Zulu Domination Guide (Deity, standard, Pangea)

Pretty sure he meant "improve" or "settle on". Which doesn't remove the fact that sometimes you have to work wine/ivory to keep the GPT/food balance in good shape.
 
Yup, and granted. The wording made it ambiguous though, and I know he's a better player than I so I figured I'd ask :D
 
Followed this strategy, this is how it went:

Zulu, Emperor, Standard map, Epic pace, Continents, Legendary start, 8 civs

I started on one of two continents together with Arabia to the west, and America to the east. I butchered Arabia with ease, and then immediatly went for America. Here is where my problems started:

-The war against America took too long. Waaaay too long! I conquered the capital without much of a fight, but they had one final city in a really tacky position (I could only approach it from ONE tile!) so eliminating the americans was very problematic.

-Once I had the entire continent for myself, I had to fill it up with cities. Here I think I got a little bit too aggressive. In the end I had 20 cities - three which were "fillers" that didn't occupy any luxaries. And three other of these 20 cities were annexed (Mecca, Washington and Minneapolis).

When the war was over I was lagging behind in tech, and I had to get my infrastructure up and running. Now followed a long period of peace.

Now it's the 1800's and I don't think there is any point in playing more. Rome is 17 techs ahead (he just reached the modern era, and I'm 1/3 through the renaissance) and leads the scoreboard. There was a period where I started catching up in tech (when I had libraries in every city, and uni's in all hammer-heavy cities, and "research" in the build queue for like 90% of my cities. But then Rome started getting tons of beakers. Problem is that I'm now having happiness issues so I can't really turn my country into anything useful. I've traded for everything I can and I'm still -6 in happiness. Due to this I have to have the "Avoid growth" checked in every single city. I only let lose on that tap every now and then.

Game is over as I see it.

...and yeah... Julius has more gold than Scrooge McDuck -_-
 
Followed this strategy, this is how it went:

Zulu, Emperor, Standard map, Epic pace, Continents, Legendary start, 8 civs

I started on one of two continents together with Arabia to the west, and America to the east. I butchered Arabia with ease, and then immediatly went for America. Here is where my problems started:

-The war against America took too long. Waaaay too long! I conquered the capital without much of a fight, but they had one final city in a really tacky position (I could only approach it from ONE tile!) so eliminating the americans was very problematic.

-Once I had the entire continent for myself, I had to fill it up with cities. Here I think I got a little bit too aggressive. In the end I had 20 cities - three which were "fillers" that didn't occupy any luxaries. And three other of these 20 cities were annexed (Mecca, Washington and Minneapolis).

When the war was over I was lagging behind in tech, and I had to get my infrastructure up and running. Now followed a long period of peace.

Now it's the 1800's and I don't think there is any point in playing more. Rome is 17 techs ahead (he just reached the modern era, and I'm 1/3 through the renaissance) and leads the scoreboard. There was a period where I started catching up in tech (when I had libraries in every city, and uni's in all hammer-heavy cities, and "research" in the build queue for like 90% of my cities. But then Rome started getting tons of beakers. Problem is that I'm now having happiness issues so I can't really turn my country into anything useful. I've traded for everything I can and I'm still -6 in happiness. Due to this I have to have the "Avoid growth" checked in every single city. I only let lose on that tap every now and then.

Game is over as I see it.

...and yeah... Julius has more gold than Scrooge McDuck -_-

Avoid the temptation to fill all that space with cities - it only does what you got.
 
Followed this strategy, this is how it went:

Zulu, Emperor, Standard map, Epic pace, Continents, Legendary start, 8 civs

I started on one of two continents together with Arabia to the west, and America to the east. I butchered Arabia with ease, and then immediatly went for America. Here is where my problems started:

-The war against America took too long. Waaaay too long! I conquered the capital without much of a fight, but they had one final city in a really tacky position (I could only approach it from ONE tile!) so eliminating the americans was very problematic.

-Once I had the entire continent for myself, I had to fill it up with cities. Here I think I got a little bit too aggressive. In the end I had 20 cities - three which were "fillers" that didn't occupy any luxaries. And three other of these 20 cities were annexed (Mecca, Washington and Minneapolis).

When the war was over I was lagging behind in tech, and I had to get my infrastructure up and running. Now followed a long period of peace.

