WOTM 05: Shaka of the Zuluhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/wotm05civ.jpg

This game MUST be played in Warlords patch version 2.08. We will NOT accept any games played under any other patch versions, and you can't play it in vanilla (plain) Civilization4!

Further, it MUST be played using the latest version of HOF mod for Warlords. This is currently version 2.08.003 (http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/mods/HOF-2.08.003.exe).



Game settings:
Civilization: Zulus (Leader: Shaka; Traits: Aggressive & Expansive)
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Prince (all the recent GOTMs and WOTMs has been of relatively high difficulty.. time for an easier game again..)
Map: Fantasy Realm, Crazy resources
Mapsize: Standard, Torodial (both east/west and north/south wrapping)
Climate: N/A
Water level: Low
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: normal
Victory Conditions: all enabled
Other settings: Raging Barbarians, No Tribal Villages


Shaka:
Shaka is Aggressive and Expansive; starting with Agriculture and Hunting. Aggressive gives a free 'Combat I' promotion to all melee and gunpowder units, and gives double production on Ikhanda and drydock. Expansive gives +2 health in every city, +50% hammers when producing workers, and double production on granary and harbor.

Unique unit: Impi (hunting)
The Impi replaces the Spearman. The Impi has the same stats as a spearman, but have a movement of two instead of one, and get a free mobility promotion.

Unique building: Ikhanda (requires no tech)
The Ikhanda replaces the normal barracks. It has same effects as the normal barracks, but in addition it reduces city maintainance with 20%, acting like a mini courthouse (with both ikhanda and court in same city the maintainance is reduced by 70%). It is slighly more expansive than a normal barracks, but since shaka is aggressive, the net effect is that it is still faster to build than a normal barracks for a non aggressive civ.

The starting screenshot is here (Click for larger version)
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/wotm05small.jpg (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/wotm05large.jpg)

Adventurer Class bonuses:
Start with Mystisism and Mining techs

Challenger Class Equalizers:
Start without Agriculture and Hunting techs

Fantasy Realm, eh? :lol: This ought to cut down on speculation along the lines of "if we move the Scout one east it might reveal an additional Flood plain, and then we could move the Settler to...."

I tried a game on that setting once but quit when I found that the map was just plain ugly to look at. There was a lot of Stone around in that game, and here's two Stone in our starting location. I guess it's more common on Fantasy Realm than normal. I'm sure stuff like Fur and Bananas will be more common as well since they're no longer limited to Tundra and Jungle. Maybe the resources that tend to be pretty common, like Pigs, will be somewhat harder to find as a result.

Another thing I noticed in my previous Fantasy Realm game was that it was a lot harder to avoid "bad" terrain like Ice, Mountains, Desert, and Tundra. I don't know if it is more common on this setting, or if this is just a factor of it being spread all over the map instead of concentrated together.

I think that Fantasy Realms uses something like the Lakes template in terms of it's land/sea set-up. If I'm right then this map is going to have a lot of land. And the map wraps in all directions. And we have perhaps the best early warmongering leader. (Impis are the fastest land unit in the game!) Hmm...

I tried this map for the first time last night. Pretty sure you are right about a LOT of land. Should be interesting with all that empty space and raging barbarians... :)

This looks fun, and a should make for a nice change. Definately going to give this one a go.

I've been waiting another WOTM to start (as I decided to reduce my playing to GOTM/WOTM only, takes way too much time - you know it, just one more turn!). But Fantasy Realm with crazy resources and normal (=tooo fast!) speed... not so excited about settings though!



I think I'll go for the Great Wall to avoid barbarian rush, I suppose there is no problems to get it. Then war, war, war till the end! My game plan is:

- Propably settle on place; maybe move one tile to west, there must be something better than 2 ice and a mountain. Lose the another stone, though. But we'll see what lays in the darkness after moving the scout. Maybe an oasis?
- Research order: Mining-Masonry-BW-(AH if no bronze around)-wheel-pottery-writing
- Building order: scout(max growth to size 2, then max shields)-worker-warrior(while growing size 3)-worker-settler-(worker-settler if there is two great city spots)-Great Wall
- Exploring order: keep scouts alive, explore a circle around capital and locate nearest neighbors, then fogbust near city spot(s)
- Axerush and annihilate the unlucky nearest neighbor after building 2-4 cities, keep 1-3 best cities and raze the rest, maybe another war just after that if I'm fast and powerful enough
- Recover and stabilize the kingdom, research CoL and forget city maintenance problems
- Second war when cats are available
- Final goal is a fast domination/conquest victory, both should be possible quite early even on normal speed because of relatively low difficulty level

I don't much care for such a setting, so I might play or continue one of the
earlier WOTM's instead.

