TSG57 After Action Thread

[Hammer Rabbi]

Welcome to the TSG57 After Action Report thread. In this thread you can post the results of your game. Please state victory date and score (preferably in the post title), as recorded in the Hall of Fame, and the most important: your path to glory!

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed and submitted your game.

Please use the Civ5 game submission page to submit your final, first play through, .Civ5Save file, saved AFTER the victory ceremony if you were not conquered (using the "Lemme play one more turn" feature.).

- How many cities did you build and how many did you decide to acquire?
- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage?
- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

Players are encouraged to provide feedback on the game. Some players like to replay the game, and although we will not record the results from a replay, you can still post your new experiences (please state if the game is a replay).

Would be interested to hear any thoughts on game setup.

 

[Monthar]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-16
Reference number: 28523
Your name: Monthar
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1795AD
Turns played: 269
Base score: 1802
Final score: 3400
Time played: 5:41:00
Submitted save: TSG57_Science_Victory.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Monthar_C505701.Civ5Save

I went full Tradition and ended up with the top 3 policies in Patronage before I could open Rationalism, because I mistimed it by 1 turn, because I realized too late that I was still working the incense with it's culture from Goddess of Festivals in both the capital and the Petra city. The Patronage opener and Asceticism were from finishing the Oracle on the same turn as a normal policy selection. I took the Order opener in to delay finishing Rationalism so I could use Oxford and the 2 free techs to plow through to Hubble. I had to bulb a few times to get that timed right.

I only when to Planned economy in Order then completed Patronage while finishing the techs and building the parts. With the help of Christo Redentor and Syndey Opera House.

I settled the Petra city on the coast instead of on the river to be able to work the incense. When I started building Petra, I realized I would have had 3 more desert hills for the city along with the extra production from a hydro dam if I'd settled on the river. However, settling on the river proved to not be necessary after all.

I lost 1 RA when Oda decided it would be a good idea to start a war even though I was 2nd or 3rd in troops at the time. That probably cost me a few extra turns. He begged for peaces giving me all his cash after I decimated his military. I had two more wars with him that I started, because he was annoying me. I took his nearest coastal city and was pressing his capital when he offered his only other coastal city for peace, so I took that deal.

After the 2nd war with Oda, I got tired of dealing with Washington's prophet and declared on him, capturing the prophet and settling it since it still had 4 conversions left. I went on to capture 2 cities, including his capital. While pressing the next city he offered his new city next to the faith natural wonder up near Sidon and his coastal city that had uranium. During this war I managed to ally with the last few CS's.

Oda took Kuala Lumpur via a coup immediately after I bought the alliance. So, Washington sued for peace I started marching the troops back towards Kyoto and gathering all the cash I could via trades to get Kuala Lumpur back before DoWing him. For this last annoyance I just wiped the Japanese out completely. That got my long time friend Theodora to denounce me, which only made her my next target.

While finishing the last SS part I took one of Theodora's cities.

Religion - Montharianism
Goddess of Festivals
Tithe
Religious Community
Cathedrals, because someone beat me to Pagodas
Religious Texts

Here's how my empire looked at the end.

Spoiler :

All in all, I feel good about this game. I finished a lot sooner than I expected. I'm sure I probably didn't come close to the fastest finish, but I should have come close to top score.

 

[Moriarte]

That was fun. I didn't meet anyone for a real long time, so, after picking free culture ruin i decided to go safe and opened liberty. In retrospect, Tradition would be stronger, indeed, but, overall, i liked how the game developed. The only downside was food scarcity, so i couldn't manage to go real tall.

Opened with Gl, free settler founded Petra city around turn 38. Rushed library there and went for NC in the capital. 2 more cities i settled in mid 60'ies.

Policy - wise i went after the obvious - full liberty (not so obvious, i agree, but i got free Admiral out of it), Aesthetics with Oracle, 3 in Rationalism, 2 in order (had to settle one more city on top of 7 coal) The admiral did a fine job of finding all the missing Civ's and CS, so starting from turn 150 my Civ basically exploded. It is amazing how much free faith, food, happiness and culture you get from that little policy in patronage..

