Possibly Starting An AAR

Hello, my name is BaneFire. It's a terrible name, I know, but I made it a few years ago and I don't know how to change it. I am thinking on doing a Rhye's and Fall Dawn of Civ AAR as Ethiopia or Zulu. My background for this is my African heritage, and playing this might help to dispell the myth that African's are 'tribal' or 'uncivilized'. Don't worry, I'm not trying to shove my 'agenda' of 'political correctness' down your throat, I just want to play as an interesting civ.

So the reason I have started this thread is because I wanted to have some feedback before I become a big pile of mess. I will be planning to do a summary of the game every 5-10 turns; and want your advice on what things to do.

What country should I play, Ethiopia, Zulu or Congo? (Not North African Civs)
What objectives should I have?
Early start or later start?
Islam or Christianity?
Fascism Democracy or Communism?

I hope I can get a fun AAR from this.

Excuse me, but what does AAR mean?

Zulus don't exist in DoC .
Why did you not mention Mali, BTW?
As for everything else - chose what you want.

Excuse me, but what does AAR mean?

Click to expand...

After Action Report. A story, basically, similar to the ones in my sig (though the term AAR doesn't necessarily imply any roleplaying elements).

Welcome here

I don't think I'm the right person to advise you, so I'll keep quiet. Just making this post to let you know that I'm always happy to see that people plan to make AARs using this mod.

(Contact an administrator if you want to have your name change, I'm sure they can help you somehow.)

Sounds interesting

Ethiopia presents a nice change of many african stereotypes by forcing you to found catholicism (don't forget to go for protestantism too). Their terrain is terrible, and the barbarians bothersome, but it's fun to play as an island of christianism when you are surrounded by muslims. Also: spam askaris, free drill II is awesome when you upgrade to riflemen/infantry.

Ethiopia is definitely a fun nation to play, and because they live for so long, they can make a decent story at any speed. For Zulu, just transplant Ethiopia to South Africa and found one or two independent cities via worldbuilder. Normally I frown on WB in a story, but it is acceptable to create a scenario.

For Zulu, just transplant Ethiopia to South Africa and found one or two independent cities via worldbuilder.

Click to expand...

And have your stability suck from lacking control over your core area, unless you immediately found cities in Ethiopia anyway.

BaneFire said:

Hello, my name is BaneFire. It's a terrible name, I know, but I made it a few years ago and I don't know how to change it. I am thinking on doing a Rhye's and Fall Dawn of Civ AAR as Ethiopia or Zulu. My background for this is my African heritage, and playing this might help to dispell the myth that African's are 'tribal' or 'uncivilized'. Don't worry, I'm not trying to shove my 'agenda' of 'political correctness' down your throat, I just want to play as an interesting civ.

Click to expand...

I can't speak for everyone here, but I certainly do not believe that Africa is uncivilized.
If you've been lurking on this subforum, you'll understand that this is a very international place
and we tend to lean on academic discourse rather than stereotyped ideas whilst building this mod.

And personally, I don't think political correctness is a bad thing.
Making sure your perspective is heard (so long as it doesn't reduce others)
is never shoving anything down anyone's throat.

BaneFire said:

So the reason I have started this thread is because I wanted to have some feedback before I become a big pile of mess. I will be planning to do a summary of the game every 5-10 turns; and want your advice on what things to do.

Click to expand...

Finish your game before you start your story.
Many stories end prematurely because someone is tired of playing the game,
so they have no intention to end the story.

I would recommend reading either Lone_Wolf or Gruekiller's AARs in the Civ4 Stories & Tales subforum, for examples of good DoC AARs.

BaneFire said:

What country should I play, Ethiopia, Zulu or Congo? (Not North African Civs)
What objectives should I have?
Early start or later start?
Islam or Christianity?
Fascism Democracy or Communism?

I hope I can get a fun AAR from this.

Click to expand...

You want a combo of Catholicism, Islam & Protestantism in all your cities.
This will enable you to gain access to all the best wonders.
Critical ones that you should prioritize are:
University of Sankore, Spiral Minaret & San Marco Basillica.
Versailles & Taj Mahal are incredibly important too.

If you are lucky, you may have Buddhism or Confucianism spread by some means or another.
In that case, capitalize on it and build Himeji Castle, Grand Canal and Porcelain Tower.

Ethiopia would be your best bet.
If you need reference, blizzrd somewhat recently completed an excellent Ethiopia game in the DoC Domination Challenge thread that I highly recommend you reference.

Good luck!

Thanks for all the replies. And seeing you Leoreth! By the way, I'm not a lurker, this is my first time on the forum for a while (though I have been looking round the forum a lot), and it looks like I am going to be playing Ethiopia. More contribution is welcome, I will start tonight.

Also regarding the whole stopping mid-way through, I do notice that as a problem, but all I can do is try and pull through. Also maybe if I am updating regularly should I call it a Let's Play rather than an AAR?

Yeah. An AAR is technically a game that you finish first, then write about

If someone thinks sub Saharan Africa was uncivilized, talk to him about Mali and other great civilizations

What exactly is an AAR?

EDit: Sorry i understand now

yurisusuki said:

If someone thinks sub Saharan Africa was uncivilized, talk to him about Mali and other great civilizations

What exactly is an AAR?

EDit: Sorry i understand now

Click to expand...

Honestly, most learned people don't believe the whole "Africa is a savage wasteland" myth. That is mostly propagated by racists and people with their own agendas. Anyone who has even a basic knowledge of African history would only be making a complete fool out of themself by thinking that. I mean really, Ethiopia (Axum) was a major player in the ancient world (I remember seeing a map showing the 4 great powers: China, India, Rome, and Axum). Mali was one of the greatest centres of Islamic learning in history, even outstripping Baghdad for a while. Sure, today the greatness of Africa is lost on the population, but that is only because they are just getting back on their feet.

If we looked at the world 50 years ago, almost all of Asia and Africa were complete disasters. If we said, "they were always like that" we would be fools indeed. To say that just because a country is poor and in a state of brokenness at one specific point means that the people living there are inherently inferior is just... wrong.

Anyway, that's all for my rant. Have a nice day.

If only the world had more learned people.

There are unfortunately still many implicitly racist and culturally chauvinist views on the African continent today.