ALC Game #21 Pre-Game Show: Playing as Shaka

[Sisiutil]

Thanks to everyone for the clarifications. I fixed the Worker discount amount in the initial post. The difficulty of achieving the Mobility promotion (and the plethora of other, more attractive promotions) is to blame for my lack of familiarity with it. So once the Impis are upgraded the promotion has no effect until they become Mech Infrantry. The game may not go on that long, but we'll see. That makes it important to get them into play as early as possible.

I like the idea of combining Impis with Chariots or even Horse Archers. Horseback Riding, however, is a difficult tech to obtain early in the game, as we've seen in previous ALCs.

Sounds like the Impis will excel at pillaging and Worker stealing, and be helpful but not game-breaking in other regards.

 

[mystyfly]

The speed of Impis in an early rush helps scouting & eliminating settler escorts. That means, say, a city is defended with two archers and produces a settler, the AI may move one archer and the settler out to found a city. The Impis shine in eliminating those settlers before they settler and may take the now less defended city.
That means that a "rush" will be much about pillaging and awaiting the chance. Probabely, two civs at a time can be held at bay like this? It certainly would be nice as it leaves land to settle for you, Sisiutil and leaves you with many workers.

I'm not that sure that it works, however... I just got that idea...

 

[BARBEERIAN]

Even with Expansive's worker bonus nerfed in BTS it's still quite useful early for getting that first worker out faster which always helps. With Shaka doing anything other than worker first probably isn't the best move (of course there are exceptions).

As for warmongering it's pretty easy with Shaka. Ikhanda's maintenance reduction is huge from the ancient era all the way until State Property (and after if that's not your civic of choice!). Impi's are IMHO the best pillaging unit. Mobility, defensive bonuses, and 2 moves make them very hard to catch. Even then, the only units that can catch them get to run into their +100% vs mounted bonus. Axes are not as big a worry as you think they might if you give 2 Impi's in your stack Shock promo's and always keep in forests, on hills or across rivers. Generally if you stick in forests it'll take 2 axes to kill a shock Impi 80% of the time last time I played Shaka.

Don't neglect those Horsies! A stack of Chariots and Impi's is arguably the best mixed mobile SoD (pound for pound) for any era. The only thing the Impi's can't crack in a city are Axes, which of course the chariots nicely compensate for. It's very similar to a standard chariot rush with the exception being your ONLY 'fear' is defending against axemen who attack the stack while it's approaching. Nothing else will really pose a significant problem.

 

[popejubal]

One thing to remember about the Ikhanda is that bonuses and penalties are added instead of multiplied.

That means Courthouse + Ikhanda = 50 + 20 = 70% discount. That means you pay 30% of the maintenance vs. everyone else's 50%.

Imagine a city with 100 gold maintenance.

Washington pays 50 gold.
You pay 30 gold.

30 gold is only 60% of 50 gold, so when you consider proportional costs, Shaka is really getting a whopping 40% discount on his maintenance compared to other Civs.

Even the Holy Roman Empire is jealous since Shaka gets a production bonus on his special building and he gets it about a zillion years earlier.
Ikhanda for the win! Build it in every city before all other buildings except Granary.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I may have the map checked to ensure I'm not isolated, but only for that.

As per ratrangerm's comment, if you go for B&S or Fractal it would be best to check for virtual pangeas too. These often work out even easier than true Pangea maps, with 1-2 civs completely out of the running thanks to isolated/sea-bound starts.

Playing on Continents is an obvious solution. And though it can produce quite boring maps, at least you're pretty much guaranteed a decent challenge.

On a related note:

Ever thought about trying a Large map?

I realise that some people still suffer performance issues (though, imo, things are much better with BtS). But there are numerous benefits, especially for a warmongering game.

The most important for this challenge is that it takes longer to establish a winning position, so the real competition is more likely to extend into the latter stages of the tech-tree. It would also force you to be more aggressive than usual - you can't afford to be as hesitant on the attack as you have in some previous games - and to deal with a more complex diplomatic situation.

If you want something in between Standard and Large, you could always go for Large with High Sea Level. This also tends to make more interesting maps imo.

 

[Sisiutil]

The speed of Impis in an early rush helps scouting & eliminating settler escorts. That means, say, a city is defended with two archers and produces a settler, the AI may move one archer and the settler out to found a city. The Impis shine in eliminating those settlers before they settler and may take the now less defended city.
That means that a "rush" will be much about pillaging and awaiting the chance. Probabely, two civs at a time can be held at bay like this? It certainly would be nice as it leaves land to settle for you, Sisiutil and leaves you with many workers.

