Assitance required. Shaka/fractal/Emperor

[CrazyAntics]

Well, I've been getting back in to BTS and I'm trying to refine my game on Emperor, which has always been sort of a bothersome difficulty level. In my previous game, I had a pangaea map where Boudica flat out vassaled the entire map while I slogged through a janissary and cannon war with Mansa. I was able to knock him off, but Boudica proved to be too much.

To change this up, I went for a HA "rush" with Shaka. Things have gone well. After taking out the Ottomans, who had rexed out to 6 cities by the time my HAs were ready to go, I was also able to grab Persia's Capital and knock him out the game. So far so good, but now I have the problem that Sury is a beast. Right now I have 1 more city than him, and it's very likely that once he's gone this game is a done deal.

Since I've lost these types of games before and have limited trade opportunities with Sury now being my only nieghbor, I'm at a crossroads.

Do I: Use my upcoming GS to go for optics so I can meet the rest of the world? Save him for bulbing education/philo?

Also, what should I be shooting for my war with? I've neglected the aesthetics line, so curis are somewhat a diversion. I have the production and food to wage some medieval war, though Sury with Phants is a consideration if I go for knights. I'm personally a fan of muskets and cannons, but in my last emperor game waiting for steel probably cost me the game.

Finally, city plans: Perseopolis looks to be my globe theater city, so I'm sending a GG to settle there as we speak. I'm considering moving the capital for Bursa because of the higher commerce potential and to reduce some maintenance somewhat. Istanbul, Ulundi, kwadukza and Anakara are all hammer time. Konya, mGung, Nobama and Nongoma are commerce. Bulawayo will probably be a secondary whip city/force out a GP at some point and for fun, the GP farm is going up north with the corn and fish in the tundra, which I should probably have already built but the economy has been tight.

Okay, I think I've over explained everything here, but I'd love to hear some ideas on how to take this favorable position and turn it into a winning one.

 

[CivNoobie]

great job on taking out ottoman and persians, but right now the best thing for you is to get CoL, you are running negatives at flat beaker rate

 

[CrazyAntics]

Yeah, Code of Laws is up next, and I probably would've gone for it first if not for an event that gave me some free beakers for MC (And the idea that getting Optics might be pretty big, if just to get some additional trading partners). Part of the reason I've been struggling on Emperor has been losing turns because of poor research choices. I think I'll play up to code of laws and throw up an update.

 

[CrazyAntics]

Short update:

Hit CoL one turn after a GS was born in Ulundi. The tech pace is extremely slow in this game so far, so I bulbed Philo and founded Taoism in 800 AD (!). After switching to Caste and Pacifism we're solvent at 0% research. However, for all that was goo in the last turns, some late scouting has brought up what is going to be a huge problem (as seen in the attached picture). Sury has enough room to throw down 6-7 more cities.

So, decision time: Where do I tech from here? It'll be around 20 turns until I can self tech compass, but there's a few juicy Aesth-line wonders I could go after as well (Only the Parthenon has been built out of those.)

 

[CivNoobie]

Short update:

Hit CoL one turn after a GS was born in Ulundi. The tech pace is extremely slow in this game so far, so I bulbed Philo and founded Taoism in 800 AD (!). After switching to Caste and Pacifism we're solvent at 0% research. However, for all that was goo in the last turns, some late scouting has brought up what is going to be a huge problem (as seen in the attached picture). Sury has enough room to throw down 6-7 more cities.

So, decision time: Where do I tech from here? It'll be around 20 turns until I can self tech compass, but there's a few juicy Aesth-line wonders I could go after as well (Only the Parthenon has been built out of those.)

ugh, I woudn't worry about him settling more cities.

I was thinking about going for a maceman/treb war as I was able to grab construction off of him, but I think he's gonna hold onto machinery for a while.

Don't worry too much about compass.

On civics, caste system is iffy here but Pacifism? you know you are playing Zulu right?

Here's what I would do:

Spoiler :

whip out a courthouse/forge in every city, build hindu temples and monasteries in every cities for the hammer bonus. After that, switch to caste system and build more farms (you got too many bad cities with cottages such as some of those up north) then run scientists for those beaker bonus from representation. Grab liberalism asap. the problem I see here is that you got rid off of all the potential tech trading partner now the only thing you can do is generate beakers and hopefully out tech him to the point you are using rifleman vs him using longbowman

as for wonders:

Spoiler :

Shaka only cares about military

 

[CrazyAntics]

Yeah, the Pacifism is only because I don't think I'm going to be able to do any warring for the next 50~ turns, and the maintenance+GPP benefits should be worth something (Especially in Persepolis). That and I'm currently thinking that to keep up in tech I would be better suited running Caste+Pacifism and running a bare bones military until I can set up Police State+Nationhood. Of course, with my troubles with emperor being what they are, I worry that perhaps my approach isn't so smart.

Looking at what you've done so far, GDP is better than what I'm getting. I may just scrub from 640, when I continued from there I totally forgot about Sury building the AP. Did you use the Great Prophet to bulb CS?

 

[CivNoobie]

Yeah, the Pacifism is only because I don't think I'm going to be able to do any warring for the next 50~ turns, and the maintenance+GPP benefits should be worth something (Especially in Persepolis). That and I'm currently thinking that to keep up in tech I would be better suited running Caste+Pacifism and running a bare bones military until I can set up Police State+Nationhood. Of course, with my troubles with emperor being what they are, I worry that perhaps my approach isn't so smart.

