TSG86 After Actions

[Hammer Rabbi]

Welcome to the TSG86 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.).

- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?
- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?
- Did Persia's unique traits factor into your Diplomacy game plan? If so, how?
- How did you adjust your strategy to account for No Espionage in a Diplomacy 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). Please refrain from posting videos until the deadline for submission is over.

Would be interested to hear any thoughts on game setup.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Turn 258 win -- really played it subpar, hit Satellites with 4500 faith, so that's not exactly brilliant planning on my part. Got addicted to building wonders ... shocking, right? Then had to cool my heels for 20+ turns until the vote.

Went standard 4-city tradition, started with 2 cites before NC. Slower start that should have been because barbs kept popping up, forgot that on King they stay around until you clean 'em up. No war except for the one I started to teach Egypt a lesson about sending great prophets my way. 10 turns later (no actual combat) he gave me 28gpt, so I thought that was okay.

Also, lost out on Great Library -- turn 50. I underestimated King, I guess, thought it'd take them longer! Oops.

Golden Ages that are 16 turns long make it easy to get enough $$ to buy the vote ...

As far as the questions go -- when you're playing on a difficulty level where half the civs don't enter the Renaissance before turn 200, and you know you have to max out science -- I think turtling is probably the best strategy. On the other hand, I could have supported more than 4 cities, so my hunch is some patient soul out there is going to play a 9-hour game where they take over most of the continent, get a late science burst from all those cities, and finish early.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

--forgot to mention, I had Oxford left as well. Brilliant.

A little more early culture would have led to finishing Rationalism earlier, and with the faith buys + Oxford, might have cut off 20 or 30 turns, depending on the World Congress timing.

 

[kb27787]

I don't remember my capitol building anything but wonders (didn't even finish rat but bought GE... only finished rat when I used the finisher for telecomm or smthg... I'm a wonder addict)
(didn't really know how to time the WC cycle but oh well...) wanted to save the faith for merchants but in the end I probably would've shaved several dozen turns off buying GS... oh well... I haven't played King since forever.

No matter what VC or what difficulty, my empire always ends up looking something like this.

Spoiler :

Pious, cultured, tall to the heavens, and slower than it should be in tech.

Sure... I had spots to expand to... but hard to do when you want ironworks... then hermitage... then wonders... Full trad, commerce, rat, patronage up to scholasticism and 6x freedom.
(srsly though I just learned that King AI are such pushovers that you'd best not take patronage or anything CS-ish... just play a normal science game and reach info ASAP and not worry about having allies... King AI just doesn't contest these CS at all)

 

[Tabarnak]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 86
Date submitted: 2014-05-16 04:41:14
Your name: Tabarnak
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1535AD
Turns played: 218
Base score: 1419
Final score: 3300
Time played: 3:34:00

I'm pretty happy with my game overall. I decided to go for a peaceful game(read: no puppets) and defended myself a bit against France but not much. No spies mean the obligation to build the Forbidden Palace and keep all the cs alive(or not?). I delibarately delayed Patronnage but the IA was so slow in techs that it wasnt really complicated to wait.

Anyway i expanded to 3 cities asap and built the GL in capital before the NC. Added 2 more cities, 2 of them can get an observatory. Like some others i have been able to ally Harun early in the game.

I have let down Petra because i didn't have enough desert tiles for my taste. I built Chichen Itza asap and got a GA right after(he lasted all the rest of the game excepted some few turns in the middle). Oracle have been built very early(78 by ''you know who'' ) but i landed my 7th policy right when i reached Astro(got Edu turn 108) around the turn 117. Culture was low at that monent(no Patronnage yet or anything else) but fortunately 2 cultural cs were far east and i allied them asap too.

Pub. schools around 160, Radio 165, Plastics around 185. Order until +25% from factories then Ratio completion. Bought a gs from faith. Bulbed rest of gs left some turns later.

PP was found around 145 but the first sesison didnt last very long. The 2nd lasted a full 25 turns and managed to get Global. right when we had to vote

Spoiler :

IronFighter will probably try the ''kill the AI and reach atomic era'' strategy. I'm looking for it i wonder if it will work at king level

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Tab -- nice job! How did you get to Plastics so fast? Did you pop some GS/Oxford to get there? In retrospect, definitely what I should have done. Addicted to Wonders!

