Deity Challenge #26 - Brazil

...you see your neighbors. It's quite the murderer's row!

with Shaka so close to you and you have to face him from the beginning. I tried to bring the dirty water to Iroquis by agreeing to fight the same war with Shaka, everything is fine until they made peace and next turn Shaka turned against me. Even though NC is finished in the 70ish turns, have a handful of spears and archors to upgrade. Fighting two wars will be very ugly. Hence I surrender.

Yeah, holy hell. If I hadn't prioritized Walls I would have been a smear under an Impi's foot. I sent my Caravan there hoping he wouldn't bust a profitable relationship but no. As it was I am so far behind that I don't foresee catching up. Zulu is brutal. I may finish this to see if I can grow out of constant war.

Iroquois, Zulu and Sweden are all running away in my game and even with a DoF I can't get Iroquois and Zulu to fight.

Zulu are so agressive. Sweden is running away like usain bolt

Zulu does lemming into Walls like nobody's business. Walls + Spearman + city damage + rivers everywhere handled the first attack. I made sure my Spearman's attack didn't finish anyone because if he was caught outside the Walls he was doomed. Zulu crashed 6 Warriors into my Walls and parked his Archers well within range. My hillside/river moat city (up near the Jungle Gold/Salt) with an Archer garrison also withstood a 2 Impi/1 Horseman assault. I allied with Antwerp (protect/Pyramids/project) and he chewed up half a dozen Zulu units.

It's actually potentially beneficial over the long run. I have DoF with Iroquois and Arabia so I can sell my Salt for bulk gold, Zulu swoops in and pillages it, I repair it and then do it all over again. But it's like having rabid Barbarians on your doorstep, constantly having to evac your Workers. I can't make a troop yet that will survive even one attack from Zulu's Impis or Horsemen, even when they are attacking across river. I don't think Zulu will get back up to strength to be a threat to taking a city but he is a huge pain in the neck. Until I deal with him trade routes aren't even an option and without that I don't think you can catch up and compete.

It is a hard map. Great early preassure. Impis are cool with their uppgrade. Makes it hard for ones archers on flat terrain. And the run away civ Sweden is too far away to even think of disturbing any time before late game.

Finally a tough deity challenge, I thank the poster with my heart

Went scout-scout-shrine (for DF!) -monument liberty build. I usually prefer liberty settler first build, but this time I got a culture ruin and there were two salts so I went citizenship first.

Around t15 I found that

1. lots of good expo places
2. I am basically Zulu's only neighbor

so I though I should beeline CB, and also to Xbows if needed. I checked every turn whether I could bribe zulu to DoW iroquis, and I finally succeed, although I had to play lots of gpt and marble.

After getting free settler I made 3 more settlers. Before that, I think I mainly build archers and 1 warrior so that I can upgrade it to swordman.

When Zulu made peace with iroquis (it was not a real war, anyway, as their borders were apart), I knew that it is coming - I could not even try pyramid and had to pump up units. I got lucky with CS quests so could save some gold so that I could upgrade 7-8 CBs and 3 swordman.

Using the river and "CS shield", I could easily defend his 1st wave. But things went bad after that - impi was so op! Sometimes it could one shot my CB. movement 3 and 3 buffalo upgrades.... and I needed 5-6 CBs to kill one impi, even with my general.

I knew that I could not take his city anyway and I might lose some units, so took white peace and started building-up. 1st screenshot shows that there was no lib except cap at t102... I could not even use liberty GE to rush NC, so I just used it for Machu Pichu.

Trade routes really helped me to catch up science. 2nd screenshot shows that out of 73 spt, 29 spt was coming from the trade routes....

I beelined to Xbows, as I knew that Zulu will come soon. I placed an citadel to defend - without it, 10+ impis would have killed all of my Xbows.

Meanwhile, China expanded like crazy but nobody DoWed her... and she took lots of wonders and leading in all numbers.

Zulu came again as expected, but he had much more than I expected. for my previous deity BNW games, I thought that AIs had too small army - maybe I have to take it back, or at least admit that it depends on civs. My original plan was def and kill his 1st and 2nd wave and push back, but it seems that defending before dynamite is a more realistic goal now.