Now it's the 1800's and I don't think there is any point in playing more. Rome is 17 techs ahead (he just reached the modern era, and I'm 1/3 through the renaissance) and leads the scoreboard. There was a period where I started catching up in tech (when I had libraries in every city, and uni's in all hammer-heavy cities, and "research" in the build queue for like 90% of my cities. Problem is that I'm now having happiness issues. I've traded for everything I can and I'm still -6 in happiness. Due to this I have to have the "Avoid growth" checked in every single city. I only let lose on that tap every now and then.

Game is over as I see it.

* No need to take that last city.

Option 1) Make peace and take it later.
Option 2) Ignore it.
Option 3) When one city is hard to approach, see if you can take it in a peace deal, wait ten turns, and then take the easier city.

* No need to fill that continent.
* Only make new cities to take the luxuries and strategics you don't have. Even then, avoid doing so unless you need to, like if someone swims over a settler.
* Once you make contact with the second continent, you might want to secure all the excess luxuries for trade-bait, but try do this with as few cities as possible. And don't bother if you're planning to go on a conquest rampage. You won't have enough friends to use more than 3-4 copies of a luxury.
* Raze any enemy city that you don't need. Even if you need to puppet one initially and keep it long enough to finish a conquest, it's better to later annex and raze it, than to have a useless city taking up your happiness.

* The game isn't over. Sell a city, or raze it and sell the buildings. Or just starve it down a few population. Use trade routes with Rome to catch up on tech. Steal techs from him. Take the whole Rationalism tree. Use the finisher to get an expensive tech. Use Oxford to get an expensive tech if you haven't yet. Try to get Porcelain Tower if it's still there. He may not have opened Rationalism. If not, he can't build PT.

* Don't put cities on "Research". Build cargo ships, and then focus on things that boost your economy. Max out your Universities. Beeline to Scientific Theory. WIN! :goodjob:
 
* No need to take that last city.

Option 1) Make peace and take it later.
Option 2) Ignore it.
Option 3) When one city is hard to approach, see if you can take it in a peace deal, wait ten turns, and then take the easier city.

* No need to fill that continent.
* Only make new cities to take the luxuries and strategics you don't have. Even then, avoid doing so unless you need to, like if someone swims over a settler.
* Once you make contact with the second continent, you might want to secure all the excess luxuries for trade-bait, but try do this with as few cities as possible. And don't bother if you're planning to go on a conquest rampage. You won't have enough friends to use more than 3-4 copies of a luxury.
* Raze any enemy city that you don't need. Even if you need to puppet one initially and keep it long enough to finish a conquest, it's better to later annex and raze it, than to have a useless city taking up your happiness.

* The game isn't over. Sell a city, or raze it and sell the buildings. Or just starve it down a few population. Use trade routes with Rome to catch up on tech. Steal techs from him. Take the whole Rationalism tree. Use the finisher to get an expensive tech. Use Oxford to get an expensive tech if you haven't yet. Try to get Porcelain Tower if it's still there. He may not have opened Rationalism. If not, he can't build PT.

* Don't put cities on "Research". Build cargo ships, and then focus on things that boost your economy. Max out your Universities. Beeline to Scientific Theory. WIN! :goodjob:
Thanks, but I'm already doing all of this. The city that was left was the only american one so that couldn't be traded. But it was a mistake not accepting Minneapolis (the hard city) in a peace deal. The lesson learnt here was that I got greedy, and started thinking with the warmonger-penis instead of the brain :D

Game is over, and trashed. No more civ now for a couple days. Need to work on my portfolio instead!
 
Thanks, but I'm already doing all of this. The city that was left was the only american one so that couldn't be traded. But it was a mistake not accepting Minneapolis (the hard city) in a peace deal. The lesson learnt here was that I got greedy, and started thinking with the warmonger-penis instead of the brain :D

Game is over, and trashed. No more civ now for a couple days. Need to work on my portfolio instead!

I have the opposite problem. I'll be in the middle of a domination game, and I get distracted by building a bunch of stuff. (out of old habit from playing peaceful)

Next thing I know, instead of taking over the world by t250, I'm winning a space race the slow way. :p

One of the hardest things for me to resist is research agreements. The thing is, even if you aren't planning on DoWing that civ for 30 turns, efficient domination requires focusing on your current conquest. The first and second round of RAs tend to come around right when I should be saving up to upgrade my units or rush-buy landsknecht. Sure, you might argue that one RA only costs as much as one landsknecht, but that landsknecht will pillage as much from city capture as it cost to make him.
 