Around turn 130 i accumulated an army of own and gifted units. That is: 2 slingers upgraded to Xmen, 3 horsemen and 2 swords. That was enough to capture Japan and Byzanthium, lol. Incan UA is insane. Left them with one city each. By turn 160 i had 9 cities, so, from then on i just grew taller and bought scientific buildings everywhere. Peaked at 1300+ bpt.

Missed most early wonder except for Oracle & Gl (grr), but got most late wonders (about 10 of them).

Religion: 10% food pantheon, tithe, inspiration, pagodas, cheap missionaries.

Empire @ launch.

Spoiler :

 

[Tventano]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-16
Reference number: 28526
Your name: Tventano
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1735AD
Turns played: 257
Base score: 1367
Final score: 2680
Time played: 4:10:00
Submitted save: TSG57_End.Civ5Save

Settled at the mouth of the river, next to the sea.
Scout, monument, worker, granary, great library, NC
Stayed with four cities, did delay building new cities because my first ones were growing so fast.

T48 Great Library
T95 Chitzen Itza
T96 Petra in Tiwanakan
in both cities built lots of wonders

T118 Astronomy
T158 Scientific Theory
T218 Plastics
used many research agreements

used desert folklore, tithe and pagoda's, +%production and religious texts
tradition, rationalism, opener of freedom and some of patronage.
Did not micro finisher of rationalism and all scientists properly, at the end of the game I just press next, next, next a little too quickly.

Getting a scientific advantage is pretty easy at King. Used the spies to convince even more city states to ally. All in all a nice game. First had the impression that I was on an island, after that on an island together with Oda. Took pretty long before I realized it was really just continents.

 

[Chysp]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-16
Reference number: 28527
Your name: Chysp
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1896AD
Turns played: 318
Base score: 966
Final score: 1533
Time played: 3:07:00
Submitted save: Pachacuti_0318 AD-1896.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Chysp_C505701.Civ5Save

First attempt at a GOTM, Inca playthrough, and first proper Science Victory! Made a few big mistakes that cost me a lot of turns. I only ended up settling three cities, and even worse, I wasn't paying full attention at one point, and accidentally settled my third city a tile away from a mountain range, so no observatory there

Oda was the only one to DoW with me fairly early, but it was a pretty pathetic attempt. He was broke and had no luxuries, so I couldn't really get anything good from it. Washington finished him off around turn 180.

I had really poor cultural output (and I usually play very culturally), so I only managed to complete Tradition, the non-coastal Commerce policies, and finished off Rationalism to get the last two techs for the last spaceship part.

And I didn't meet anyone on the other continent until about turn 220!

Overall, a fun game, and I'm looking forward to the next GOTM (hopefully it won't be on Immortal or Deity though, I'm not good enough for that difficulty )

 

[leif erikson]

First attempt at a GOTM, Inca playthrough, and first proper Science Victory! Made a few big mistakes that cost me a lot of turns. I only ended up settling three cities, and even worse, I wasn't paying full attention at one point, and accidentally settled my third city a tile away from a mountain range, so no observatory there

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Many people make mistakes in playing, learning what they are and how to overcome them is one of the many things we are about here. Congrats on your victory and best of luck in future.

Overall, a fun game, and I'm looking forward to the next GOTM (hopefully it won't be on Immortal or Deity though, I'm not good enough for that difficulty )

Shouldn't worry as the idea is to play the game and compare what you did to what others did, ask questions and pretty soon, you will be playing Immortal, and maybe Deity.

