Help Me Not Suck: Professor Shaka's War Academy

Gumbolt said:

Before engineering you should be thinking about building some mace and galleys to prep for the war. you lack production but you should be able to use slavery to 3 pop whip mace. Again the issue here is you are now building workers/settlers instead of this. Theres a part of you that is an empire builder when perhaps at times you should just whip away your empire and destroy the world.

The main issue I have with what you have done is you over expanded to 20 cities when 7-8 strong cities could of spammed mace and treb much earlier. The advantage of a smaller empire is lower costs so you reach military techs sooner.

We'll see how you do. All i can see is set yourself a goal and stick to it!!

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IMHO, this a brilliant post. If The Oz-Man is indeed serious about medieval warfare, you’re right, the city builds now ought to be dominated by *maceman / *treb (after engineering) and *galley. Settlers are indeed just going to use up valuable hammers and whips. Workers may well still be needed IMHO because unimproved tiles are still being worked – unless the plan is to whip them pronto. I guess settling the land at this stage is more in keeping with how I would’ve played this map:

1. Fill out land
2. Tech to rifling
3. Draft rifles
4. Transport rifles using galleons
5. Win game.

Apologies if I’ve given you some bad advice The Oz-Man.


That said Gumbolt, your post also illustrates another point – that I’m currently rather confused by the inconsistency between The Oz-Man’s rhetoric and city builds. As mentioned above, if The Oz-Man is indeed serious about medieval warfare, then I’d expect to be seeing ikhandas, maces and galleys being built or queued. Trebs would be added to the mix following engineering.

However, when I looked at the save, I didn’t see a single combat unit being built. Instead, I saw (i) forges going down in cities with 1 hammer, (ii) forges and libraries being built before granaries, (iii) courthouses going down in cities with maintenance costs at 4 – whilst Amsterdam, where maintenance costs are above 10, contains neither an ikhanda nor a courthouse. Instead, it’s building a forge even though it currently has only 3 hammers. To top it all off, I see a hammer heavy coastal city in the north building the UoS. It’s at times like this I’m reminded of that old adage: “your situation will not improve if you do nothing about it” - and how that means there needs to be a correspondence between your plan and your city builds that I don’t yet see in the latest save.



@The Oz-Man: The map is perfectly fine IMHO. As I mentioned earlier, a number of victory paths are open to you – including conquest if you want it. Having looked at the saves you’ve supplied though, I’d humbly submit that the real issues are:

(i) You haven’t played the map particularly well. Not spotting the need for early happiness and avoiding the mids was an obvious example. Another would be the failure to adjust to the hammer poor nature of the map by recognising that the best way to get an army as a result is via the whip or draft.

(ii) As mentioned above, there’s currently an obvious inconsistency between your plan (here a desire for war) and your city builds (which involve wonders at the expense of military units).

(iii) You’ve not yet mastered a key point of Civ: when building, remember the adage: “that which can wait, must wait”. In other words, there’s very little point building forges in cities which contain only three hammers, when its maintenance costs are more than 10 (as is the case with Amsterdam in the latest save).

Now before everyone accuses me of being overly critical, let me say this: The Oz-Man has my sincere apologies if I’ve caused any offence. None is meant at all. Instead, the good news is that most, if not all, gamers have had to grapple with these issues at one point or another when trying to progress at Civ. I was no exception and lost many games at noble until I grasped issues such as these. And I’m sure that if you learn the lessons of this game The Oz-Man, you’ll be whipping prince and higher in no time.

Honestly, with shaka, ikhanda's should be everywhere, anyway. They aren't expensive and they are an economic building for him.

AutomatedTeller said:

Honestly, with shaka, ikhanda's should be everywhere, anyway. They aren't expensive and they are an economic building for him.

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Agreed...that's why this is a great map for nobles IMHO. The ikhanda can help both with the initial war against WvO (if wanted) and to help settle all that land.

learner gamer said:

IMHO, this a brilliant post.

@The Oz-Man: The map is perfectly fine IMHO. As I mentioned earlier, a number of victory paths are open to you – including conquest if you want it. Having looked at the saves you’ve supplied though, I’d humbly submit that the real issues are:

(i) You haven’t played the map particularly well. Not spotting the need for early happiness and avoiding the mids was an obvious example. Another would be the failure to adjust to the hammer poor nature of the map by recognising that the best way to get an army as a result is via the whip or draft.

(ii) As mentioned above, there’s currently an obvious inconsistency between your plan (here a desire for war) and your city builds (which involve wonders at the expense of military units).

(iii) You’ve not yet mastered a key point of Civ: when building, remember the adage: “that which can wait, must wait”. In other words, there’s very little point building forges in cities which contain only three hammers, when its maintenance costs are more than 10 (as is the case with Amsterdam in the latest save).

Now before everyone accuses me of being overly critical, let me say this: The Oz-Man has my sincere apologies if I’ve caused any offence. None is meant at all. Instead, the good news is that most, if not all, gamers have had to grapple with these issues at one point or another when trying to progress at Civ. I was no exception and lost many games at noble until I grasped issues such as these. And I’m sure that if you learn the lessons of this game The Oz-Man, you’ll be whipping prince and higher in no time.

