The Community Deity Game #6 - The Zulu

T158 DomV, ABCDE

Policies:
Liberty (left, right), Commerce (Wagon Trains, Mercantilism)

Religion:
OWN, Initiation Rites, Holy Warriors
Same as I've done in the past, except I went with Initiation Rites (naturally spread to a 2nd city) instead of Tithe for the early 100 gold

Achievements:
Full achievements

Science:
This was an Illiterate game - no science buildings built/bought.
After key Ancient era techs, went Construction to get first war started, Engineering to get 3rd Trade Route up, Machinery in the 90s and Civil Service 10x. After that, worked towards Printing Press so puppets could build a Zoo.

Cities:
3 self-founded. Never annexed.

Army:
Aside from 2-3 CS gifts later in the game, I only ever built Archers/Composites/XBows and Spearmen/Impi.

Wars/Progress
Spoiler :
Early trade routes went East to Brazil, so the first war went West to the Mayans, starting with Composites. I built mainly ranged units early on, shifting over to mainly melee (Impis) later). After the Mayan capital, I used them to level up a bit while building a road towards the Shoshone. As my army moved West, Brazil DOW'd; I held them off and then pushed back, but their Great Wall really slowed me down. I ended up using 3 GG citadels to get at Rio; I probably should have brought a few of my more experienced XBows from the Western army over to help, as the Eastern armies progress was very slow.
Western army continued counter-clockwise pattern while Eastern army moved into Arabia, who also gave them trouble. Final turns involved lots of suicide runs, as the Western army made it all the way to Medina (I had been hoping to meet in the middle, at Poland). I delayed to ensure I had 10+ impi and conquered Medina the same turn as Mecca for an emphatic finish.
As I wrote earlier, my impi were always in battle or on the way to one. I do agree with Sclb re: improving achievement wording, which is partly what the CDG series thread was meant for.
Spoiler :



 
Blatc said:
T158 DomV, ABCDE
Click to expand...
Wow! Very impressive.

Religion: OWN, Initiation Rites, Holy Warriors
Click to expand...
I am trying a third time from scratch using Tradition because my HAC runs both took me past T350. Got OWN+HW this time. It is OP. Still, I expect to go well past T200. I enjoy hitting Autocracy anyway.
 
Impressive, indeed. Blatc, care to elaborate on your gameplay? Did you build any other buildings, like monument, granary? Did you settle close enough to the AI to send the trade routes? Benchmarks?

I actually replayed with 2-city Honor and took Palenque around t70, but when I marched my army towards Pocatello, he had a few swordsmen and horsemen, which were difficult to kill in is territory, so I reloaded a few turns and went after Pedro, who I barely took out with CB"s and GG bombs. After that I hit a late t120 machinery (after civil service). I even built libraries, so I wonder how you teched it so fast with just trade routes? You used Liberty GS to bulb it? You didn't research pottery and went straight for machinery and CS only afterwards to have cheaper techs? I also put my money into city-states for allyship, but I guess the best way is to put all of your resources into pumping out units and just outswarming the AI because maneuvering units will take too much time and make them obsolete? It's better to just produce units, faith-buy units, and gold-buy units and ram them into AI?
 
I built monument, granary, and UB in both expos, as well as happiness buildings and market later on.
I settled Eastern expo specifically within TR range.
Let me know which benchmarks you'd like and I'll try and remember.
I would suggest teching Machinery before Civil Service and bribing your next target to DOW someone so they move their troops away.
I used Liberty GE on Machu.
Pottery was the first thing I researched. Even going illiterate, you need Pottery for growth, access to Calendar, and Sailing for 2nd trade route.
Re: units, my army wasn't that big; out-maneuvering was important, as is getting some logistics/range XBows. I was only in spam-unit mode towards the end.
 
