Zulu Domination Guide (Deity, standard, Pangea)

Thank you for the effort put into this write-up. If nothing more shows how to get a highly promoted army and how good it becomes.

I have only one problem with all this, the worker repairing and pillaging trick. I wrote a thread about this last autumn when it was introduced, they even covered it in polycast. The thing is that it gives a big advantage for the attacker, because you can't pillage your own improvements when defending, and repairing them. The only downside is that it's really strong only if you have the pyramids, otherwise you spend 2 turns to repair. So i pretty much consider it an exploit of some sort.

Thanks again, cheers!
 
I have tried this guide twice now. Both times the pyramids were built before turn 40. That never happens in BNW. The Pyramids usually are not built at all unless I decide to get around to it.
 
What a glorious guide! <--- See what I did there? ;)

Thanks so much! I've been playing Venice and winning via Diplo on Deity because its too easy haha. You have me something new to do, so thanks. Also, someone make a LP/Video of the first 30/60 turns, like Tabernak did. It shows some really minor things that the OP doesn't write/screnie. Still the best thread on this forum! Haha *high five*
 
Great strategy write-up - thank you.

Do you think it could work to go with Honor instead of Liberty? -

My thought is this: One of the Honor Policies make units earn XP 50 % faster - and it seems to have quite a strong synergy with Shaka's special abilites and will help you get those 3 range / 2 attacks CB even faster.

You will of course be missing out on the Pyramids, but it seems quite easy to steal workers once you start warring, the AI is not very good at protecting them.

Or am I missing something?
 
Great strategy write-up - thank you.

Do you think it could work to go with Honor instead of Liberty? -

My thought is this: One of the Honor Policies make units earn XP 50 % faster - and it seems to have quite a strong synergy with Shaka's special abilites and will help you get those 3 range / 2 attacks CB even faster.

You will of course be missing out on the Pyramids, but it seems quite easy to steal workers once you start warring, the AI is not very good at protecting them.

Or am I missing something?

pyramids only is definatly not worth choosing liberty. I like the extra setler and worker+5% production and even the Global happines.

There are few good reasons to go liberty (if you have later many citys, then kicks in liberty opener and later the extra GE is awesome).

My 2 cents.
 
Great strategy write-up - thank you.

Do you think it could work to go with Honor instead of Liberty? -

My thought is this: One of the Honor Policies make units earn XP 50 % faster - and it seems to have quite a strong synergy with Shaka's special abilities and will help you get those 3 range / 2 attacks CB even faster.

You will of course be missing out on the Pyramids, but it seems quite easy to steal workers once you start warring, the AI is not very good at protecting them.

Or am I missing something?

I would say that the whole start has a strong foothold in Liberty for a few reasons:
1. Builds 3-4 cities fast and the only way that i know of in BNW to do this is going liberty as you get 1 for free and the next ones are build 50% faster.
2. For 3-4 cities improvements and for building roads to conquest and for repairing pillaged improvements you need workers and he gets 3 for going liberty 1 for free and 2 from pyramids.
3. For fast improvements and fast repairing you are again helped by the 25% faster from liberty and 25% faster from pyramids
4. States that a GE to rush buy Machu Pichu is a great help for this strategy and the only way to get a GE this fast is by taking Liberty

Edit: i'm not saying that Honor is not helping, is just a different strategy and a different start.
 
So i tried this out with England and i gotta say it worked even better then i imagined :D.

Because of the longbows i was able to pick logistics first and just get presiscion through the upgrade, essentially evening out the exp advantage the zulu have over england.

My only viable target for the early war was a Attila with very well defended cities (32 def while i still had composites), my other possible victim (monty) was friendly with me and built the great wall, so both of them were bad targets but i didn't want to attack a great wall and lose my caravans in the process.

So while it took me waaay longer then necessary to take attila out (around turn 130), i was still able to keep up in tech very well (only 8% behind runaway augustus) thanks to the double spy from england. I pretty much stole my way through the entire upper tech tree while teching the bottom, and having 2x rank 3 spies is enormously helpful for couping all the cs later.

I had to decide between using my GE on NC(stole philo) or Machu Pichu. I decided to go for machu and i think that was the right choice (especially because i managed to snipe the last religion slot.)

So while this map is not played out yet i'm pretty sure it is won.I just took byzantiums huge petra/pisa/itza/djenne capital and have a bunch of +1attack/range 2x cover gattlings + cav/artillery (soon air support).

Interesting thing is that monty is still super-friendly with me and joins me in every war i wage for a small bribe. I expected him to have backstabbed me by now, so now i will feel bad once i have to take his capital last :sad:.

So your buildorder def. works and ist certainly not limited to the zulu (even though impis are awesome).

also: the repair/pillage thing is brooooooooookeeeen.
 
