strategy as immortal zulu in scramble for Africa

maloyu

Chieftain
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Nov 3, 2013
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After several attempts and tons of hrs, finally made zulu won this scenario at immortal lvl.

Resuming zulu's disadvantages: 1- Week cities, 2- low pop, 3- no tech, 4- too many enemies, 5- no naval ( naval), 6- geographically surrounded, 7- partner too dumb (friends, mainly boers).

And some advantages: 1- low-cost army (270 gold or 2 turns on capital), 2- 3mov army and slight attacking bonus, 3- many friends (all Africans and far europeans), 4- fast general producing rate, 5- new cities come with some improvements (4 citizens and some buildings).

The previous failed strategies was 4 front-lines expansion/resistance (portugueses, germans, englishmen and their naval line), see the post here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12876456&postcount=8

Although the winning was based on previous fails experiences and some save/loads - a Cetshwayo with a time machine - but it is worthy to be shared.

In few words, the strategy was bloody-cultured land-trader Cetshwayo.

General chronological strategy:

1- connect geographically your cities, use the 4-hex rule to push boers settlers.

1bis- Pet boers to defend you partially from the Queen and Bismarck. Defend their cities (either by unit-placing or fighting),

2- spam impis at your capital, use 2 3-mov impis to explore (in order to reveal soon as possible all the players),

4- conquer the neighbor European coastal cities in the first 40 turns. Cape Town may lay too long, I isolated it with two citadels and drew the army to the north and east

5- alternate turns between impis and settler, found cities in the in-land. Don`t make Portugueses seal your north. I find some cities too difficult to defend, so I sold them to Northern friends. Chose your dealer wisely, a) who is not at war but has it borders closed to this city`s closest enemies, b) who pays well, c) who is not a threat in term of scores. Egypt payed ALL his fortune for two cities I found (rich in resources) and that fed me till the late-game.

6- note that by the middle of the game the enemies spammed naval units, so some coastal cities became literally defenseless. I razed port elizabeth, beira and lorenzo and found one-hex-in-land versions of those. Eventually selling would be good too. Note that northern africans barely fight with england and portugal, and their enemies (italy, belgium and france) don't come to the south (don't leave settable land for them).

7- Secured your coast and northwest-side, advance toward northeast-side portugueses and germans. Use the blood of the enemies (and more of your warriors) to write your culture and history.

8- Extremely difficult fighting against advanced European armies, but your score rises pretty fast, watch when you top the rank, more Europeans not-that-friend Africans may war you (Egypt in my case, mainly because I friended Morocco instead of him). That brought me some trouble, I had to sell two more cities to Morocco to keep my growth and happiness. But since Egyptians were busy with invaders of Suez Canal, I haven`t to drew much units to fight them. Eventually they made peace with me when its score drops.

9- In the late-game I had to fight England, who conquered the boers, and germans from the east-side. Watch that your enemies may be engaged in several war too, so peace them when they pay. Far enemies are not a threat. However ensure that you have a short front-line but a lot of enemies to kill - this is the ONLY source for cultural score.

10- Near the end, I had to compete te score with Ethiopia, who were buffered by Egypt at the North and by me (who has drawn all the attention of pt and uk), just pray for their economy don`t go so well.

11- Raged attack to kill and crush enemies and won on the scenario with 10 points of difference upon Ethiopia. Almost fainted of tiredness.

General tips:

1- reduce your front-lines` width but always engage in fight.
2- cities don`t give/take your score (whether keeping them or selling them)
3- any other thing but kill won`t make you win.
4- impi rage attack when surrounded will scare of the invaders. IAs has a life-saving policy and will withdraw.
5- maximize your profit by checking resource-trading every turn. Gold can buy a lot of army. A healthy economy is essential.
6- and happiness too. Lately they can give your cultural score - useful for top the rank.
7- don`t engage in long city-siege battle. make good use of citadel and retreat to recover your health. CPUs are not efficient removing citadels.
8- make your roads efficient - 3-mov impi from capital (or other cities that bought Army camp- whatever the name) can immediately supply your battle in anywhere.
9- don`t rely on your city`s defense, neither on geographies (river or terrain).
10- 4 trebuchets can empty any city`s strength in one-turn, quick-siege-only.
11- watch your mouse click (or fingers), an slight error could cost you the entire macro strategy. I didn`t use save/load on those cases to keep it more "real" But it cost me several turns to recover from the mistakes.
12- by the replay I noticed that my 30 happiness is NOTHING compared with europeans` 200 happiness. So bear in mind that you are fighting with whom is almost always in golden age (historically true) and can hire(buy) any unit at any time.
13- note that your friends are REALLY REALLY dumb. Do it yourself.

Conclusion and commentary:

I hope I made myself clear through this topic. Fails and successes are highly-dependent on contingencies in this scenario. I felt myself immerse in the real history. The cultural scoring for southern saharans were historically true - today`s zulu`s culture is in fact based on their bloody sacrifices and war-stories, beside other ethnical and cultural heritages. They "won" the "battle" in terms of culture and history, even they were annexed later.

Few researches on wikipedia (trying to find a real-world strategy) were useful: army placement ("bull-horn" formation, with all the social policies), anglo-zulu relationship etc. Although this match is not 100% historically true, e.g. zulu were not close-friend of boers neither of berberes/egyptians and other adaptations (my land-trader strategy will just fail), it remarkably reconstructed this very complex scenario`s features e.g. well-hide ethiopians, zulu army and strategies, importance of the Suez Canal and railway, culture of blood and sacrifice, northern african`s wealth, weakness and strengths of the civs and leaders etc... I bet that the civ staff have worked hard on this. WELL DONE civ 5. :king: now give my study hours back!!:mad:

PS: i wont try deity... not even again immortal.
PS: who played as boer?
 
Thanks for this write up. Will give it a go.

Although I don't think I'll ever win as a non-European power in this scenario, unless when playing on Easy or so.

I enjoyed the Belgians most. Creating your own empire in the middle of the Dark Continent somehow feels cool.
 
I played Boers on immortal, most fun game I ever played.

Immediatly DOWed by England and Germany. Germany didn't do anything but England was a pain, almost captured Bloemfontein but I managed to fight them off just in time. Zulu got conquered by Portugal and England almost immediatly, so I conquered Englands Ulundi.

Since Bismarck didn't seem to be up to anything, captured Swakopmund but he suddenly decided to fight back. In the meantime, gained a lot of culture with my large population and Staatsmuseums. Almost at the end, England made peace and I peacefully won the game.

Will definitely try again on deity, so much fun this was.
 
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