I've always respected Zara played by the AI, always seemed to do good but never really considered him a strong leader.. untill last evening, when I decided to give him a go!

I start my casual Terra/Standard/Marathon/Monarch game and pick Zara..
I find myself in a not-so-good land, w/o lots of resources, tundra in the North, Ocean west & south and Izzy with the Khmer on the east (Khmer always generate ivory at their capital for some weird reason). I mumble ". .. .. .. ." to myself. Monty, Justinian, Shaka and Mehmed :crazyeye: completed the cast.

The only (military) resource I got my hands on was Iron.

Game starts, I manage to get SHenge and crank out 7 cities (became 9 in the end) before an economy crash-where ORG helped a LOT to recover..

To the point : The Stelle kicked ass with Zara's CRE, cheap Libraries, Theaters and Collosems, steadily pushing the borders.

Theocracy Drill IV Oromos were DELICIOUS!!! I cannot believe this INSANE unit, which with only 1 xp giving civic comes with DrillIV out of the 'racks and can be upgraded to Rifles -> Infantry -> Mech Infan..

I also got Steel after Oromos and at that point, the balance started to tip to my favor...

Now, why do I make this post? It's not about brag but only to make some people give Zara a little bit of love! Do not do the mistake I did all this time and ignore him.. It seems that Zara games can be VERY fun and Oromo's are INSANELY powerfull..

I'd like to see Cyrus of Ethiopia.. Charismatic Oromos with extra GGs, extra hapyness from SHenge/Stelle and kickass culture pushing + with cheap settlers to Rexx at start..
and a draftable UU.. heck, it's gonna be my next game!

You're right - Zara is an absolute monster - CRE is such a great trait for aggressively settling, and ORG helps pay the bills for all those Drill IV oromos - a bunch of them with siege support and you'll never lose a single oromo.

He's great to tech gunpowder, chem, then lib-steel while drafting oromos - build some cannons and kill kill kill. All the new cities will pop borders instantly with CRE, and get cheap whipped courthouses.

Pretty much yeah. There's a trifacto of strong leaders with the creative trait and Hunting/Mining. They usually bust out the gates and give an early advantage for the human player.

Suryavarman
Catherine
Zara Yaqob

Zara is a very strong leader, no doubt about it.

Pretty much yeah. There's a trifacto of strong leaders with the creative trait and Hunting/Mining. They usually bust out the gates and give an early advantage for the human player.

Suryavarman
Catherine
Zara Yaqob

They're some of the best AIs, too (mostly thanks to CRE IMO). They're just good leaders period, no matter who has them.

Agreed on the strength of Zara. IMO, the recipe for success with him is to set up a good Globe theatre city real early and draft the crap out of Oromos. You can back them up with trebs or even cats adn they will do some damage. Backed up with cannons they are, of course, unstoppable, but then again so are muskets.

Suryavarman
Catherine
Zara Yaqob
___________

Indeed. Those are 3 of my favorite leaders. Throw in Hatty for quick wars and land grabbing! Throw in Louie for quick Oracle (chopped at 2nd city aggressively settled towards AI) Hammer economies! Throw in Willem for massive land grabs and abuse of water tiles!

Hummmmmm, I guess I'm actually a CRE junky lol. The only other leaders I actually play with that aren't CRE are Asoka, Gandhi, Fredrick, Napolean, and when I'm in the mood for real abuse, either Persian leader.

I played Zara for the first time a week ago and I agree, he's crazy powerful. He has what amount to a super creative trait (with the stele) and the Oromos are very powerful as well. Everything seems to fit together rather well. He can expand like crazy, he can push borders back rather easily, and he can wage war well (one tech away from BW, Oromos, and ORG). If he started off with the Wheel instead of hunting, that would be the icing on the cake.

I played Zara for the first time a week ago and I agree, he's crazy powerful. He has what amount to a super creative trait (with the stele) and the Oromos are very powerful as well. Everything seems to fit together rather well. He can expand like crazy, he can push borders back rather easily, and he can wage war well (one tech away from BW, Oromos, and ORG). If he started off with the Wheel instead of hunting, that would be the icing on the cake.

