Zulu Noble Random Map Game

I decided to start another game and I will use this post to show the start. I have Corn, Fish and a bunch of Dye so I will settle in place, research Fishing-Mining-Bronze Working-Wheel-Pottery and look around and see what is available.

I thought I would try another game with a different style of leader - and not so broken, either.

Shaka is Aggressive and Expansive. His unique building and unit are the Ikhanda and the Impi, both of which are available early. He starts with Hunting and Agriculture.

Two things about the Ikhanda: One is Shaka builds them twice as fast as a normal barracks, being aggressive. The other is that they reduce Maintenance by 20%. So that should mean a 70% reduction in maintenance costs once courthouses are up. So it should be an automatic that they get built in every city, correct?

As for the Impi, I have not played enough Zulu to know really what to make of them. They are spearmen and they move fast, even on hills or in jungle. I am up for ideas on how they are most effectively used - I am thinking scouting.

The Expansive trait means workers and granaries are built faster. The granaries are a one-pop rush and a city should get going faster. It also means a +2 bonus to health.

The initial save and screen shot are attached here. The game at 1000BC is in the very next post.

Here I will post my game at 1000BC.

Research was as follows:
Fishing (6)
Mining (17)
Archery (17 - Hut)
Bronze Working (25)
The Wheel (32)
Pottery (38)
Animal Husbandry (45)
Iron Working (58)
Writing (64)
Sailing (70)

I located the second city by a lake near a bunch of elephants and one sugar - This should be a pretty good production city later on. The third city claims a nearby rice resource and the fourth city claims the iron.

The RNG gave me a big break on Turn 64 - a mine popped copper.

Mao is my nearest neighbor - He is protective and it looks like he has a barracks producing CG2 / Drill1 Archers. However he does not have any metal yet (though he is expanding in that direction) and I should have iron up in a few more turns.

I am also setting up a settler whip for the next turn - I can send that one southward to a good food resource, or I can send him to grab that other iron resource to deny Mao.

Mao's capital looks pretty good - How many swordsmen will it take to capture it? I will expect it to have two defenders, possibly three by the time they get there.

Are there better ways I could have opened? Here is a screenshot and a save.

Shaka is one of my favouite leaders, he fits very well with my war-heavy playstyle. Your fourth city placement indicates to me you intend to rush Mao with swords + axes. My comments are based upon this assumption.

Please dont take these comments the wrong way, I like your techpath generally (cept squeezing in Mysticism before Pottery for border pops - see below - and delaying Sailing in favour of Mathematics for 50% chops on your soon-to-be army) and you did a decent job in claiming land.

1. You missed what is in my opinion the best site for an early-ish rush, the horse/stone/corn city. I would grab this site first, to block of the southern part of the continent and have a 11H city at size four. I think I would build 1N of the stone despite not knowing about horses in time (can work corn + 2 grassland hills + plains hill with a border pop) - monument first (this is why we need Mysticism before Pottery, probably even before Wheel). If we were Axe/Chariot rushing definitely 1NW of stone to get all three resources in first ring.

2. With a forest heavy capital and a jungle-heavy second city, you need more than three workers. I would whip two workers in the capital (you will regrow fast at size two), then start building/chopping swords like crazy. Add in a couple of Shock Axemen to protect the stack and possibly a Cover Impi for scouting/worker harassment.

3. Even though your capital is a production monster, I dont think you can get enough swords to wipe Mao out. Keep in mind I play a higher diff so this may still be doable. The other three cities will be lucky to complete more than two units, so it will be tough to pull this off. Perhaps settling the city in point 1, building enough workers, then spamming cottages, trading tech and backfilling the southern part of the continent might be a better approach.

4. City #2 - we dont have IW to clear the jungle when it was settled?? If you want this site early prioritise IW over Pottery & AH (we have archery for barb defence). Settle this as city #3 after the stone city discussed above.

5. City #3 is a weak city early on. A 4F tile and low production/no other improvable special resources do not really make this a useful city for a sword war. the capital can run enough commerce while you war. I would skip this city until the middle of the game.

6. City #4 is also weak for a sword rush. It will be a contributing city once you have a few farms + mines up, another reason to delay a war until you can get this city to be a useful contributor.

7. I would have chosen to go for an early REX into a sword/Cat/Phant war instead of straight rush into swords. Reasons for this are:

we have distant copper, (decision to rush/settle resource city already made before copper pops in capital)
the iron in food poor spot(s), means a city built to claim these will not contribute much to an early war effort;
chariots not very useful against protective archers
we have a jungle blocking our target and a large tract of land to expand into the south, plus two neighbors for some trading opportunities at some stage.



I am not the best player on the forum by a long way but hopefully this can give you a bit of insight into city selection (which is a skill I am constantly improving)

If you like I can play a shadow to 1000 BC or even the end of the game to compare, although my last Noble game ended in a domination victory before 1300 AD.

Good luck with the rest of the game

Berkobob said:

Shaka is one of my favouite leaders, he fits very well with my war-heavy playstyle. Your fourth city placement indicates to me you intend to rush Mao with swords + axes. My comments are based upon this assumption.

.......

7. I would have chosen to go for an early REX into a sword/Cat/Phant war instead of straight rush into swords. Reasons for this are:

Click to expand...

