%#*# Zulus!!!

Shaka is the most dual-personalitied, Backstabbing, Demanding leader i have ever seen!!!!

I turned my back on him for a few turns to deal with persia, i Figured what the heck! hes gracious and i just gave him a huge gift of money for his birthday!!

Next thing i know, while im readily slaughtering Persions with my excellent babalonian bowmen, I Have an army of 25!! yes 25!! zulu swordsmen at my CAPITAL GATES!! Shaka declares war on me then proceeds to sack my capital, while his special units destroy every link i have with my resourses.

Finally get to make peace with him and he takes an arm an a leg,
work him back up to gracious and the next turn he declares WAR!!

WTF!??do zulus have a thing against babylon?? or what gives here?? how do I deal with these crazy Zulus!!

I prefer to get a strong defense near them, wait a few millenia, and then nuke the piss outta them.

As to the early part of the game I generally try to wipe the Zulus and Indians quick if they are near me...Zulus for obvious reasons, the Indians because they were the only nation to ever use nukes on me in Civ 2. (damn that pacifist Ghandi!)

Hehehe. Have you by any chance heard of the AZC? Our representatives will be in contact with you shortly

Death to Zulullia!

Wow...do I second this one. The Zulu are BASTARDS! I think I've met them 3 different times now and each time they'll shove their spear up your pooper if you turn your eyes away for even a second. And then it happened again last night! Although now I have a chance to try out them fancy war elephants.

2nd place - Germans
3rd place - Russians
Honorable Mention - The Aztec

Not that I'm bitter

Cleopatra is also a *****,
she had a warrior in my territory
and i gently asked her to remove it
and she declared war on me
!!!




AND THOSE AZTECS
ARE ANNOYING

25 swordsmen?????!!!!
Well fenaz, all I can say is OUCH!

That kind of units can really wipe out an entire civilization in the early stages. Now that's why I try to get my hands on iron early in the game. With enough of pikemen behind fortress or on hills and mountains, they're hard to pass by without being thinned down.

But still, 25 swordsmen is an army of hell!

Try to go after him first. Letting them stick around has always proven to be a nuisance. Wipe up a few of there cities early..hopefully taking away resources and render them useless. Then sue for peace and demand money trade, etc. You can just cripple them so they are no longer a factor. If they try again they just have those annoying impi dudes..but that is it. By that time you should be waayyyy ahead in tech and military and you should be able to kill them off quite easily.

In my most recent game (also playing the Babylonians), I beat Shaka to a nice city site which gave me access to 6 gem deposits. Nice, huh? Yeah, he thought so too. My southern cities, which including the one I've mentioned, were defended by a bowman, swordsman, and horseman each, and each had city walls.

My turn ended. "The Zulus have declared war on us!" screamed my advisor, who then ran for cover. Soon after that, I saw why:

A stack of 8 swordsmen, 3 archers and 4 impis was advancing on my gem city. HOLY GOD! I mean, this was EARLY in the game! Ok, I switched every productive (northern) city in my empire to building swordsmen and hoped to hell my southern cities would hold.

Uh-huh, right.

I lost my gems city and two others before sufficient reinforcements arrived to fight them to a standstill. I was NOT a happy camper. Just as I was about to give up, however, my cities began reverting back to me b/c of my lovely culture (I LOVE the Babylonians). My little war had triggered a golden age (one of my bowmen actually WON at least 1 fight) and I got a great leader whom I used to rush the forbidden city in one of the southern cities. Shaka gave me peace for 100 gold and we settled in, with the same borders, for the next 1500 years.

The next time I fought him, I dropped two tactical nukes on him and hit him w/Modern Armor. Of course, I was about to win via space ship, so I didn't really put much effort into the war... plus I was dealing with Queen. "I got you to sign a protection pact so I could start a World War" Elizabeth.

-Arrian

p.s. A thought JUST occurred to me... I used the leader right away, while I was still fighting (and losing). The cities reverted AFTER I built the Forbidden City... I wonder if the F.C. has the same effect on cultural defection as your normal palace? Hmm...

according to a game file I read the other day, I believe it said that the Zulus are the most aggressive of the all nations while the Indians being the most passive.