Hunting/Mining is far superior imo. Hunting lets you build camps and let you research AH directly. It's also a prereq for Archery.
You can get any two worker techs and then still go Archery 3rd if required, including AH>BW->Archery.
The Wheel is only really fine as a starting tech when coupled with Fishing or Agriculture since that opens up Pottery. Otherwise it's pretty bad.

It seems like every few games I've got Mr Tracksuit dowing and coming at me with a stack of Oromos. Too bad Curris/Knights are immune to First Strikes and he doesn't seem to like Formation. :D

Hunting/Mining is far superior imo. Hunting lets you build camps and let you research AH directly. It's also a prereq for Archery.
You can get any two worker techs and then still go Archery 3rd if required, including AH>BW->Archery.
The Wheel is only really fine as a starting tech when coupled with Fishing or Agriculture since that opens up Pottery. Otherwise it's pretty bad.

I think to some degree it's a matter of personal taste. I value being able to get copper hooked up immediately for a possible early rush. I think that the ability to build camps is generally an insignificant plus due to the low probability of having elephants, furs, or deers in the immediate vicinity of your initial settler. You are far more likely to have a food resource in the BFC in which case you can pick up AH from agriculture, which you're going to need anyway.

Hunt/Min is definitely better because it allows for a quicker start. The only time the Wheel is a good starting tech is with Agr, and even then, I would rather be able to improve 1 food source, 1 mine, and chop immediately. If you do need to rush you are going to need AH or BW either way so delaying the wheel matters not.

You don't need archery as proved by TMIT warrior busting tactics. I would much rather have Agr/Min but hunt/min is undoubtedly superior to TW/Min.

i like hunt/min because you get the early exploration, which i think is quite important, especially if rexing, and can go 1 of fish/ag/ah to start depending on what food you need. it kinda sucks to start coast or inland and have the opposite starting food (not a huge deal, but still).

i like hunt/min because you get the early exploration, which i think is quite important, especially if rexing, and can go 1 of fish/ag/ah to start depending on what food you need. it kinda sucks to start coast or inland and have the opposite starting food (not a huge deal, but still).

I agree. It's a bit funny actually. I prefered Hunting/Mining to Agriculture/Mining on Monarch and Emperor but the increased AI grabs and worse results from Huts on immortal lead me to favour Ag/Mining more.

Now on deity I'm back to prefering Hunting/Mining as the scout allows for a quicker/better prediction of what type of landmass you're on since this is so vital for early game strategy on deity (I typically play Fractal). Not to mention that it gives you Archery quicker which again is less critical on non-deity.

I haven't been able to spawnbust with warriors successfully in all games, sometimes there's too much land to cover and it is more of a gamble in terms of archers wandering in from outside the immediate area and taking out your first expansion. There's also the gaps before you get a good coverage around your city where you don't have perfect knowledge, esxpecially if you have a lot of jungle say, because units might have spawned before you got your warrior in place even if he's now preventing new spawns. All it takes to break the spawnbust then is for one such already spawned barb to kill one of your units and the whole system can break down as that area may now be flooded with archers going for your capital/expansions. So I think that strategy is situational on deity at least, sometimes it works great.

All you've mentioned I fully agree with, but I haven't seen anyone mention cheap courthouses and cheap libraries. Both are must have buildings in most of your cities and with half the production cost it really speeds up your progress too.
I actually also had my first game with him 2 weeks ago and it was fantastic. Managed to reach CoL quickly and pumped out courthouses in my quickly rexxed cities which recovered my economy really fast together with the ORG trait ofcourse.
Besides that I also pumped out espionage points so fast before any other civ could that I didn't have to raise my espionage slider to have by far the most espionage points which made war really easy causing city revolts.

