Zulus Suck!

Never played as Zulu, but really. Any civ can take advantage of stupid AIs...
 
it's not that all zulus are noobs, far from it. But you can be a noob and still win a lot of games with the zulu. Basically, the ai doesn't have a unit in their cap till 5 turns, so a zulu player can get an easy free cap. Also, the ai usually loses to an impi army in the first 20 turns.

usually it just takes one archer to hold off most impi armies, but it takes 5 turns to research this and more to build archers. warrior armies don't do the trick. the only skill that is a little harder for zulu players to pick up it seems is when to stop building warriors and start teching, growing and expanding.

the zulus are extremely easy to play with. Even newcomers (i'll avoid the term noob in this case) can win most of their games with the zulu. This has to do with the points i made above, and the fact that a lot of players don't know how to defend against the rush. If I live for 10 turns against zulu, usually they won't be able to rush me. But often they'll get at least one cap, usually more. that's a pretty big leg up. plus they'll get the majority of huts and barb villages due to their +1 movement and overrun bonus.

on top of that, they get rapid city growth after 5 techs, which is ridiculously powerful. couple this with republic and there's no problem expanding. then after 14 techs they get 50% gold, so with already control of the map, and a means to expand like gangbusters, it's usually no problem to win an economic victory by 1500AD if no one mounts a comeback.

the reason you see a lot of people call Zulu players noobs is because their skills get exposed after they get a couple caps and have a huge advantage early on. It's easy to spot these guys because they don't expand much, or at all, they tech slow, and lots of times they'll keep churning out warriors. By the time I'm getting to the modern, they usually haven't even made it to the industrial era. I can't tell you how many times I've beaten zulus who have taken all caps but mine, and I still crush them. No other civ has a players like this.

This sounds like fun actually. I only played as the Zulu once, but I didn't rush because I didn't know about how the ai civs work. I'll have to try that strat, at least on sp.
 
Top Bottom