News: TSG114 Announcement

Welcome to the 114th game in the GOTM V Training Series! This Series will allow new and old GOTM fans to try out these features from Civ5's expansions and DLCs in a friendly environment. Participants are encouraged to post questions, stories, advice, tricks and failures in the dedicated game threads (described below). Each game will specify the Civ you will play and the Victory Condition to strive for. You can read more about the GOTM and Training Series concept in this thread.

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Civ V BNW - TSG114 Details:

Player (You): - Shaka - Zulu
Victory Condition: Culture but all other VCs are enabled.
Difficulty: King
Civs/City-States (including player): 8/16
Map Type/Size: Pangea/Standard
Game pace: Standard

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Game options:
Start - Ancient Era
Enabled - Quick Combat, Quick Movement
(Regardless of starting options, you may turn on/off Quick Combat/Quick Movement using the game options menu at any time during gameplay.)
Game Version: This game was created in Civ5 Brave New World version 1.0.3.279.
Game Requirements: Wonders of the Ancient World DLC, Gods and Kings expansion, Brave New World Expansion.

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Zulu Unique Attributes:



This is where you will start:




Information about threads associated with each individual TSG -- Must Read if you are new to our Game of the Month!


File Upload System
We have a game file upload system you can find here. Please use it to upload your completed first attempt by saving the game on the turn after your victory or defeat. (by using the "lemme play one more turn" feature) Please note: you must submit your game on the turn following Victory. If you continue to play, the game overwrites the data and your submission could be rejected by the submission system.

This game runs for a month and ends August 15th, 2015.

The save will be available for download on July 15th, 2015, midnight Central Standard time (UTC -6:00) in the US.

The Save can be found here.

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Evidently we've only played one Zulu game before this, a Domination game of course. So I decided to play this one as Culture to experiment with strategies. This is for some new players or for some who'd like to try a strategy they aren't familiar with. (You pros who've tried all the strategies don't really need to read this, unless you need to correct any of my mistakes of course.)

There are known strategies on lower level Culture games that can win very quickly. The most common one I think is the Sacred Sites (SS for short) strategy that relies on getting one Reformation belief (Sacred Sites of course) out of the Piety tree. And it hinges on getting 2 faith-bought buildings from your religion, generally any 2 of Cathedrals, Pagodas, Mosques, and Monasteries. The fragility of this strategy is if you only get one building or another Civ gets SS.

Another fast strategy is through war. Conquer as many capitals/cities to remove the need for lots of tourism to influence the last couple of AIs you let survive. Fully conquering the culture leaders means you dont have to influence them. Both of these strategies are fast at lower difficulty levels, often winning in under 200 turns if not under 150.

The 3rd strategy is the basic peaceful rush to late game tourism amplifiers (hotels/airports/Ideology tenets) through fast science while filling tourism slots with works of art and landmark relics, etc. It isn't as fast as the others but can also be won under t200, just not as often or as easily for most players.

I'm only explaining these for new players who may not know about them or for those who have tried only one or two of them. Many people will take the SS strategy because it is an atypical playstyle and the high likelihood of SS still being there when you enhance your religion. It is something any civ can achieve. I think Zulu is certainly helpful for the Domination strategy with their Impis and UA, and King diff is still low enough that it will be enough to dominate very quickly with just Impis, you just need to get enough tourism to overcome the remaining civs culture levels. Most of our low level culture games cant help but be won by the fastest SS games but I'd like people who have tried that to experiment with other methods and those who haven't to try SS to see how the tourism mechanic can be used early.

As the game has been out and unchanged for some time now I have no problem identifying the known methods for those new players who are still coming into these GotMs and I recommend they look at the Strategy and Tips subforum for threads that detail these strategies. Also, for any good-hearted regulars, post any links to the better sources to explain these, whether they be other threads or videos that show how it works. As always, just don't post any spoilers about this game once the save goes live on the 15th.

Okay, wall of text is finished now, haha.

HR

Interesting. I think I'll go for pseudo-domination, but I'm very bad at war so I won't be surprised if it ends up taking 450 turns.