So I tried this strategy several times in deity/standard/pangea, it's very map-dependant. The ideal scenario is 2 close neighbours : one for early science caravans and the other one for archery practice. If you can achieve that, get sailing/engineering for the 3 caravans asap and profit!
Most of the time you won't roll such godly starts, so I'm always late in tech : machinery t.12x, civil service t.13x/14x. Impis are OP but as meat shields they are weak compared to muskets with cover promotion. So after taking down 1 or 2 capitals I feel it's already too late to have fun. Impis get one-shot by towns and xbows are not strong enough to clear the units quickly.

I wonder how you can achieve turn 100 machinery, that's the main issue in my games : being 20 turns late in science.
 
Edit: Nuked my own post because I've changed my mind about some of strategic comments I made. Not all, but enough that it would have been a pain to edit them all out.
 
I still can't seem to get this to work.
I've tried it on Immortal and won around turn 196 I think, but I haven't been able to get any success on Deity.
I killed the Netherlands in 1 game early before being destroyed by Maria.
In my newest one, I got 2 Range CBs against Ghandi but by then he had 30 Defense on his cities so I couldn't take them.
And I haven't gotten XBows before turn 110 on any game, even with 3 caravans giving science and stuff.
Anyone have any ideas that haven't been said?
 
I'm determined to get my first Deity win with this strategy, because it's the most fun.

Is it worth practicing on Immortal until I have the strategy well rehearsed, or just going Deity every time until it works, slowly improving every time?
 
I'm determined to get my first Deity win with this strategy, because it's the most fun.



Is it worth practicing on Immortal until I have the strategy well rehearsed, or just going Deity every time until it works, slowly improving every time?


I'm sure most people would agree that there are much easier ways to get your first deity win than early rush. In fact, I'm not sure there's a harder way to win on deity. Just my two cents. That said, it *is* better to practice on a lower difficulty level first, but deity really changes things, so some of what you learn won't work. But in my opinion it's still better to practice on lower levels. If you've never attempted early rush on any difficulty, start with warlord and work your way up IMHO.
 
I'm sure most people would agree that there are much easier ways to get your first deity win than early rush. In fact, I'm not sure there's a harder way to win on deity. Just my two cents. That said, it *is* better to practice on a lower difficulty level first, but deity really changes things, so some of what you learn won't work. But in my opinion it's still better to practice on lower levels. If you've never attempted early rush on any difficulty, start with warlord and work your way up IMHO.

Oh right. I didn't realise it's considered the hardest. I might just go for a science victory first then. I've gotten the Zulu rush and Moriarte's Liberty Domination to work on Immortal, but not very easily. It's just that they were the most fun
 
I'm determined to get my first Deity win with this strategy, because it's the most fun.

Is it worth practicing on Immortal until I have the strategy well rehearsed, or just going Deity every time until it works, slowly improving every time?

Even if you're a strong Deity player, I think I'd give it one run thru on Immortal at least.

I'm an average Immortal level player. Doing this on Emperor was a cake walk, but I'm bogged down playing Immortal as it is harder to kill all 7 civs while keeping up in tech so that my Impi's aren't fighting armor. I may post a save as it is turn 276 and only Rome remains and he has more tech and better units than me so perhaps attacking him isn't best right now but surely he'll come after me.
 
If you think early domination is hard, you can always shift to epic speed, it makes everything much easier. It gives us a lot more time to plan your wars, position your troops and heal them. I just finished a Huns domination victory on diety turn 157, and I didn't even face knights except when I was attacking the last civ.

I think the next civ to win with will be the Zulu for me, but I still can't decide if its better to go peaceful start and spam spearmen until CS, or I should start beating AIs with composites.
 
This strategy is based on Deity, standard speed (other speeds are also possible), standard size, Pangea map.

If you faced Zulu as your neighbor in your game before, you probably have seen millions of zerglings, oh sorry Impis, are coming to your territory. Even for deity players, it's difficult to defend that rush while catching up the tech of other AIs.

After recent Deity challenges (where Zulu is your neighbor), I decided to play Zulu to see why this is so powerful. I found that Zulu is even more powerful if player uses it. All of UA, UB, UU are great:

UA: melee unit maintenance cost is 50% less, 25% less XP needed for promotion.
UB: barracks that offers special promotion (buffalo something) to melee units.
UU: IMPI. Does range attack (spear attack) before it does melee attack.

