Scramble for Africa

Hakuoh

Warlord
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
Messages
115
How are your experience with it?
I playes as Germany but found it kinda hard since i started only with 2 Citys and Napoleon instandly found Lake Victoria on round 1.
And the Zulus are real pain.
 
Played as the Italians and I got an easy victory. There doesn't seem to be a way to beat France and England in exploration, but you can beat them in conquest and railroads. I played on Prince though.

The Zulu on the other hand... I was simply slaughtered.

The Europeans are definitely the easiest side to play in. You don't have to worry about the worst threat (Other Europeans) and you have a lot more chances to win.

The subsaharian have it worst, especially the Zulu and the Boers, and I'd say especially the Zulu since their army and city strength suck on top of being surrounded by enemies.
 
Played on Prince (I'm a little behind the curve around here it seems, everyone else is always playing on crazy difficulties) as England

Being able to pump out improvements at double speed meant it was pretty easy for me to mop up the Boers and eventually the Zulus and use my newfound wideness to grab the longest rail bonus. I also had a lot of my edge cities supply production to Cape Town via trade-routes, which helped me pump out the gatling guns and explorers I used to tame the wilds.

The European civs are REALLY fast to find natural wonders, so even with dedicated explorers I got beat to two of them, but I was the first to find King Solomon's Mines and I got a settler to Lake Victoria before anyone else (although the French found it first, but it was crawling with barbs)

Did however make up for it by digging out a TON of artifacts - while it wasn't as quick as finding natural wonders, having dug them all out meant that once I established a lead, no-one could use them to catch up to me.

All in all, a lot of fun. Probably try a North African or Sub Saharan civ next.
 
Played on Prince (I'm a little behind the curve around here it seems, everyone else is always playing on crazy difficulties) as England.

Don't feel bad about this. I used to, but I came to realize that people playing on higher difficulties do so on the back of hammering every AI exploit at every possible opportunity.
 
About halfway through as the Zulu and am in 4th place but behind by about 500 points. But I don't really see how I am going to win, I am supposed to develop culture but can only build ampis so I think I am maxed out except for may another GW. Also the Europeans are so advanced there is no way to conquest. I killed three boer units, boxing them into only praetoria. The Europeans get so many points for exploration and railroads the deck is stacked, just like real life I guess.
 
Is it just the games that I play or does France practically auto-win everytime that the human player doesn't win?

Everytime I get into a game with any Civ France always takes off getting into the 2000 point range by turn 60 meanwhile England will be at ~1400 and then 3rd place is something like 1100.

I think it's cause their exploration gets going faster since it's concentrated throughout north africa where there isn't much competition and England gets distracted with wars with the Zulu and Boers.

Also playing as Zulu or Boers is kinda impossible, I don't see how it's feasible to build enough to compete once France and England get going.
 
Is it just the games that I play or does France practically auto-win everytime that the human player doesn't win?

Everytime I get into a game with any Civ France always takes off getting into the 2000 point range by turn 60 meanwhile England will be at ~1400 and then 3rd place is something like 1100.

I think it's cause their exploration gets going faster since it's concentrated throughout north africa where there isn't much competition and England gets distracted with wars with the Zulu and Boers.

Also playing as Zulu or Boers is kinda impossible, I don't see how it's feasible to build enough to compete once France and England get going.

France was the strongest European competitor but my closest competitor score-wise was actually Egypt - even with the natural wonder points I sniped from France, Egypt would've been ahead by about 500 points.
 
I played as the Boers on Deity first, taking the lead only in the last 3 turns with the help of England's troops. It was a really exciting game, and the toughest I had ever played (I probably wouldn't have won if not for a convenient mountain range). Then I tried the Ottomans on deity...

If anyone has beaten SFA as the Ottomans on Deity, please attest. I doubt even the devs have done it.
 
I played as the Boers on Deity first, taking the lead only in the last 3 turns with the help of England's troops. It was a really exciting game, and the toughest I had ever played (I probably wouldn't have won if not for a convenient mountain range).

BrentH,

Congratulations on the victory. I've been trying the Boers on Deity and doing ok for a while and then getting wiped out around turn 40-50. Seems like just when I get started to roll 20 more units show up and swamp me. Any tips on how to start out initially? Build units or buildings to boost production then build the units? Or what ????

Any chance you have the initial autosave from your victory? I saw the save over in the achievements thread and the mountains look like what I need to help me survive a bit longer. :lol:

If anyone has beaten SFA as the Ottomans on Deity, please attest. I doubt even the devs have done it.

I also have tried the Ottomans on Deity and managed to hang on to my capital and start to take back Tunis after losing it on turn 4 to Italy. Boy do they hate me! Then around turn 30, Portugal joins in with the rest of the European civs and wipes me out. Ouch. Not sure how to even begin to approach playing as the Ottomans.

I did see a save over in the achievements thread for the Ottomans (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12614153&postcount=331) but have no idea how they got to the win.
 
Abandon Tunis, you can't defend it.
Get a Gatling gun, a rifled cannon and some privateer for defense.
Grab Coal ASAP to build ironclads and capture Italian ships. Add some frigates and you can conquer Italy and other coastal cities.

The problem is I don't get enough GPT for VP after that.
 
