Scramble for Africa: Anyone is disappointed by Zulu?

I mean,I know Zulu is supposed to be technologically behind but come on!

I think obviously the creator of the scenario wanted Zulu to be perceived as a military power and wreck-havoc in lower Africa, by giving Shaka a aggressor personality and a huge sea of impi to start with. but it's just simply no match, even when well upgraded and present in hordes and +25% modifier, compare to simple rifleman.

It took me 20+ turns to get rid of boer, simply because sending impi toward city = suicide and trebuchet is just way too inefficient.

After taking care of Washington, my north is sealed off by Portugal and south by Britain. Since I have DOF with Portugal and Britain denounced me. I DOWed on Britain. Sending my massive impi Army in and trebuchet.

Only to discover that the mighty zulu army vanquish in the hands of half a dozen explorers...seriously a impi (upgraded) cannot take a explorer heads on...it is just frustrating...

The impis in africa scenario is too weak to assault cities, they'll take too much damage like 80% of their hp cuz they're basically pikemen assaulting industrial era cities.

And then riflemen vs impis..

Due to Boers getting in your way to their troop patrols and city settlements while refusing open borders.

Zulus cannot even wage war against england, only maybe against portugal.

I wanted to rise havoc as zulus in scenario, I was quite disappointed and stopped playing the scenario right there.

To be fair, FIraxis lost their touch at making good scenarios, last time there was any good scenarios.. that was back in beyond the sword expansion.

The Zulu are by far the hardest civ in this scenario, or pretty much in any Civ V scenario. They...really aren't meant to be won with regularly. They're there as kind of a flavor thing, and as a supreme-level challenge for those really super good players. I mean hell, MadDjinn got completely overrun as the Zulu, you know it's a really tough one when that happens.

It's clear to see that Scramble for Africa is largely balanced for being played as a European. That's where more of the unique mechanics come in and the more interesting ways to win, and for the most part, the other half of the civs are largely native obstacles for the Europeans that you can play as anyway for fun. The Ottomans are basically an entry barrier for Italy, Morocco exists for trade routes, Egypt is there to make the Suez a target, Ethiopia is something of a baseline opponent that needs to be outright beaten to win, and the Boers/Zulu are largely obstacles for England who otherwise has the upper hand.

I mean, it IS called "Scramble for Africa", after all, which historically is a term referring to the European powers gaining an interest in colonizing and claiming territory in Africa. But in any case, yeah, the Zulu are not what you play to experience the depth of the scenario. They're there if you're super awesome at the game and want a crazy masochistic challenge.

Scramble for Africa is not balanced in the slightest, and I'm pretty sure it's not intended to. I kind of like it - leaves for much more spread in difficulty by picking different civs. I had a lot of fun trying to survive as Zulu and the Boers.

Tinker said:

Scramble for Africa is not balanced in the slightest, and I'm pretty sure it's not intended to. I kind of like it - leaves for much more spread in difficulty by picking different civs. I had a lot of fun trying to survive as Zulu and the Boers.

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I do quite like to think of the Zulu as "what if the Western Roman empire was even MORE screwed?" On higher levels, unless you're crazy good at the game, you're pretty much spending the entire scenario with like five civs trying to kill you and succeeding, only for the Zulu this starts when you only have maybe four cities at most and are two whole eras behind everyone. Plus, to actually win, your direct competition is the Boers, who get lots of culture from farms and their unique building, and have tech parity, and Ethiopia, who, as we all know, basically needs to be eliminated for anyone to win, and good freaking luck doing that when your elite forces are glorified Pikemen. Your goal is to get Culture, but you have pretty much no advantage on actually generating more than your fellow sub-Saharans, and hell, you even have one whole guild you can't build along with several culture buildings. Your only real way to get culture is from defeating units, and they all vastly outech and outmatch you, even with your bonus to units that need better techs.

It's glorious in how impossible it is.

Zulu are designed to be absolutely crushed (like reality) winning with them is an acheivement (the "real" difficulty for them is about 2 levels higher than the listed difficulty)

Quote: To be fair, FIraxis lost their touch at making good scenarios, last time there was any good scenarios.. that was back in beyond the sword expansion. :Quote

How Dare You! Civ 5 scenarios are great and you have no right to say that. Have you even tried the Fall Of Rome Scenario or The Wonders of the Ancient World Scenario or any other non Polynesian Civ 5 Scenario.

Oh and to the OP, I agree with what other people are saying in that it was designed that way on purpose.

If you want to win as the Zulu, your strategy can't really be offensive city taking. You probably want to settle your cities fairly close together for defensive purposes and you have to turtle up while producing culture and hope you don't die. You can always get lucky and take a city that someone else got really low for you, but otherwise it's not going to be worth it.

Nick Hynds said:

Quote: To be fair, FIraxis lost their touch at making good scenarios, last time there was any good scenarios.. that was back in beyond the sword expansion. :Quote

How Dare You! Civ 5 scenarios are great and you have no right to say that. Have you even tried the Fall Of Rome Scenario or The Wonders of the Ancient World Scenario or any other non Polynesian Civ 5 Scenario.

Oh and to the OP, I agree with what other people are saying in that it was designed that way on purpose.

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I've played fall of rome and yes, its a decent scenario, it showed that firaxis probably still can make good scenarios. but it have that artificial 100 turn limit I think. Their BTS scenarios never had a turn limit. I liked that.

The Fall of Rome scenario wouldn't really work without the time limit since it's about survival for the Roman civs.