I know what u guyz mean but the aztecs are pi*sing me off, early in the game when they only had there capital, I took over it and they respawned only a few tiles away, so I just left them alone and gave hem some money to be my freinds. They were polite towards and so was everyone else, I was a head of everyone in tech and defence and offince and even culutre, I wanted to expand and there was no more places left, so I decided I would get the aztecs to declare war on me but that didn't work so I decided for a surpirse attack and I got the Irqouis to help me out incase the germans decided they wanted to be allies with the aztecs. So I build about 8 swordman and 2 horseman for my first wave of attacks against the aztacs, I sent them to to thier borders, and I kept building more swordman and horseman for the second wave of attacks. So I got ready to kill the aztecs and I sorta felt bad because the aztecs were polite towards me and I had just traded them 2 of my luxuries for 150 lump sum (that is a good stratedgy if you are gonna backstap someone) So I got all of my glorius army to go in and capture 2 cities in 2 turns, to my surprise I had 2 casualities so i got mad and got a bigger army for my second wave of attacks and they were all veterans, so I attacked them again and got a couple of cities and razed one. You would think the aztecs had enough of, so I go and demand peace treaty and a tech but they refused!!! Then I went to "We are approaching your city, I urge you have peace with us" something like and he said "We do not surrender" and then something about gods....

Man those aztacks sure are stuborn, it is me and the Irquois against a puny civ... I was gonna spare them but I think I'm just gonna destroy them once and for all

Interesting reading about the zulu-babylonian war. The manual says that tribes of the same region (the zulus, babylonians & persians are considered 'middle eastern') generally are supposed to get along better. I have met the Zulu's several times in my games, and although their expansionist tendencies are a pain in the neck, I have yet to be attacked by them.

I FINALLY GOT THE GAME!!! Yipee!

"Shaka is the most dual-personalitied, Backstabbing, Demanding leader i have ever seen!!!!"

I agree. Agressive is one thing, but backstabbing is another. In my game as the Babylonians (I wanted to play for the English but I object to being called Madam) I made peace with the Zulu several times and stayed out of their way, but every time I turned my back they made a strategic alliance with another civ against me! The Romans do the same thing, but they're not almost as bad as the Zulu.

But I'm not complaining - I think these civs make the game interesting. on the game, Firaxis!

I should add that in the other games I've played as the Babylonians, the Zulus have been peaceful neighbors - largely because they were weak. I also ran into them while playing the Iroquois (my latest game) and I was the nasty warmongering tyrannical aggressor

What I love about the blitz Shaka tried on me is that it wasn't something the AI did just to mess with me. It (shaka) knew damn well that I had a city with 6 gems. It knew gems were good, and it knew it had a bigger, badder army than me... so it hit me. The only reason it lost (and it didn't really lose, so much as stalemate) is because of culture. Militarily, the AI had me beat. I recall screaming things like "What the &(*^$! where in the hell did he get all those troops!?!?" and having evil "AI cheats" thoughts. Of course, the AI doesn't cheat (at least not in the CIV II sense of the word) on Regent level, so I think that the Zulus did nothing but build units while I build temples and libraries. Thus their military superiority and my cultural dominance.

-Arrian

heres a tactic that i used to utterly humiliate and destroy the zulus.

I bribed every civ i could into signing mutual protections with me with technology and money.
I then repeatedly refused to pay shaka tribute and massed troops at his border moved them in and refused to move.
Shaka declares war, and there are 8 civilizations attacking him.
He is pushed back into only a few cities, he tries to get peace, he is rejected, any civs that stopped fighting with him, i signed a military alliance to get them to whack shaka again.
Several catapults all bombarding his capital.
All zulu cities captured.
Zulu eliminated.

Man, my favorite way of screwing Zulus over is mass culture next their borders. a Rite of Passage. Let him settle in my land... watch those cities revolt and join me... watch a friendly AI block him to the other side of the island...slowly taking his cities..taking his vaunted impis with a Cossack charge or to nail his ass to the wall with a couple of squadrons of Babylonian bowmen. Zulus are way too easily pacified and neutered if you can get to them in time and if all his road network goes through one of your cities and you give him a wine or two . All Hail Babylon... So I'm Biased

I haven't had much trouble with these so called, "Zulus" because their are nothing more than a minor tribe on steroids! The only time they would ever attempt a "backstabbing" role in my games is...never. They have not once (in 5 games) been technologically or had more cities than me.

I come to the conclusion that they would only "backstab" someone if they are technologically and/or have a larger army than you. Period.

Well... Haven't played that much though, but I've noticed that the far most aggressive civilisation of them all is - the Romans.

Actually, I always manage to create a military alliance with the Zulus. For some reason, they are always so nice to me . Japanese and Chinese on the other hand, are a major pain, declaring wars on me on a regular basis, even when I have superior armies (only Germans are as stupid, but I don't run into them quite as often).

The Zulu are have been never dangerous in my games.
They often manage to piss of their neighbours which
will often lead to their down fall. The Zulu, American
and the Germans are often eleminated before 1000 AD.

In my current game it is the Zulu's and I (Babylonians) MPP'd against the Germans, Persians, and France. France is about to fall if it doesnt get happy and give me what I want. All my cities bordered with the Zulu's are undefended and he has never attacked any of them. He could take about 4 in one turn if he wanted because i have no troops stationed there.

Should I trust the B*stard?