Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter XXII : Suryavarman II

r_rolo1

r_rolo1

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Welcome to the 22th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one :p ): starting in isolation....

For the 22th game in BTS the choosed leader was Suryavarman II of the Khmer:
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0045.jpg


Civ4ScreenShot0044.jpg

Thank God that BlueMarble exists..... ;)

Sury ( don't force me to write his full name again .... ) is a interesting caracther ( never played with him, but his AI gives some fight... normally the Cre AI do ). His traits have a interesting synergy ( cheaper workers for more early land to improve,. besides that the traits halve the price of a lot of very useful buildings ( you'll want a granary in every city , and probably a library in most of them ) ) and both their UU and UB are very off-road compared with the the other civs ( some like it and some hate it ... ). I think that it is a interesting chalenge for Sury


His UU.
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0046.jpg

The rare, ellusive and controversial Ballista elephant.... It replaces the normal elephant and it has the ability of forcing a fight with Mounted units if outside a city. This is a great feature, but the usual scarcity of Ivory ( better, the annoying tendency of the RNG to put all of then in one compact area ), makes it dificult for the Khmer to use them to the fullest. In here..... first we need Ivory, and second, I highly doubt that you'll fight mounted units weaker than cuiraseers and B. phants are not that strong....

By the way, am I the only one that noticed that awful Civilopedia error? ( B phants = powerful melee unit ) Or is a new "feature" of 3.17 :lol: ?

His UB.
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0047.jpg

Baray replaces aqueducts and gives 1 extra food. It may look too little of bonus, but if you think on it as a extra free of charge ( in happyness, health and in maintenance ) grassland pre-bio farm, things start to look better. In spite of all, food is the cornerstone of Civ ( no food = no anything ) and any bit counts, isn't it?

The start (for reasons that I'll explain below, the warrior may not be exactly in that spot in your game ):
Spoiler :
Civ4ScreenShot0048.jpg

Khmer on a lake....

Seriously, not a bad start ( in spite of starting 1 tile away from any river.... ). Good food potential, a nice assortement of hills, some forests in the outskirts....

Again I made a functional scenario ( In that regard I must say a thing: free techs for both AI and humans are not kicking in, and that makes that AI in higher levels starts with warrior/scouts instead of archers ( with the correct numbers. Settlers/workers are working well ) . That is not a issue of my scenarios , but of the way the game is coded... the game atributes the free techs before choosing the leaders.... if the leaders are already chosen it simply moves on . And as the handicap file does not specify archers as free units , but simply "defensive units" ( if you give Rifling and Robotics to a AI, it will start with Mechs :lol: ) if the AI does not have archery they will get warriors/scouts ( depends on hunting ) instead. In isolation that is a minor issue ( you can't rush ;) ), so I took the decison of letting things to stay this way, because the correction would need to change the game code, a thing that is not exactly my objective with this games ) ).... All the speeds are working well ( no more games ending in 1900 ) The save is zipped... you only have to unzip this to the worldbuilder saves or for the PublicMaps folder ( either one will do ) and load it from the scenarios.
Any problem PM me...

P.S WB saves are crosscompatible between 3.13 and 3.17 if they don't have No Espionage ticked. No problem with the patches here :p

Again a small request ( not mandatory :p ) :

We ask the participants to do, if possible, a write-up with the victory save and a description of your game ( strategies, techs researched, wars,...). All the info should be in spoiler tags ( to not disturb other people's games ). If you want ( we would like to :p ) post reports at this moments of the game:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).


The last words are to wish good luck to all :goodjob: . And let the games begin!



P.S We don't have any kind of problem with defeats and reruns. Just play and enjoy ;)
 

Attachments

Signing in. Immortal keeps flattening me, so emperor it is again.

I like sury's traits, and not having to look at him is a huge bonus. The capitol looks pretty decent. I'm strongly considering 1 SE though. You don't lose food but gain coastal/river.

I'm torn on early wonders but obviously if I go 1 SE GLH is a consideration. I'm considering my typical theology shot again too via building oracle very early and taking whatever with it and then using the prophet.
 