Thank you for the effort put into this write-up. If nothing more shows how to get a highly promoted army and how good it becomes.

I have only one problem with all this, the worker repairing and pillaging trick. I wrote a thread about this last autumn when it was introduced, they even covered it in polycast. The thing is that it gives a big advantage for the attacker, because you can't pillage your own improvements when defending, and repairing them. The only downside is that it's really strong only if you have the pyramids, otherwise you spend 2 turns to repair. So i pretty much consider it an exploit of some sort.

Thanks again, cheers!

I do feel like an exploit too when I piliage heal/repair. I guess that introducing 25hp healing was a good idea, but they should have not allowed enemy workers to repair the tiles.

However, there are so many other "exploits" too - people cried over "lump sum exploit" before BNW, but I think you can do something like that in BNW too. For example, you can just get all the gold (now you get 30 gold for 1gpt, full price in standard speed, which is ridiculous.... this one basically denies the very simple economic principle that today's one dollar is worth more than tomorrow's one dollar) right before the DoF expires.

Also, artillery rush (as AIs don't use artys early and they just get killed) and air repair bombers seem to be exploits (at least to me). If I expand the horizon, I consider RA is kinda cheap and could be an exploit as AIs don't make full use of it.

So when I play games, I just use most stuff (except self-pilliaging) unless it is clearly agreed/stated.

For the strategy itself, I believe that it could work without pilliage&repair, but it would be more difficult.
 
I would say that the whole start has a strong foothold in Liberty for a few reasons:
1. Builds 3-4 cities fast and the only way that i know of in BNW to do this is going liberty as you get 1 for free and the next ones are build 50% faster.
2. For 3-4 cities improvements and for building roads to conquest and for repairing pillaged improvements you need workers and he gets 3 for going liberty 1 for free and 2 from pyramids.
3. For fast improvements and fast repairing you are again helped by the 25% faster from liberty and 25% faster from pyramids
4. States that a GE to rush buy Machu Pichu is a great help for this strategy and the only way to get a GE this fast is by taking Liberty

Edit: i'm not saying that Honor is not helping, is just a different strategy and a different start.

This reply is excellent. I do not find something to add...
 
I have tried this guide twice now. Both times the pyramids were built before turn 40. That never happens in BNW. The Pyramids usually are not built at all unless I decide to get around to it.

you mean that you lost pyramid before t40? that's... I haven't experienced in my 20+ BNW games...
 
What a glorious guide! <--- See what I did there? ;)

Thanks so much! I've been playing Venice and winning via Diplo on Deity because its too easy haha. You have me something new to do, so thanks. Also, someone make a LP/Video of the first 30/60 turns, like Tabernak did. It shows some really minor things that the OP doesn't write/screnie. Still the best thread on this forum! Haha *high five*

Thank you for your comment (and pun too!). Hope you try this one and it suits to your style too.
 
So i tried this out with England and i gotta say it worked even better then i imagined :D.

Because of the longbows i was able to pick logistics first and just get presiscion through the upgrade, essentially evening out the exp advantage the zulu have over england.

My only viable target for the early war was a Attila with very well defended cities (32 def while i still had composites), my other possible victim (monty) was friendly with me and built the great wall, so both of them were bad targets but i didn't want to attack a great wall and lose my caravans in the process.

So while it took me waaay longer then necessary to take attila out (around turn 130), i was still able to keep up in tech very well (only 8% behind runaway augustus) thanks to the double spy from england. I pretty much stole my way through the entire upper tech tree while teching the bottom, and having 2x rank 3 spies is enormously helpful for couping all the cs later.

I had to decide between using my GE on NC(stole philo) or Machu Pichu. I decided to go for machu and i think that was the right choice (especially because i managed to snipe the last religion slot.)

So while this map is not played out yet i'm pretty sure it is won.I just took byzantiums huge petra/pisa/itza/djenne capital and have a bunch of +1attack/range 2x cover gattlings + cav/artillery (soon air support).

Interesting thing is that monty is still super-friendly with me and joins me in every war i wage for a small bribe. I expected him to have backstabbed me by now, so now i will feel bad once i have to take his capital last :sad:.

So your buildorder def. works and ist certainly not limited to the zulu (even though impis are awesome).

also: the repair/pillage thing is brooooooooookeeeen.

it seems that you got the game - as you said, england and china could be really strong with this strategy as it is based on getting range/logistics Xbows. Zulu's UA helps a lot in getting fast combo but having Xbow UUs could be even better.

I wrote it as a Zulu guide as I love those OP impis...
 