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Great post Learner. Especially the bit where you called my post brilliant. 7000 posts and finally a brillant one.

Anyway Oz

Learner Gamer has this game licked!! I would seriously review all city builds and consider your game plan. For starters ditch all the wonder builds. Do you really need any more now? Also consider how to best use cities to reach your end needs.

Drafting units?
Whipping units?
Production city for HE national wonder?
What are the key buildings required for most cities? Barracks UB? Forge?
Remember you will want many more trebs than melee/gunpowder units.

Pull this save together and focus! We want this game finished before santa arrives! You have a week.

Had some time to look at the screenshots some more...
I do not think the map is to blame. The cities just seem to avoid hills for some reason.

E.g., the wheat north of amsterdam could have fed the three hills close by, the horse city NW of Ulundi could have gone 1W to gain two hills at the cost of ... fresh water (and why are those desert hills not mined?), the hills next to the corn at kwa... whatever in the south are unused, etc.

Regarding workers/Tile management:
There are irrigated plains (close to the worst tile to work) south of food-starved Babanaga. Those workers should have irrigated the grassland.
There are a lot of non-irrigated food specials, despite Civil service having been researched long ago. Examples include wheat next to Hlobane, rice at Ulundi (!), corn at Jute and kwa...whatever.

Another thing: Non-riverside grassland huts are close to not worth it for a non-financial civ. All those cottage workers could be scientists, and the workers could have improved more important tiles.

The most difficult part of Shaka's immortality was that he could always hear the drums.

Centuries ago, the Zulu war-drums had hammered ominous rhythms as the tribe's Impis thundered from the mountains to bring war to the Dutch. Even now, he could still hear his people chant in his mind. War. War. War. War.

That was generations ago. The Zulu reputation had softened in that time. In his elaborate throne room, Shaka sat amidst the smell of fresh spices, dressed in his finest silk robes. Outside of his palace window, he could see the distant Mausoleum rising above the western hill, arrayed in the finest marble. He had it all. His was the greatest nation in the world; even the residents of the Holy Lands of the East envied him.

And yet he could not stop hearing the drums.

War. War. War. War.

Charlemagne was weak. The Holy Romans were a backwards people. The Zulu had the technology to forge an army that would make the world tremble. Shaka had but to act.

But the spices. The furs. The silks.

War. War. War. War.

"Um... sire?"

The war-chief woke from his trance to find a messenger--a page with bowl-cut hair from uMgungundlovu to the north. Shaka tried to focus and listen, but he still heard the drums.

"Sire... the University of Sankore is--"

"UNIVERSITY!?" Shaka roared. He remembered this character Sankore. He promised a continued age of Zulu enlightenment, where educational facilities would be established in Hindu temples across the land. The project would require an extensive Temple-building campaign.

Shaka snorted. Breathed.

War. War. War. War.

Zulu craftsmanship would be wasted on these Temples. It was time. Religious enlightenment could wait until the drums were silent again.

"Have Sankore sent to work with the scholars of the Netherlands if he wishes to seek enlightenment," Shaka growled. "uMgungundlovu will have no such building. Your fishermen will build boats. If we cannot cross the Holy Mountain by foot, we will find our own way into the Holy Land."

"B-b-but sire!" the messenger stammered. "Do you mean--"

"War," Shaka said. "War. War. War. War."

And the chief wandered off to meet with his advisers, chanting all the while.

But all did not begin with war. While the North began crafting the Galleys necessary to ferry troops to the Holy Lands, in the West, Shaka accepted his advisers' wisdom and adjusted his build orders:



He also negotiated a trade with the Spanish queen, who seemed... let's say "excited" about the deal.



Seeing that maintenance costs still dragged his research desires, Shaka opted not to settle the distant South. Instead, he settled the city of eThekwini within his existent borders:



(It's not quite ready yet--I still need to get a missionary over there to bring in the faith--but I built this one to whip into oblivion and as a possible Globe Theater drafting city.)

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, a charismatic warrior-mathematician named Nabu-rimanni created a hysteria with his enumeration of the distant cosmos. He rose to power as an adviser to the local lords before finally being brought before Shaka's court in 1060.



Nabu-rimanni's teachings were combined with Shaka's philosophies to teach that it was Zululand--not merely the earth--that lay at the center of the universe. The newfound nationalistic fervor sparked a Golden Age.

All was going according to Shaka's plan.

The mania spreading across the lands allowed Shaka to slip in several changes to his government.



The newly crowned King Shaka--accompanied by his cadre of war-eaucrats--transformed Ulundi from an opulent city of wonders to the production center of the Zulu Empire. Zulu warrior-artisans crafted strong Maces and menacing Trebuchets in the capital, shuttling them off in Galleys built in uMgungundlovu and Bulawayo.