Emp/Epic

Check 1: 130 AD

Spoiler :
4000 Settled 1 SE
3775 Wheel from hut
3475 55 gold from hut
3225 Researched AG and AH so far. Pottery next.
2850 Have pottery. Going writing. Entire island explored, another island of unknown size to NW
2275 2nd city settled 1E of clams at southern tip of island
1975 We have bronze in capitol BFC. Revolt to slavery.
1600 3rd city founded 1 SE of rice. I have writing as of a while ago and am going the mono path towards monarchy. Maybe if I get research I'll get theology first.
1100 first GP - a scientist obviously :). He gets settled.
775 4th city, 1S of wheat that also gets fish/sheep. Power city for specialists.
470 ToA fails in capitol. I was using it for money :p.
395 I found christianity and convert
245 5th city founded on blue circle for a change - between flood plains west of capitol.
185 I go into strike :rolleyes:. I rearrange a few tiles to go green.
170 Revolt into HR and OR.
65 Second GS is settled in capitol. The next one in 27 turns is a likely candidate for putting an academy there.
130 AD settled city 6 1W of copper on northern tip of island.

130 AD summary: 6 cities, 56 BPT @ 20% science, religion founded and attempting AP in near future. Will scout and possibly settled nearby island shortly.
 
Emp/Epic

Check 2 1350 AD
Spoiler :

280 Currency completed
340 Academy in capitol
355 AP is JEWISH :(. Computers got it early this game.
805 I take barb city harappan on the western island. It's idiotically settled on wheat, so I have to raze it.
870 It wouldn't be game without the barbs !@#$ing on me. I lost a 95% battle with an axeman against an archer attacking it.
1060 Someone else gets liberalism before I get paper again
1250 I have optics and start making caravels
1295 Met charlie & shaka. Charlie capitulated to shaka
1300 Met Pacal. Interesting with religions. Shaka is Hindu (founded!), Charlie is buddhist (founded), and pacal is confuc (founded). I'm christian (founded).
1305 Pacal has a willing vassal - Asoka (buddhist).
1310 Met Mao. He's jewish.
1330 Met Willem. I was wondering who got to lib because many of the other AIs are very backwards. Willem, however, has every tech I do and a HUGE lead on top of it. He's in FR. I want very much to buddy up with him as the others can be considered targets. If I'm to attack him, it's going to be in the very distant future.
1350 My maps prove the world is round.

Recap:

Pacal and Willem are far ahead of me. The others seem a bit behind. My intention is to attack the people who are behind and buddy up to the tech leaders. This is a bad game for iso because it's basically pangaea +1 and we're the +1. We'll see if I can avoid screwing it up too badly.
 
Emp/Epic

Check III 1724 AD

Spoiler :
1380 Charlie breaks free of shaka, shaka declares on willem. Ummm?
1385 Charlie declares on shaka :rolleyes:.
1410 I get astro. Willem is the only other person with it.
1430 Pacal declares on mao
1435 Charlie capitulates to shaka again...
1525 Phony war with mao to placate pacal II.
1530 Revolt to free market
1535 Willem capitulates to...SHAKA?!
1580 Pacal heads for emancipation
1640 Asoka declares on me as he vassaled to Mao...
1650 revolt to FR
1670 Random event is used to make peace with mao
1712 MASSIVE war breaks out. I don't even know who's with who. Only Pacal II and myself aren't at war, and we're friendly with each other.
1720 I finally trade for an inland map with willem. I don't like what I see. Shaka is HUGE. He has grenadiers although not astro yet. IMO my best bet is to try and shift all EP to Willem and attempt to steal the pre-reqs for assembly line from him. If I have infantry to shaka's rifles I might make some headway vs him. Maybe the only good thing about all this is that shaka took one of Willem's culture cities and removed that from being a threat to me.
 
Emp/Epic

Check IV UN loss.