Also cheap Theaters and Coloseums, happyness becoming non-issue and quicker Globe Theater for drafting Oromos... Everything just fits in so nice...

Also not that Zara is one of the easier leaders to get a cultural victory with. Stele just does his job very well. Oromo are great city defenders and with the cheap libraries and theaters you are certain of high cultural defenses.

I never really considered playing Zara... In fact, I remember reloading once when I got him in a random leader game because I remember not liking him. I will definitely give him a try once or twice now.

The thing I do not like about the musketeer UU is that they are obsolete so fast that it is just painful. I refuse to go epic or - god forbid - marathon just to get a good sense of warfare in the earlier stages. Promoting the Oromo's to rifles as suggested or going maces + cannons would somewhat solve that though...

Oromo's getting obsolete fast? Not really.
If you go towards Steel you will have cannons to do collateral first and mop up with Oromos later. The fact that most mounted units are immune to First Strikes gets neglected by the bonus vs mounted units DrillIV gives.
If you go towards Rifling on the other hand, you can upgrade your Oromos to Riflemen. That is Drill IV riflemen with a total of 35% bonus vs cavalry, 60% collateral damage immunity, 4-7 First Strikes and (hold your pants) 5 xp away from Pintch promotion... (because DrillIV is your 2nd promotion...) Formation comes at 17 xp if I remember correct with this line of promotions, not hard to get. This way you get to have a single stack that is great at both attacking and defending and counter to Gunpowder and Mounted units as well.

Beeline to Flight-Radio-Assembly line and rule the world with bombers, fighters and infantry.

Yup, that is a great UU indeed. I never really considered them to be good, or even top half...

Shows what I know. :lol:

As I said, imagine Cyrus of Ethiopia...
DrillIV, Pintch & Formation at 13 xp. That's Vassalage,Theocracy, Barracks and a settled GG (which is piss easy to get with an Imperialistic leader...)
Also you get the extra hapyness from the Stelle...

ORGAAASM...

IMO Stonehenge is a waste of hammers with Zara unless you're going for a cultural win.

Even then it is since you would need only 3... A monument adds so little to the cultural win that it can very well be omitted. I understand and respect the merit of stonehenge, but saying it is that useful for a cultural win... Nah.

% mod on your towns is *nah*?

The +25% is *woohoo!*,. yet saying that stonehenge is that useful for a cultural win is *nah*.

Come to think of it, I am not making any sense. :lol:

Shenge enables Stelle (Ethiopian UB) in all cities, granting +1CLT/Turn and a 25% bonus on all culture.
Library, Religion, Temple, Coloseum & Theater, you are not goin for cultural. You are just pushing the heck of the enemys borders and put immense cultural pressure on his tiles & cities.
So you are telling me you want to skip that?

I love CRE and am also a big fan of Hunt/Mining combo. Gliese and Futurehermit are right on. Teching one food tech followed by bronze is a great opening.

I'm not a huge fan of Oromo's though, which everyone seems to love.

Mopping up after trebs/cannons? Pretty much any unit will win vs. a city already crushed by siege attacks. I like UU's that are reliable in the open field and can take a stab at attacking a city in the rare cases where siege cannot help.

I've tried oromos twice now and in both games my stack was attacked on the way to the city via massive mounted units (knights). Oromo's might as well have been normal muskets (Pikes defended but my trebs were hurt). When attacking a city, knights were chosen as the top defender when using oromos - again, they are reduced to normal muskets. Thankfully I promoted a few up the combat line. It's too bad they don't start with C1, C2. Drill is probably a lot better when they are upgraded to rifles and taking on cavalry (not immune to first strikes).

They're not uber units that can defeat anything, but every raves about Churchill redcoats getting D4 after 8XP, Oromos can get it after 5. Heck, Oromos can upgrade to D4/pinch riflemen with just 10XP, only slightly worse than Churchill redcoats.

They'd be a real menace played with an Imperialist leader, since Drill is great for getting lots of XP (especially the sweet spot where you can attack with 90%+ odds and still get 3XP from a win). It's too bad you can't upgrade a Maceman to an Oromo, and be able to get a cheap CR3/D4 unit.

