TSG66 After Action thread

[leif erikson]

Welcome to the TSG66 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.).

- What did you think of the new Culture VC?
- How many cities did you build? How many did you end up with?
- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage given BNW? Are these element more of a factor, or less?
- What Social Policies and Ideologies did you select and how did they support your goals?
- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?
- Were your UA and UU helpful in achieving your goals?
- Were any AI runaway's in your game?

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.

 

[tommynt]

played this in 1 big session - won turn 151 - this is possibe way faster if u know what u do and are focused onto winning ...

Emperor ai is just WAY too weak.

 

[Chee]

Turn 151 is just insane! Well done!

Now, how did you do it?

 

[GrannyPants]

First submission. Turn 330 cultural victory!

What did you think of the new Culture VC?
I like the new cultural victory a lot. The great works and theme bonus system is great.
I just made the move to mostly playing on deity, so this emperor game allowed me to wonder spam and fill up on the theming bonuses. Yaaaaa!

- How many cities did you build? How many did you end up with?
Four cities:
(as soon as I can figure out how to get images uploaded... My print screen files are "TGA" files and I can't open them... sigh...)

- How did you use religion or spying to your advantage given BNW? Are these element more of a factor, or less?
I took the silver pantheon bonus, but got trolled by the GP spawn and missed the real tenants I wanted. Not having cathedrals hurt me later when I filled up on artifacts and had no spaces left to put free antiquity sights.
Tithe ended up being a huge help, and kept me positive during some crucial parts of the game.
I was in the tech lead pretty much from the get-go. So I stole a couple early techs after shopping around for a civ with techs I could steal, then rolled diplomats into the civs I was least influential with.

- What Social Policies and Ideologies did you select and how did they support your goals?
Full Tradition and Aesthetics. Patronage to the science bonus. Rationalism to the specialist bonus. Exploration to coastal production (for Louve mostly). All the rest into Freedom.

- How did diplomacy go with your neighbors?
DoWed early-ish by the Indonesians, but 1 CB was enough to stop their triremes and warriors. Flat peace after 15-20 turns. No other wars.

- Were your UA and UU helpful in achieving your goals?
The maoi were great, ESPECIALLY with hotels. I wish I had read the description of of the hotel sooner, because maoi and hotels (and the other similar buildings) gives you A TON of tourism.

- Were any AI runaway's in your game?
Just me

 

[leif erikson]

First submission. Turn 330 cultural victory!

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Congratulations on your win. Best of luck in future.

 

[budweiser]

Stayed peaceful with 5 cities and had a long game. Here is me rocking the casbah to finish it off. I tried everything short of the religious city spam and war to make tourism, but there is not enough available I guess. Still needed science to get a faster win.

 

[Monthar]

I screwed up royally on this one.
1st I didn't expand enough to take full advantage of Sacred Sites + pagodas and cathedrals for 4 tourism per city.
2nd I didn't build enough troops for the war.
3rd I started a war with Brazil way too early, which pissed everyone off and prevented any more RAs, open borders, etc, etc.
4th I didn't take Indonesia out the first time they DoW'd so when they DoW'd again during my war with Brazil they took Samoa which broke several deals and caused me a lot more problems.

Indonesia, Brazil and the Shoshone where the 3 I had the hardest time getting influential with. I ended up wiping out Brazil and Indonesia and finally getting the Shoshone to Influential.

I ended up with 7 cities I founded and a bunch I puppeted.

Here's a screenshot of my final turn.

Spoiler :

The first 3 civs I got influential with were fairly early on so I thought I was well on my way to a sub 200 victory.

I had 3 reloads thanks to an overheating issue that made the game get a bit screwy when I first started doing stuff on those turns. At least I've had the autosaves set to each turn so I only had to redo a few moves with each.

When attempting to submit the game I got this error. I tried twice and both times I had ensured I had the save for GotM 66 selected not 65. I think the submission system is confused since both games have the same civ and VC. So I've attached the save to this post.

ERROR !!

There was a problem with your submission.

Your entry has not been recorded for the following reasons:

You appear to have already submitted an entry for Civ5 GOTM 65. You are only permitted to submit one entry per game. If you need to resubmit, please contact a member of GOTM Staff for permission.