 

[Unresolved]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-16
Reference number: 28528
Your name: Unresolved
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1810AD
Turns played: 275
Base score: 1529
Final score: 2780
Time played: 3:59:00
Submitted save: Pachacuti_0275 AD-1810.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Unresolved_C505701.Civ5Save

Really, really bad gameplay on my part. Too many errors for King and all of them compounded into a terrible bpt until the low 200s. I managed to lose 2 workers in the beginning of the game in he same turn and I didn't hit any of the science benchmarks. I played in a domination fashion for the first half of the game when I realized it was continents. I took over my whole continent, but my science and population never exploded until I got Fertilizer. Then Washington(the city) and my other cities grew ridiculously fast. I hit Plastics really late, some time around T230 I think, but my finish was pretty strong. My capital in a golden age was getting 265.2 production/turn while producing the spaceship parts. My second city wasn't a slouch either with 150+ production. All in all, I wish I could go back and replay that game.

Oh, and my computer crashed at turn 176(because I didn't notice my power plug disconnected), so I reloaded the autosave from that turn.

 

[Browd]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-16
Reference number: 28530
Your name: Browd
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1675AD
Turns played: 245
Base score: 1459
Final score: 2977
Time played: 4:15:00
Submitted save: Pachacuti_0245 AD-1675.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Browd_C505701.Civ5Save

Approached this one sort of schizophrenically. Went Tradition 1 city GL/NC (capital at mouth of river by mountain) and then planted two more cities fairly quickly (Petra city in the same place most folks put it, and third city on the coast near Uluru). These cities grew well (love those terrace farms), had early science buildings, observatories, etc., and generally met all my expectations.

Then, after about turn 95, for reasons I can't quite explain, I succumbed to the temptation to fill the empty space -- fourth city on the coast SE of my capital, another on the coast N of my Petra city, and a sixth city by the mountain (on the gems) between Warsaw and Florence (that one at least got me some extra coal, but if I had stuck with 3 cities, the coal deposit north of the capital would have been sufficient). These last three cities never performed and just represented a waste of gold and incremental social policy cost (did get two GSs and some beakers, so not worthless, but not worth the investment). Tempted to reload from before I planted those cities to see how that plays out.

Anyway, for most of the game I had the only religion (Byz founded after turn 180 or so and that was it) -- desert folklore, ceremonial burial, pagodas, religious community and itinerant preachers (in 20 cities at the end -- made no effort to manually spread to the other continent, since I didn't need the happiness).

Only war was early with Japan -- stole a worker and a settler, and finally took 250+ gold and some gpt for peace. Kept my units hovering outside Odo's borders and he never sent another settler my way. Also kept two comp bows busy for 100+ turns blocking a Byz settler, so she didn't found a second city until after turn 200. Thought about just putting her out of her misery, but always seemed to have something more pressing to do. Probably should have done it, since Constantinople would have been far better than any of cities 4 - 6.

Unlocked astronomy around turn 135 and sent two caravels out to explore. After finishing Tradition, took two policies in Patronage (opener + Aesthetics for perma-friend with CSs), then took 4 policies in Rationalism (all except Sovereignty), then Order opener and factory policy, and then finished Rationalism.

As is my (bad) habit, I waited too long to bulb GSs. Ended up with one more GS than I needed (Oxford shaved 1 turn off the tech for the last SS part), and never bought any GS with faith -- used faith instead to buy a GE for Hubble and then planted two more as manufactories in capital and Petra city to speed up parts production (but I doubt they shaved off even one turn).

 

[glory7]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-17
Reference number: 28531
Your name: glory7
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1390AD
Turns played: 199
Base score: 1723
Final score: 4417
Time played: 7:33:00
Submitted save: glory7_gotm57_t199.Civ5Save
Renamed file: glory7_C505701.Civ5Save

my personal SV best record. Thanks for gotm staff - it was a great map. (I had 2-3 crashs but I could manage myself to finish this asap as I really enjoyed playing this map)

some key times are:

t108 rati open and secularism, t123 free thought (spt 320), t168 plastics (bought 4 labs with 5K cash and one more at t169 - spt 1149), t190 rati finish and spt 1500. t194, all tech done (had one more GS to bulb..miscalculated again)

sp: full tradition, patro open, rati till free thought, order open, planned economy, full rati

cap: river coast, 2nd: river hill next to mountain (this position had like 10+ desert hills), 3rd: next to uluru. All those are great position for terrace farm and observatory.