Anyone up for posting a test map or two?

I might make one up when I get home, but it'll be pretty late...

I'm just wondering whether if we move the Scout one east it might reveal an additional Flood plain...

I was just looking at the picture again and I think this is the first time I've ever seen the computer not recommend settling in place. It looks like the settler is up so that is somewhat odd.

I was just looking at the picture again and I think this is the first time I've ever seen the computer not recommend settling in place. It looks like the settler is up so that is somewhat odd.

Settling in-place gives you, amongst other goodies, a mountain, two tundra-forests, an ice-forest, and a bare ice. So I'm not too surprised the computer isn't recommending it. (EDIT: Oh - and what looks like a desert. Lovely!)

Given this is prince level I'll be tempted to scout around for a couple of turns. On this map finding nice spots is going to be totally down to chance, and there could easily be something incredible a few tiles away. Only problem is, finding sites that don't contain some ice/tundra is going to be tricky I suspect.

Propably settle on place; maybe move one tile to west, there must be something better than 2 ice and a mountain. Lose the another stone, though. But we'll see what lays in the darkness after moving the scout. Maybe an oasis?


It looks like another ice without trees and either a desert or tundra square (I'm guessing tundra). Hard to see anything on the middle square except that it seems like it isn't a hill, nor does it have trees. Also, the stone you'd lose is on a 3 food square... Still, probably worth a quick look. Who knows if bananas are on that ice!


- Research order: (AH for growth?)-Mining-Masonry-BW-wheel-pottery-writing


The pigs are on jungle, so you'd need AH and IW to work it, wouldn't you?

I would start farming the floodplains and then switch to the sheep and the stone. Definately early warfare and survive the nightmare. I've played fantasy several times and it's quite a horror to find good places to settle. Added to that the poor settling of AIs and you'll end up with many useless cities unless you want to go through the troubles of refounding many of them.

Settling in-place gives you, amongst other goodies, a mountain, two tundra-forests, an ice-forest, and a bare ice. So I'm not too surprised the computer isn't recommending it. (EDIT: Oh - and what looks like a desert. Lovely!)

Given this is prince level I'll be tempted to scout around for a couple of turns. On this map finding nice spots is going to be totally down to chance, and there could easily be something incredible a few tiles away. Only problem is, finding sites that don't contain some ice/tundra is going to be tricky I suspect.

By my count, if you make the improvements (pigs/sheep/stone/gems), and farm the square to the east, you have 25 food and 21 commerce... doesn't that equate to a size 12 city? If so, doesn't seem too bad on this map.

I'm thinking I'll send Mr. Scout downriver to see if there is a good place for city #2. I think you're right on the ice/tundra (and desert) issue... so a start with +2 health and +2 happy isn't too bad.

The way I've been out teched on the last few GOTM/WOTM, I really don't want to waste any time sticking it to those SOBs! :mad:

By the way, how the heck do you keep up in a tech race on higher levels?

By the way, how the heck do you keep up in a tech race on higher levels?

Try to be pleased/friendly with at least two AI. Don't over-expand (try to keep research at 70%. Use one city as a GP-farm (run several specialists to generate Great People Points and then lightbulb techs to trade). Build cottages or capture cities with cottages and switch to Universal Suffrage and other cottage/research friendly civics. Get to liberalism first. Use spies to monitor AI research. Sell tech for gold which will fund your research. Capture cities to fund research. Make peace for tech. Build the Pyramids and switch to representation & specialist economy. Try to monitor the AI tech path to predict what techs they skip (select those and trade for their tech). Build libraries and monasteries in high commerce cities (specialize cities for research, great people or production). Or shut down research when you reach construction or engineering and kill them all :lol:

I would try to conquer the world with just Mining and BW, then shut down research. But I don't think I'll bother.