With the secrets of Engineering unearthed and Zulu carriages now the envy of the world, Shaka turned his attention to applying his people's sciences to the theater of war:



(Per advice, I went for the Cuirassier beeline. We made a brief stop at Printing Press to beef up our towns, but that also helped us get close to Rifling.)

Shaka had considered--perhaps foolishly--seeking to rule the world via diplomatic means. However, his people enjoyed a significant technological advantage over Charlemagne. And Justinian. And Isabella. And Montezuma.

War. War. War. War.

Shaka breathed deeply and shook his head.

In 1070, Chuck's crown must have been weighing too heavy on his brain, because he decided that what his people really needed was to wage war against the world's mightiest army.



Montezuma had "enough on his hands" for decades, but the Aztec war machinery turned too slowly. Charlemagne took the initiative. War had come to the Holy Land.

Shaka sought intelligence on his future opponents:



And his Galleys began to fill:



Early in the next century, Justinian conceived of a new government for the known world, one bound by the Hindu faith. It was a play for power, Shaka knew; the Byzantines and Spanish could not hope to match the breadth and might of Zululand, but they could bully their way to the front through bureaucratic means. Indeed, Isabella--whose shamans had founded the faith millennia ago--threw in with the Byzantine king. However, even their combined numbers could not match the fervor and size of the Zulu population.



Montezuma's support was nice, but it was hardly necessary. Shaka himself sat in residency at the Apostolic Palace as overseer of the faith, and no one could hope to challenge him.

Nicolaus Copernicus, a student of Nabu-rimanni, rose in Amsterdam, where he invented the Printing Press.



And at the end of the Golden Age, Shaka implemented one final civic change:



Infrastructure still needed to be built throughout the empire. While Amsterdam would suffer as its scientists were forced back into the mines, a period of Slavery could help that city build the necessary infrastructure to allow even more specialists to work there.

With Nationalism researched, Shaka sought deals with Justinian...



...and Isabella.



The secrets of Music and Feudalism were what Shaka truly sought. Isabella's music could be put to work in Ikhandas throughout the land, turning them from rude barracks into hard-nosed military institutions.

A decade later, Montezuma himself came to call.



The Zulu military wasn't quite complete, but it was certainly up to the task.



(No, that's not all the siege! Yes, the future garrisons weren't far behind! I felt pretty good about this force, though. Chuck couldn't build longbows yet. Chuck could even research Feudalism yet! By the end of the round? HE STILL CAN'T. I should've done this eons ago!)

Traditionalists in Byzantium were shocked to see the Zulu king daring to use his boats to go around the Holy Mountain. However, there was nothing they could do. Shaka the Pope-King simply declared that a study of the scriptures had revealed that the blessed Zulu people were indeed allowed to make such a crossing. There was little Justinian could do to stop the Zulu army from descending on his old friend Justinian.

Isabella made a laughable offer to claw her way into the Liberalism race:



Yeah, you go ahead and have fun with your Divine Right there, sister.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek appeared, muttering something how the filthy Gauss Academy was filled with germs. Shaka was intrigued by these "germs" and sent the Great Scientist to further study them in Amsterdam.



The secret of Military Tradition finally arrived in the Zulu Empire. Throughout the land, powerful gunman atop the steeds of Bulawayo rushed to the front, eager to prove their might to their king. At the same time, the Zulu army finally arrived at the walls of Augsburg, gateway to the Holy Roman Empire. Needless to say, the city was little prepared for an army from the other side of the continent:



Shaka's generals considered a proper siege, and Zulu Trebuchets tore the walls to rubble. Before their powerful boulders could pound away at the defenders, however, the soldiers discovered that the city garrisons were not so strong as they expected:



The armies marched on the city with minimum casualties, Augsburg was burnt to the ground, and the Workers surrounding the cities were shipped back to Zululand to build roads and farms.

Seeing the production capacity of Ulundi, and noting that his people already enjoyed a military advantage over all of the people in the world, Shaka decided to allow himself a single luxury. His extravagant new palace was greater in scope and size than Justinian's pathetic Apostolic Palace, and the Zulu pope revealed that his scholars had discovered text in the scriptures that indicated that this--not Justinian's structure--was destined to be the seat of the Hindu gods.



Again, the jingoistic Zulu celebrated this slap in the face to the old guard with a Golden Age.

All the while, new troops continued to be shuttled into Byzantium for transport to the front.



(There's our supply lines at work. I'm thinking about getting some galleys on the other side of the subcontinent to put them closer to Chuck, but it's a dog's age to get down there right now.)

With Guilds and Banking providing new financial opportunities, Shaka noticed that Isabella had completed her study of Education! The Spanish queen was on the verge of taking the Zulu people's advantage right from under their noses. Shaka snorted. It would not be.



...no matter how much help she received.



The treacherous Sankore throwing in with the Spanish meant little to Shaka at this point. Selling the secrets of Literature to Montezuma financed the Zulu scientists' final push toward Liberalism, and granting them the luxury to pursue this new found extension of the old Dutch Philosophy allowed the scientists to unearth a technology that would aid the Zulu war effort:



Shaka was satisfied. Briefly.