4th: east of cap, coast, 2 salt, 1 crap, 2 wheat. 5th (to claim 7 coal): NW of cap, on top of gem. This place had 6 pop but managed to produce 100+ spt with all science buildings and jungle tiles.

Annexed 3 caps in my continent. I used tommynt style and did not even consider RA. At the end of the game, half of opponents were on medieval era and other half were on renaissance era.

I miscalculated again and had one GS left, but monster petra city (2nd city) helped a lot. I could produce spaceship parts in 3 turns in both cap and 2nd city. I think I got all the techs at t194 when I played gotm54 too, but this time I started producing earlier. Next time, I would bulb 2 GS, instead of one, to start apollo faster.

attached 3 screenshots.

 

[golem]

Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1814AD
Turns played: 277
Base score: 1085
Final score: 1972
Time played: 3:44:00

I thought how I am fast, but when I see the results I am the last.
I did four cities, later one more for aluminium. I went Tradition, open Patonage, Order, finish Rationalism. All went easy way, I had no war at all. Lot of RAs, trade - I have all the time enough money, enogh itme for any wonder.
Nice game, thanks.

 

[Derfel_82]

Your name: Derfel_82
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1720AD
Turns played: 254
Base score: 1494
Final score: 2988
Time played: 4:04:00

Very nice map. I liked very much this game.

Maybe i could did in a sub T250 but i did some mistakes.

 

[Brigg]

Your name: Brigg
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1804AD
Turns played: 272
Base score: 1423
Final score: 2635
Time played: 2:56:00

Well, I learned quite a bit. Mostly don't start a game after a 14 hour day install.
My NC was interrupted twice by planting cities.

I went for growth with my faith, except for the 20% combat advantage. My religion was founded right after Japan decided to swarm me and I thought I needed the advantage.

Tradition
Commerce Opening
Left side of Rationalism
Right side of Freedom
Finish Rationalism.

The best decision I made was to plant city #4 over by Uluru, on the coast. Those terraces surrounded by hills made a great spot.

I should have made that my 3rd spot and planted a couple more cities around my starting area.

I needed to get the railroads up earlier and I also transitioned late to production to wrap up the spaceship. I could have shaved a few turns off there as a I was waiting for the Apollo program to finish before I could start all of my spaceship parts.

Theodora was also annoying. I declared war on her twice due to the GP carpet bombing despite Inquisitors and a GP being right next to each of the cities.

Fun game, now to try a Liberty start and see how that goes.

 

[marekb]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-17
Reference number: 28541
Your name: marekb
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1735AD
Turns played: 257
Base score: 1507
Final score: 2954
Time played: 4:00:00
Submitted save: TSG57_END.Civ5Save
Renamed file: marekb_C505701.Civ5Save

Very nice map. If I had placed one or two more cities near mountains and build observatory, I would have finished sub 250, but I am impressed with sub 200 by glory7.

I intended to play peacefully and managed to do that. I thought Japan DOW me but they didn't. Luckily found Jerusalem first and befriend them soon clearing barb camp and got pantheon very early (took Desert folklore). I founded religion early (Tithe and +15 growth) and enhanced it with HS (Divine Inspiration, RT). Bought 3 GS and 2 GE.

 

[adoui]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 57
Date submitted: 2013-03-17
Reference number: 28543
Your name: adoui
Game status: Science Victory
Game date: 1902AD
Turns played: 322
Base score: 1842
Final score: 2878
Time played: 12:25:00
Submitted save: Pachacuti_0322 AD-1902.Civ5Save
Renamed file: adoui_C505701.Civ5Save

Hey guys, first GOTM submission, off the pace so won't go into the details but thought I'd say hello Been playing Civ on and off since the original (in those cutting edge Amiga 500 days) and recently got the bug back so thought I'd get involved.

Didn't build a Petra and managed to forget to build the third SS booster and engine at the end (apparently they're required ) so still plenty to learn but fun game, took Japan and America out in the final turns just to round things off.

Thanks Hammer and all for putting the games together, and the rest for feeding back, seriously enjoying getting to grips with these.