Really, dificulty is to low to be any fun.
Common, WOTM3 and 4 were resonalbly low dificulty.
3 was just monarch and 4 on extrimelly slow speed, which lowering dificulty.

I do believe average level of player increase, so games below monarch dificulty are probably not fun for magority now.

:D Well, I for one am happy with the low level! Thanks for the prince game. I'm looking forward to it!

I think it's just the thing after these higher level games - I'd even take a warlord game like the one we had way back in GOTM4 I think. :D

:D Well, I for one am happy with the low level! Thanks for the prince game. I'm looking forward to it!

I think it's just the thing after these higher level games - I'd even take a warlord game like the one we had way back in GOTM4 I think. :D


I agree.


The overwhelming majority of people that play CIV play at this level or lower and of course it is always fun to see the elitists stare down the length of their probosci as they post their supercillious rants when these games are proffered by the staff. Try to remember, by definition, 49 percent of you are below average (clinical studies repeatedly show that 75% of people claim to be above average -- are you one of them?)

The pigs are on jungle, so you'd need AH and IW to work it, wouldn't you?

You're right, somehow I thought that I don't need IW soon, maybe because of those gems in the forest. The other pig is still workable, although it's not worth it to research AH for just one pasture.

Fantasy realm? Crazy resources? What kind of map is this?

Was hoping for an immortal game, but perhaps this could be fun also. Not sure how to play, perhaps I will try an impi rush...

...or I might give a OCC a try again. :)


The great wall is going to be the most useful wonder since we will be facing massive barbarian activity. As we have stone it should be fairly easy to get.

Ugly map, fantasy is fun but bizarre.

I'm glad of the lower difficulty too. And Normal speed. I'm still staggering my way through WOTM4.

I'm probably settling in place on the Plains-Hill. Maybe scout to the west first to see if settling on the Jungle-Plains-Hill would be better.

No idea of my tech path... need to make a practice map and mess around.

Not played Shaka before. Do Impi's get both Combat I and Mobility I out the starting gate? They are like Chariots, then, except they kill any horse unit they meet. I wonder if concentrating on an Impi rush rather than an Axe rush would be better? Sounds like fun.

Of course Cu will turn out to be on a flood plain-Jungle tile, will need Iron to mine it!

Remember to fog bust, and research archery. This is Raging Barbs on a wide open, nearly all land map. Omnidirectional defense will be necessary. And the AI's will probably tech slow, like they did on the last Raging Barb map (WOTM2).

I'm not really sure what to do with the UU. In the past I've only really needed spear units if someone had hordes of elephants coming at me. Aren't they somewhat useless unless your opponent is mounted? The movement is nice though.

Anyone who's built the great wall - do the barbs lose interest in your borders or do they all congregate just outside your borders ready to pounce on any unit that emerges?

Barbarians just walk past you and tr to raze the roads that lead to other civs, other than that some may straggle but rarely.

Really, dificulty is to low to be any fun.
Common, WOTM3 and 4 were resonalbly low dificulty.
3 was just monarch and 4 on extrimelly slow speed, which lowering dificulty.

I do believe average level of player increase, so games below monarch dificulty are probably not fun for magority now.

Personally, I'd rather see higher as well, but I'm pretty sure the majority actually play below Monarch.

...I'm pretty sure the majority actually play below Monarch.

I disagree. As Civ4 is relatively old game, most of the sunday players have already forgotten it and went for some other game. All fanatics left have propably made their way at least to the Prince level - majority plays Monarch or higher.

I disagree. As Civ4 is relatively old game, most of the sunday players have already forgotten it and went for some other game. All fanatics left have propably made their way at least to the Prince level - majority plays Monarch or higher.

There's still going to be a steady trickle of players who have only just bought Civ4, or who have had it for a while but have only just started exploring the forums or the competition (and hence haven't learnt all the different strategies that various players here have developed to play on higher levels).

Also, I've certainly had games before that I've played a while, then left, then come back to again, or which I've maintained a low-level interest in for a long time; I'm sure it's plausible that such players exist for Civ too.

(I for one am glad that the GOTMs/WOTMs span a variety of levels going down to prince or lower. Both because I like that newer players get a chance to play them, and because I find GOTMs on lower levels than I'd normally play on interesting for experimenting with different strategies to see how they might play out.)