Also - Order, clearly the right call. Freedom is great for Diplomacy victories if you need it. On King, you don't need the caravans to the CS, though.

 

[Tabarnak]

Tab -- nice job! How did you get to Plastics so fast? Did you pop some GS/Oxford to get there? In retrospect, definitely what I should have done. Addicted to Wonders!

Also - Order, clearly the right call. Freedom is great for Diplomacy victories if you need it. On King, you don't need the caravans to the CS, though.

1 gs + Oxford for Sci. theory. 2 gs for Plastics then the rest for Global.

Order is also nice for Sky Scrappers.

For a sub 200 turns you have 2 choices:

Reach Atomic with 1(or 2?) civ left or trying to delay PP as much as possible and do everything in like 35 turns from that point to get the 10 turns vote. So if you wanna get peaceful sub 200 you need to get PP around 150 and fly through the tech tree at lightning speed. It's a pretty hard task. You need PP to get Public Schools...you don't want to delay science buildings AT ALL.

The conquest mode is probably easier but at king level you still not have bonuses like lower levels than prince and still suffer from 5% science penalty which can be painful. Also, the king AI does build some units from time to time especially with France and Assyra in your world. I really hope to see someone doing a sub 200 finish for prince or higher it will be the first entry of that genre.

I don't have enough XP into singleplayer and especially diplo to dip a game into war mode....or trying to get 1 single round of PP vote. I will wait for a strong result and learn how it can be done

 

[DrakenKin]

Made 3 cities early, hard built settlers while buying workers and archers for barb camps. All other cities were puppets. Yes i conquered everyone but one AI (casimir) by the end.

Two of those cities had mountain / observatories.

All trade routes were shuffling food (all land), only kept one single regular trade route, and that was just for the CS quests. Main income early was from tithe and spreading religion with cheap missionaries.

I kept capturing workers, i had 12 at some point. Never had so many. I would take a city and they would swipe to make trade posts or make roads in no time, fun times.


Rationalism unlocked turn 148.
Turn 159 secularism unlocked, research is now 238 per turn.
Scientific theory turn 182, yep late late. But already eliminated napoleon and harun, while Ashurbanipal eliminated askia. Ashur is next on my list. The plan is to let casimir survive (he's backed up in a corner of the world that would be a pain to take without a navy), and hope he chews on Maria in the meantime.
Turn 218 used oxford to pop plastics. I now have 30 turns to eliminate 2 AIs if i want to skip information era. (5 cities, but some tricky placement.)
I was able to do just that. Good thing i built the great wall myself to stop the AI from slowing me down, Egypt already had 45 defense cities by the time i reached him.

Biggest challenge in doing it this way is that your focus should be the top of the tech tree, while you need bottom techs for wars. Since espionage is disabled on this map, you can not focus on top and steal bottom early, you have to get all by yourself, which hinders this strategy. I expect the best times to be peaceful tech focus.

It does slow you down quite a bit, unless you get some good timing on when to start, OR ally military states early and use free units to attack. (I had little luck on that front, quite a bit of gifted units but all melee.)


Anyway, turn 240, the world congress changes to "atomic era" even if i am still killing the last of maria's cities, meaning there are 2 AIs left, her and casimir, yet we still jumped into the atomic era. So it might be that you only need to kill 5 AIs? (And yes i am still in atomic and none of the other AIs are at atomic yet, checking demographics screen i am at 100% science and casimir is still 66%.)

Another odd thing, i needed 40 delegates to win, but after i eliminated maria, leaving only casimir on the map, this number dropped to 39! So it seems number of AIs does matter somehow.

Anyway i hit atomics left only casimir alive, at that point i had enough delegates (16 CTs, palace, world religion, and about to vote world ideology), and had to wait 23 turns for the world leader vote.

5 turns before the vote, i unlocked information age. I could probably take 30 turns off that if avoid some of the mistakes i made, but i still believe full peaceful play is the best strategy here, leaving some scientists or faith to rush through information era should work better than conquest.