Spoiler :
1740 Oh god, Zulu wipe out india entirely.
1744 Now Pacal is whipping up on Mao
1764 Mao capitulates to pacal rather than shaka...thank god.
1800 I steal steel from willem
1840 Steal rifling from willem, 1 turn to assembly line so time to start spamming infantry after that.
1846 I grab fascism via self-tech
1849 Stole physics
1851 Revolt to police state :devil:
1852 Willem completes apollo. I don't care he has very few cities
1864 I steal combustion from Willem. Time to mass destroyers as I have a city settled RIGHT ON OIL. Shaka has infantry but he doesn't have steel. This means I need to destroyer him to hell. A blockade might even be necessary.
1867 Shaka declares! :(. Fortunately he has one galleon full of stuff, the rest are frigates. My destroyers aren't out yet but I have upgraded my galleons to transports. Transports suck against modern warships but they're double the strength of frigates...! I'm going to spam a navy and just blockade this guy while I get marines and an attack force going. Once rushmore finishes I can do naval assaults with pillbox defenders and whittle at shakas army. This war is for the game actually (if he were to get my cities, he'd win domination, whereas if I repel him and capture most of his cities, my lead would be so commanding nobody else would be able to do anything), so I hope I don't lose it :(.
1888 Heroic gesture of mercy ends the war. Not for long though. I'm angry at shaka but more rationally for me to win he has to die.
1892 I notice that while fighting me shaka teched steel, railroad, and combustion. That's really interesting. Cute. Really realistic to get 10+ units slaughtered in rival territory, then get blockaded, then spam troops, only to easily tech 3 beaker-heavy techs. I HATE high difficulties when someone gets big. It's so stupid.
1905 War with china for diplo with pacal II
1909 Shaka declares on Pacal, instantly capturing a city. No more phony warring for me I guess. The world is at war. It's time for blood.
1912 I delcare on shaka and take Delhi.
1913 Mao gives me a map for peace.
1916 Major naval skirmish in my territory results in most of zulu's warships destroyed or fleeing. I've long revolted to caste/SP/police state and have the science slider off. I'm workshopping everything. Yes, I intend to win with industrialism.
1921 Looks bad - Pacal is getting crushed. He's lost 4 cities. Also, if I mouse over "peace with pacal II" in shaka's diplo screen, I get "we'd rather win the game, thank you very much" :(.
1922 Shaka had taken back Delhi. I take Bombay.
1923 Pacal capitulates and declares on me :/. Shaka still needs 12% land. That's not the problem however. The problem is that he's got around 60% of the world's pop between him and his vassals, and I'm the sole target.
1936 I'm put out of my misery by a diplomatic victory by shaka (UN).


Edit: I'll retry later. That loss makes me really angry. I hadn't lost on emperor in a while :(. Not sure where I went wrong. I guess I got a bad look, and needed to be more aggressive under such a scenario.
 
MULLIGAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:lol:

Emp/Epic

Check 1.

Spoiler :
Settled 1 SE like last time. ZOMG I pop AH from a hut instantly on turn 1 with scout. Game's looking better already :rolleyes:.
3775 Next hut is a map. Heyo.
3700 ANOTHER map. Give me more maps plx. I want to see the entire planet.
3650 I went AG first, now for the wheel/pottery. I'm trying a non-BW opening for games where it's not all forest to see how it affects early game timing. If you look in my first summary I did something similar.
3525 Complete first worker. I'm going to get some fogbusting warriors out.
3150 I was improving the pigs when an event instantly pastured/roaded it.
2900 I have pottery and am going for writing
2550 Most of island fogbusted, starting settler
2425 I have writing, going for BW
2225 Settled 2nd city 1E of clams on south tip of island
1950 BW, revolt to slavery. Going for MONARCHY ASAP this time.
1625 Forgot to report it, settled 3rd city between the FP tiles west of capitol. I'm obviously just going to cottage it.
1400 4th city 1 SE of rice north of capitol. It gets fish too.
775 Revolt to HR. Sailing and CoL next
365 I forgot for a few turns again. 5th city when up on that plains hill where we get wheat/fish/sheep.
125 I have CoL. Going for currency.
25 AD 5 cities, about to found my 6th. I've conserved quite a few forests. I've been using my production city to keep pushing the pop up. Beakers are stale at 37/turn. I'm working lots of cottages though so I may see a spike in tech rate sooner than last time. I hope.
 
Emp/Epic

Check II/III/IV all in one package as I hang it up at 1475 AD.

