows me down at the end is that there are three "lines" you have to tech toward to get all the parts finished.

Obviously i go to Plastics first. (Research Labs). I do need to save more gold to be able to rush buy these more often.

Then fill in what's needed and usually enter Atomic era via. Atomic Theory (extra science from Academies + find out if i have Uranium).
Then hard tech Radar > Rocketry > Satellites
I build Apollo and Hubble (in either the cap, or in two different cities, depending on which is fastest).

While those are being built i start working on the other 12-13 techs remaining.
I do not have 12-13 scientists saved, ever.

I have one free from Oxford, usually the two from Rationalism (sometime in this time frame anyway), the two from Hubble + however many i've saved.
So that means 5+ usually around 4-6 saved, which means i only have to hard tech a few techs before i can bulb my way to the very end.

This game the bulbing actually seemed to work right for me, as in, it would actually finish the techs fully and let me bulb all together.

Previous games i'd get times where it wouldn't finish the tech (even though the beakers were there - bug?).
But then you still have to wait from the parts to finish.

So should i be saving a lot more scientists i guess to pretty much bulb the entire way thru Atomic + Information eras?

Or i should be bulbing to get to Research Labs sooner?

I don't think i can make the ending much fast than i do, but i'm thinking i do some things wrong much earlier in the game?

 

[Gamewizard]

You can give 200g to CS to get any tile improvement instantly.

Yes of course, but my situation was that the CS didn't tech coal yet. They had mines on the coal already but didn't have the required tech until I was well into the modern or early atomic era.

 

[Bezhukov]

If you sit an Inquisitor in the Holy City, the enemy Great Prophet will give up and go home. He only hits your other cities if he's already hit your cap. You don't need multiple Inquisitors.

 

[glory7]

I just finished my game but I feel like I should not submit this one, as I realized later that I used auto-annex bug. When I played gotm 46, I saved before the city capture and load - that method worked. But today when I captured madrid after loading, it just gets auto-annexed. Well, I was going to annex it anyway so I thought it won't matter.

Same thing happened when I got London, so after that I didn't even bother. I thought if I buy courthouse right away, it would be the same anyway. I played till the turn before victory and I saved. When I loaded the file, it shows unhappy sign, instead of 30+ happy. While I believe that I could have handled it with building theaters and other happy buildings, it could have affected my game and might delay several turns.

For the game itself, as I wrote in progress thread, I went optics first and used GL to pop philo, and built NC next. Went math to build HG, and beelined to education. Hit education at t99, bought uni at cap with saved money. Opend rationalism with oracle at t108. Went astronomy for observatory, and after that beelined to printing press. Built Pisa, and beelined to scientific theory. Got indust next, and got chem and fertilizer for growth and prod. beelined plastics after.

When 2 turns from radio completion, I bulbed one scientist to get plastic. It was around t185 and before plastic bpt was about 650-700. Saved more than 3.5k to buy 3 labs immediately. When I got labs up in 6 cities and put all specialists (my own 4 cities and Madrid, London), bpt went up to 1400-1500 around t200.

Went for rockectry (bulbed one GS to get it faster), satellite, advanced bal, robotics, and remaining techs with bulbing GS. I messed up a bit and didn't need that much science, or should have bulbed GS earlier to get apollo earlier. I spent about 10 turns on making spaceship parts after completing all necessary techs.

For cities, settled cap right away and built 2nd city next to mountain and wine (obvious spot). 3rd city was on south island, on top of spice. 4th city was on +10 gold mountain lsland, right side of it.

Didn't do any RAs and bullied cs at the beginning and other civs during all game. 6 frigates and 2 caravels were more than enough to control the sea.

I didn't get any UU. Religion was important, as tithe was good source of income and god of the sea and religious community was good for production.

I used GE from Pisa tower to rush big ben, as I planned to buy all labs, factories, etc. I think it was worth it - I had more than enough GS in the end anyway. 1 from faith(got 1 GE with faith to rush hubble) and 2 from hubble, and 5 from cities. I plantted first 2 GS.

I should have conquered other caps earlier - I could have attacked them with frigates around t120, but delayed it until t160. I was busy building other stuff instead of galless (so that I can upgrade them to frigates and go), and it might have saved several turns.

 

[Maxym]

Science Victory
Game date:1740AD
Turns played:258
Base score:1558
Final score:3054
Time played:13:33:00

Finally finished it, not a very good game but decent enough considering i lost Oracle same turn i finished it and acoustics.

I should have settled on the coast, for future reference if starting ring has no 2 food tile and is on coast, its for a good reason. I think earlier trireme would help getting in early gold. I was not too far off with the start with t 105 education.

Made few errors like building one lab thnking i will have no cash but then had enough with 9 turns to go building. I think i have started bulbing too early as some labs/factories were recently completed.

In the end i rushed hubble when my last GS in cap was 5 turns away thinking build time will be limiting factor and then had to wait 28 turns as both hubble and louvre reset the counter very high.

I captured Constantinople to get my coal, i considered settling one more city for it but decided it will be more fun. Took it a bit late as i could have made those factories sooner if not for lack of coal. Signed only 3 RAs used cash to buy science buildings. Conquered Madrid for fun and Sukhotai in revenge for late DoW.

Took dumbest belief ever peace gardens when i only could build two!! and foregone 15% production bonus.

Got my cap converted once and few other cities twice but since i had awful beliefs it did not matter.

i think under 240 is the best i could have done here unless i grossly underestimate the coastal start and right beliefs.

victory

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demogrphics

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