If you selected an incorrect file then please resubmit using the correct file.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks, Monthar. Your diagnosis is spot on. I saw the error messages.

Normally, there wouldn't be a problem. as the system calculates a checksum for the submitted save, and tries to match it to the starting save checksum. The checksums are not matching in all cases as a result of the changes to the BNW file format.

I've adjusted the script to work round the problem, so you should be able to submit your file now. Meanwhile, I'll use your file to work out where the checksum error is.

 

[Monthar]

Thanks, Monthar. Your diagnosis is spot on. I saw the error messages.

Normally, there wouldn't be a problem. as the system calculates a checksum for the submitted save, and tries to match it to the starting save checksum. The checksums are not matching in all cases as a result of the changes to the BNW file format.

I've adjusted the script to work round the problem, so you should be able to submit your file now. Meanwhile, I'll use your file to work out where the checksum error is.

Well the upload works now, but it's not reading the file correctly. It flagged my win as a loss, which you can clearly see in the screenshot I posted previously that I had the gold cup victory icon on screen.

It did get the turn number correct, but lists the date as 0 AD instead of 1946 as shown in that same screenshot.

Game: Civ5 GOTM 66
Date submitted: 2013-08-02
Reference number: 29408
Your name: Monthar
Game status: 3 Loss
Game date: 0AD
Turns played: 366
Base score: 2609
Final score:
Time played: NA
Submitted save: TSG66_Cultural Victory.Civ5Save
Renamed file: Monthar_C506601.Civ5Save

 

[AlanH]

Thanks. That will be another error relating to the file format change. I was congratulating myself on having seen one successful submission last night

Investigating.

 

[budweiser]

Monthar if you are over heating, have you tried cleaning the dust out? That worked for me. I haven't had any heat issues since.

 

[Monthar]

The overheating is only because we've been having some 100+ degree days. Plus we found out the dogs got under the house and ripped into the vents so they could keep cool, which made the house heat up a lot more than normal. I think we got up to about 85 or so in the house until we fixed the vents, but it took a long time for the house to cool back down.

Normally my computer doesn't overheat. This was a rare thing caused by extenuating circumstances.

I did clean all the dust out last week.

 

[casualplayer]

Turn 292 Cultural win. I was a belligerent blue jean and rock music promoter. I wanted to try a different tactic, pillaging caps for great works and also kicking the crap out of my opponents' CPT so my Tourism would overtake them sooner. The AI can't handle Galleas that can travel through and fire from ocean so I ended the game with all but Portugal, Assyria and Poland's caps. Could have easily taken them all and got a Domination win somewhere around Turn 250 with my Range/Supply fleet.

I settled in place and founded 3 more cities, one extremely late just to get the Iron from that tiny island to the west of the starting position so I could make Frigates. Second city was Rock of Gibraltar, and that 5 GPT kept my economy afloat when the rest of the world was in recession. I tried to drop my next Settler on those tasty Desert hills + 3 Gold on that isthmus running between Brazil and Assyria but somehow Assyria landed an unaccompanied Settler next to a barb camp, the barb ignored it and Ashurbanipal swiped my spot. He made up for it by being my attack dog all game long, snarling at Brazil and Poland whenever I asked for a lux or two. I almost shipped my Settler clear across the board to the King Solomon's Mines spot but instead I nabbed the island just above Antwerp and Sydney. Sydney, my "adopted" fourth city, looked sweet for the Maoi treatment so I captured it and annexed it. Then I puppeted like a fiend across the map.

Shoshone was the first culture I met and I made a point of fogbusting and ruin-clearing a wide radius around him. I Maoied every bit of vanilla coastline and frequently overwrote luxes and other improvements too. Everybody but Assyria was eventually Guarded towards me so I couldn't sell my extras for much of anything anyhow. There were very few Wonders that I didn't get in my cap that I wanted. Everything went crazy late; I got LoA on Turn 55 and Petra didn't go until about Turn 150.

With two Silver and a Stone staring at me I did my nearly standard Masonry/Liberty/Pyramids BNW open. I sure would have liked Mausoleum because of how many GPs I knew I would be burning through but there were none of the ancient goodies to be had. Pyramids plus Stonehenge meant my first GP was a GE, who got recycled into a GP through Hagia Sophia.

