News: WOTM 05 Pre-Game Discussion

WOTM 05: Shaka of the Zulu

This game MUST be played in Warlords patch version 2.08. We will NOT accept any games played under any other patch versions, and you can't play it in vanilla (plain) Civilization4!

Further, it MUST be played using the latest version of HOF mod for Warlords. This is currently version 2.08.003.



Game settings:
Civilization: Zulus (Leader: Shaka; Traits: Aggressive & Expansive)
Rivals: 6
Difficulty: Prince (all the recent GOTMs and WOTMs has been of relatively high difficulty.. time for an easier game again..)
Map: Fantasy Realm, Crazy resources
Mapsize: Standard, Torodial (both east/west and north/south wrapping)
Climate: N/A
Water level: Low
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: normal
Victory Conditions: all enabled
Other settings: Raging Barbarians, No Tribal Villages


Shaka:
Shaka is Aggressive and Expansive; starting with Agriculture and Hunting. Aggressive gives a free 'Combat I' promotion to all melee and gunpowder units, and gives double production on Ikhanda and drydock. Expansive gives +2 health in every city, +50% hammers when producing workers, and double production on granary and harbor.

Unique unit: Impi (hunting)
The Impi replaces the Spearman. The Impi has the same stats as a spearman, but have a movement of two instead of one, and get a free mobility promotion.

Unique building: Ikhanda (requires no tech)
The Ikhanda replaces the normal barracks. It has same effects as the normal barracks, but in addition it reduces city maintainance with 20%, acting like a mini courthouse (with both ikhanda and court in same city the maintainance is reduced by 70%). It is slighly more expansive than a normal barracks, but since shaka is aggressive, the net effect is that it is still faster to build than a normal barracks for a non aggressive civ.

The starting screenshot is here (Click for larger version)


Adventurer Class bonuses:

1. Start with Mystisism and Mining techs

Challenger Class Equalizers:

1. Start without Agriculture and Hunting techs

Fantasy Realm, eh? This ought to cut down on speculation along the lines of "if we move the Scout one east it might reveal an additional Flood plain, and then we could move the Settler to...."

I tried a game on that setting once but quit when I found that the map was just plain ugly to look at. There was a lot of Stone around in that game, and here's two Stone in our starting location. I guess it's more common on Fantasy Realm than normal. I'm sure stuff like Fur and Bananas will be more common as well since they're no longer limited to Tundra and Jungle. Maybe the resources that tend to be pretty common, like Pigs, will be somewhat harder to find as a result.

Another thing I noticed in my previous Fantasy Realm game was that it was a lot harder to avoid "bad" terrain like Ice, Mountains, Desert, and Tundra. I don't know if it is more common on this setting, or if this is just a factor of it being spread all over the map instead of concentrated together.

I think that Fantasy Realms uses something like the Lakes template in terms of it's land/sea set-up. If I'm right then this map is going to have a lot of land. And the map wraps in all directions. And we have perhaps the best early warmongering leader. (Impis are the fastest land unit in the game!) Hmm...

I tried this map for the first time last night. Pretty sure you are right about a LOT of land. Should be interesting with all that empty space and raging barbarians...

This looks fun, and a should make for a nice change. Definately going to give this one a go.

I've been waiting another WOTM to start (as I decided to reduce my playing to GOTM/WOTM only, takes way too much time - you know it, just one more turn!). But Fantasy Realm with crazy resources and normal (=tooo fast!) speed... not so excited about settings though!



I think I'll go for the Great Wall to avoid barbarian rush, I suppose there is no problems to get it. Then war, war, war till the end! My game plan is:

- Propably settle on place; maybe move one tile to west, there must be something better than 2 ice and a mountain. Lose the another stone, though. But we'll see what lays in the darkness after moving the scout. Maybe an oasis?
- Research order: Mining-Masonry-BW-(AH if no bronze around)-wheel-pottery-writing
- Building order: scout(max growth to size 2, then max shields)-worker-warrior(while growing size 3)-worker-settler-(worker-settler if there is two great city spots)-Great Wall
- Exploring order: keep scouts alive, explore a circle around capital and locate nearest neighbors, then fogbust near city spot(s)
- Axerush and annihilate the unlucky nearest neighbor after building 2-4 cities, keep 1-3 best cities and raze the rest, maybe another war just after that if I'm fast and powerful enough
- Recover and stabilize the kingdom, research CoL and forget city maintenance problems
- Second war when cats are available
- Final goal is a fast domination/conquest victory, both should be possible quite early even on normal speed because of relatively low difficulty level

I don't much care for such a setting, so I might play or continue one of the
earlier WOTM's instead.

Anyone up for posting a test map or two?

I might make one up when I get home, but it'll be pretty late...

I'm just wondering whether if we move the Scout one east it might reveal an additional Flood plain...

I was just looking at the picture again and I think this is the first time I've ever seen the computer not recommend settling in place. It looks like the settler is up so that is somewhat odd.

Jenarie said:

I was just looking at the picture again and I think this is the first time I've ever seen the computer not recommend settling in place. It looks like the settler is up so that is somewhat odd.

Click to expand...