They fixed a lot of stuff, and game didn't become harder as a result. One thing to fix would be: teach AI to fight like tommy does. The rest I can live with. :cool:

if AIs control units like tommy does... I am pretty sure that I won't be able to beat emperor. If they control citizen tiles and techs like him too, now I am not sure about winning consistently at the prince level.
 
Lol, imagine what the percentage of people that can beat deity would go down to. Zulu will be fun because it's a new civ. England/China like glory7 said should be pretty OP with this too. What turn do you usually win using Zulus? Also do you play quick or standard?
 
Lol, imagine what the percentage of people that can beat deity would go down to. Zulu will be fun because it's a new civ. England/China like glory7 said should be pretty OP with this too. What turn do you usually win using Zulus? Also do you play quick or standard?

I haven't done many games but usually around t200 at standard speed (if lucky, earlier).

I both play quick and standard (it just depends on how I feel when I start the game). And for domination, obviously quick speed is more challenging.
 
Ahh ok thanks. I haven't tried domination on quick, so I'll win a few times on standard first. Again thanks. I've always wanted to XP farm but in sci/diplo games I never want everyone to hate me :o
 
Thanks glory! I am only playing on King, but I just used your guide (more or less) to win a domination game with Zulu (standard settings, fractal map) in 1605 AD. I never upgraded beyond Impis and xbows, though I'm sure that's not doable on higher difficulties. By the end I had 5 xbows with range and logistics promotions. I think I only ever lost maybe 2-3 Impis and 1 xbow (the latter a screw-up on my part while he was embarked).

My only real problem was after taking out the first two civs my econ cratered but I think it was because I am still keeping too many cities. Old Civ4 habits die hard....
 
Hi! I´m pretty new to Civ overall, been playing way too many hours last week or so though, jumped from playing warlord to my first Immortal win yesterday through diplo win (yeah cheating a bit but rather that than nuke in my ass)

I figured I´d go for this guide today and see if i could do something a bit more aggressive on immortal than just buying votes.

I´m having troubles keeping the time Schedules that you put up, I´m not able to upgrade more than one cb tops until the time when i should start taking first cities... and by the point I´m ready to take the first city, my enemy have 4-5 cities and all of them act as a massive blocker for me..

I try to just base my Cbs next to barb camps as soon as i can to have them xp farm, but still too slow.. and if i try and "pick off" my new enemies units then i take too much dmg instead and risk losing units due to some bad terrain or something like that.. How exactly are you managing to get those upgrades so fast? on my best try so far i had managed to take 2 cities but no capital so far in turn 120+, not sure if it was just bad luck and good city placement from opponent which didn´t allow me to surround it with Cbs..
 
So I tried this haha. Eventually Brasil got 10 units (compbows/spears) inside my borders, and overwhelmed my 4 CBs. I had a melee unit also. I never seem to get a weak city near me, Brasil's city was 2x my pop and bordering my cap. I'm looking for a good start for this strategy haha. What turn should I have range? And how would this strategy change for England/China? They both get UU's at machinery though....
 
Hi! I´m pretty new to Civ overall, been playing way too many hours last week or so though, jumped from playing warlord to my first Immortal win yesterday through diplo win (yeah cheating a bit but rather that than nuke in my ass)

I figured I´d go for this guide today and see if i could do something a bit more aggressive on immortal than just buying votes.

I´m having troubles keeping the time Schedules that you put up, I´m not able to upgrade more than one cb tops until the time when i should start taking first cities... and by the point I´m ready to take the first city, my enemy have 4-5 cities and all of them act as a massive blocker for me..

I try to just base my Cbs next to barb camps as soon as i can to have them xp farm, but still too slow.. and if i try and "pick off" my new enemies units then i take too much dmg instead and risk losing units due to some bad terrain or something like that.. How exactly are you managing to get those upgrades so fast? on my best try so far i had managed to take 2 cities but no capital so far in turn 120+, not sure if it was just bad luck and good city placement from opponent which didn´t allow me to surround it with Cbs..

XP farm with barbs should be done with archers, not CBs. When you got CBs it's time to XP farm on enemy units.

CB upgrade cost is 80g at standard speed and there's no way you don't even have 240g by CB time... meeting CS alone might give 200+ gold. Don't waste your gold on rush buying stuff.

If you are not used to domination games, it would take more turns to hit certain threshold (ex: range upgrades, Xbows timing), but as long as you cut enemy units off continuously and do not lose yours, you are fine. Make sure you do not waste shooting opportunity and fast upgrade will follow automatically. Once you get range/logistics, it's steamroll time.

Another advantage of early war is you are going to face warriors/spears/archers at the beginning, instead of pikes/CBs/etc. With 4-5 CBs (and/or properly placed front city) you can cut one unit per turn and this is enough for standard speed.
 
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