As I said, imagine Cyrus of Ethiopia...
DrillIV, Pintch & Formation at 13 xp. That's Vassalage,Theocracy, Barracks and a settled GG (which is piss easy to get with an Imperialistic leader...)
Also you get the extra hapyness from the Stelle...

ORGAAASM...


I'm currently playing an unrestricted leaders game as Boudiccia of the Ethiopians. Free C1, DII and Charismatic? WHEEEEE!

Cyrus warmongers better than Boudi by far.

Stonehenge is never a waste on zara imho. Your unique building in every city can never be bad imho. 3,75 :culture: per turn outpushes almost every border early game making agressive settling very possible. It is like saying that stonehenge is wasted on sitting bull. Also denying the AI stonehenge means more culture push from the start.

I decided to start a game with Zara today... Wow. He is a very solid leader indeed. I never really considered unit upgrades because I dislike warring in general. I gave it a shot now, and despite me sucking at the actual warring, my oromo's and later upgraded riflemen made short work of anything the AI managed to throw my way.

I captured SH btw from spawning next to HC and he had stone is his bfc. I settled next to copper and wiped him out. thanks Incan bastard! :goodjob:

Cyrus warmongers better than Boudi by far.

Yes - Boudica is a poor leader.

Stonehenge

Imo is always a bad idea. CRE gives the luxury of freeing up the tech tree plus saving valuable tech time and saving hammers on stuff besides border popping builds. I'm not about to waste my time researching Myst + building monuments. The only time I build a monument is for close border culture wars, otherwise, NEVER.

massive lols @ "Mr. Tracksuit" comment... I think he looks like a spokesperson for Nike everytime I play against him :lol:

I was gonna say something like that too... the AI Zara always gets rediculous powerful. One not mentioned here I always have to face off against is Brennus. Dude always gets an early religion and gloats about it the whole game. But yeah agreed that Willem and S-man always do well. Joao is usually a pain in my side too for whatever reason.

re:Stonehenge -- I like it with Sitting Bull and Ramses (hey, free UB in all cities? Sign me up!). But with culture victories you really only need to build three monuments, and all three together take less time than one stonehenge. I'd much rather get the GWall up so I don't have to deal with barbs, or grab the Oracle for that juicy free tech -- Theology or metal casting more often than not.

The thing with Ethiopia is that Zara is CRE - that's usually your excuse NOT to have to build monuments. Having a CRE leader with a Monument-derivative UB is almost as useless as having an Observatory that produces Artist-pollution in your Science City; all very "Meh".

I like Zara, I like his traits, and he's a fun Civ to play and a significant AI opponent, but I think the UB/UU are flawed; nice, but nothing special.

And that's what I think about Mr Tracksuit. :)

What's wrong with his UU? They are super cheap and you can quite easily start producing Drill IV units right off the bat and when drafting they still start off with bonuses. You don't even need to wait for cannons - just treb/OW.

The UB is not worthless since it can be used to a) win culture wars and b) for cultural victory. That is a lot better than many UBs. Dun, Salon, Totem Pole, Feitoria?

Has Anybody trid Tokugawa with Ethiopia?

That's an extra drill off the bat, no? or does it not matter because they already start with it :(

Has Anybody trid Tokugawa with Ethiopia?

That's an extra drill off the bat, no? or does it not matter because they already start with it :(

Unfortunately free promotions of the same level don't add. =(

Unfortunately free promotions of the same level don't add. =(


oh, that sucks. Waste of a trait for their UU then

Some of my best games have been with Zara, including my first Emperor win. Darius I is still the best leader ever though, insane old washington FIN/ORG + decent UB + top tier UU is insane.

As far as Zara's UB goes, it's mediocre. Not bad considering they produce a lot of culture when they get old, I usually just pop them off wherever I need more cultural presence or in my three main cities if I go for cultural (which is a good option with Yara). There are definitely worse UBs out there, I think the worst one overall is the Dun, as walls are 95% useless anyways and the UB gives a useless bonus.