Fair enough. I am just surprised you were able to tech so fast just via trade routes. So the first goes to Rio, and the rest? If you attack the Mayans, you are not trading with them, though I guess you then send a TR to their second city, once you capture the capital. As for Machu, do you build roads before conquest or after you have the city? William and Casimir were already settling between my south expo and Palenque around t100.

I am going to try Liberty. I just can't make Honor work.
 
Blatc said:
T158 DomV, ABCDE
Click to expand...

It's impressive that your illiterate game hit machinery faster than my literate game. I am fairly certain now that liberty is faster than honor for this type of speed game and a slight delay could mean the AI tech to the next era and thus delay my conquest even more. Once they get to industrial era then it's pretty much over, as it's very difficult to kill industrial cities with XB or Impis. It is also imperative to kill certain AI before they can spam their super OP UU and frigates.
 
I think Liberty is just straight up better when you want to close the game asap. Its bonuses are immediate and significant early on. I actually looked over at the Shoshone DCL, and apparently I won it by t150 with Liberty (but that is Shoshone).

Honor probably gets better after artilleries because you kill strong enough units to actually make money, and units become stronger and harder to kill, so the faster promotions are nice. But then again, you could hit artillery faster with Tradition and have more money anyway.

I am still slowly playing the Tradition start with the intention to go all the way to rocket artillery, modern armor and aircraft because Shaka's UA will help me get them promoted fast. I am intrigued to see what the promotions for later units are. But then again, playing that would take me a week or two, and I might just get bored and play Liberty rush because impis are fun.
 
Sclb, same as I posted on some of the DCL, I usually try a few starts comparing different # of cities and/or different policy trees and, for the quick DomV, it's usually a clear edge to the Liberty start, with 3 cities doing quite well.

adcarrymaokai said:
Fair enough. I am just surprised you were able to tech so fast just via trade routes. So the first goes to Rio, and the rest? If you attack the Mayans, you are not trading with them, though I guess you then send a TR to their second city, once you capture the capital. As for Machu, do you build roads before conquest or after you have the city? William and Casimir were already settling between my south expo and Palenque around t100.

I am going to try Liberty. I just can't make Honor work.
Click to expand...

Please use spoilers for game specific info.

When you remove a few techs (Writing, Philosophy), getting to Machinery in good time only requires you to get up to ~40-50 science per turn. The key is getting to 20/30/40 ASAP Move trade route techs up in your tech order and caravans up in your build order, compared to a peaceful science/culture game. 3-city Liberty means you only build 1 settler (unless Spain or El Dorado); you're somewhat building a caravan instead of another settler. If the AI sends a TR back, let's say at 4bpt each for 8 total, that's beyond what you'll get out of a 4th expo for quite a while.
20bpt from cities, sans bibliotheque, requires 17 population (8, 5, 4) and 3 from Palace. If you conquered a city with Comp Bows pre-Machinery, that should get you 25+
20bpt from trade routes requires 4 @ 5bpt or 5 @ 4bpt. Once you send your 3rd out, 20+ is very doable on most maps, though you'll need to think about TR when placing expos (my Eastern expo is likely different than some others on this map). If 4bpt sounds high, it shouldn't; remember that you didn't tech Writing or Philosophy (or a few others we can delay until after Machinery).

Spoiler :

1st TR went from Eastern expo (I went East of NW, not North by the coast) to Rio
2nd TR went to 3rd Brazilian city
3rd TR went to Arabian expo
2 of the above were sent from my Eastern expo; for the 3rd, my capital was able to reach on of the expos

I pre-built roads towards the Mayans while I worker baited outside of their closest city; this is T60-75 or thereabouts. After I took their capital (2nd city conquered), I used their #2 city (to the N) to level up while 3-4 workers built a road towards the Shoshone. I also upgraded to XBows during this time.
I had barely started building a road towards Brazil and put a few units together when they DOWd me (Denounce first helped warn me to prepare for war). I held them off and resumed build the road to Rio as I pushed them back. As I wrote before, the Eastern wars were relatively slow and involved 5 GG citadels.