Settling in-place gives you, amongst other goodies, a mountain, two tundra-forests, an ice-forest, and a bare ice. So I'm not too surprised the computer isn't recommending it. (EDIT: Oh - and what looks like a desert. Lovely!)

Given this is prince level I'll be tempted to scout around for a couple of turns. On this map finding nice spots is going to be totally down to chance, and there could easily be something incredible a few tiles away. Only problem is, finding sites that don't contain some ice/tundra is going to be tricky I suspect.

CivSetä;4972917 said:

Propably settle on place; maybe move one tile to west, there must be something better than 2 ice and a mountain. Lose the another stone, though. But we'll see what lays in the darkness after moving the scout. Maybe an oasis?

Click to expand...

It looks like another ice without trees and either a desert or tundra square (I'm guessing tundra). Hard to see anything on the middle square except that it seems like it isn't a hill, nor does it have trees. Also, the stone you'd lose is on a 3 food square... Still, probably worth a quick look. Who knows if bananas are on that ice!

CivSetä;4972917 said:

- Research order: (AH for growth?)-Mining-Masonry-BW-wheel-pottery-writing

Click to expand...

The pigs are on jungle, so you'd need AH and IW to work it, wouldn't you?

I would start farming the floodplains and then switch to the sheep and the stone. Definately early warfare and survive the nightmare. I've played fantasy several times and it's quite a horror to find good places to settle. Added to that the poor settling of AIs and you'll end up with many useless cities unless you want to go through the troubles of refounding many of them.

DynamicSpirit said:

Settling in-place gives you, amongst other goodies, a mountain, two tundra-forests, an ice-forest, and a bare ice. So I'm not too surprised the computer isn't recommending it. (EDIT: Oh - and what looks like a desert. Lovely!)

Given this is prince level I'll be tempted to scout around for a couple of turns. On this map finding nice spots is going to be totally down to chance, and there could easily be something incredible a few tiles away. Only problem is, finding sites that don't contain some ice/tundra is going to be tricky I suspect.

Click to expand...

By my count, if you make the improvements (pigs/sheep/stone/gems), and farm the square to the east, you have 25 food and 21 commerce... doesn't that equate to a size 12 city? If so, doesn't seem too bad on this map.

I'm thinking I'll send Mr. Scout downriver to see if there is a good place for city #2. I think you're right on the ice/tundra (and desert) issue... so a start with +2 health and +2 happy isn't too bad.

The way I've been out teched on the last few GOTM/WOTM, I really don't want to waste any time sticking it to those SOBs!

By the way, how the heck do you keep up in a tech race on higher levels?

Mastiff_of_Ar said:

By the way, how the heck do you keep up in a tech race on higher levels?

Click to expand...

Try to be pleased/friendly with at least two AI. Don't over-expand (try to keep research at 70%. Use one city as a GP-farm (run several specialists to generate Great People Points and then lightbulb techs to trade). Build cottages or capture cities with cottages and switch to Universal Suffrage and other cottage/research friendly civics. Get to liberalism first. Use spies to monitor AI research. Sell tech for gold which will fund your research. Capture cities to fund research. Make peace for tech. Build the Pyramids and switch to representation & specialist economy. Try to monitor the AI tech path to predict what techs they skip (select those and trade for their tech). Build libraries and monasteries in high commerce cities (specialize cities for research, great people or production). Or shut down research when you reach construction or engineering and kill them all

I would try to conquer the world with just Mining and BW, then shut down research. But I don't think I'll bother.

Really, dificulty is to low to be any fun.
Common, WOTM3 and 4 were resonalbly low dificulty.
3 was just monarch and 4 on extrimelly slow speed, which lowering dificulty.

I do believe average level of player increase, so games below monarch dificulty are probably not fun for magority now.

Well, I for one am happy with the low level! Thanks for the prince game. I'm looking forward to it!

I think it's just the thing after these higher level games - I'd even take a warlord game like the one we had way back in GOTM4 I think.

mushroomshirt said:

Well, I for one am happy with the low level! Thanks for the prince game. I'm looking forward to it!

I think it's just the thing after these higher level games - I'd even take a warlord game like the one we had way back in GOTM4 I think.

Click to expand...

I agree.


The overwhelming majority of people that play CIV play at this level or lower and of course it is always fun to see the elitists stare down the length of their probosci as they post their supercillious rants when these games are proffered by the staff. Try to remember, by definition, 49 percent of you are below average (clinical studies repeatedly show that 75% of people claim to be above average -- are you one of them?)

Mastiff_of_Ar said:

The pigs are on jungle, so you'd need AH and IW to work it, wouldn't you?

Click to expand...

You're right, somehow I thought that I don't need IW soon, maybe because of those gems in the forest. The other pig is still workable, although it's not worth it to research AH for just one pasture.

Fantasy realm? Crazy resources? What kind of map is this?

Was hoping for an immortal game, but perhaps this could be fun also. Not sure how to play, perhaps I will try an impi rush...

...or I might give a OCC a try again.


The great wall is going to be the most useful wonder since we will be facing massive barbarian activity. As we have stone it should be fairly easy to get.