Legends of Revolution: Immortal Shaka

Just thought I'd share this for those that might be interested. I've been enjoying this game, and thought someone else might get a kick out of it, also.

It's the latest edition of Legends of Revolution. The settings are Immortal, Marathon, Standard, PerfectWorld, BarbWorld, BarbCiv, StartAsMinors, RagingBarbs, ChooseReligions, NewRandomSeed, and with events enabled. The leader is Shaka, and the Civ is Zulu. The earliest save I have is Turn 2, but other than initial scout moves, and city founding, nothing else has been done.

The map was worldbuildered by me several months ago. I think I was sick of several cramped, grinding, resource poor maps I had been playing for several games in a row, and fed up with the giant useless deserts of PerfectWorld, so I did some work on the map. The start, however, was pretty awesome to begin with; I didn't do all that much with it. I then promptly moved on to something else, and forgot all about this until I stumbled upon it a couple of weeks ago. Glad I did, because it's been a pip.

There's plenty of production, food, and commerce, so it plays more like an Emperor game, but the barbs and minor civs make the early game fluid, and highly interesting. The only thing I can suggest is don't neglect your military, and don't be in too much of a hurry to develop your cap; it's tempting, but it'll probably just get pillaged to the ground before you can get anything out of it. If you've never played LoR before, this is a pretty forgiving map to learn on, although the settings are pretty harsh.

Have fun.

Edit: Oh, and LoR can be downloaded here, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=319235 , if you don't have it already.

I might give this a shot. I have to re-install LoR - haven't played it in a long time. I hate the MAFs with these mods.

edit: aaaargh! I wish this map wasn't large size

I was a little too hasty in posting this last night without giving due consideration to new users.

Firstly, in LoR Shaka is AGG/ORG, the Ikhanda is the same as normal, but the Impi is a replacement Axemen with the benefit of being resourceless, two moves, 3 STR with a 100% bonus v Melee, and unlocked with Pottery.

Secondly, BarbWorld and BarbCiv means that there are a number of Barbarian Cities on the map at the start of the game, and that more barb cities will eventually settle down. These Barb cities will develop into full-fledged civs at some point after reaching a population of 3 or 4 (I forget which). When this happens, a new Civ will appear, and, to give them a survivor's chance, they will spawn with a BIG army. Given that StartAsMinors is enabled, you will be at war with this new Civ, and they will promptly go rampaging around the map like the Vedic Aryans event.

Thirdly, StartAsMinors means that all civs are unable to conduct diplomacy, and are at war with all other civs, until such time as BOTH parties have obtained Writing; if you have Writing, and the other guy doesn't, you're still at war.

What this all means is that even with a juiced start like this, the early game is VERY dynamic and unpredictable. So, how to play this? I actually spammed a few scouts while researching Fishing, so as to pop huts, and discover the Barb cities (there's a lot of land, and a lot of huts out there). I then worked the unpillageable seafood for food and commerce, while working the undeveloped forest hills for production (whipping would work well here, also, but I was sorta doing an RPC with this, and Shaka was forbidden to whip, so I foregoed that option), and beelined Pottery, so as to get Impis out for Barb defense, which allowed development of those juicy gems, and later expansion. NewSeedonReload is enabled, so everyone's game is going to be quite different, so I'm not really giving too much away.

Two more tips: razing barb cities before they become full-fledged civs saves ALOT of headaches, and walls are actually a very good hammer investiment in this type of game.

If anyone wants to try this with my RPC-type settings, Shaka loves his people and is highly benevolent. Whipping and drafting are prohibited, and cities are not allowed to go into unhappiness, or unhealthiness, so growth must be delayed if such will lead to unhappy/unhealth. Shaka is a religious nut. He must try to found a relgion; doesn't matter which. Once that religion is founded, he must take it as his state religion for the remainder of the game, remain in Theocracy, use inquisitors to purge all nonstate religions, and devote himself to either a) shrining the holy city, or b) seizing the holy city. All attempts must be made to build the AP in the holy city, or failing that, to seize the AP (or raze it if it's built by apostates). Shaka also likes his land, and must continue to expand; peacefully if possible, war if he must. The ideal VC is domination by conquest/diplomacy, but religious works as well.

I've been playing this for a few days now, and it's been very lively, and highly enjoyable. Hope someone else can get a kick out of this as well.

Sort of cheesy for me to bump up my own thread, but I'm going to be laid up for a couple of weeks, so I'm thinking I might take another shot at this; which should be interesting since I haven't played Civ in about a year, and I recall the settings as being quite challenging.

Just throwing this out there if anyone has any interest in shadowing, and perhaps being available to answer questions.

All the best.

Not played much LoR but enough Rev mods to have some idea on how fun the early game can be

Habitus said:

Not played much LoR but enough Rev mods to have some idea on how fun the early game can be

Click to expand...

You are correct.

I don't know if base Rev/DCM includes the Barbarian, and Start as Minor mods, but they really change the opening game, and make each subsequent game off the same start quite different, as well.

You take one look at that opening start, and just figure it's going to be a breeze. And then...

I also think this would be pretty neat, because with Random Seed everyone is going to be playing over the same geography, but have very different games. It'd be kinda cool to see those variations.

Played around with this for a bit. First try, I was still reacquainting myself with the civ controls, made a hash of scouting, and failed to spot a nearby barb city. Said barb city spawned Japan, and Meiji promptly marched his doomstack right onto Ulundi. Ooops.

Started over, and followed my own advice from last year. Build military, grow slowly, find barb cities and burn them before they spawn, then gradually fill in the gaps in the map. I remember enough about playing this game to know that I'm not playing optimally, but I'm having fun, so screw it.

I've just started a new phase of settling, and will begin exploration soon; I'm curious to see how the AI is managing out in that fog.

I've posted a couple of screenies showing the capital, and the meagre amount of map I've managed to expose and fill so far.

If I get time I'll try and shadow (I'll be sub optimal as well so it'll be fun). RevDCM includes the BarbWorld n Minors options

I like a lot of the concepts in this mod and it certainly makes you use different strategies, but the mod needs to give the minor civs a better chance at expanding and ultimately winning the game. They get spawned with a ton of units, which tanks their economy later on. So it's a pain when they rush you or to capture their cities, but it seems like the game is pretty much in the bag if you manage to survive the early onslaught (made easier by chopping all the surrounding forests). I might post some screenshots later on.