Victory screenshot attached, definitely didn't annex Warsaw because they were annoying me...

Now to see if I can repeat glory7's sub 200 time above. How hard can it be...

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Hey guys, first GOTM submission

Welcome to GotM and thanks for submitting! I'm glad you enjoyed the write-ups and feedback. This is great for learning how to improve.

 

[pkf]

really perfect game glory! congrats.

looking forward to the next gotm SV, getting better every time, still short of sub200 though.

finished t215.

key mistakes:

1) not enough growth. i compared your screenshots to mine and you either finished tradition much earlier (but doubtful) or i simply get to greedy with hammers too early. this might have been caused by amphitheater specialists as well - i was kind of forced to since i maneuvered myself into an unfortunate situation with cultural cs.
seems like youre always 2-3 pop ahead in cap and 2nd city.

2) 4th city was delayed in a incredible stupid way. lost a warri to barbs because of a hasty click and had 4th city up about 10 turns later than i should have.

3) dowed theo when she was ally with yerevan (for about 2 turns...) when i would have been allied with yerevan in about 10 turns due to science quest. delayed policy pick up significantly. i actually used a second faith GE to get sydney opera

4) got aesthetics instead of planned economy. not sure which is better but aesthetics feels overrated since it takes forever to get going.

5) forgot about nuclear plant for cap and got it quite late.

6) you had 3 caps before hitting plastics. i started warring too late, again. and i got stuck on kyoto for 10 turns.

7) started way too late to mine all terrace farms etc for optimal spaceship part production.

8) late acquisition of certain good terrace farm tiles that would have boosted growth earlier (i hate hate hate that you cant pick what tiles cities culture, cap got all sea tiles before the mountain tiles next to marble...).

it all boils down to growth deficit though, i think i was faster in ren era than you were, but then had a happiness shortage and grew slightly slower to make up for it. perhaps ceremonial burial is stronger on lower diffs since gold shouldnt be the bottleneck. was swords into plowshares worth it?

 

[glory7]

really perfect game glory! congrats.

looking forward to the next gotm SV, getting better every time, still short of sub200 though.

finished t215.

key mistakes:

1) not enough growth. i compared your screenshots to mine and you either finished tradition much earlier (but doubtful) or i simply get to greedy with hammers too early. this might have been caused by amphitheater specialists as well - i was kind of forced to since i maneuvered myself into an unfortunate situation with cultural cs.
seems like youre always 2-3 pop ahead in cap and 2nd city.

I don't think I finished tradition much earlier than you too - I didn't have culture CS ally IIRC. I was friend with yerevan though (barb killing near border - both CS did not give barb camp quest so I waited but they didn't for like 20-30 turns... when CS got units, I had to clear it and returned the worker). I did not have amphi specialist.

2) 4th city was delayed in a incredible stupid way. lost a warri to barbs because of a hasty click and had 4th city up about 10 turns later than i should have.

um, that sucks...

3) dowed theo when she was ally with yerevan (for about 2 turns...) when i would have been allied with yerevan in about 10 turns due to science quest. delayed policy pick up significantly. i actually used a second faith GE to get sydney opera

sydney.... lol

4) got aesthetics instead of planned economy. not sure which is better but aesthetics feels overrated since it takes forever to get going.

aesthetics is good if you can get it early and if difficulty is higher. I am pretty sure that getting rati 2 asap is important so you get aesthetics only if you have to spend 2 sp after tradition before going to renaissance. It takes 20 turns to reach 30 influence, and at this difficulty I think you can do all the quests (culture, faith, science, barb, etc) so you can get CS anyway.

I considered getting aes around t150 but opened order instead so that I could get planned economy asap. I built all my factories after planned economy and saved gold.. result was more than 5K when plastic came up.

5) forgot about nuclear plant for cap and got it quite late.

6) you had 3 caps before hitting plastics. i started warring too late, again. and i got stuck on kyoto for 10 turns.

kyoto was difficult to attack. I try to kill them after getting univ as I need to get caps and grow them and staff univs there.