But still he heard the drums.

War. War. War. War

The army that had crushed Augsburg had treated their wounds and were marching back to the front. The thundering of Cuirassiers marching with blinding speed to Holy Roman lands echoed through Byzantium. In their lofty palaces, Isabella and Justinian shuddered. How long until the drums would beat for them?

(State of the world to follow!)

State of the World at 1350 AD:

I've set research to Rifling, but I can switch to something else if you guys think that's wise. I think we can get Constitution online before the Golden Age ends, which--in hindsight--I think is a better idea. I'm thinking of ending the GA by going Rep/Nationalism/CS/Merc, then drafting enough Rifles to win the game and then some. I think Cavalry are going to be the real players in the next round, but we'll see.

Here's a look at Zululand:



The forge in Nongama is kind of boneheaded. If that city's going to be producing anything, it'll be drafted/whipped units or great people.

Here's Not Zululand Yet:



Zhou, I believe, has changed hands in the middle of the war, so that's likely where the bulk of Chuck's army is. I doubt he expected me to actually do anything with the DoW, much like last time, where I just let him rot.

Brief look at the military adviser:



At this point, almost everything in the core cities is improved. We've still got three or four more cities to build, which will help us cement our hold on the papacy. I don't think anyone can compete with us on that front, though.

Say, Chuck, what do you have to offer Zululand to get us to stop beating on you?



"YOU GALL-DERNED KIDS WITH YER TREB-YOO-SHAYS!"

Yeah, no, we won't be taking that.

Techs:



Would it be worth trading something old for Optics? Maybe whipping a few useless old techs on Justin? I'm not going to shoot for circumnavigation, but I'd like to know who our mysterious isolated friend is.

Relations:



Despite the fact that we're throwing our weight around, the Hindu bloc still loves us to pieces.

Suckers.

Demographics and powah:



I don't have a lot of intel into Monty and Justin, so I might re-allocated the spy sliders and see what's up. I doubt they can compete, though--they're both backwards, and once we start drafting rifles and building Cavalry, we're just going to steamroll them anyway.

So next round thoughts. We've got domination locked up for sure now, I think. We can outproduce them, we can outmaneuver them, and nobody's going to be able to field anything threatening to a horde of Cavalry in time to save their rear ends. I'm very tempted to just DoW Justin as soon as I can field a dozen or so Cavalry just to simplify shipping things to the front.

The only area I'm concerned about is the navy--it's the only area where we don't have a technological edge. DoW-ing on Justin means he'll be sending Caravels our way to pillage all of our tasty seafood, and they'll be a pain to dislodge. We could capitulate him PDQ, but I suspect we could also roll through him pretty easily and put all of those nice cities to work for us. Then we just hit our closest tech competitor in Isabella before a final showdown with Monty.

Thoughts? Here's the game save. Thanks for all of your advice; if nothing else, it was the kick in the rear end I needed to start the war in earnest.

I recommend going to the S&T section when this is done and writing a story. Just do this without asking for the opinions and it would be good. Include the captions, though
Edit:sorry for the

There, the rest is up. I tried to take you guys' advice to heart and went whole hog with the killing guys, and I think it's put us at an advantage. I've been trying my best to take your advice to heart. In most cases. For example:

K.Murx said:

There are a lot of non-irrigated food specials, despite Civil service having been researched long ago. Examples include wheat next to Hlobane, rice at Ulundi (!), corn at Jute and kwa...whatever.

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Dude. The rice at Ulundi and the corn at Jute are irrigated by the city tiles themselves, and there's a worker in kwaBigname in the save (under that Axeman) irrigating the corn. Irrigating Hlobane's wheat was the second build that city got after the Wheat itself was farmed. I probably could've irrigated these at the same time if I'd built more workers, but some of the "come on, you're neglecting Ulundi!" stuff isn't exactly fair. I'm an easy target for sure, but let's pick on the stuff that I'm actually doing wrong.

SamSniped said:

I recommend going to the S&T section when this is done and writing a story. Just do this without asking for the opinions and it would be good. Include the captions, though

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My goal is to improve my game; the creative writing part is incidental just because I like doing it. I'm doing it here in this way so I can get something out of it; I doubt I'd gain much by posting in Stories & Tales. Glad you're enjoying it, though!

this game is won. But there are still things worrying. First I don't understand the mixture of plans you have... you mention like 3-4 things you want to do at once, always try to streamline the play.

You will need communism if you will take some bigger number of cities on other continent (ofc you could just chain vassal there with giving back cities to vassals)

noble is not punishing enough, but generally your tech timeline was very slow. The gameplay was certainly not optimal.

I enjoy the story.

For next game if you really want to start to learn, launch Monarch game.

Agree with a lot of the comments. Your story telling is great just a shame all the advice is ruining your flow a bit.

I honestly think you can finish off all the Ai with curs and maybe rifles. Turn off the slider at rifles and just full out attack.