Strategy outline:

Cap BO: scout - monument - scout - granary if you have wheat/dear - shrine if you think you can get a nice pantheon/religion - 3 archers (can get a worker too, but I recommend "stealing" worker(s) )- pyramid - archer - settler(s) - UB - spear - CB(s) - etc. If you find early culture ruin, you can get a free settler 5-6 turns earlier. After getting the policy, you can build settlers first if you have done enough worker stealing and enough happiness.

Expo BO: monument - granary - UB - units

Tech: pottery - archery/mining/animal husbandry - masonry - lux techs - finish sailing right before you want to start the 2nd caravan - CB tech - bronze working - horseback riding - writing - currency - machinary - civil service - your choice

SP: liberty free settler - citizenship - liberty finish - commerce or patro

Details, with a sample game screenshots :

1. Start with liberty fast settler build and pyramid. Getting pyramid was easy at GnK and it's even more easier at BNW since most AIs don't go for liberty. This strategy can be done without pyramid, but I recommend you to play with it and restart if you are not used to domination yet. UPDATE: if you think you need to claim the land asap and have done enough worker stealing, ignore pyramid. Hard building settlers after the +50% policy would not take too long.

My starting location attached for this post is far from great, as you can see it at screenshot #1. I hope it enhances general applicability of this tactic. If you have a nice starting position like a map in recent deity challenge, you can do much better.

Get 3 (or even 4) archers before pyramid. You need them to protect yourself from barbs and do some barb quest anyway. Stack XP. Your 2nd promo comes at 23XP and You can get up to 30XP. With lots of archers you can do at least one barb quest.

2. Settle 3-4 cities, depending on terrain and unique lux. Steal worker(s) from CS (does not mean that you can DoW multiple times - DoW and steal, and about 10 turns later wait 2 tiles from the border to get another one(s)). This is not essential but certainly helps.

Find your victim. For example, if your neighbor is Morocco or Portugal, you found an easy prey. Get a worker from him if possible when you DoW. DoW early (before t60). See screenshot #1. I think I DoWed around t50 and killed his incoming units with 4 archers/CBs. I piled up lots of gold as I got 2 DoF - I did not use them to suggest that you can do this without it.

Don't even try to get a city and just stack XP & kill his units. If you take a city too early, it's likely that you suffer happiness problem and warmonger penalty hit. Usually you can get 1-2 DoF if you have not taken any city yet. Moreover, when you attack city you get 3 XP - this is a huge difference. This city is your "bootcamp", or training ground. Units that got damaged heal and other units keep attack the city/units. At ss #1, I intentionally did not take that city for this reason.

3. You will get at least 2-3 range promo CBs by t90-95 and you can take your first cap without losing more than 1 melee unit. Thanks to OP UA, you only need 75 XP for your 4th promo! you can choose either range or logistics, but I recommend range for first 3 veterans. With them, you can avoid loss of units.

See screenshot #2 - I took Persia cap at t92. I gave Susa ("bootcamp") to my friend Portugal (we DoFed and she tends to be weak - focus on wonders and not units). You should sell/give the city, for the following reasons:

A. It does not have new lux - so that city is simply happiness eater.
B. From the minimap, you see that other civs are far from me - you need caravans to catch up science, as you get library pretty late in this build and you don't even get philosophy till you get civil service. One trade route usually gives 4-5 science. Connect caravans to that city. You want the new city owner to be science focused guy so that you won't worry about being backstabbed until you get impi+Xbows combo and you can get more spt out of the trade routes. You can use 2 caravans (animal and sailing) and usually you can get 1 incoming one - and you can get 12 spt.

4. If possible, place at least one city next to mountain so that you can rush Machu Pichu with your liberty GE. I usually rush NC with liberty GE when I play normal liberty gaems, but for Zulu donimation you don't need NC. If you can bulb liberty GS to get Xbows or impis 8 turns earlier (say, machinery is 9 turns to go and you bulb and it's next turn) then do it.

For usual games, you hit machinary around t100. Upgrade your veterans. Go for the next victim. Just keep shooting until he ran out of his units. When civil service is done (usually before t115), upgrade your spears to impis. Now time to steamroll.