Looking at what you've done so far, GDP is better than what I'm getting. I may just scrub from 640, when I continued from there I totally forgot about Sury building the AP. Did you use the Great Prophet to bulb CS?

yes, CS is the result of bulbing. See if you can wage a war here by finish teching machinery and go for macemen/catapault/warphants and capture couple of surys cities

 

[FlyingSwan]

As Civnoobie says you want the hindu temples and monasteries for the hammer bonus,little tip though-whip the monasteries first into the temples you get the hammer bonus quicker this way and have it to build the slightly more expensive temple.

 

[CrazyAntics]

Update: 1230 AD.

This is a reload from the original save. The whole idea here is that this game is over when Suri is dead, so instead of waiting 20+ turns for the lib race I've abandoned it and just decided to self tech nationalism (Right now running back to grab drama). However, with Police State and Nationalism I'm about to bring Suri the pain.

Shown below is two of my SoDs, with another smaller one that's going for Pasagarde. The main goal here will be at least 6 cities, although since I'm in Police State and Nationalism I may just keep going until the Khmer are no more. It would appear that with Sury's land I'm probably just going to need a vassal or two to hit domination. Below is the save for more details.

A big thanks for giving some advice on this, and I'll have an update soon as we see the war effort bear some fruit.

 

[CrazyAntics]

It's kinda working. A better update when I have the time, probably going to stop to regroup one we take Suri's capital. I don't think it's wise to go much further than that with my tech level.

 

[CrazyAntics]

Update: 1420 AD

Well, putting the wick to Sury has been fun, and now his capital belongs to the Zulu war machine. The stacks of the Zulu empire are a little smaller than they started, but it looks like we're at the winning position now. The economy? Not so much, we're building wealth to keep our research to Optics going, but we've got Taj and UoS in the bag (Hopefully). The big question is whether I can keep this up, as it looks like Sury is banking on Gunpowder to bail him out and is only 2 turns out from banking.

Again, thoughts on techs, war strategy and general rah-rah-ing for the victorious Zulu troops are appreciated. After I get some input I'll probably just give one or two updates on the way to domination and of course pass out some to CivNoobie, Flying Swan and anyone else who wants to pass on some advice.

 

[FlyingSwan]

had a quick look at the last save.I would switch to monarchy and then research Feudalism and try to get an early(or instant)capitulation from sury.After that you can tell your vassal what to research and with clever trades he will be better off alive than dead imo.

 

[CivNoobie]

@Crazyantics...it seems like you got this game in the bag

here's my attempt:

Spoiler :

Instead of going engineering and nationalism, i just pumped out macemen and catapaults for a quick rush...the result:

Spoiler :

lost a supermedic

though, i did capture the capital with a shrine

 

[CrazyAntics]

Final update: Victory, 1720 AD.

The war drums of the Zulu can finally go quiet, as we achieved victory. After triggering a golden age with Taj and completing the UoS, we bartered for peace with Sury. We ended up only getting a city I had already captured then accidentally left open for a stack of knights to capture. However, this allowed the stack to heal up and get refreshed with more Trebuchets for the extermination ahead.

Optics paid dividends almost immediately, first by allowing me to meet Kublai Khan, who in isolation was a tasty target and allowed me to backfill on a couple techs. However, even better, we met Zara, who traded us Gunpowder for nationalism. The Golden age (plus a fortunate GS) allowed the Zulu people to come out of no where to capture Liberalism in about 5 turns at the extremely late date of 1520, which since we had Nationalism meant we could get Military Tradition for free.

11 turns after we made our peace deal, we were ready with two stacks of our medieval+siege troops as well as 15 Curis with 3-4 being pumped out a turn. Obviously it wasn't going to be good for our favorite golden boy. Long story short, we rolled, then teched to astro, built some galleons and took 3 cities from Kublai in 2 turns to trigger his capitulation and the domination win!

Big Lessons from this game:
-Taking away civs kills the tech rate. I was even more fortunate that Kublai was in isolation and Ethiopia and Germany founded different religions. 1520 AD Lib date is reminiscent of Noble difficulty.
-Trebuchets are awesome. Combined with the fact that I was Khmer's only possible trading partner, Medieval war made too much sense to eschew. It's definitely map specific, but a well composed stack and plenty of siege is unstoppable, especially if you're fortunate enough to be able to support more than one stack.
-Sometimes you just don't have to care about the slider. As late as the first peace treaty with Khmer (~1450AD) I was negative at 0% (mostly because of war unhappiness)
-Police State+Nationalism+Theocracy is crazy effective. Possibly the only reason I was able to keep up with my war with the Khmer was that Police state was saving me 4+ and nationalism was +2 from all the Ikhandas.
-Let me guess what got the medic, CivNoobie. A Ballista Elephant? Who says those things are useless? I kept mine under a stack of Phants, which meant he got to see the glory of the empire as a cavalry on the last turn .
-Horse Archer "rush" is pretty damn powerful. Scoring the Pyramids, the Great Lighthouse and Stonehenge, as well as 6 cities, for the price of ~20 Horse Archers pretty much won me the game.

As promised for Civnoobie and for Flyingswan for their help in securing me my earliest win and highest score so far in CivIV. I'm leaving the save below just in case anyone has to see how insane that empire would've been under state property.