Not so much Shaka lately, though! Izzy, Gilgamesh and Qin have all been common opponents.
) and after conquering my continent (two civs plus me), I met Justinian (and Boudica) on a continent of probably the same size as ours, so he had gone wild with settling cities. I figured I'd have my work cut out for me, but it turns out he went the Willem research route (WRR) and teched anything but gunpowder and rifling (he had airships and built the Kremlin - thank you very much!), so my riflemen (and later infantry) made easy work of his longbows and maces, though I think he had a musket or two after a while. Always nice when it happens that way! Otherwise, when he's been left alone, he's usually more of a threat. Before throwing in the towel, he peace-vassaled to Boudica who at least had grenadiers, but I got them both in the end!
Very nice.In one of my recent games, I managed to block off quite a bit of land which kept Shaka and Qin fighting for what they could get. Shaka was Hindu, Qin founded Judaism and adopted it after a while (not immediately) and I also went Hindu. It didn't take very long for Shaka to rather expectedly declare war on Qin, but he didn't have much success the first couple of thousand years with them signing peace treaties every now and then only to break them once they had expired, but eventually Qin bit the dust and capitulated.
Considering I had been left to my own devices and the other two had been fighting more or less all the time, I was miles ahead in tech and had started to prepare my own military force, because obviously Shaka was going to go after me next. Religious buddies at Pleased means jack to him! With a smile, I could see him rallying his forces in his border city - horse archers, maces, catapults and such. Unluckily for him, I was massing rifles and cannons, so when he declared (he had a couple of knights by then, but otherwise mostly backwards garbage) and had taken one step into my culture, he had his complete stack wiped immediately and there was nothing left in his cities. A couple of longbows, some crossbows and the occasional short-lived knight that tried to run by, so I took a city or two every couple of turns. Qin sent a stack of like two trebs, two knights and a mace, but once Shaka was down to two cities, he broke free and they both capitulated. And of course Qin had overtaken Shaka in score by then
After capping them both I shipped my forces over to Toku and Izzi (of course...) who were Buddhist friends, but Toku gave up surprisingly quickly after losing his army and one city. Izzi gave up after losing her cities 2-4 (Madrid would have been next up).
Next time we meet will be different!! 
rolleyes come knocking and demanding tribute of a petty sum of 135 gold. She had had a field day with the pushovers Asoka (not surprising, Jewish Indians vs. Buddhist Spaniards with considerable border tension), HC (more surprising, but he was also rocking Judaism) and then Zara peace vassaled to her, so I was alone against her and her harem (I was also Jewish and had been hiding behind the Judaist wall of Asoka and HC). Izzy didn't have any direct borders with me, but once she had taken especially Asoka's cities we were touching borders. Again, I could see her massing units in her newly acquired border city much like Shaka in that other game above and I wasn't really ready for war (yet), though I had started building up an army of cuirassiers. I think she tripped herself by making that demand, locking her into peace with me which gave me enough time to at least produce enough material to hold off her inevitable invasion and in time also push back and take out Asoka completely and - after a long slog - enough of her and HC's cities to force capitulations. If she had just gone for it, I would most likely have had to give up at least a couple of cities close to her and her vassals. Probably, I'd have been able to come out on top, but it would definitely have been much more cumbersome and it's not out of the question that I wouldn't have bothered...