It would be interesting to know typical numbers of Civ4s sold weekly worldwide, does anyone have a clue? I admit that this type of game keeps selling much longer than average games, but is the flow of new players big enough compared to old veterans? I doubt that.

I made a test game. I regenerated a map till I had most of the features and some resources, then worldbuilt the rest.

http://www.deadzoom.com/member/yoohoo3131/Civ4ScreenShotWOTM.jpg

The save
http://www.deadzoom.com/member/yoohoo3131/WOTM5TestBC-4000.CivWarlordsSave

Yes, Impis get Combat I and Mobility for free. They're superb pillaging units and pretty good at everything else you might want. Axemen are their only real weakness, but if you can pillage away your enemy's metal...

If you build the Great Wall any barbarians inside of your borders will be forced out. And after that barbarians appear to ignore your territory completely. They'll just skirt the outside edges on their way to attacking your neighbors' cities.

I don't usually play at Prince level either, but this looks like a fun change of pace game to me. For those who think Prince is too easy a difficulty level, I suggest thinking in terms of "how fast can I win?" or "how high can I score?" In other words, consider the challenge to be doing better than the rest of us WOTMers. :)

Cabledawg

Thanks for the practice map. I have never played this map type before, so some practice will be essential.

Vixafox

I'm still relatively new to Civ4/Warlords...I can't consistently win on noble yet. So I for one am glad for an easier game.

I played my test map out and the game seemed really easy. Im not sure if its the difficulty level or the fact that the AI dont seem to handle the weird resource placement as well as a human. I was able to get the capitol up to size 16 with 4 specialist. I could have grown it further, but anything beyond that, gains you nothing. I built all the early wonders before the military buildup. Enjoyable game though and looking forward to the WOTM.

One more thing. Im not done with the game and have seen 70% of the map. Theres isnt any Iron anywhere I can see. I went into worldbuilder and there is 4 Iron on the whole map. 3 of them are within 7 tiles of each other. That seems weird.

This looks like a lot of fun, esp. the Raging Barbs, as I've not been playing with them at all recently.

Not sure which class I'll play, starting with zero techs seems kinda scary, but starting with the extra seems overboard, maybe I'll just flip a coin.

Cabledawg - major thanks for the save, I'm thinking I'll knock off a bit early today(like in an hour or two), and go try it out. Never played the Fantasy Map before, can use the practice.

Not sure which class I'll play, starting with zero techs seems kinda scary, but starting with the extra seems overboard, maybe I'll just flip a coin.Alternatively you can play Contender class (no bonusses and no handicaps :) ).

Alternatively you can play Contender class (no bonusses and no handicaps ).

Good idea.

I played my test map out and the game seemed really easy. Im not sure if its the difficulty level or the fact that the AI dont seem to handle the weird resource placement as well as a human. I was able to get the capitol up to size 16 with 4 specialist. I could have grown it further, but anything beyond that, gains you nothing. I built all the early wonders before the military buildup. Enjoyable game though and looking forward to the WOTM.

One more thing. Im not done with the game and have seen 70% of the map. Theres isnt any Iron anywhere I can see. I went into worldbuilder and there is 4 Iron on the whole map. 3 of them are within 7 tiles of each other. That seems weird.


Dude! At least write "spoiler" on the post! I didn't want to know that! :(

One more thing. Im not done with the game and have seen 70% of the map. Theres isnt any Iron anywhere I can see. I went into worldbuilder and there is 4 Iron on the whole map. 3 of them are within 7 tiles of each other. That seems weird.

It must be a perfect-crazy game with unforeseeable results.:crazyeye: The explorering units play a very important role as never they do. It will be definitly funny if we'll get into such situation:lol:

Looks like fun. Like the last game on Marathon, this presents something different that I, and I think many others, would probably never otherwise play.

And Prince level is a wise choice. With two games a month and players of different skill levels, GOTM will attract more participants with varying difficulty levels. :goodjob:

One more thing. Im not done with the game and have seen 70% of the map. Theres isnt any Iron anywhere I can see. I went into worldbuilder and there is 4 Iron on the whole map. 3 of them are within 7 tiles of each other. That seems weird.

