Snowballing Civ

Hi everyone!
I'm currently playing Arabia on immortal and the Zulus are snowballing HARD.
They took 4 capitals and I'm currently at war with them.
I haven't lost a unit yet and I'm pretty much caught up in terms of science (I entered industrial age like 3 turns after he did)
I kind of wanted to go for a domination victory but now I'm not so sure.

Does anyone have any advice for what I should do next?
I haven't been playing Immortal long, do you guys think it is a lost cause to fight against the superpower zulus, or does anyone have any tips on how to weaken the zulus?

nukes are quite effective against carpets of doom, or so I've heard.

I'm a turtlesaurus though, so my advice would be to invest some gold in city states and either weaken him by spreading him out or wait out for the UN

Get (Great War) Bombers and Rocket Artillery. Pretty much the only way to eat through his units fast enough until Stealth Bombers.

Nukes trade efficiently versus carpets of doom but they don't help if you're severely outmatched production wise -- because you need to keep making more of them. On the flip side, highly promoted Rocket Artillery and Bombers can annihilate carpets of doom with high promotions. This is a situation where investing in Honor would have been a good idea (assuming you didn't) -- the GPT is insane from the finisher (in a situation like this) and the 50% extra XP helps get those important promotions faster. Cheaper upgrades and faster barracks/armories/military academies are nice, too.

Not exactly sure what techs you have at the moment, but ideally you'd be making mainly Artillery (the backbone of your army for a bit) and some infantry line units to fortify while he bashes his carpet against them.

Planes change the dynamic since you need Triplanes of your own to intercept or AA guns (later Fighters and SAMs) once you hit Modern Era and those come out.

Kevins4ever said:

...I haven't lost a unit yet and I'm pretty much caught up in terms of science (I entered industrial age like 3 turns after he did)...

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Just because Shaka entered the Industrial era first doesn't mean he out-techs you. Check the demographics screen. Since he's been warmongering his tech rate will suffer due to the number of cities Shaka owns.

Kevins4ever said:

...I kind of wanted to go for a domination victory but now I'm not so sure...

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As Arabia you wanted to start a DomV around the time you researched Chivalry. As soon as Shaka reaches Flight a DomV may be hard until you get Stealth Bombers and XCOM squads.

Kevins4ever said:

...Does anyone have any advice for what I should do next?...

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without a save-file it's hard to advise properly as many facters will come into play. My advice is to beeline Plastics then Flight and build a defensive army and concentrate on another VC.

Ideology
Shaka will almost certainly pick Autocracy. How's your tourism over him if it is good you may cause Shaka some serious happiness issues if you pick a different ideology. This will make battle with him a lot easier, heck he might flip to your ideology.

Oh Shaka, well if you plan him fighting till the end, I suggest you rush flight and make some War bombers to help you out. And some AA units to kill his bombers. Afterwards you should go for plastics and upgrade your close combat units to Infrantry. This should give you the upper hand for a while.

How many civs and CS are left in the game? You could work against him in Congress. Embargo on him and CS would definitely cripple his economy. Oh and, while this depends merely on terrain though, you could spam Battleships(and some Destroyers) to kill and capture his coastal cities as you shouldn`t have any problems with Oil playing as Arabia.

Also make sure to get public schools and research labs done at the same time to simply out-tech him. I would suggest going Autocracy with mobilization and perhaps opening commerce to mercantilism to just buy the units while building schools and labs. But that really depens on how you are doing in culture and how fast you can get these policies. Or you could go Order with skyscrapers and mercantilism to buy buildings while spamming units. Really depens on the situation.

I`m pretty certain that you can defend against his invasion so focus on science regardless of your plan but have enough units to defend yourself in the meantime. Make some citadels where you expect his assult will come from. This should help you hold the line with significantly smaller army. Then when you get Bombers, Modern Armor units and Rocket artillery, you should just run over.

Rifles, Artillery & Cavalry, then tech to GW Bombers. Use Oxford and GS bulbs to widen the tech gap right now.

So basically the situation I'm in is like this (sorry I don't really know how to upload things, im new)

Shaka is on one half of the map and he's conquered like 2 civs and taken 4 capitals.
The huns are struggling and are in between me and Shaka. There are a lot of city states acting as a buffer as well.
I have assyria and the byzantine next to me and we all have a declaration of friendship.
Should I end the war between me and Shaka and go after the other two first (which are sure to attack me if I get weak) or should I concentrate on building an army and send it through and attack Shaka first?
I tried to convince the other civs to fight him and they only did so for a small amount of turns

Why turn on your allies? That's usually not helpful if you're going up against the top dog.

If you're overpowered or somehow achieve incredible strength then you could probably make it against 2 or more civilizations.

Does Shaka have Rifles yet?

Kevins4ever said:

So basically the situation I'm in is like this (sorry I don't really know how to upload things, im new)...

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