See screenshot #3. I marched to Paris at t114 (and took it at t117). #1 army Aztec attacked me around t95, but all he did was providing more XP farming opportunity to my units. You can kill them all without any loss. Eventually he offered a good peace deal and I moved on to France with England. I just took CS between (France took it during the war). Usually it is not recommended to take CS as you get heavy warmonger penalty, but at this point it's okay - everyone will hate you soon anyway for getting many cities.

Place roads everywhere so that you can save turns/units by doing moving-shots. For example, after machinary, you move 2 road tiles and shoot twice with your veteran Xbows. For standard speed, it takes 2 turns with citizenship and pyramid to place a road. For quick speed, only 1 turn!

You should have lots of workers at this point (tile developments are almost done already). Use them to

1. place roads
2. get rid of roads after you pass through and don't need them
3. Pilliage-repair. It takes only 1 turn to repair, so bring lots of workers to the front line. Even for the tiles you don't need to heal, make sure you pillage (get gold!), repair, and shoot.
4. Block/lure enemy units with them.

5. Build roads everywhere you march and kill everything with range & logistics Xbows. There is no unit that can beat impi front line (impi is pikeman after all so knights cannot do anything, for example).

See screenshot #4. I got backstabbed by Portugal - and Maya and Spain joined the war against me. However, impi + Xbows just kill all of them. I took 2 more caps at t146.

Impi (assuming that you make it at the city where you built UB) starts with like 2-3 promotions already (buffalo series). It gives you 10% combat bonus, big flank attack bonus, 3 movement (!!!), open terrain bonus, 30% cover, and spear attack before range attack, etc. They just don't die easily and with 3 movement you can manuever it as if they were horse units.

You will hit the next promotion very soon (it requires only 23XP, so you are only 8 XP from it). Usually you finish buffalo promo. In case you attack a city and need a meat shield, just push one impi in and use insta heal.

6. After this? I doubt that you really need any more tactic after getting 4 caps.... Get armory at your main production cities and pump out impis + Xbows and kill everyone.

Possible Q & A :

Q1. How do you deal with gpt issue?

A. Pilliage/repair continuously. Try to get machi pichu with your liberty GE. I intentionally piled up lots of gold and did not use them to show that even things go wrong you won't suffer gpt problem seriously. You can also get some nice gpt from selling cities, but not required. Lastly, commerce right 1 helps a lot as you build lots of road. Oh, and thanks to UA, maintenance cost for impis is half price!

Q2. Your science is slow... what happens if there is a runaway?

A. Yes, it is true that I did not have philosophy (no education of course...) before like t115. However, you can speed up your spt in early game using caravans (explained above) and after you start your conquest you can just annex other caps. They usually have university in it :)

Moreover, you just don't need any other tech for a while - nothing can stop impi + Xbows till rifle, and before that you probably killed most civs. and when it is needed, you can upgrade impi to rifleman!

Lastly, if possible, just go for sci runaway first. That's why I killed Portugal and Maya first in the sample game.

Q3. How to deal with happiness?

A. Good point. As you have large army, you should be able to do lots of barb quests. Get some CS. Also, raze/sell/give non-important cities.

If you can get a nice religion, it certainly helps, but it's hard to get own religion at deity domination. Just use other civs' ones. They will send lots of missionaries, and when they spread religion, check whether you can buy pagoda/mosque or use some other perks like +1 happy if you got shrine.

Q4. Okay, but deity AIs have so many units... can you really steamroll?

A. They do, so if you can bribe AIs to fight against each other it certainly helps, but it is not necessary. You get range at 75Xp and logistics at 112XP. In some cases, getting logistics early is better, as you can stack XPs quicker and your fire power doubles. However, if you need range units to attack cities from 3 tiles away to minimize loss, choose range first.

Given that lots of your attacks are to cities, you get 3XP per that attack so stacking XP is really easy. Non-Zulu civs need 100 and 150 XP respectively, and this is a considerable difference. You can get range & logistics Xbows like 30-40 turns earlier than other civs, and once you got them, they are "rocket artillery of medieval era".

Let me know if you have any questions/comments.

Update:
I haven't played civ5 for a while - sorry for the very late update. I recently played a map from deity challenge lineup, and posted detailed walk-through up to impis+xbows rush to kill 3 civs. link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13287166#post13287166

How do you xp grind on cities when they run out of health? I get no exp for attacking them further
 
Domination is easier when the AI is closer. When I play Shaka on emperor typically the AI is a far away trek.
 
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