Just finished up my first game of this. Wish i had read all the details and known more about it in advance. First of all belgium seemed hands down awesome (they still are) so I picked them but misunderstood their bonus. I definitely thought it meant cities on the same river are automatically trade connected, which would have been incredible because of where i started, this is not the case. River space (any tile next to a river) counts as a road to your units/caravans. Not nearly as amazing however it does become very useful if youre trying to conquer all the subsaharans in the last 25 turns.


I was sure i was going to win, being 300 points ahead of france 4 turns before the end. France then stole my railroad bonus by two hexes and screwed me out of the win 2 turns before it ended. They had too many points in the first place as I did not realize how many points the natural wonders were worth and was wasting my precious explorers time digging up artifacts the first twenty turns. artifact VP isnt squat compared to the 300 you get for finding a wonder first, i only found one and france nabbed the other three. Still i ended up just shy of 2000 VP on prince difficulty.

The belgium unique infantry is great btw, like 70% of the map is covered in rough terrain and these guys excel on it. Also in case you werent aware each of the wonders confers a bonus promotion to any unit that spends 1 turn in any tile next to it so send all your troops on a round of them. I had quite the army and was able to knock out the zulu with no problems barely lost a unit. Haile selassie on the other hand was a real challenge i might have lost half my army just trying to take 1 city (which he peace treatied me for anyways). The egyptians also were no pushover but i was able to wrangle a city theyd settled on the last turn. I also got a free city from morocco, declared war on them by like turn 10 and never even saw them and then got a peace offer with a free city. Speaking of that i feel like the wonder/railroad VP is not balanced at all to the land VP. I conquered all of the zulu (which included the boers previous homeland) and then took 1 city each from morocco ethiopia and egypt. On top of that i conquered a city state and bought two others by marriage in addition to the 8 or 9 cities i founded with settlers. The way france won was so anti-climactic, iwas slaughtering innocents and he just put down some railroad.

Also did anyone else think it was funny that belgium gets +2 production from plantation tiles? True to history as always civ.

UPDATE: Just won as morocco, found playing the africans much easier/less hectic. I still had to attack france to win though. Sorry i wrote so much but if you have nothing to do at work read it it might make you laugh.
 
Abandon Tunis, you can't defend it.
Get a Gatling gun, a rifled cannon and some privateer for defense.
Grab Coal ASAP to build ironclads and capture Italian ships. Add some frigates and you can conquer Italy and other coastal cities.

The problem is I don't get enough GPT for VP after that.

ggmoyang -

Thanks for the pointers.

I didn't have any coal in my borders and it would have taken too long to build a settler and then get some. I guess I need to reroll a start with some coal and try again.
 
If you've already played as a Euro civ, is there much point in replaying the scenario as a different Euro civ? Or is it pretty much the same experience just with a different starting location and UA?
 
If you've already played as a Euro civ, is there much point in replaying the scenario as a different Euro civ? Or is it pretty much the same experience just with a different starting location and UA?

They act out quite differently, because of terrain and neighbours. England is the easiest, Portugal and France should be pretty easy with a lot of inland colonization and going wide, Italy will be at naval war from turn 1 with North African factions and the Germans and the Belgians would be the hardest Euro factions, as they have the least settlements on poor terrain around the equator with poor access to both Sub-Saharan and North African civs to exploit. I think this scenario has a high replay value because of that.

I played as England first, steamrolled the Zulu and Boers, married a couple of tribes, conquered Egypt and built a railroad from Cairo to Cape Town in no time. I plan to play as Italy or Germany next.
 
paying as Boers on deity now. portugal germany and zulu declared war from about turn 5, didnt built anything but units until turn 60. boers get culture killing enemy units, so i have managed to climb to the second place. unknown player leads with 400 points more (i have 2000) and its not france. it seems i had to build a couple of museums earlier.. well i'll try to catch up with great writers
 
Don't feel bad about this. I used to, but I came to realize that people playing on higher difficulties do so on the back of hammering every AI exploit at every possible opportunity.

This is due to poor design and poor AI.

paying as Boers on deity now. portugal germany and zulu declared war from about turn 5, didnt built anything but units until turn 60. boers get culture killing enemy units, so i have managed to climb to the second place. unknown player leads with 400 points more (i have 2000) and its not france. it seems i had to build a couple of museums earlier.. well i'll try to catch up with great writers

You won't catch up. Exact same problem I had out of 8 games the most I got was around 3k at 2nd place while Ethiopia got 6k. Building museums won't help as you will easily fill your tree with just conquest and culture gives you very little points (maybe 1k overall meaning you have to make 5k through conquest or stop Ethiopia from making so much) 3 threads have started about this irritating and idiotic randomization/balance issue.

if you want to win on deity, you'll definitely have to to something about ethiopia.

You can't touch Ethiopia, I tried moving my sets up there but it takes 20 turns and you are way behind, I still managed to get 2nd place on that play through. I have tried leap frogging cities through Portugal, but with terrain and deity infinite resources she pumps out units at 2 per city every 3rd turn, not including her huge navy.

I played as the Boers on Deity first, taking the lead only in the last 3 turns with the help of England's troops. It was a really exciting game, and the toughest I had ever played (I probably wouldn't have won if not for a convenient mountain range). Then I tried the Ottomans on deity...

If anyone has beaten SFA as the Ottomans on Deity, please attest. I doubt even the devs have done it.

You got extremely lucky that NA kept each other in check then what was your final score? Obviously they have not played it on D.
 
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