7) started way too late to mine all terrace farms etc for optimal spaceship part production.

8) late acquisition of certain good terrace farm tiles that would have boosted growth earlier (i hate hate hate that you cant pick what tiles cities culture, cap got all sea tiles before the mountain tiles next to marble...).

it all boils down to growth deficit though, i think i was faster in ren era than you were, but then had a happiness shortage and grew slightly slower to make up for it. perhaps ceremonial burial is stronger on lower diffs since gold shouldnt be the bottleneck. was swords into plowshares worth it?

hope that inside quote is not confusing. For the last part, I did not go for tithe or church property as happiness was bottleneck for me. With 4 cities with great position, after tradition growth was just crazy and I did not want to spend hammers on happy buildings. also, AI cities are growing slowly so gpt from those religion perks are not that great.

Swords into... was actually not that helpful as jap and byz DoWed me when I was building univ. Of course they didn't even touch my cities but that was annoying as I could not get that 15% bonus. I think religious community was better choice, but who knows... it is certain that I have had that bonus for at least 50 turns and it would mean that I got at least 2-3 pops faster.

 

[pkf]

Planned Economy makes much more sense now.. I had to buy factories which drained from the money pool for labs. Also it just gets you that little bit of extra beakers earlier and therefore you reach plastics sooner.

One thing makes me wonder though - how do you accumulate so much culture to get ratio finisher in time? I had the same total amount of policies picked (including oracle ofc) and well, you know about my dark secret to get the ratio finisher now..

Another thing - once you pick up secularism, do you fill every specialist right away, cutting growth for max beakers? I am quite schizophrenic when doing this, microing citizens in and out of specialists slots... (I mean specialists that are not in sci buildings obv).

Btw, Peace Gardens is actually a quite decent belief, if you're a pathological river settler like me.

 

[Monthar]

Think about it this way. If you put one citizen in an engineer slot after Secularism you gain 2 2, but if that citizen was working a terrace farm for 2 4 while building science you'd still gain an extra 0.5 from that citizen while continuing to grow. Each new citizen adds more based on the science buildings in that city. IIRC it's 1 for every 2 citizens, another 1 for every 2 citizens with a library and another 1 for every 2 citizens with a a public school. If you have these two buildings you're gaining 1.5 per citizen before the multipliers from the university, social policy that increases the university's multiplier, research labs, observatory and NC if NC is in that city.

With all science buildings in the NC city each new citizen is adding an additional 4.5 after multipliers. Thus if working those terrace farms instead of the engineer, artist and merchant slots means your city is growing every 4-5 turns, your total science output will be higher in the long run. Plus, the larger the city's population the faster it can build the SS parts when you shift the citizens to maximize production.

Then there's also the problem of feeding all those specialists, which requires an equal number of citizens working 4 tile. Sure, with Maritime CS allies, granary, watermill, hospital and the specialist food reduction policy in Freedom, you'd need less citizens working food tiles.

However, if you want to maximize your beakers for the 8 turns prior to bulbing with your scientists, you could then fill all the specialist slots for those 8 turns and build science in all your cities.

Edit:
You also have to consider whether or not the city has jungles. With just the university that's 2 2 per jungle. With trade posts that's another 1 , 2 with Economics and another 1 with Free Thought. Each city would need to be set on a case by case basis. The easiest way to evaluate each is compare the total science output of the city while building science while working all tiles vs working specialist slots. The way I'd do this is lock all citizens to as many food tiles (with jungles counting as food tiles) as possible to get the lowest number of turns until the next growth with the remaining citizens on production. Then I'd move citizens from the production tiles to the specialist slots until I either fill all the slots or the science produced no longer increases when moving from production to a specialist slot. In this way you can get a much science as possible while still growing as fast as possible.

 

[pkf]

Thanks for the effort.

I do consider growth aspects and production, key thing is figuring out whether more long-term growth or, for instance, earlier scientific theory is more important.

I guess the latter is true - earlier key sci techs = earlier finish.
Hence it becomes the micro nightmare I was already going through but still wanted to avoid =(