Some of my best games have been with Zara, including my first Emperor win. Darius I is still the best leader ever though, insane old washington FIN/ORG + decent UB + top tier UU is insane.

As far as Zara's UB goes, it's mediocre. Not bad considering they produce a lot of culture when they get old, I usually just pop them off wherever I need more cultural presence or in my three main cities if I go for cultural (which is a good option with Yara). There are definitely worse UBs out there, I think the worst one overall is the Dun, as walls are 95% useless anyways and the UB gives a useless bonus.

Next time you say "Dun" useless, try to do this :
0) Plant all your cities on hills
1) Plant Duns on all your cities
2) Spam Xbows&Longbows under Theocracy
3) Upgrade them on the Guerilla line
4) Dow on all your neighbours. See them get obliterated and crush their economies on you while they try to do the impossible
5) Keep on teching
6) Get to rifling and proceed to own everything with promoted G3C1+ riflemen...

I used to think that Dun was useless as well but it turns out that I was-well-WRONG!

Next time you say "Dun" useless, try to do this :
0) Plant all your cities on hills
1) Plant Duns on all your cities
2) Spam Xbows&Longbows under Theocracy
3) Upgrade them on the Guerilla line
4) Dow on all your neighbours. See them get obliterated and crush their economies on you while they try to do the impossible
5) Keep on teching
6) Get to rifling and proceed to own everything with promoted G3C1+ riflemen...

I used to think that Dun was useless as well but it turns out that I was-well-WRONG!That you need to point out that the AI is stupid in order to make the Dun seem powerful is a strong argument to saying that the Dun is in fact pointless.

@cardgame

The protective trait grants a free city garrison upgrade. Oromo's start with drill I & II. You would indeed get the protoctive bonus yet is does indeed not add to the drill line.

I also <3 Oromos, and the short time window for normal muskets is misleading. If you're willing to adjust your strategy, longevity is actually a big draw of the unit:
If Oromos+Cannons are enough for the first big push (quite likely since Cannons + Macemen tend to work just fine), we can leave Rifling be and mass-produce Oromos while teching to Assembly line.
This can often blindside the AI twice... soon after the first party is over (AIs get Rifling) we'll get Assembly line, trade for Rifling and clean up with highly-promoted Infantry.

There are solid but less impressive alternatives: Mass-production of Oromos to upgrade to Riflemen, or acquiring Military Science and being able to keep building Oromos for stronger Grenadiers. The latter is good if we want to continue pushing before we steamroll the world with our fake 'Infantry UU' (no regular one exists, and for good reason). However, it'll lead to very lopsided and possibly risky warfare... our offense is excellent, our defense leaves much to be desired.

*

Creative is one of my most hated traits (I tend to settle tightly so border pops are often irrelevant to me) and the Stele also leaves me extremely cold... but I suppose the combination could wrap around to excellent again in the right circumstances. Even if it doesn't, at least he still has ORG which is my favourite trait in the game.

To echo what Iranon just said:

The thing I do not like about the musketeer UU is that they are obsolete so fast that it is just painful. I refuse to go epic or - god forbid - marathon just to get a good sense of warfare in the earlier stages. Promoting the Oromo's to rifles as suggested or going maces + cannons would somewhat solve that though...
The key for me, and I prefer to do this with Napoleon above all of the others, is attempting to match up your Musket UU with cannons. You need gunpowder to get to chemistry anyway, so my plan is usually to start building trebs in my HE city sometime around the time I set my goals on bulb-aided Liberalism->Steel move. Once gunpowder is in, I'll probably have a second or third city start building the UU. The turn after I get steel, I set the slider to 100% gold until I can upgrade all of the trebs into cannons, and I send them off to war with a hodgepodge of whatever is lying around and a bunch of shiny new musketeers. The cannons rip the longbows/maces/pikes/knights to shreds, and the musketeers fly up the roads from the homeland to garrison and/or join the city busters. If I were Zara, I'd probably end up splitting the cannons into smaller stacks because of the Oromo's superior ability as an offensive weapon.