Spoiler :
115 AD Math.
265 Barb galleys sure are annoying. I made a handful of my own. Some survived enough to get promoted once and +20% str vs no promo barbs is pretty solid. It's still not the nice odds I prefer but it will have to do. Annoying patch.
340 My first GS. I instantly academy him for +10 BPT in capitol. 3 turns on currency. Then I'm going CS ASAP.
445 Revolted to caste. Time for some GP farming
580 Hanging Gardens doesn't normally go this late does it?
670 I get CS and revolt
700 Such a strong civic with a cottage capitol. 131 BPT.
760 I found Isvarapura 1W of silver. I'm going for optics anyway. This city nets me seafood, whale, and silver for a solid happy boost.
980 Capture a barb worker as I land outside tartar, which is again in this game stupidly settled ON TOP OF THE WHEAT.
1000 Tartar burns for its idiocy. I also conveniently burned a barb galley in port, and that's never been so satisfying as in 3.17
1010 Another barb city instantly respawned:rolleyes:. It's not what I had in mind at first but if it grows I might not raze it. We'll see.
1080 Optics. Starting on paper.
1210 By the way, Navajo burned also ;).
1120 Willem beats me to circumnavigation
1230 3 People declare on willem. Shaka and his 2 vassals charlie and asoka. This is ridiculous. Is his start that strong?
1260 No shaka, I don't care to join vs dutch. I don't have astro. Idiot.
1290 Chinese join that dogpile, and Willem becomes shaka's vassal :mad:. This is atrocious.
1340 I lose lib. What annoys me is that I had education and philosophy before anyone had education. Pacal hasn't cottaged anything either. Sometimes I hate the imbalances of the higher difficulties, even though I usually win emperor (although this looks like me gonig 0-2 on this map with shaka being so huge already).
1475 Zulu declares on me. I could probably fend him off but I just don't feel like playing this out. It's pretty frustrating to have somebody at 38% of world pop before you can intervene.


Edit: If I try this again, I might try some exotic approach to do something about what happened to me in both attempts. If I do bother doing so rather than making a new post I'll probably just edit this one. Don't hold your breath though. It's been a bad civ weekend for me :(.
 
@ TMIT i've had similar problems with this map, its a good map, but the opponents.... yeah...

Spoiler :
i dont think it has so much to do with shaka's start so much as it does with shakas tactics and the opponents he faces early. shaka is a monster if he's allowed to get rolling, once he gets established he spams units like there is no tomorrow and just flat out overwhelms the competition, particularly when they are 'weaker' opponents. Asoka is probably a walk for him and then after the indian falls i doubt that charlie can stand up to him. If it goes the other way, that is to say charlie first, well, shaka is pretty persistant when it comes to war.

I've played through this twice now on monarch, and in both cases shaka has taken over half the continent and is almost systematically going through the remaining free states. in my first game they even all shared a religion and were lovey dovey and he was still declaring war on them looking for that ever larger piece of the pie.

This game probably be significantly easier if there was even one other AI separate from the mass that could be conquered to allow for a bit more even playing field when it comes to taking down shaka. Granted maybe i'm going about this all wrong, who knows.
 
No, I'm running into similar problems. I need to get even better early game. People have had liberalism before 500 AD. If I could pull something like that, I might be able to move fast enough to alter the outcome of the game in my favor. I still need to get better somehow........there has to be a way :).
 
Played this for a while, until about 1300. I'm not gonna finish it. I'm kind of burned out on Civ and can never finish games anymore.

But this is one of the nicest islands in a long time. Its huge, it has tons of resources. Tons of health resources. my capital was size 21 in 1300 with no health or happiness problems and it could still grow.

Settling 1 SE is definitely the way to go with this capital, letting you build the great lighthouse, harbor, levee, and customs house, and only picking up 3 coastal tiles.

As for the opponents
Spoiler :

Fortunately Shaka did not get very big in my game. Scorewise Pacal was first. I was 2nd. Willem and Shaka and Mao were about even, and Asoka and Charlemagne got whooped.

And everyone except for Willem and his vassal Asoka were very behind in techs. More behind than i'd seen them in a long time on emperor.
 
Emperor/Epic - Check I:

Spoiler :
Checkpoint I: Strategy, Schmategy, and Great Lighthouse Powered REX

4000 BC: 1 SE of the original capital is a coastal site for the capital with all the food still there. I move the settler 1 SE. Start on Agri.

