The Immortal Challenge Lineup - Game #29 The Zulu Kingdom

All games in this series will be set to IMMORTAL difficulty. User civilizations, maps, and opponents will change each game, but the pace will always be set at standard and the starting era will always be ancient. We will try for a variety of starts, and not just having a crazy warmonger as your next door neighbor (although there will be that too). This isn't a competition so there will be no predefined victory conditions. New challenges in the series will be posted every other Wednesday.

Who can play?
Anybody can play. The more the merrier. Even if you normally don't play immortal games you are still welcome to try. The games can become great learning resources for the player trying to improve. Even if you don't finish the game, we are still interested to hear about your experience.

Do's and Don'ts
We are going to be using the honor system. Feel free to restart, reload, play the same game multiple times, but don't use the science overflow exploit. Also please don't edit the game in IGE. If you do chose to cheat, please don't share your results in the comments. Also, please use the spoiler tag if you post a picture, comment about neighboring civs, close by wonders, or locations of ancient ruins.

Also, please tell us about your Build Order, Social Policies, Tech Order, and what type of wonders you went after. I know a lot of this stuff seems pretty mundane to the experienced player, but the details are incredibly useful to people trying to learn.

Future Games in the Series
I want users to submit saves from turn 0. Preferably the person submitting the game has played enough turns to know the map is either difficult, fun, or unique in some enjoyable way. Write a short description as to why it is special and email the save to immortalchallengelineup@gmail.com

Important
If you submit a game for the challenge, you must have the DLC map packs disabled. Not everybody has them and they are honestly kind of useless. Having them disabled will allow more participants.

Click to expand...

Game #1 - Japan
Game #2 - Poland
Game #3 - Ottomans
Game #4 - Arabia
Game #5 - Brazil
Game #6 - Denmark
Game #7 - Songhai
Game #8 - Sweden
Game #9 - India
Game #10 - Russia
Game #11 - Germany
Game #12 - Aztecs
Game #13 - Egypt
Game #14 - France
Game #15 - Austria
Game #16 - Siam
Game # 17 - Venice
Game # 18 - Iroquois
Game # 19 - Greece
Game # 20 - Persia
Game # 21 - England
Game # 22 - Ethiopia
Game # 23 - Assyria
Game # 24 - The Celts
Game # 25 - America
Game # 26 - China
Game # 27 - Korea
Game # 28 - Spain
Game # 20 - The Zulu

OK, this must be the toughest Immortal ICL but sorry, I do not like such setup - no CS, rather tight on land and of course warmongers are your neighbors And the map type is not ordinary either. DomV is an obvious way to go surely

Pretty tough neighbourhood, and having Atilla close by in the start always makes for either interesting or very short games. I prioritized not stepping on his toes, and was trying to bribe him to declare war on Alex - but I didn't have enough interesting resources to give him. Luckily Atilla soon asked me to join a war against Alex, which I happily accepted, and we've so far been very friendly - and codependent with caravans going both ways.

I'm not very used to very early aggro, so I was not very confident on which paths to take tech-wise. I chose some kind of hybrid I guess, and I feel I've gotten a decent start with good infrastructure, while building the Ikanda and a few units in some early lulls to be able to defend myself and maybe be aggressive if I find it opportune.

I set my sights on the Mongols very early, viewing them the easiest of my closest neighbours to conquer. Considering possible city placements I found my strategy to be going Liberty and not building any settlers. I placed my free expo strategically to conquer Karakorum, and it worked out after a bit hairy defense of said expo city. I had bribed Sweden into attacking Mongolia, but didn't wait long enough before DOW'ing him myself, so he threw all his units at me instead of at Sweden. Sweden did help a lot in conquering the city itself after I killed all the units, so it was worth a luxury and four horses to win a very easy siege on what looks to be a decent city.

All in all I was quite happy with the result, since I hadn't built very many units - instead prioritizing infrastructure and acknowledging my awful economy not being strong enough to support a larger army.