River start with double salt and gold? Yes please! This looks like it'll be a fun one for sure.

Why not both SS and Domination combined? By opening honor, taking left liberty, left honor, piety to reformation, and etc., and getting a religion with two buildings and taking sacred sites, then annexing every last city and building a faith building in each one, won't that get an even faster sacred sites victory than leaving everyone alone? Well, I guess not without those nice multipliers, but still I guess we will see. I have been wanting to try the Zulu's and their horrid impi's for a while, so I am looking forward to starting this one.

You'd be better off razing every captured city you can and building a new city in its place. The cost of all those courthouses would kill your economy.

Wild_Woojsha said:

Why not both SS and Domination combined? By opening honor, taking left liberty, left honor, piety to reformation, and etc., and getting a religion with two buildings and taking sacred sites, then annexing every last city and building a faith building in each one, won't that get an even faster sacred sites victory than leaving everyone alone? Well, I guess not without those nice multipliers, but still I guess we will see. I have been wanting to try the Zulu's and their horrid impi's for a while, so I am looking forward to starting this one.

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If you haven't done either SS or Dom strat I'd suggest some practice games and focusing on one to learn them before trying a hybrid. It should give you a sense of the wiggle room you have in timing. Tourism is a climb that needs a snowball effect to influence them quickly and timing is crucial to SS if you want very fast results. Dom relies more on where your opponents are as the 'runaway' culture leader is the only real challenge. If they are all the way across the map then it takes longer. Luckily for the lower levels the culture leaders are usually very manageable.

HR - Maybe the discussion about SS belongs in a spoiler tag? I might be able to guess that SS is available in this one.

budweiser said:

HR - Maybe the discussion about SS belongs in a spoiler tag? I might be able to guess that SS is available in this one.

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It has been a known strategy for a long time now. And it is King/Pangea so SS is easily assumable for anyone who knows about it. This was more for the new players who may not. It isn't spoilerish to discuss general strategies. The only things to stay in a spoiler tag are map/save-specific knowledge and those are for OA/AA threads.

Sacred Sites is all over this forum, every culture victory thread has a link to some sort of guide and its even in several signatures. But it's the zulus, and they have impi's with buffalo horns, on a pangea map. They have to dominate at least a little bit. I'm gonna try cleansing the map this time the second I finish civil service. Can't wait to see what's hiding left of that hill, probably gonna settle on it regardless though, need every hammer I can get.

Wild_Woojsha said:

Sacred Sites is all over this forum, every culture victory thread has a link to some sort of guide and its even in several signatures. But it's the zulus, and they have impi's with buffalo horns, on a pangea map. They have to dominate at least a little bit. I'm gonna try cleansing the map this time the second I finish civil service. Can't wait to see what's hiding left of that hill, probably gonna settle on it regardless though, need every hammer I can get.

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With 19 posts (at current count) I wasnt sure how well you knew these forums. I can see you are familiar now. My apologies. I can tell you hybrid SS isn't easy for me. The few times I tried it my timings were terrible. Happiness and trading partners are situationally necessary to keep Rebels at bay (staying above -10), and at low diffs it isn't easy to draw a DoW out of your neighbors to take the hostile heat off of you. And delaying Reformation beyond the 8th policy is also quite tough for a quick finish.

But I am curious as to how you'll do this. I wanted a Zulu culture GotM so that the Dom approach would be more attractive than the standard SS efforts. I welcome all the approaches of course, but I'm trying to get players to try things they aren't familiar with too.

HR

Hammer Rabbi said:

With 19 posts (at current count) I wasnt sure how well you knew these forums. I can see you are familiar now. My apologies. I can tell you hybrid SS isn't easy for me. The few times I tried it my timings were terrible. Happiness and trading partners are situationally necessary to keep Rebels at bay (staying above -10), and at low diffs it isn't easy to draw a DoW out of your neighbors to take the hostile heat off of you. And delaying Reformation beyond the 8th policy is also quite tough for a quick finish.

