BTS Roleplaying Challenge: Shaka

Congratulations snow666 - your first Prince win?! :thumbsup: I'm pleased that the game has been picked up by mid-level players.

Tycoonist - glad you're enjoying it too, although haven't peeked at your spoiler.

ilovesimgolf - I haven't started yet ... I just thought that I'd get the thing going for the community to enjoy, but I aim to have a shot in the next few days if time permits.
 
Cool!

Never played Shaka before, have a small time frame to play just one more and love the hacking feast it promises to be ;)
 
I am moping up the remainders of the last two opponents right now... It was huge fun... Didn't look at the units statistics yet, but i expect quite a bodycount :D

I have some notes and tons of screenshots... I will post a detailed report as soon as i am done.
 
You need to upload them somewhre - http://www.imageshack.us/ for example. Its pretty self explainatory - after uploading it gives you some 'links' you can copy/paste - choose which one works best for you. I pefer just taking the images url and put it in kind of
HTML:
[img]http://www.here_is_my_image.com[/img]
 
Strategy:

1. Main goal was to cripple several opponents before 1 AD. Especially Mansa, who shares with anyone, anytime. I thought I would be better of by crippling him than to have him share all his secrets with everyone else.
2. Starting position looked very good with both food and production.
3. Try to found at least 3 cities and have 2 capitals as quick as possible.
4. As role play, try to always prioritise military technologies
5. Only build Ikhandas, granaries, happy buildings and 1 culture building and then units, and units and then some…units.

Spoiler :
OK, first I would like to point out that I normally play on Epic or Marathon, so I had some “strange” things happening.

4000 B.C. I decided to settle in place and the goody hut gave me 41 gold. To try to cripple my opponents early my first build was a warrior, and building by using the plains forest. So minimal growth but with the goal to produce three warriors asap. Three aggressive warriors can normally take down 1 archer, in a non-hills city. My research was archery.

3840 B.C. Hut yielded 34 gold

3800 B.C. My warrior was sent exploring south and the scout to the west. The scout then found Mr Musa.

3760 B.C. Bismarck found me.

3680 B.C. Started to research mining.

3520 B.C. Buddhism FIAFL.

3400 B.C. Finished my research of mining and started with AH to be able to use the cows. I changed the tiles around when I had three warriors and started to produce an Archer until I grew Ulundi’s size to 2, then I changed the production to a worker.

3320 B.C. I found Bismarck’s borders in the south. I looked at the map and decided that Bismarck would be the first to be liberated by the glorious hordes of the Zulu nation.

3240 B.C. Hinduism FIAFL

3000 B.C. AH finished and next the Wheel.

2960 B.C. Bismarck adopts slavery. Uh-oh! Not good. Not that I am afraid of him being able to produce axemen but he can whip.

2880 B.C. The hordes of Zulu (3 warriors!) has declared war against Bismarck by entering his territory. I used the diagonal in the BFC to use as little movement as possible. I was pleasantly surprised to see 1 warrior alone guarding Berlin. I also found a goody hut worth 35 gold.
2880assaultforcejn0.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

2840 B.C. The Zulu nation is victorious against the European oppressor! Bismarck is no more. I gained a worker and a capital in the process. He never whipped anything except a workboat for his second clams, because the first already had a net. I lost 1 warrior. So 1 warrior stayed in Berlin and the other started exploring.

2800 B.C. The worker in Ulundi was finished and I started on an archer. Did I have decay here? I can honestly not tell, because I forgot. Note to self, check decay on builds!

2720 B.C. Berlin came out of the revolt and I immediately started an Ikhanda. I now had approximately 170 gold, but on 100% science I lost 4 gold. Ouch! I also met Vicky this round and finished the wheel and started with BW. No ponies within my current borders.

2640 B.C. I was lucky with a hut and gained 70 gold. Good, with my finances in mind.

2160 B.C. BW finished and I revolted to slavery immediately and started with Mysticism to enable the building of monuments for easy border expansion. Between 2640 and 2160 I also met the Dutch and lost my scout to a bear. It had done his duties well until then.

bronzeov1.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

1920 B.C. Mysticism was finished and I started with Fishing.

1880 B.C. Stonehenge was built somewhere.

1840 B.C. The great wall was built by Vicky. I could see the graphics!

I also founded my second and third city during this period. The first went to grab the copper just west of Ulundi. I had to whip the settler to beat Mansa. The second was founded between Ulundi and Berlin for easy access to a lot of rivers, bananas, rice and gems. See the dotmap above. This meant that I had to research IW. I was also very lucky because a gold mine popped in Ulundi. I also noted that the pace of the game picked up here because I have very few notes:). I know that my build was Ikhandas, monuments and then axes because…

900 B.C. The Zulu nation has had enough of the Malinese insolence! I had 5-6 axes, a couple of Impis and some archers. See below for the build up and preliminary battle plan. The red circle has an archer and a settler just ready to build a new city. Up in the north., not on the screenshot, I have a fogbusting archer waiting for a settler. So-so location but ponies in the first ring.

mansa975gd0.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

875 B.C. I reached Mansas first city. This is the one he built when I beat him to the copper. I only lost 1 axe and razed the city. It had to much overlap with my copper city. I also had my first level 4 impi which was promoted to woodsman 3, mainly because of the healing he could provide.