I signed a declaration of friendship with Sweden, which I'm unsure whether or not to regret at the moment. I finished todays session after conquering Mongolia, and am not sure which target to hit next. I may have chosen Sweden if I didn't DoF them, so I might try to get them to help with the Huns as well. The Huns is the closest neighbour, so it would be natural to take them out, but I'm considering trying to use the AI and conquer Greece more easily, and then take the Huns from both sides at an opportune moment if it works out. I'm open to suggestions on this, though, although it's hard to get a good feeling on an actual game from just a screenshot. I guess the answer to who to kill is very dependent on diplomacy, though, and it is hard to predict who wants to attack who.

I took all the capitals on my side in pretty good time, but forgot to inflame wars on the other side. Even though they are all nominally psychopathic warmongers, they were more interested in going 'KB mode'. They were deep into the industrial and I was too far behind.

So I know something about East v West maps: happiness is at a premium. This means Tradition is even stronger than normal. It also means I might need early trades with the AIs, so bum rushing our neighbours could drag the Zulu Nation into a quagmire.

Stole early workers from both Attila and Genghis. They were very reluctant to make peace, but finally Genghis has agreed.

3 city opening is fine here - because of happiness again. The goal is to build up a solid economic foundation before turning the world into a smoking husk of former civilizations.

Well, you've successfully turned an Immortal game into a Deity game. I think rolling a standard Deity map would have been an easier way to do this

Just the missing city states probably adds a half level of difficulty.

The early focus on economy has worked well here, if not the fastest road to victory.

Impi are in the field around t90, so the harassment of Attila could change into conquest.

Alex was the major threat in the West, so he's next. All that remains is a weak Athens.

1st Food, Hammers, Science, and self sufficient in happiness. All the other AIs have denounced me, excepting Gustavus and Genghis.

After the Greeks I'll send the army swimming to Rome, I think. Techwise, I'll go down the bottom towards Cannons and then Artillery. The only major issue left is managing happiness with additional conquests. I should probably stop growing in the two secondary Zulu cities.

Also, I was unable to Liberate the Huns. Is that because I killed 'em?

Well, tryed this one and ragequit after cleaning my continent, china is way too far ahead...
Dunno if i can catch up, but dont really want to try it, will be long long run and pretty exhausting one according to the amount of cities to manage(with most of them still annexed and tons of barbarians running everywhere in the continent that have same units than i do ...).

Seriously the miss of CS is really hard to handle.
Dunno how it happenned but china got half the east part and was like 2 era ahead of everyone ...

Finding footing in Roman territory is not the easiest task. I'll lose several good units before I can sack Rome here.



Despite lower than average beaker potential Artillery is still finished on turn 163. Easy sailing from here right?



It turned out to be not so easy after all. In the Dido DCL thread I told Acken that I'm glad dog-piling is still in the game. Well, Karma happened.

4 DoW's over the space of three turns! While I'm already fighting the Romans! This game would have completely fallen apart if I had not already reached artillery and claimed the largest army card. The fact that I was already happiness self-sufficient paid off in spades. Lost all my trade routes, however.



The toughest fights were pushing through the Polish Winged Hussar spam, followed by the grand finale with Sweden. These were fun fights all around - I've never had so much trouble with glorified lancers.



The key to this map, I think, is realizing the happiness shortage. All my cities had Zoos by the end, I prioritized the Circus Max, and tried to build enough faith to buy any available Pagodas and Mosques. There is no doubt this game is harder that a chunk of the DCL games

I had some fun warring, but I don't think I'm in a position to win. I was in perma wars all game, stole Workers from Attila and Khan. I was wailing on Attila when I noticed too late that Sweden had Karakorum beaten down... I got some units there but couldn't take it in one turn, so Sweden got it. So I had to DOW him to take it back, I probably should have waited a while rather than deal with his entire army. When I got it it was now pop 2 and nearly worthless, other than the luxes.

When I took Karlstad it started building a damn Caravansary - even though at war and neg happy, and so did Karakorum after a while. My frustration level was already pretty high so after a few turns I quit. I don't even have Unis or XBs yet.

Left side Liberty and Left side Honor, WG in my expo. My attempt doesn't even deserve the server space for a map.