It's not discussed much on here, but getting AI to war with each other (and finding cheaper bribes so you can afford several) is certainly part of my game, though not easy to describe. Perhaps as I prefer to start war earlier than some other players, I end up starting to think about bribing AI into war earlier as well, and that leads to less expos being built? Makes sense. Also, not just bribing, but agreeing to DOW, which can go two ways:
1) AI asks you to DOW another AI. You say Yes, in 10 turns. The AI starts war early; you decline when they say the time has come.
2) Same as above, but you DOW the 2nd AI...and then the first one.
In this game, Poca asked me to DOW William, who I wasn't worried about. I said 'yes in 10 turns' and then agreed. Poca went to war as I was building my Western road and upgrading to XBows. I believe I also bribed him to DoW Egypt. Normally, I try and get my next target to Dow as much of the world as possible.
 
Turn 280 win DomV using Tanks-Arty-Nukes
cdg6zulu.jpg

cdg6zulu1.jpg
Probably had only achievement D but did not count seriously.

Spoiler :
Went for Full Lib-Comm-Rati-Autocracy(4). Initially found 2 expos and later went on to find another one to keep city connections.

Founded a religion but holy warrior was gone.:cry:

DoWd Brazil on t67 and took his cap with CBs a few turns later. Managed to get Arabia Dow Poland and then Dowd Arabia same turn. Got his cap at t110. I had hit machinery at t101 but had little gold. Then went after Maya who had tonnes of units.

Meanwhile Arabia gifted me a city which Poland took for 75 gpt.:crazyeye:
Poland also eliminated Arabia.:goodjob:

Maya was a bit hard and probably ruined my timings. Could get his cap only at t150 and got dowd by runaway William and Brazil.
Meanwhile proposed and won WF.

War with Brazil ended with pedro gifting a city which was again sold for gpt. Then took Dutch cap at t201(too many cities and army) with XBs and 2 arty. Then peaced out for gpt.

Then went for Egypt. It was probably the hardest cap after Soshone. Took it at around t229 and got 5000 gold and gpt. This was what changed the game and I bought tonnes of landships.

Then went after Poca and only got 1 city but took 9999 gold and 21 oil.

Again Dowd Poca and took his cap at t261. I had enough units and tanks to rush Poland but decided to nuke him out after I had taken all his gold for gpt.:lol:

I was tech leader after dealing with William. Poland was my friend throughout the game till the end as I always tried to get "fought against a common foe modifier" with him. Before taking any cap always tried to get him at war with the civ I was attacking. Soshone stayed friends during mid-game as we fought William but later denounced me.

CS allies were first cultural and later had nearly all of them.
P.S. One reason for continuing William war(nearly 60 turns) was that he was tech leader and after his massive army was dwindled I had to make sure he would not runaway to Space.

 
Domination VC, turn 345.

This was my third attempt, having gone past T350 with my two HCA tries, so I abandoned them. This one ended up not much faster, but felt a lot more robust. I build all the Wonders from Eiffel on, mostly because of my tech lead. As with my other tries, all three expos were on NW. As with my 2nd game, I had OWN and HW.

Tradition, Rationalism, then 1st to Freedom for 6 FL and SoL, then switched to Order and built Kremlin. Ended with 12 in Order and full Commerce (in addition to full Rationalism).

Achievement D only. I was too hard on the Impi-kin and only one was alive at the end.
 

Attachments

  • civ5ss-cdg06-t345sv.jpg
    civ5ss-cdg06-t345sv.jpg
    354.5 KB · Views: 185
You would get a faster domination victory if you concentrate on the conquest, don't build wonders, and don't waste valuable policies in policy trees that don't assist the warfare.
 
^^ First 200 turns (in all three of my games) were concentrated on conquest, I built no early wonders, and I did not waste policies. Yes, my early DOM game is weak -- but your advice has nothing to do with that. Once I knew my DV would not be fast, I relaxed about that, and just aimed for a fun conclusive win. Which this had. One civ had the boosters, but none were really close.
 