Since I've not played on fantasy world, I was trying a few test maps to see what they look like. It looks to me like on each map, the game picks one or two resources that just go everywhere - eg. on one map there was pigs all over the place, on another map gold scattered everywhere (Imagine how fast science would go on that map), and other resources that are unusually rare.

One thing I did notice about these maps - there's going to be very little resource trading, coz to a good approximation, other than whatever the rare resources are, every civ has everything.

GOTM play has pushed me up to the higher levels and greatly improved my play to the point that I have had some fairly decent results, but I still like playing the lower levels as a different kind of challenge. I also would like to see 200+ submissions for some games, and the attraction of new players to GOTM play. I think moving the WOTM game down as the GOTM progresses up is a good idea; it fits the moderators plan to keep the difficulties out of sync, it attracts more players, and it gives us a less intense challenge as GOTM play pushes up the expected Deity level game.

Well, I'm always asking for maps to play, so I figure I owe one now and again... someone let me know if I did it wrong, I really don't use worldbuilder much at all. But, here it is!


http://www.deadzoom.com/member/mastiff/WOTM5-TestBC-4000.CivWarlordsSave

GOTM play has pushed me up to the higher levels and greatly improved my play......I think moving the WOTM game down as the GOTM progresses up is a good idea.

What he said! Agreed!

...or I might give a OCC a try again. :)

I'll pick up that challenge. What about vasals? Is that for wimps?

In my test game I managed to build the Great Wall (2360 BC), Stonehenge (2160 BC) and the Pyramids (1360 BC). I also founded Judaism (2160 BC). My intentio n with WOTM5 will be to build as many culture generating buildings (to span as many tiles as possible from my only city) and found a couple of religions (without adopting any) to be able to build monastaries and temples and to spread religions to create a suitable amount of tension between the AI (AI research too fast => spread different religions, AI research too slow => spread one religion).

mayby i'm crazy but i like that starting location :D
research masonry and you have a decent city already? 2 stone and gems + food? and on plain hills.

cant wait to start this!(although i have to finish wotm4 too :D )

I'll pick up that challenge. What about vasals? Is that for wimps?

You brave person! ISTM that OCC is going to be particularly difficult on a fantasy realm map due to the likely difficulty in finding any spot for your one city that doesn't have quite a number of near-useless ice/mountain/desert/tundra tiles in it. OTOH I guess the stone makes things easier.

btw I'm intrigued by the stone. Is it there because Gyathaar chose to give us a helping hand or because stone is one of the resources that the map generator selected as a common, appears-almost-everywhere resource. The fact that there are two stones suggests the latter - in which case building the great wall/pyramids/stonehenge ahead of the AI might not be the total walkover that it will be if Gyathaar was being nice and we're the only civ that has stone.

Impossible to answer until that scout has done some wandering.....

I also btw notice that high food spots are a lot rarer on fantasy realm maps, since the map generator seems to have a tendency to stick all the food resources (except, strangely, deer) on tundra or ice. I think I'm going to find that a real issue since I tend to go for long sciency games and so am looking for city spots that can easily grow to size 20-ish cities in reasonable time. I predict Erkon is going to struggle with that too...:mischief:

Why do those two ice spaces have the food that a flood plains would?

I also btw notice that high food spots are a lot rarer on fantasy realm maps,

This spot has an absurd amount of food and I'll bet moving to that blue circle has even more.

I think they are ice-flood-plains

This spot has an absurd amount of food and I'll bet moving to that blue circle has even more.

I'd say it has an excellent amount of food at the beginning (especially with that ice-flood-plain-sheep), enough to get the city up to size 8-10 comfortably, and certainly more than adequate for early conquest games. But for late game, beyond size 8-10, you'll start to run into increasing food problems because of all the marginal tiles (unless you start farming over all the cottageable tiles, in which case the city won't actually be doing much useful).