3975 BC: Agri popped from hut! Woohoo!

3525 BC: The starting island is all scouted out now. There's a small landmass NW of the base island, reachable by galley. TGL comes to mind. No, seriously. There's no foreign trade but there is intercontinental trade. TGL can be profitable.

Happiness res are nearly nonexistent. One wine, one silver, and a whale. This... sucks. I'll need all the happiness I can get. HR comes to mind.

3250 BC: Scout gets eaten by a lion. Across a river, in a forest. Not that it matters, but **** lucky animals.

2275 BC: Sailing is in. A vital tech, I plan on building TGL (and if I can manage it, the ToA) and settling that western landmass ASAP for the commerce bonus, and running a 'hybrid hybrid economy' with trade routes, specialists, and cottages.

2050 BC: Oracle BIAFAL. What the...? I've never seen it go so early. Probably means the ToA plan is down the drain as well.

1500 BC: ToA goes before I even researched Poly. Too bad.

1275 BC: TGL is in.

125 BC: Monarchy is in and I revolt to HR. CoL next, I might even still be able to grab Confu with it. I'm now at 8 cities. Also, at 40 BPT with running scientists. Not bad, not bad.

100 AD: CoL is in. Time to get those courthouses up. What's ever nicer is that I'm the first to CoL and manage to found Confucianism! That's nice, because a state religion means extra happiness, religious civics, and a shrine which might bring in some nice cash.


Why I even try at Emperor is even beyond me. It's slightly above my current level and I suck at isolated starts.
 
TMIT:

Spoiler :
Aren't you just really proud of Shaka though? He can win!
 
Quotey said:
TMIT:

Spoiler :
Aren't you just really proud of Shaka though? He can win!
Click to expand...
:lol:

That bastard can be really dangerous if you let him loose. I didn't thought he would get too far, given his neighbours, but it looks I was wrong ;)
 
Spoiler reveals civilizations in this game:
Spoiler :

The problem is the lack of the standard starting techs at the higher levels (Emperor+)!

On Emperor all AIs (including Barbarians!) get the free techs: Hunting, Archery. (Immortal Agriculture, Deity Wheel).
Thus the default defensive units will be Archers -- very good defenders in the early game.

The warmongers (Shaka et al.) won't run into problems as they focus on military tech-wise from the start so they will soon have Archers, Axemen, IMPIs.

The builders (Asoka ...) will focus on civilian stuff, wonders and religions and will long have only Warriors as their best units (In a test game Asoka's army consisted of 2 Warriors in 1500 BC!). This will get them into real trouble to expand as they will face Barbarians who will spawn at Emperor rate!

Furthermore Barb Cities will only have Warriors as defenders -- Shaka's Impis and even his Archers will blow them away so the warmongers have another advantage for their early expansion.

This will all lead to a huge difference in the AI's power rating which will in turn lead to earlier wars that the warmongers will easily dominate.

A last thing: Shaka and Asoka both start with 2 corns in their capital BFCs. Shaka starts with Agriculture and builds farms right away. Asoka should get Agriculture too as a free tech but not in this scenario so his Fast Worker idled in his city for 10 turns until he researched it.

All of these differences in the early game kind of snowball here especially as this is a small pangaea...

Solution: Free techs must be edited in for the AIs in the WB-file and given to the Barbs via WB. The game must then be saved as a normal save (WB-files forget the Barb tech level!). I understand that this will require some sort of automation via programming...
 
That's a good idea. TMIT, if you play again, can you do that? Go into WB and give everyone the techs.
 
Dan, the problem with that is the WBs do not allow that kind of flexibility becauseof the way the game checks stuff ( bad design IMHO ): it gives the free techs to the AI before the leaders choice. If you choose the leaders the game will bypass the free techs....

As you can understand I do not feel atractted by the prospect of making 6 diferent WBs or 24 (!) saves ( counting with the speed changes ) every LHC. To say the truth I think it would not be good for the series..... But as this problem is itchy, I may consider it otherwise: I would like to make this as close to a normal game that by acident is a isolated start as possible.....
 