But I am curious as to how you'll do this. I wanted a Zulu culture GotM so that the Dom approach would be more attractive than the standard SS efforts. I welcome all the approaches of course, but I'm trying to get players to try things they aren't familiar with too.

HR

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I have been lurking for a while, and finally decided to create an account and start posting. I don't really know how I am going to do it either, my plans will probably be changing the second scouting is complete and I see just how extensive this map is. Rebels don't scare me that much since they'll just be target practice anyway, but the other affects of happiness and bad diplomacy does. I don't plan on going to war until my impi's have wiped the map of barbarians and are in place like chess pieces for the final invasion, so maybe I can get a good religion and SS before then if I can play this right. It might be better just to use my impi's to clear a wide area to finish building 12-15 cities really quickly? The map will decide in the end which road I take...

Wild_Woojsha said:

Why not both SS and Domination combined? By opening honor, taking left liberty, left honor, piety to reformation, and etc., and getting a religion with two buildings and taking sacred sites, then annexing every last city and building a faith building in each one, won't that get an even faster sacred sites victory than leaving everyone alone? Well, I guess not without those nice multipliers, but still I guess we will see. I have been wanting to try the Zulu's and their horrid impi's for a while, so I am looking forward to starting this one.

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Feels like a waste of policies but I've never tried it so it may work. A modifier to that strat is to go left hand Liberty, then reform to SS and then finish Liberty with a Musician.

I briefly tried the Zulu DCL and failed horribly so I have not yet witnessed their awesomeness (I did Huns, China, England and Mongolia)

Maybe I missed it but are barbs/ruins on/off?

Unless the OP states otherwise, ruins are on and barbs are normal. This one doesn't state otherwise.

stormtrooper412 said:

Feels like a waste of policies but I've never tried it so it may work. A modifier to that strat is to go left hand Liberty, then reform to SS and then finish Liberty with a Musician.

I briefly tried the Zulu DCL and failed horribly so I have not yet witnessed their awesomeness (I did Huns, China, England and Mongolia)

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Honor opener nets you 8 culture every time you slaughter a brute, which adds up quickly when your first four policies are less than 100 and you are actively hunting down barbarians. If it were up to me, I'd finish Liberty, Honor, and Piety but I doubt that is possible even if I kill every single barbarian on the map. I like your idea though, since more self founded cities will help tremendously when building up for the impi onslaught.

Wild_Woojsha said:

Honor opener nets you 8 culture every time you slaughter a brute, which adds up quickly when your first four policies are less than 100 and you are actively hunting down barbarians. If it were up to me, I'd finish Liberty, Honor, and Piety but I doubt that is possible even if I kill every single barbarian on the map. I like your idea though, since more self founded cities will help tremendously when building up for the impi onslaught.

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You know you want a win time of 150-200 turns right?
Acken will probably win this with a time of 138 turns or something.
You just don't have time to dip into two policy trees (and finish them!) and pick up SS and finish liberty for a great person.

You need a 2 scout opener, an early culture ruin, maaaaybe get lucky with a faith NW and to get out 4-5 cities before the game is over.

Wild_Woojsha please try to hybrid. Open with honor. I am really curious to see how it turns out!

I think I will try liberty left coupled with Piety for SS as I have never tried it - not a particularly big fan of the religious mechanism in Civ 5. After Votm 113 on deity, this game will be a fun experiment with presumably lower stress!!!

Best of luck to all.

If you want my advice, Honor is only good if you're going for a Pangaea domination and/or Raging Barbarians. In any other condition, it's a waste of policies.

Here's a suggestion:

Scout,Scout/Monument,Worker,Stonehenge,Granary,few Archers, 3rd Settler (should get the free Liberty settler by now). If you opened Piety, it's Shrine,Monument in the expos. Once you have Philosophy, use Oracle to catch Reformation around 90 and then start spamming cities and Pagodas. When you run out of room for cities, start rolling Impis

Yeh. I just ran a test game, and the difficulty with a Zulu cultural victory is that Impis come out around the same time as the important cultural victory milestones (second prophet for second religious building / theology / temples...) This one is gonna be tough to choose between a military culutral victory or SS and peace supported by military.