Oh your initial stack needed at least 10 trebs/10 mace. Trebs take down the cities mace mop up. With thr ight troop levels you should be able to chain vassel all the AI.

Oh stop worrying about how strong the AI is. This is noble not deity. They will not be able to match a 20-30 strong stack.

As for your tech trades. Don't give away CS and other military techs so easily. Did you need theology??

I agree with V play Monarch level next and rise to the challenge. Monarch is quite beatable really.Noble was a bit too easy for you.

Have fun crushing the AI.

I decided to go with everyone's advice and just get the game wrapped up since we all knew it was won. I'll do a write-up later on (it's a monster round), but for those of you who can't wait:



I'm going to play a game at Prince next, but I'm shooting to move up to Monarch pretty quickly. To keep the games linked, my next game will be played by a randomly selected rival from this game, and so and so forth until I find something better to do than play this stupid game.

Thanks for all of your help, guys; hope you enjoy the finale!

Congrats. Never rush a game for us. People love your write ups. 1625 is a reasonable domination date.

I think you are more than ready for higher levels. Prince may be too easy for you too.

Congratulations on the win. The last turnset you posted was much better!

Agreed BTW on upping the difficulty to monarch. FWIW, I found very little difference between prince and noble.

It was no secret now to the Spanish and the Byzantines that the Hindu Council at Constantinople had become a sham. Outwardly, Shaka was devout in his faith; however, the show he made of defying sacred doctrine under the guise of "new scriptural discoveries" was transparent to all but the most zealous devotees to the Zulu king. Shaka's armies had entered the Holy Lands--ostensibly to war with Charlemagne, but in too great a number to be ignored. It was Montezuma who had initiated the holy war, but it was Shaka who now held the advantage. The Hindu Council was his to control, and the zealotry of the Zulu people--and their sheer numbers--meant that the faith would remain ascendent not in the East, but in the West.

Still, Shaka made a show of reform. His government was outmoded. The costs of maintaining his empire still threatened to spiral out of control. The military had been modernized, and the Taj Mahal would soon do the same.

While on the home front, Shaka's bureaucrats in Ulundi sought to draft a new Constitution, in the East, the war against the heretical Holy Romans was finally going full steam. The Zulu army approached the lush border city of Vienna, finding it heavily fortified behind both walls and the rocky terrain, but also lightly defended:



Mounted Zulu gunners, meanwhile, stormed to the front. The now ancient warlord delighted to see the new weaponry the old Dutch spear-casters had inspired, and Chuck's army. While Axes had prevailed against the ancient bows so many years ago, Shaka found their use in this century... rather quaint.



The assault on Vienna was a rout...



...and the city soon fell.



Shaka kept Vienna; he had the garrisons to hold the city, and it would prove an excellent forward base and hospital city for the Cuirassiers racing to the front.

The victory was owed in large part to a wild-eyed madman in a wacky cape and very few clothes. He taught his soldiers to alternate between running at incredibly fast speed and striking super-awesome slow-motion blows with their weaponry, a technique he had mastered beneath the perpetually beige skies of the Peloponnese.



His incessant screams of "THIS... IS... ULUNDI!" as he assumed command of the city's military forces were met with quiet nods and answers of "...yes. Yes, it is, actually."

All was not screaming historically inaccurate generals in Ulundi, however! The Zulu Constitution was at last drafted, and Shaka took time at the end of his Golden Age to reform his government:



The new representative government--led by Prime Minister Shaka--was elected by the Merchant and Scientist classes, who had come to prominence in Amsterdam, Jute, and Nongama. The Nation of Zulu, as it was now called, grew ever more reclusive and insular despite being a natural extension of the bureaucrats who had ruled Ulundi before. Justinian and Isabella in particular balked at this new government, but there was little they could do without the ability to rule the faith as Shaka now did.

It came too late to matter much, but Shaka finally began the projects of completely settling his own land:



And a student of Copernicus rose to prominence in Amsterdam and joined the National Zulu Academy of Sciences (previously the Gauss Academy):



(Most of our GPs were Scientists, and almost all of them were settled. We burned one late for Biology, but it didn't matter much by then.)

As the army of Vienna tended to its wounds, Charlemagne seethed in his palace at Aachen. "So!" he thundered. "The Zulu chief thinks that his horses are mighty? SHOW HIM THE POWER OF THE BLESSED HORSES OF HOLY ROME!"



Oh, Chuck.

The forces of Holy Rome were depleted, but Montezuma nevertheless threatened to take the rest of the empire for himself. Shaka made a deal with his old friend to back down for the time being--at least until the Zulu army could capture Charlemagne himself.



Thucydides told us what we already knew:



And Coco Chanel, whose luxurious suits had helped the Zulu Prime Minister bring sexy back, became the mother of modern economics.



She was sent by galley to Madrid under armed escort, where her cutting-edge fashions made Shaka a small purse of gold--enough to keep the war machine rolling.

Mainz fell to a force of Cuirassiers...



...who also beat the proper army to capturing Charlemagne's capital!