You brave person! ISTM that OCC is going to be particularly difficult on a fantasy realm map due to the likely difficulty in finding any spot for your one city that doesn't have quite a number of near-useless ice/mountain/desert/tundra tiles in it. OTOH I guess the stone makes things easier.
...
I think I'm going to find that a real issue since I tend to go for long sciency games and so am looking for city spots that can easily grow to size 20-ish cities in reasonable time. I predict Erkon is going to struggle with that too...:mischief:

Brave or Stupid, the final spoiler will tell :lol: I plan to settle in place. The starting site is excellent (extra hammer from plains/hill) with lots of nice tiles to work. In my test game, I reached about size 14 (with 5-6 specialists), and around 1600 AD I had 5k gold in surplus, running 100% science from the start. I had settled 10 great people and I had a solid tech lead.

The Great Wall and the Pyramids are key wonders to build.

Dude! At least write "spoiler" on the post! I didn't want to know that! :(
Comments about the test map (like no iron nearby) won't necessarily apply to the real map, and isn't a spoiler. If you don't want to hear things like the city can grow to 16, you probably shouldn't be reading this thread. That's the kind of thing it's for.

Brave or Stupid, the final spoiler will tell :lol: I plan to settle in place. The starting site is excellent (extra hammer from plains/hill) with lots of nice tiles to work.

Starting position is about as good as it gets on Fantasy/Random. Build it up, settle one other city on a military resource, and take the remaining good city sites away from the AI's that have so conveniently settled and developed them for you.

The Great Wall and the Pyramids are key wonders to build.

Agreed. On a test map it was easy to beat the AI's to both. I'd have gotten Stonehenge too, had I realized it had not been built. Great Wall keeps the barbs away, and Pyramids gives Representation for pop growth/science, or any of the other government civics as needed.

For any of you lurkers who have been wondering about playing a GOTM, this is the one to try. Use the adventurer save. With Mining and Mysticism, you'll rock!

Hey one can allready submit Wotm 05! My guest one does not need initial save for that! ;)

I'll pick up that challenge. What about vasals? Is that for wimps?




Hehe, are you sure you dare to compete with me? ;)

Ok, let's make it official and put some pride on stake. Winner = highest score? Or do you have any other idea? Most cities razed? Highest culture?

Good luck!

Btw, wassals are definitely for wimps.

Just got Warlords for my birthday, haven't even noticed there's a fantasy setting yet. Should be interesting.

Comments about the test map (like no iron nearby) won't necessarily apply to the real map, and isn't a spoiler. If you don't want to hear things like the city can grow to 16, you probably shouldn't be reading this thread. That's the kind of thing it's for.

IMO stating there is no iron around is a spoiler for any game. It ruins part of the game as you already know certain information. It doesn't matter if its a test game or not, out of respect for other peoples enjoyment of the save, it would still be nice to state its a test save spoiler. Just my two cents.

re: WOTM5: I considered playing challenger for this one, but in the end decided to go with contender. I'll probably settle in place. I've never played this type of map.

Comments about the test map (like no iron nearby) won't necessarily apply to the real map, and isn't a spoiler. If you don't want to hear things like the city can grow to 16, you probably shouldn't be reading this thread. That's the kind of thing it's for.

Oh, hey... Don't get me wrong. I just wanted to play the map without knowing no iron was around. I knew it wasn't a spoiler for the real game... Knowing some resources like that could be centralized was important. Just looking forward to playing the test this week-end, was all.

Do not post here once you have started the game

Do not post here once you have started the game

Am I allowed to take the adventurer warlords game. I have never played a warlords game but I ahve finished in the top half in the standard ones a coupel of times?

If you have ever finished in the top 50% in a game then you are not supposed to compete at Adventurer class.

The objective of Adventurer class is to allow novice players a chance to get into the GOTM competitions "at the shallow end" with a few aids - "life preservers", or "inflated arm-bands". It is not intended as a refuge for more experienced players who want an easier ride for a month. This *is* a competition, after all, and its primary objective is to help players to develop their skills under a variety of game conditions. Once you have learnt to play without such aids, you should really avoid using them again.

I was just wondering ow differnent warlords is in middle of test game at the moment. And seems differnent.

What is the HOF mod, and why oh why do I need it? (Beside the obviosu I can't play otherwuse)

The main discussion thread about the HoF Mod is here.

Apart from providing the staff with better information for managing game security, it provides a number of enhancements that you can choose to use or disable in the Options screen. They include better-organised Domestic and Foreign advisers, auto-logging of the game events to a file, and additional on-screen warnings for things like city growth and unhappiness.