I'm not that sure that it works, however... I just got that idea...

That sounds like a VERY cool idea for using the Impis: Worker stealing and AI expansion containment. Evil!

As per ratrangerm's comment, if you go for B&S or Fractal it would be best to check for virtual pangeas too. These often work out even easier than true Pangea maps, with 1-2 civs completely out of the running thanks to isolated/sea-bound starts.

Playing on Continents is an obvious solution. And though it can produce quite boring maps, at least you're pretty much guaranteed a decent challenge.

On a related note:

Ever thought about trying a Large map?

I realise that some people still suffer performance issues (though, imo, things are much better with BtS). But there are numerous benefits, especially for a warmongering game.

The most important for this challenge is that it takes longer to establish a winning position, so the real competition is more likely to extend into the latter stages of the tech-tree. It would also force you to be more aggressive than usual - you can't afford to be as hesitant on the attack as you have in some previous games - and to deal with a more complex diplomatic situation.

If you want something in between Standard and Large, you could always go for Large with High Sea Level. This also tends to make more interesting maps imo.

I'll consider playing a large continents map--what does everyone else think? I have played large maps on my computer, and it handles them reasonably well. Huge is right out of the question, though.

 

[Validator]

Standard sized Hemispheres map with 2 massive continents and low sea level. 10 total civs. That usually gives a 5-5 or 4-6 split. Good early warmongering possibilities, but you'll need to invade the other continent to reach the domination threshold so the game won't end too soon.

 

[patagonia]

I like the idea of combining Impis with Chariots or even Horse Archers. Horseback Riding, however, is a difficult tech to obtain early in the game, as we've seen in previous ALCs.

Sounds like the Impis will excel at pillaging and Worker stealing, and be helpful but not game-breaking in other regards.

HBR isn't that difficult to obtain, it just depends where your priorities lie.

In my last Emperor game as Kublai, I started with Boudicca as my closest neighbour and decided I should take her out sooner rather than later. Beelining HBR directly wasn't many more beakers than teching to Priesthood so I did that and used the hammers I would have spent on the Oracle to get another city out first. The stack of Ger-onimo Keshiks I was assembling slew her early rush against me and before long the Celtic empire was no more.

The point is that none of the early techs are inaccessible if you prioritize them from the start. HBR may be viewed as a "dead end" tech early in the game, but if you think it'll help you win a decisive military victory, it's worth heading for.

The most important thing if you're planning an early UU rush as Shaka is to make your offensive army 100% Impi (in the absence of HBR). As with the Keshik, the Impi's main strength lies in its speed and mobility. If you build a mixed stack, they lose that edge and become nothing more than a nice graphic and animation on the screen. If there's jungle to cross, even adding horses would be a mistake in my opinion. Sure their base strength may be lower, but you can take cities much faster before reinforcements can arrive or extra defenders can be whipped, so you don't need many more Impis than you do axes, especially as you can get to the enemy borders that much earlier.

 

[Bhruic]

Standard sized Hemispheres map with 2 massive continents and low sea level. 10 total civs. That usually gives a 5-5 or 4-6 split. Good early warmongering possibilities, but you'll need to invade the other continent to reach the domination threshold so the game won't end too soon.

Is there really any point to that tho'? If one continent is fully conquered, the game is already a foregone conclusion. Dragging it out by requiring conquering on the other continent seems pointless.

Bh

 

[Validator]

Is there really any point to that tho'? If one continent is fully conquered, the game is already a foregone conclusion. Dragging it out by requiring conquering on the other continent seems pointless.

Bh

Then why not just play Pangaea?

Intercontinental invasions aren't always the easy things to pull off, especially if you fall behind in tech while conquering your continent.

 

[Bhruic]

Big and Small effectively is Pangaea, just with extra islands mixed in.

And you might fall behind in tech while conquering your continent, but once you've done so, the massive land power is going to catch you up very quickly. Not to mention give you an extremely large army.

But if you want to play with multiple continents, then go with 3+. Even after you've conquered yours, it still won't be (or won't be as much of) a cakewalk.

Bh

 

[Mesousa]

I'm against the idea of using a large map, not only will it make the game more difficult to shadow for those with older computers, but consider how tedious you've found long warfare yourself in previous games sometimes. And AggAI already means more units. I don't think people want to wait even longer for the played rounds just because you had to conquer even more cities, with more units each, to reach a significant point.

If you go with continents (I like the idea of having 3 or 4, and Hemispheres makes nice maps), you could even consider using a small map with low sealevel. You'd still have to cross ocean to reach other continents, so there's no big difference, and you wouldn't have had to change the number of opponents.