Charlemagne, retreating to Prague in the west, promised Shaka the world in exchange for an end to hostilities; however, his pleas fell on deaf ears.

A poet who had made a living composing ballads at the Statue of ZeusShaka became world-famous...



...but was left dormant for now.

Ten years later--as Zulu siege engines chugged toward Prague--the Spanish queen had a revelation. Her empire was great--second in greatness only to the Nation--but, despite founding the Hindu faith, she found it spiraling out of her control. While she had allied herself with Justinian in a marriage of convenience, the winds had changed. The armies that marched from Byzantium to Holy Rome, which now featured vicious Rifles that were the envy of the world--were clearly meant for conquest.

Isabella was proud of her faith, but she was no fool. At a meeting of the Hindu Council, she made a grand show of dissolving her marriage to Justinian, throwing herself at Pope Shaka to save her people.



Shaka considered the offer. Beautiful wonders lay in Madrid, and despite his control of the Hindu Council, tithes still poured into Spain. Accepting Isabella as his wife, however, would mean that research could also be shared. The Spanish army would join the crusade against Holy Rome... and any further crusades that would be necessary. Best of all, the marriage would completely unman Shaks's chief rival, Justinian, leaving him with no allies in the Council. Shaka agreed, and the pair consummated the deal, both physically and in the exchange of gifts:



The old city of Utrecht was re-founded in the midst of the celebration.



A Caravel was soon "whipped up" in nearby Khangela to continue the exploration of the world.

Meanwhile, back in the East, the war effort once again threatened to spiral out of control. Montezuma, seeing two of his Hindu allies battling the recalcitrant Charlemagne, had decided to once again bring his armies to bear, quickly capturing the city of Nuremberg! Only the hilly Prague--one of the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire--remained, and it was here where Charlemagne's army had been encamped. Trebuchets destroyed the city walls, but there was little time to establish a state of true siege. Montezuma could not be allowed to capture the city, nor could Charlemagne be allowed to bow before the Aztec king. Zulu Macemen and Riflemen rushed to the front...



...and, despite losses, captured the city!



Charlemagne was found passed out in the basement of a local pub, his breath reeking of cheap Vienna lager. He was brought before the Hindu Council, tried as a heretic, and given as a sacrifice to Kali.

The East was pacified. The Holy Roman Empire was no more. The Hindu faith united the land.

Except... well.



Montezuma's armies remained strong. And the Aztec king remained a wildcard, answering not to Hindu sovereignty but instead to his own selfish ambitions. He would desire war again... and he would find plenty of targets among the faithful.

This was what Pope Shaka told the Hindu Council when he announced that Montezuma himself had been deemed a heretic by the Church.

(Dun-dun-dunnnnnnnnnnn! To be continued!)

learner gamer said:

Agreed BTW on upping the difficulty to monarch. FWIW, I found very little difference between prince and noble.

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I think so as well - having a peanut gallery is at least half a step up.

War had come to Azteka. The attackers at Nuremberg were stronger than Charlemagne's facile forces, but they knew nothing of how to hold a city--especially one in a state of anarchy. The Zulu Cavalry were merciless and efficient, wiping out the Aztec forces and burning the city to the ground.

(It was a really lousy town, with no sources of food in sight and a whole lot of ugly plains. I could've used the sheer land, but eh, I had better cities to go get!)

Across the ocean, the Zulu Caravel--manned by intrepid scholars and explorers of the Dutch West--came upon a populated continent several hundred miles off the coast. The villagers there were paranoid folk, convinced by their king that their land was unique in all the world, that nothing was to be found beyond the Great Sea. The emergence of the ship should've put their delusions to rest, but their king instead declared these newcomers to be demons, servants of darkness, tricks of the light, whatever suited his fancy at the time. He was truly mad. His name was Saladin of Arabia.



(So that's FOUR religious zealots on the map! Geeeeeez. Poor Sally was a complete non-factor in this game, but I thought we should come meet him anyway.)

While the Arabs stewed on their little island, the advent of Communism saw a Dutch assassin make an attempt on the life of Shaka! While the attempt failed, Shaka was so impressed by the cur's moxie that he immediately put him to use, pairing him up with the poet Li Po to initiate the New Zulu Way:



Sweeping changes began:



The Nation of Zulu became the People's Republic of Zululand. Slavery had accomplished its end, and the land returned to the old castes. Meanwhile, the merchants and scholars who had previously run the Nation's port towns now found their private enterprises seized by the state in what Prime Minister Shaka dubbed "ultimate domain." By now, the leaders in Ulundi had streamlined their own government, and state control of the means of production brought about untold budgetary efficiencies. For the first time in centuries, the Zulu economy thrived.

Montezuma's hard-to-spell cities (Tlatalco was this one, I think? Is that a city Monty builds? The bottom one is Zhou.) found themselves under assault. The Aztec war machine was one of the best in the world, but it could not withstand the state-of-the-art Zulu army.




Isabella, the more "enlightened" of the First Family of Popedom (She adopted FREE RELIGION! ), was glad to provide Shaka with the technology he had requested that she research...