Diplodomination win turn 268. Score 2063.

 

[DrakenKin]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 86
Date submitted: 2014-05-16 21:49:34
Reference number: 31131
Your name: drakenkin
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1785AD
Turns played: 268
Base score: 2063
Final score: 3892
Time played: 10:26:00
Submitted save: Darius I_0268 AD-1790OTWvictory.Civ5Save
Renamed file: drakenkin_C508601.Civ5Save


- Did the map type help or hinder victory and how?

Hinder. Too much tundra. Not enough good spots left for coastal cities, so no awesome food boosting unless you take a second city on a lake which i didn't like. But there was a lot of rivers and some mountain spots which was nice.

- How did the difficulty level affect your game decisions?

Wasn't worried about the AI, warmongered early and "fought the world".

- Did Persia's unique traits factor into your Diplomacy game plan? If so, how?

I did domination to reach diplomacy, attacking in golden ages was awesome with the extra +1 movement point. My trebuchets / canons could get in range of city, setup, and shoot. It made quite a bit of difference. Gold was good also, but it was mostly the movement points.

- How did you adjust your strategy to account for No Espionage in a Diplomacy game?

I did not. If i did i would have went peaceful instead taking the war path, since i could not steal the weaker techs from AIs. But i really was in a fighting mood and wanted to see what effect it would have to kill all AIs but one to skip information era and see if number of required votes would drop or not.

 

[Mutineer]

Could have done 30 turn early, but make some big mistakes in industrial era, So were not able to show one can beat it with out tradition. lol

 

[notyourtypical]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 86
Date submitted: 2014-05-17 10:17:57
Reference number: 31134
Your name: notyourtypical
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1690AD
Turns played: 249
Base score: 3141
Final score: 6410
Time played: 3:42:00
Submitted save: Darius I_0249 AD-1695.Civ5Save
Renamed file: notyourtypical_C508601.Civ5Save

Easy, yet fun game, especially after GOTM 85! I did nothing outside my borders until I picked up Chemistry around T200. Then I built many cannons and riflemen, 3 armies worth, and killed everyone but Arabia on my way to the Atomic Era. I probably should have gone conquering 30 turns earlier, but I can be a bit of a wonderwhore on low difficulties.

Spoiler :

 

[CAIM]

Man... I'm really blind and did not see the VC... (first time I played GOTM), so i won a science victory >.>
Going to try TSG85 then...

Moderator Action: Moved to the After Action thread. Once you open the save, please do not post in the Announcement thread as you may say something that spoils another player's game. Thanks.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Man... I'm really blind and did not see the VC... (first time I played GOTM), so i won a science victory >.>
Going to try TSG85 then...

Welcome to GotM! For future GotMs, they almost always have a single designated VC (and an occasional Any VC game) and there are usually some setting changes to pay attention to, things like No Ruins, Raging Barbarians, etc.

Thanks for playing and I hope you enjoy future GotMs!

HR

 

[KloppsKopp]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 86
Date submitted: 2014-05-18 12:47:30
Reference number: 31139
Your name: KloppsKopp
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 2005AD
Turns played: 426
Base score: 3091
Final score: 3636
Time played: 9:09:00
Submitted save: Darius I_0426 AD-2006.Civ5Save
Renamed file: KloppsKopp_C508601.Civ5Save

My first GotM as well. Didn't perform overwhelming, but had a lot of fun:
Finished by Turn 426 (first world leader election)...
2 City Tradition start, third city was founded after Autocrazy was picked (annexed Paris and Assur till then, though)
My mistake was to delay rationalism till after gunboat diplomacy... my culture output wasn't really high till I captured Theben once I had artillery... (France and Assyria went completely down before)

Then my puppet empire was creating lots of funds that I didn't really use... could've annexed and rush-buyed anything.

I controlled the World congress the entire game, made my religion the world religion early. Similarly, Autocrazy became World Ideology. Everyone was guarded to me until the songhai revoltet to autocrazy as well. That's why I didn't have any research agreements until the game was already over...

Bottomline, If I would've priorized science properly, I would have done much better, but the world leader elections started way too late.