I finished cranking over 1600 CPT and popped a Great Writer for over 13000 just for fun. My Tourism topped 260 and I Great Musician bombed Portugal and Morocco just for the sake of finish speed. Sure, I'll give you 300 GPT and all my luxes for Open Borders, rock tour, DoW. I pillaged at least 6 Great Works from caps, maybe more.

Maybe I should have given the Sacred Sites tactic a try. I had the Gold/Silver pantheon to start, Pagodas and Tithe, and could have taken another Faith building when I enhanced my religion with my HS prophet. Instead of dinking around with Liberty and Tradition, and finishing Aesthetics, I could have finished Piety. Hmmmm..... Next time.

 

[drakar8888]

Hi people, here is my short story.

Settled in place, upon realizing it's a water map and there will be a massive scouting advantage to being Polynesia I switched my tech path into Writing and built the GL. After that I built all wonders that have any relevance to cultural victory.

Didn't build any military units. Didn't settle any cities.

Allied all city states. Filled tradition, patronage, aesthetics. Went freedom ideology.

My relevant techs stopped at hotels/Eiffel tower.

The Moroccans were by far the hardest to become influential over. They fell 25 turns after Indonesia.

I could't complete some theming bonuses because the AIs didn't have the great works that I needed. For example Oxford University requires 2 writings from 2 different eras and different non-player civs. But all the writings the AIs had were from medieval.

The AIs still have no idea what to do on a water map. Emperor felt like a super low difficulty setting.

Moai were completely useless when going this wonder heavy. I was generating 760 culture during Golden ages without working a single moai. I would take a farm or a mine over 1 culture/1 gold every time.

I got gifted a Merchant of Venice, which I used as a normal merchant.

 

[bjelar]

This is my first GoTM ever, and I must say it was a lot of fun

My strategy was to get A LOT of culture and social policies to help me win, and I decided to not have more than 3 cities. I also chose to be 100% pacifist, just to see how hard it was to win a culture victory without weakening or eliminating anyone from the game.

The start went very well. I managed to build Great library, Parthenon, Collossus, Hanging gardens (yay!), Statue of Zeuz (a large number of city states wanted me to), Notre Dame, Porcelain tower and Sistine chapel in my capital, and I was completely dominating.

The first mishap came as the Shoshone build the Uffizi ONE TURN before me, thus delaying my eventual victory by 50 turns at least

I went on to build the Louvre, Kremlin, Globe theatre, Eiffel tower, leaning tower and broadway while building archeologists to recover art. By now my cities produced so much culture (moais everywhere, my capital produced 385 culture per turn without golden age) I actually got every single tenent in the "order" ideology

But things were not going well in the world, Ahmad Al-Mansur was running away with it, conquering most of the world and having A LOT of culture and a different ideology. My tourism didn't make a dent. For a while I thought I was going to lose, and then the Indonesian guy attacked me with the largest fleet I've ever seen. My defences were a bit on the light side, pacifist as I were.

I managed to defend my cities, and even launched a counter-attack and won a minor city and threathened to take his capital. Then he offered peace. In the meantime, Marrocco revolted, changing their ideology to order My tourism sky-rocketed, and it was time for the world games.

My three cities practically build the world games, doubling my tourism output to 650 per turn without modifiers. I won the game 10-15 turns after the world games had been build.

To sum it up it was a lot of fun, but to win quickly I think you pretty much have to all but conquer the world, and then win a culture victory against the rubble you leave alive. To win peacefully, it is always going to be a long game.

I won on turn 392 (1972 AD), but I did make a number of mistakes. It wasn't neccessary to limit myself to three cities, I didn't really need every single social policy
I should have build the Uffuzi
I forgot about researching refrigiration as soon as possible, because I was to busy getting my hands on battlehip to pay the Indonesian back for their surprise attack.

Yay, can't wait untill next time

 

[leif erikson]

This is my first GoTM ever, and I must say it was a lot of fun

Yay, can't wait untill next time

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Congrats on your win and best of luck in future.