...and the exploratory Caravel rounded the Arabian continent to end up in... Spain? Wait, what? How the--ooooooooooooh!



The Battle of Bantu, a fishing town on a western peninsula, wasn't even sporting:



Neither was... um, this place.



Seeing his empire crumble before his very eyes, Montezuma and Shaka negotiated a peace. The Aztec state would fall under control of the PRZ, obeying Shaka's missives in war and peace.



However, the arrangement was... not so delightful as Shaka's marriage to Isabella. Montezuma had been declared a heretic, and he could not be allowed to live. While the Aztec Empire remained a vassal nation, Montezuma himself was arrested by the now well-armed Hindu World Police Force. He was dragged in chains to the Taj Mahal, where Shaka tied his former friend at the gallows.

Once again, the faith was ascendant. The heretic Montezuma had been destroyed. However, the public outcry outside of the PRZ was monstrous. Montezuma had been a bastion of the faith, a stalwart servant of Hinduism for centuries. It was Justinian himself who led the protests at the Taj Mahal, and the charismatic Byzantine called for the ouster of Pope Shaka and for the center of the Hindu Council to once again be the Apostolic Palace at Constantinople.

The votes were tallied. Pope Shaka's numbers could not be matched, and even the matriarch of the faith threw in with her husband.

"I will allow you this concession, however," Shaka said as a furious Justinian was escorted from the Taj Mahal by the Hindu World Police Force. "You wish to see the Pope come to Constantinople? Then the Pope will come to Constantinople."



It was, of course, no coincidence that galleons in the northern ocean--an upgrade from the old coast-bound galleys--bore Cavalry and Riflemen. The ships tore across the coast, depositing their military payload on the shores of Thessolonica.




The Shwedagon Paya--while functionally useless at this point--stood as a testament to Byzantium's waning influence. The Holy Mountain, which had once united the Zulu and Byzantine people, was now little more than a rock for Shaka's forces to maneuver around.

Shaka overpaid Isabella for the secrets of Democracy.



(I don't mind doing that with a vassal, especially since we were now several tiers ahead of Izzy.)

This new technology--which the PRZ discovered during its Golden Age--sparked one final revolution.



The People's Republic of Zululand had become the People's Democratic Republic of Zululand. Academics of Amsterdam scoffed that each adjective added to the front of the nation's title seemed to only make Shaka's tactics more brutal. However, they did so in private; reprisal against the academics in particular would be swift and brutal.

Angora fell, thanks in large part to the new Cannon that had been constructed from the shells of the army's old Trebuchets...



...and Antioch fell.



Antioch would be retaken soon after--Constantinople was a city of impressive military production, and Justinian, it seemed, had been preparing for this war for some time. Nevertheless, Zulu Cavalry ultimately prevailed, and when the city was later garrisoned by drafted Riflemen, the Byzantines would never be allowed to rule it again.

With the Ironworks built, Ulundi became kind of ridiculous:



(It ended up being four turns because of the GA. We didn't get a lot of use out of the Kremlin, but Ulundi was turning out a Cavalry every turn at this point, and I figured the shiny wonder was worth a couple of them when we were clearly on the clock to win.)

Justinian's forces made a proper assault on Thessolonica...



...but the port city had become the staging ground for Shaka's army. The city held.

Shaka finished yet another new seat for both the Hindu Council and the Zulu government, which by this point were essentially inseparable. He had little desire to even cite scriptural precedent at this point and instead simply started showing up and issuing edicts.



Adrianople had a prize inside...



...while Nicodemia was pretty mediocre.



Suddenly, combat broke out along the shores of Arabia!



Justinian tried to sink Shaka's exploring Caravel with his own. It didn't work.

However, the time for petty skirmishes had ended. Cavalry from the West and from the South had surrounded Constantinople and the Apostolic Palace.



In the East, Isabella was doing well for herself thanks to her new Conquistadors, an improvement on Shaka's old Cuirassiers.



The city would fall back into Byzantine hands several years later, but nevertheless, it was an impressive victory and a blow to Justinian's pride.

At last, the sheer number of Cavalry that had descended on the city proved too much. Constantinople, the envy of the world, had fallen to Shaka's military might.



And what a city it was! It was too late in Shaka's war of conquest for these wonders to make much different, but simply owning them was enough.

The Cavalry who remained healthy turned from Constantinople and rode to Nicaea, where Justinian had fled. The effort, however, proved unnecessary, as several Byzantine cities emerged from revolt at once...



It was done. President and Pope Shaka made a show of capturing the city of Nicaea anyway, and Justinian himself was transported to Ulundi, where he was never seen again. Some say he was scarred to the point of becoming unrecognizable and serves forever as a housekeeper in Shaka's Kremlin.

With the continent at last under his control, the drums became quiet forever, and Shaka found himself at peace. A war of conquest against Arabia was unnecessary, and the paranoid people of that continent were instead a point of study for Amsterdam's scientists. Inspired by Isabella's quest for enlightenment, Shaka quietly fazed out the Hindu Council's old functions, merging them into the PDRZ's central government. The Caste System was abolished, and the Zulu people were emancipated.