Building on what Dan said after checking out the events on the other continent in the early game:

Spoiler :


Shaka rushed and killed Asoka in my 2nd game by 800 BC. I'm not kidding. They spawn FAR from each other too. It's a good point about the starting techs, food start, and snowball effect. It's difficult to deal with an AI that size. I'm also not seeming to tech quickly enough. I've tried an assortment of SE things (being practice games I intentionally avoided the mids and went bulbing, but it looks like mids are needed for this sort of thing in isolation). On my island, land barbs were nothing. I've never had it so easy vs them since I could just fogbust them away forever really early (animals barely stopped coming). That didn't mean barbs weren't an issue though


Barb galley spawn rate is really gay now. I played the opening to this map 3 times. In one of my games, I had no less than 3 galleys wrap around one side of the island within a few turns of each other. Classical naval warfare is asinine to begin with - you can't use terrain like you can on land other than just sitting in the way for +10%. There are no buildings to enable promotions. The only thing that's viable is getting metal casting much earlier than normal and putting up some triremes. IMO getting it early and pushing out 3-4 of them is a bit inhibitive on builds though. However to stop galleys from blasting through them and pillaging sea tiles that's basically what you need to be safe - a wall of 2 triremes on either side of your coastal empire to prevent the occasional multiple galley assault. Even 1 won't cut it, because you get attacked in succession :(.

I think it's imbalanced, compared to land barbs. IMO either land barbs need to be harder too or they need to tone that galley nonsense back a bit. Occasionally land barbs will spawn so that 2 attack a point at a time. Usually not, however. In all 3 of my play-throughs, I saw a 2 galley stack at least once, and that was the lucky game. In the other two games I saw 2 galley barb stacks three times. Again I emphasize: there is no way in civ IV to ensure ships will win this battle with any reasonable consistency, you have barely better than 60% odds with galleys defending on coast, which only get 1 exp on defense.

IMO it's a bad change. Outside of the extremely rare trireme blockade opportunity these units really don't help much, and the frequency the barbs show up on water and the tendency to cluster is a bit much.
 
Emperor - to 1485 AD or something, check II. Not sure if and when check III is decided.

Spoiler :
640 AD: India bites the dust. Crap.

1285 AD: Well, first I go trade-whoring Education around. I get Feudalism from Pacal (he apparently researched quite a part of it himself, becaused he wanted some money to go with it. I also trade it to Willem for Nationalism. And then I pull the ace out of the sleeve - I bulb the leftover GS on Liberalism and take Constitution for it. Now to trade-whore some more! (also, booyah! won a liberalism race on Emperor!)

1290 AD: And I immediately try and get some value out of Lib. Willem will give Gunpowder, so I take that one. Also, I get some techs from Pacal - Literature and Machinery. In retrospect, shouldn't have taken Lit because he went WFTYBTA.

Also, I adopt Free Religion for the diplo bonus with the other continent.

It turns out India was conquered by Shaka. Shaka is the usual 800lb gorilla on the power graph, but techwise backwards. Charlemagne probably got bad luck with his lands or something like that - he voluntary vassaled himself to Mao. Willem and Pacal are the tech leaders, but Pacal is beloved by everybody and Willem is Public Enemy No.1.

The whole other continent is one big Hindu lovefest save for Willem, who doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against Shaka and Mao. There's no friggin' way in hell I'm going to win this unless everybody decides to go Free Religion and Shaka stirs up trouble again.

Next up, going up the combustion branch. Shaka is showing WHEOOHRN - and even worse, he has already got Rifling. I spam frigates because he doesn't have Chem yet. When Pacal had researched Chem, I decide to trade it away to prevent Pacal from gaining even more of a tech lead. I get Rep.Parts from Willem, Economics from Mao, Democracy from Mao for Lib and Sci.Method, and give Willem Steel for Rifling. Bring it on Shaka... bring it on!

The only thing giving me trouble is thinking how I'm going to win this game...

Diplo? Nope. All the Hindus love each other.
Domination/Conquest? On Emperor level, against Shaka with three times your land and ten times your soldiers? Yeah, right. :rolleyes:
Culture? I'm too late with that. Unless I want to hit legendary in 2020 AD, when Pacal is already living the good life on Alpha Centauri or Shaka has conquered the world.
Space? Pacal is WAY ahead in tech of me. There's no way I'm beating him to AC unless Shaka declares war on him.

The only silver lining in all this is that I just might get infantry against Zulu rifles. Not that that's going to do me any good when I'm outnumbered 10 to 1, but still.
 
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