Your assumption is correct. I intended to take out Mao before he gets too strong, or more importantly, before he gets iron. Besides, it turned out that he was getting boxed in from two sides and I thought I could do the knockout.

Your critique is very welcome - Generally I play a builder style and I am still learning how to execute a war on somewhat even terms. Unfortunately I still have a tendency to be a wonder addict. Playing Zulu is a contrast.

My thinking when I settled the second city was to get access to the elephants and that will help my expansion effort because I could grow the capital to size 6 and start settlers. My thinking when I settled the third city by the rice was a small food surplus, but enough to workers. The purpose of the fourth city was simply to have access to iron.

I reloaded at Turn 68 instead of 75 to fix a little micro - It was late night / early morning syndrome and I still get annoyed when the micro is done wrong.

The city site you mentioned in 1 looked good enough that I decided to settle it. It is a pretty good production site - and maybe the stone will come in handy for.......... catapult ammunition?

As you can see in the screen shots, George W Shaka managed to start a war and crash the economy at the same time.

By Turn 102 I had a stack of 9 swords ready to invade China, another 2 close behind, and another 2 just produced. Noting that Beijing has 2 CG2 Archers, I moved the scout out of harm's way and declared, then invaded with my two stacks sending them northeast. The Impi to the north grabbed the worker and moved next to Ghungzou and found the other two archers and settler south of the city. So I knew all the units Mao had.

Turn 104, the stack had made it to Beijing to find four archers waiting, so I started promoting to cover and attacking and took the city losing 2 swordsmen. Ghungzhou fell two turns later with another 2 swordsmen lost. Shanghai fell Turn 109 with a loss of one and that was the end of the war.

As bonus prizes, I got the Great Lighthouse and a holy city, but no shrine.

So now the war is over, the economy is in very rough shape and I have a Great General. What should I do with him? Should I join with the medic Impi or the CR2 Swordsman? Or should I settle in a city?

To recover the economy, it's a good old matter of time. Get some cottages up and run some scientists, research currency and code of laws. It will get easier when Beijing pops a border and brings another gem mine online.

I understand why you would choose cities 2 and 3 but these cities will be slow to develop early and city 2 especially will chew up a LOT of worker turns which could have been used improving the capital/your third city. (farm the sugar ASAP to maximise city 2's growth).

Nice job warring. I might have razed Ghungzhou to save a bit on maintenance.

I would attach the GG to a medic unit for an eventual war against Celtia. Recover the economy like you suggested, although you might want a few cities running scientists for the early GP's & research power to get to alpha/currency. Burn through your gold with the slider at 20 or 30% to reach alpha, then tech currency. Most of your cities will build either infrastructure or research/wealth until your economy comes back online.

I might grab Calendar before CoL for the +2 happy resources.

Here is my game at 500AD:

I researched Mathematics (83) Mysticism (87) Masonry (91) Calendar (107) Alphabet (115) Currency (122) Code of Laws (126) and Metal Casting. (135) I am intending to beeline Optics and maybe Astronomy so that I can meet and trade with the other civilizations.

I suppose if it took me 8 turns to research Alphabet and 7 turns to research Currency and 4 turns to research Code of Laws, maybe the economy was not as badly crashed as I made it out to be. I did have to resort to converting production to research and wealth for a short while - building units would only cost money and add to the problem.

Since I now share the continent with the Celts, they are not really inclined to trade techs with me - particularly the religious ones which I ignored. So I will take a quick diversion and find the other continent. I am thinking about Astronomy because I have the Great Lighthouse and those trade routes will look really good.

As for a war with the Celts, I really do not look forward to the idea of attacking fortified Gallic Warriors on those hilltop cities - I might as well be fighting Longbows. It will be a lot of messy work and I will delay it until I tech some more. After my diversion, I am thinking about researching Construction and Engineering and Civil Service and just attacking with lots of Trebs and Maces.

Here is a screen shot and a save.

Berkobob said:

If you like I can play a shadow to 1000 BC or even the end of the game to compare, although my last Noble game ended in a domination victory before 1300 AD.

Good luck with the rest of the game

Click to expand...

I finally got the game cleaned up and finished - It was a domination win in 1842. I guess in order to get a domination win before 1300, I should have stopped building the economy long before getting maces and attacked the Celts.

However, what I did was research Optics and Astronomy and started trading with the other four civs, then started rolling the Celts with maces and trebs as soon as they were available.

When I had rifles available, I loaded 12 siege and a bunch of CR2 and CR3 rifles and some cavalry and attacked Babylonia. Unfortunately, they had the AP, so they were able to put a big break into the war - so I changed my civics to Universal Suffrage and Organized Religion and Free Speech and Emancipation and quickly build three missionaries and sent them back to the mainland and spammed Judaism all over the continent so that I could block any future votes.

The turn after I settled a peace with Babylonia, they vassaled to the Dutch. I suppose I should have taken them as vassals and given them back their cities and gone after somebody else. Anyway the next time I declared on Babylonia, I was also at war with the Dutch and the Incas, so I took one city at a time until it was over.

About the AP victory, I get the impression I have to be at peace to secure that victory, is that correct?