It was an eternal Golden Age--born of bloodshed, but nonetheless an age of peace. Every once in a while, a scholar of the Netherlands will become a bit too "intellectual" for his own good and will mysteriously have his or her "tenure revoked" and begin a period of "indefinite vacation," but such--as Shaka says--is the price of peace.

(Whew! That was a fun round! Post-game write-up and analysis coming up!)

POST-GAME ANALYSIS:

Here's where we started...



...and here's where we ended up!



Sometimes my oldest daughter will come and look at these maps and try to guess which one is mine. She'd definitely figure this one out, I think.

Score:



GNP:



I think it's clear to see that I overextended myself here, stifling--as you all said--vertical growth and therefore not being able to afford my horizontal growth. I'm not used to having this big a chunk of land to settle, though, especially not in this weird shape. Still, it started to click near the endgame, and we could've done even better by adopting Free Speech in the end, even if that didn't end up being necessary.

For the record, this game was my first time really playing around with the draft. I tend to go straight into Free Speech when I can, so it was interesting to try stifling research to get the troops I needed onto the field. The wheat town near Ulundi ended up housing the Globe Theater and drafting the rifles that helped hold Byzantium.

POWAH CHAHT!



It's funny because you can see the exact moment when I said, "man, screw this, I'm just going to go kill all these guys!"

OTHAH POWAH CHAHT!



Yup--once we got rolling, nobody was gonna stop us. I think we could've taken the nice stuff in Spain, too, but outsourcing the research like that was a big help. I've never been in a situation where the second most advanced civ on the map (and one with a rather nice tech on me) peace-vassaled like that, especially so late in the game.

Demographics:



Despite sucking pretty hard in the mid-game, we're still on top of a pretty blah bunch!

Info Screen:



MOAR WORKERS NEEDED! Definitely going to remember that next time.

And the score?



Well, this is a new high score for me! It's about 20,000 points ahead of my previous high score, which was a game as Freddie on a Fractal map that was much more Pangaea-ish. Endgame was the same in that one, too: spanking Gandhi and Hannibal with Cavalry despite sharing the (yes, Hindu) faith with them.

So it's a pretty great score for me, and I'm happy with it, but there's obviously a lot of room for improvement. Fellow Noble players, maybe this will help you out. You see, I've learned something today...

I think going after Willem early might have been overreaching on my part. He could've been pretty easily boxed in and might've built something nice for me, and Amsterdam ended up being a pretty big drag on my finances for a lot of the game. I've learned a lot about build orders and specializing cities as well.

One thing I think I didn't do enough in this game was leverage Slavery. Switching into CS when I did was an attempt to prop up the economy when, in fact, I could've been whipping infrastructure or units to go take on Justinian. If I'd built the Pyramids (like I should have) and leveraged Representation, CS might've worked, but I didn't, so it didn't.

I also think I need to work on building cities to grab resources instead of just building them where I think they'll be pretty good. I consider something like Stone a throw-in--a good production tile to work, and if it helps me build a wonder, hey, cool. Khangela wasn't a particularly good city, but what I didn't think of was how I could leverage it to make my already good cities (Ulundi in particular) even better. I think that lack of lateral thinking keeps a lot of people at Noble; I had a lot of advantages that I didn't use simply because they sometimes meant founding a city that wasn't so great. Ultimately, bringing in the happiness resources gave me the leverage I needed to get through those last few rounds.

Most of all, I learned that when the game is in the bag, you don't sit there building the Statue of Zeus. You go win the game.

Thanks a lot for your help, guys! If it's all the same to you, I'd like your help in my next game as well. Random.org has put us with Isabella, so we'll be keeping the Expansive trait and adding in some interesting diversions to the Shaka formula.

Hope you all enjoyed yourselves; I know I did. Thanks again!

A suggestion for your next end of game report: sort the columns on the statistics screen. Most interesting is likely to be descending order of things built.

*keeps throwing peanuts*

Rushing Willem was no mistake. You did not know the lay of the land when that decision needed to be made, and if you're Shaka, rushing someone is always an option. Your mistake was mixing up Impi-choke/pillaging and axerush. Which lead to Amsterdam being less than it could have been for some time.
Slavery Agreed.
City placement You should not only look for decent spots for your cities, but also try to keep track of what kind of city your empire needs. You found yourself without production potential this time (except Ulundi), but there were quite some possible production spots on this map. Hammers are most of the time more important than commerce - especially if you have access to libraries and enough food for specialists. As a rule of thumb, an empire should have a least two or three production cities.

One more thing: Build more workers and use them correctly. Correctly means to improve food specials first, then production, then commerce. Then cottage riverside grassland, followed by riverside plains. Non-riverside grassland should usually lay bare until CS, then farm it for specialists. Do not waste people/worker turns on normal plains until you can either workshop them or build biology farms (or unless you need them as an irrigation channel).

And play monarch. You are wasting your time on noble/prince.