There are plenty of older GOTM's to practice on.

 

[glory7]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 66
Date submitted: 2013-08-02
Reference number: 29409
Your name: glory7
Game status: Culture Victory
Game date: 540AD
Turns played: 137
Base score: 943
Final score: 3492
Time played: 3:46:00
Submitted save: glory7_0137_gotm66.Civ5Save
Renamed file: glory7_C506601.Civ5Save

Sadato wrote a nice guide about this sacred sites culture fast win strategy. This strategy works best in pangea and works well up to emperor difficulty. It can be done at the immortal level but not always (you can find my sample screenshot of immortal shoshone t120 (quick speed) win at that thread). For deity, it's tough and not really recommended.

Basically, except for the early capital growth you ignore growth in expos - actually, I let citizens work at hammer/gold/culture/faith tiles instead and limit growth to 2-3 for most cities. All you need is shrine, monument, and temple. In particular, don't bother at all with library - I don't think I had any. With those 3 required buildings, each city provides 5 faith and 3 culture - and if you buy pagoda/mosque, it goes up.

Settle on top of lux, hills prefered. Do not plan to buy some important tile(s) on 2nd or 3rd ring. You don't have that much money. Expo like crazy until you run out of happiness. Once you can buy some pagodas and get CS allies, you can expo more.

The difference is I went stonehenge instead of pyramid (as for islands map you don't really need many workers and don't need roads). Also, having no roads means that happiness could be a serious problem as you cannot get +1 happy from liberty meritocracy policy.

SP: liberty free settler - piety till reformation - was going for liberty finisher but needed 4 more turns...

religion: religious idols - church property+pagoda - mosque+itinerant preachers
(should have gone initiation rites instead)

cap BO: 2 scout - monument - granary - worker - scout (to get worker from nearby CS) - stonehenge (worker bought) - settlers - shrine after piety open - settlers - oracle when philo done - temple - circus - settlers

expo BO: shrine when philo done - monument - temple - units

tech: pottery - mining - calendar - animal - trapping - philo - civil service - etc

I settled about 20 cities and had one puppet (Morocco cap - gave other city to assyria). 3 more settlers were waiting on the spots, but I didn't as I did not want to delay liberty finisher GM - well, I could not get it anyway.

DoFed with Portugal and Brazil. Also did with Poland later but he backstabbed (no meaningful consequence though).

Indonesia was hostile as I settled too many cities near him (sorry dude). As he got lots of culture too, I got catapult army and attacked him. Plundered 2 cargo ships so that I could ally culture CS. Without any real fight, he offered a city - I just took his gold+gpt and moved on to Morocco. He had jungle +1 culture pantheon and both GLs, and finally parthenon. He was a culture "runaway" and had no army.

My 5 catapults+something took his cap without any loss - and got a great work. I took his remaining city (I captured his settler so he had only one other city) and gave it to assyria, who had miserable culture and score anyway.

After that, I just took a tour with my 9-10 units and got some tributes from CS so that I could maintain culture and happy CS allies. Other civs could not reach 1500 total culture when I got CV so no need for another war. Maintaining open borders and trade routes for 50% bonus was more important. I also got shared religion bonus with 2 civs.

It was a quite lucky game for me as there was only one culture runaway (and he even built parthenon!) and other civs had similar culture levels so I did not even need GM concert bomb. You can see at the screenshot that the top culture guy was like sub 1500 at t137...

 

[tommynt]

I knew glory d finish in the 130s.

if I knew what i was doing I proly d have had too

gj

 

[glory7]

I knew glory d finish in the 130s.

if I knew what i was doing I proly d have had too

gj

Thanks - I have done this strategy lots of times already and I know that you do not have many BNW culture game experience. This sacred site rush is so broken

 

[AE_]

I had no idea about sacred sites, so I played a "normal" culture game and finished at turn 232. Hopefully I can be among the fastest that didn't use sacred sites... Really happy about how my game went, and I believe the new CV is more fun than the old one. To bad that the GotM games will be all about sacred sites, hopefully they will fix this in a patch.

But gg glory, I had not expected anyone to win almost 100 turns before me.

I will probably post some details about my game later. Now I have to try sacred sites.