^^ In my best attempt, two caps by T200. I might have gotten one more with Impi->Riflemen. In every case, things stalled out for me until Rocketry.
 
I think you need to go back and practice basic domination, if you don't mind me saying so? What turn did you hit Civil Service and upgrade your Ikands spearmen? Domination is all about getting to a certain technology before the computer playes have units to deal with it. You want to research Civil Service before they have Gunpowder units, Rifling before they have Rifling, things like that.
 
enslingkorp said:
I think you need to go back and practice basic domination, if you don't mind me saying so? What turn did you hit Civil Service and upgrade your Ikands spearmen? Domination is all about getting to a certain technology before the computer playes have units to deal with it. You want to research Civil Service before they have Gunpowder units, Rifling before they have Rifling, things like that.
Click to expand...
Well, that's obvious. I think what most people need is to know how to get ahead of AI in tech.
 
adcarrymaokai said:
Well, that's obvious. I think what most people need is to know how to get ahead of AI in tech.
Click to expand...

The answer is to take the capitals of the computer players, annex them, buy courthouses and use their science to accelerate your research. To do this, you need to use each succesive range of units to beat up on someone who can't deal with it.

This can be done by any civilization with any cutlure path, but Honor and Libery are best. Its also better starting earlier. If you can take the first capital with Archers then that's best of all.

This is the Zulu we're talking about and their units arrive before turn 100 and are affective for more than 50 turns. There are lots of videos that show how to get most of if not al th capitals in this time.
 
After some failed Honor attempts decided to go with Tradition-Commerce-Autocracy turtle, filling Rationalism, as well. Started war with artillery and riflemen and soon after supplemented with planes, which really did most of the work.

I had barracks, armory, and Brandenburg Gate in the capital (and maybe military academy, too?), plus Autocracy tenet, so all the new units built there had 4 promotions right off the bat. I picked triple bombardment and repair on planes, and by the end of the game they would have triple bombardment, repair, range, logistics, and defense from interception. Shaka's UA is great for fast promotions, and that really helped me sweep the AI's faster than I would expect on this city-spam map.

Interestingly, I was significantly slowed by Arabia, who picked defender of faith. Apparently it's pretty strong.
 

Attachments

  • shaka swag.jpg
    shaka swag.jpg
    494.2 KB · Views: 147
Domination @189
Spoiler :
A - Win before T200 - 2 points yes
B - Win without using Artillery (or later units) - another 2 points yes
C - Win without using Cannons (or later units) - another 2 points no I needed the canon to finish the 80+ Poland Cities ,the XB where only 5 or 6 damage on them
D - Train, upgrade or buy at least 20 Impis - another 2 points not sure no
E - Keep 10 Impis in battle and alive until victory - another 2 points only 7 left no
took many try to get there .I tried a few time going honor but always ending too late in tech
Going liberty with building the pyramids worked.
I followed Blatc victory ,on my game the Dutch built the great wall and a lots of units.
I spend a lots gold buying CS to keep my adversaries busy so after the commerce opener and the trade route one I went to the CS tree.
I was stealing tech from Poland and my timing was pretty bad.
Did not built any libraries

I managed to pay Poland to start wars with everybody
 

Attachments

  • zulu.jpg
    zulu.jpg
    111.4 KB · Views: 165
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Nizef
Quest for Glory - Deity Challenge #1
2
Replies
20
Views
2K
billby
billby
M
Planting a Great Person
Replies
19
Views
1K
billby
billby
M
Petra: tips for getting it
Replies
0
Views
322
martindo
M
L
Rise of the Mongols scenario. 50 turn Deity walk through.
Replies
0
Views
2K
lerrocco
L
Nizef
Quest for Glory - Deity Challenge #2
Replies
7
Views
1K
Megalou
Megalou
Top Bottom