 

[leif erikson]

Welcome to CivFanatics and GOTM.

Congrats on your first game and a win.

 

[glory7]

Game: Civ5 GOTM 86
Date submitted: 2014-05-19 15:59:54
Reference number: 31143
Your name: glory7
Game status: Diplomacy Victory
Game date: 1420AD
Turns played: 203
Base score: 2188
Final score: 5470
Time played: 6:42:00
Submitted save: glory7_gotm86_203.Civ5Save
Renamed file: glory7_C508601.Civ5Save

This is an epic moment of this game:



So I miscalculated my culture, and I had to use Pisa for great writer so that I could finish rationalism. I used rati finisher to pop plastics last turn, and rush bought 1-2 labs. But I still had to research 4 tech... including archaelogy.

Fortunately, I had 3 GS (2 from faith, bought last turn, and 1 GS from PT), and just got oxford completed.



could pop penicillin with oxford, and lots of science leftover. But I was not sure that which one would come first - world congress (1 turn left), or advance to the next level world congress. I was about to ragequit if I miss this by one turn.

It seems that going into atomic era counted first. After that, it was just clicking the next turn.





I found the 2nd (and last) culture CS very late , and that was crucial. I miscounted the number of CS and I thought that I met all 16 CS....

SP: full tradition - pat open - pat left 1(oracle - could not save this for secularism as Songhai was clearly building it. I could see it from his cap) - rati open - secularism with 2 GW - rati right 2 - order till factory policy - rati finish (2 GW again)

religion: earth mother - tithe+pagoda (pagoda helped a lot. I think I got pagodas for all my cities, and culture, happiness from them really helped) - religious community+itinerant preachers.

Game plan: tradition 4 cities, and keep warring with 6 CB/Xbows. I killed everyone except Arabia and gave him the cities I don't need. I even had to give him poland cap with colossus and GW as I didn't want to increase the research cost.

 

[Tabarnak]

At which turn you opened PP?

I should try this next time.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

I was hoping for sub 200T victory and so would have been if I had reached the atomic era in first world congress not second (was close )

Unfortunately I built only 3 cities, and started conquest too early gaining underdeveloped cities; also in beginning lost GL to Egypt

I think the best strategy in this game would be a combination of strong science from native cities (5) with the late rapid conquest (3* XB strong armies - oval map is very good for it)

glory7 203T is very close to magic sub 200T
Tabarnak 218T is also very good for peaceful game

 

[DrakenKin]

I think the best strategy in this game would be a combination of strong science from native cities (5) with the late rapid conquest (3* XB strong armies - oval map is very good for it)

1) Do you ever use siege units before canons? (cataputs, tebuchets?)

The odd thing is that sometimes the AI completely ignores them and they can demolish cities mush faster than bows when left alone. Some other times the AI targets the siege units first and you lose them so fast that you regret building them in the first place. But what really pushes me to keep using them is those situations you fight vs a city and have very little placement for ranged units (corner coasts, too many hills, mountains), a couple of siege units pack a lot more punch than 4 or 5 bows and so it is easier for placement.

Also,

2) Do puppets increase science cost? If yes we'd need to hold warfare as late as possible.
3) Do you ever annex to make universities and run specialists? I am thinking when a puppet reaches 10 population it might be better to annex it and get more science from it instead of gold. But i am comparing that strategy to getting science from trading posts and just trade-posting all the puppets. Any thoughts on this?

Anyway very impressive times guys, it keeps me motivated to practice more and get better at this game.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

1) Do you ever use siege units before canons? (cataputs, tebuchets?)
2) Do puppets increase science cost? If yes we'd need to hold warfare as late as possible.
3) Do you ever annex to make universities and run specialists? I am thinking when a puppet reaches 10 population it might be better to annex it and get more science from it instead of gold. But i am comparing that strategy to getting science from trading posts and just trade-posting all the puppets. Any thoughts on this?

1)I never use catapults - too easy to kill, rarely trebuchets. Archery units are just too good - strong and mobile.
2)Yes unfortunately puppets increase science cost like other cities (also have 25% science penalty)
3)Annexing developed cities is very good idea, especially if you have gold to rush buy universities and courthouses