 

[LuckyAC]

Don't do a large map whatever you do. The games already take months!

 

[Winston Hughes]

From what I can see, Standard Hemispheres with Low Sea Level will give you about the same amount of land as Large Continents with High Sea Level, so I don't think you'll see much difference in terms of performance or # of cities that need to be captured.

The major difference is the predictability and balance of the maps. The Hemispheres settings will make for very predictable (and, imo, boring), but reliably balanced maps. The Continents settings, on the other hand, are much less predictable (and can throw up some interesting geography, like bottlenecks, channels and large inland seas), but produce some quite unbalanced starts.

The Continents settings will also give you large oceans, making intercontinental war more tricky/tedious (depending on your preference).

 

[Munch]

Whilst Big & Small, Hemispheres or Continents would all be great, I don't think having an entirely land map (such as Pangaea or the often forgotten Lakes) really 'stacks the deck' in your favour. I understand your caution following the Ragnar romp, but the problem there was two-fold:

#AI sucks at naval maps
#Ragnar is probably the best at naval maps

The thing about a Lakes or Pangaea map is that (particularly with Aggressive AI) the computer players are all in their prime. The kind of map they play best on is the all-land type, where they can attack anyone who looks weak at any moment. This is particularly true for Lakes maps, because you can walk both ways around the world, whereas with Pangaea you can be almost certain the AI won't attack you across the water if it can get at you over the land instead; this makes Pangaea easier than Lakes because you can feel fairly safe huddled into a corner with your back to the sea.

I'm gonna throw my weight behind a Lakes map. You've already stated that you are playing this game on Emperor, which I believe is your current level? There's been talk of moving up a level soon, and I think the toughest map setup you could possibly try before increasing the difficulty would be a Lakes map with AggAI. Besides, if you haven't tried it before then it's worth a go just to see how well the AI does.

PS. I've always lost on Lakes+High sea level (ie High lakes level) on Monarch and I'd love to see how you go about it!

 

[ese-aSH]

about impies, two short notes :
- it is very easy to hunt barbarians with them to get the 10 xp before having real fight with them
- the mobility loose effects with 1 move units, but one of the GG promotions gives you an extra move, therefore I advise you to favorize generals on units with that mobility promotion instead of settling them in towns.

 

[cabert]

many already mentioned the superb abilities you get for zulus.
At epic speed, on a standard sized pangea, this makes for very short games!
Although it may be seen as an abuse (pangea is a form of abuse, you have too much information on the map, and the AIs don't know how to use this information), this is the best showcase for zulus.

Conquest in 1000 BC, anyone?
by the way, you don't need anything else than impis for a while.
when there are too many axes around, you can get some good use out of chariots.

 

[JackRules]

Also, Inland Sea maps give you the ability to march to any opponent or sail across the sea to any opponent. My favorite for warring.

 

[idiot_savant]

Looks like a great opportunity to drive toward as early a conquest victory as possible. Impis and Chariots are a super powerful combination esp with right promos and Chariots bonus to Axes.

I like patagonia's idea about possibly altering the tech tree choices and prioritizing HBR, etc. It would be fun to after worker techs to primarily go after war based techs and combine that with a massive number of cities from conquests so as not to fall behind tech-wise (much easier in BtS already). It would mix up the tech tree a bit... Not to say, you don't... just that doing something different that takes advantage of their super warmonger traits would be neat.

To others' point, you can conquer other civs so quickly as Zulu and not worry as much about maintenance, etc., that Shaka gives you a nice opportunity to go in this direction and not get hurt by it whereas other civs eventually have maintenance or tech issues or both... Warmongers r' us!

 

[Zanttu]

To summarize my main points:

1) Mobility is not worthless at all. As seen in the image, you can outrace any normal unit, including Scouts and Chariots (which Impis get bonuses against).

2) Cover should go to the starting Impis. To claim my right to a Deity Win, I was Shaka against Tokugawa. Built 15 Impis and took him and his Protective CG2 Archers DOWN!!!

3) Maces and other such units should receive City Raider, or the Impis after the first campaigns. Then use money from city razing or Great Merchants to upgrade them to CR Riflemen.

1) I think everyone agrees about this, but as pointed earlier mobility becomes useless when upgrading to 1 move unit. So it can't be used like the bersekers ambhitious (how in the heck is that supposed to be spellt) promotions.

2) I usually give to my first suicide attackers Cover, so they could do a bith higher damage. When the battle odds start climbing over 40-50%, I start to use the CR promotion because it's more useful later on.