The point is, in this scenario, muskets have a much better useful life for a couple reasons. First, until the AI can field something that can stop cannons, you don't even NEED to rush towards rifling. I'm usually doubling back to pick up economic techs or other war help (Nationalism/Military tradition if the war looks like cannons aren't going to be enough to finish the job completely) at this point. I could easily research/trade for as many as 8 or 9 other techs before I need rifles.

Iranon -

Get off your lazy butt and honor the community with an Immortal Walkthrough! :)

Ha! Even thought I already spend far too much time on this game at the expense of things that might be almost as important, I actually set out to do a write-up some time ago... and developed a healthy respect for the people who keep that up because it seemed like very hard work!

I was constantly missing an informative screenshot that I could have sworn I took, wondering why the heck I even took another one, trying to justify my more harebrained moves, struggling to explain my goals even if I thought I knew what I was doing, getting lost in several articles because I thought I remembered something pertinent to my current state (of the game, not my prosthetic sanity) only to find out those were written for vanilla, and generally finding my own prose... less than readable.

Trust me, it's a bad idea. After all, I struggle making comprehensible points even on things I'm comfortable with.

I'm not a huge fan of Oromo's though, which everyone seems to love.

Mopping up after trebs/cannons? Pretty much any unit will win vs. a city already crushed by siege attacks. I like UU's that are reliable in the open field and can take a stab at attacking a city in the rare cases where siege cannot help.
D4 units not only mop up well, they rake in the xp as well. Seriously, your D4 oromos get their 10xp and 17xp promotions in no time. Any promotion gained after D4 is especially strong.


I've tried oromos twice now and in both games my stack was attacked on the way to the city via massive mounted units (knights). Oromo's might as well have been normal muskets (Pikes defended but my trebs were hurt). When attacking a city, knights were chosen as the top defender when using oromos - again, they are reduced to normal muskets. Thankfully I promoted a few up the combat line. It's too bad they don't start with C1, C2. Drill is probably a lot better when they are upgraded to rifles and taking on cavalry (not immune to first strikes).

Oromos are tricky to use. It's true they are susceptible to attacks from mounted in the field, which is why you should stick to strong terrain if you expect to be attacked, or don't send them in until you have wiped out their mounted stack. You might need more pikes anyway. If your trebs are getting injured on the way, by mounted units flanking you, just heal them when they get to the city. The ones that didn't get injured bombard the city while the others heal (you do have a medic in your stack I hope!).

Using oromos to attack after siege units, you should be careful to make sure you are not attacking too soon after siege. I would recommend damaging units to 80HP (or lower) before you use oromos. Injured knights would hopefully not be a problem because they would not have any defensive bonuses. But in the case where an injured knight is the best defender, that'd be the time to either use another CR treb or use something like a CR mace, or a knight of your own. I can't honestly say that knights defending cities have given my attacking stacks a big problem when playing as Zara.

Besides, you can just promote a few of your oromos to Formation instead of D3 or D4 if you really want. If your Formation Oromo can't hurt an injured knight then you're probably not using enough siege.

And remember, half the reason Oromos are so great is they retain the D1 and D2 after upgrades. In many games, it's probably more valuable to use rifles instead of the oromos, doing a mass-upgrade when you get rifling.

I respect Zara he is an all around good performer. I like to play with him if I want easier and more relaxing games.

His UU is top class, Ormos are very tough defenders and they can help you stacks , you only need few ormos to defend captured cities. But I don't think that Ormos are good in attacking cities, drill promotions are better for defending, CR3 is better than Drill IV in attaking cities. Also note that a first strike give an extra chance in one round of combat (where a single battle between 2 units contains sub rounds of combat) but it will not increase the winning odds of that round.