725 B.C. Timbuktu was liberated but the toll was high. I lost 4 axes in the process.

325 B.C. I have now founded iron city and ponyville in the north. Currently researching metal-casting, for forges and extra happiness. Below is screenshots from 325 B.C., look at the state of my finances! –12 at 30% !! Not so good....I have expanded way to fast, or maybe not?



325bcsouthel3.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

Red dot is where the settler almost ready in Berlin is going. Like I didn’t have enough maintenance….

finances325bcti0.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

300 B.C. Confucianism FIAFL. I am sure that Judaism was founded before that but I did not make a note of it. I remember that I was surprised because I thought I had missed that the Oracle had been built! This was also when I realised that I was playing on normal speedJ.

275 B.C. The Oracle was built.

250 B.C. The Malinese nation is now only a memory!

I now started a build up period and I do not have any screenshots of this period. I have some from 75 A.D. But the difference between this and 250 B.C is not so big.

375 AD Willem declared on Napoleon. Afaik no cities changed hands but there were some fighting, because some generals was born.

400 A.D. I converted to Judaism. And sadly enough I do not know why:) I think I wanted to have the extra happiness and had a long term plan to adopt theocracy.

560 A.D. Zara declared on Napoleon. And I was still building up for Ragnarök, or the doomsday! I had planned to declare on Vicky and follow up with Napoleon.

940 A.D. The Zulu assegais were thirsty for blood. The thirst was to be quenched with the blue blood of the English invaders!! The mighty king Shaka declared war on the English.
Now the war had really started. I think that I had like 10 turns of peace in all after this. During this time I had also built the ToA and the Colossus in Ulundi and the had started the MoM in Berlin. Had it been better to build troops? Yes of course! I do not know why but I am a builder more than a warmonger. I didn’t even have Trebs at the time and Vicky had longbows, but war never the less.

960 A.D I captured and razed the first of England’s cities.

1020 and 1040 the others had had enough and made peace. My war continued...

1060 London was captured and the Zulu nation decided to keep this jewel, mainly because it’s access to Oliphants or something, and of course it was a capitol, which normally is worth keeping. And as icing on the cake, a double holy city, Judaism, Hinduism and with the Temple of Solomon.

1130 I captured and kept Nottingham which was a small town to the north west of London, and don’t ask me why I kept it.

1210 I had destroyed the English. It seems like Napoleon and Zara boxed her in. I was surprised on how easy it went. I did not lose many troops at all.

1320 I declared on Napoleon. During this period Zara had spread like weed. Everywhere he could, he placed a city. To be honest I started to despair because I was so behind in technologies and my finances were a mess but I did not give up! I had decided to raze all Napoleons cities except the city where he had built the Pyramids. Can anyone say Police state? It was a good plan and I razed 3-4 cities but Nappy decided to build a city on the island just northwest of the former English territory. And then something happened. But in between a commercial....

1460 The state of the world:
stateoftheworld1460jq8.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

My SOD:
stackofdoom1460ac8.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

As you see I now break-even at 50%, 1645 Willem declared on Napoleon and he captured Lyons at 1645 and Tours 1665, both just north of Paris, I could not allow this to happen, because Paris was a real prize with several settled GP’s, including a General and I did not want to compete with creative Willem for Paris’ tiles. So I made peace with Napoleon and immediately declared on Willem, captured and razed Tours and Lyons. And then disaster hit...

1675 Zara declares on his fellow African. Bastard. He also adopted Universal Suffrage and Emancipation!! More unhappiness, just what the doctor ordered, not! Also he had overtaken me in score for the first time. Not good.

1705 Willem made peace with Nappy, whose only remaining city was the crappy one on the island to the north. He managed to found another city on this island as well. So only three main competitors left. I made peace with Willem 1710 but not with Mr Ethiopian-soon-ceased-to-be smiley face. I had a vague concept of the map but I, correctly identified Zara as the main rival.

1802 I had my first golden age. During these 100 years I had captured and razed several of Zaras cities, especially in the north. I had rifles now and even though both Willem and Zara was way more advanced than I, they never researched rifling or fielded any grenadiers, very strange.

1814 I declared on Napoleon and kept one of his crappy cities on the island to the north, only to make sure that no one else settled there.

1816 State of the world and some war weariness:
theworld1816ir2.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]



1830 The French were destroyed.

1830-1858 I razed almost every Ethiopian city, except the capitol, with like 10 wonders and one other city close to the capitol. I made peace with them then, and he only had 1 city left. I really do not know why I didn’t finish him of. I guess it seemed like a good idea not to at the moment J And of course Willem settled like 10 cities in the former Ethiopian territory. These AI’s are like vermin, they spread uncontrollable…. So, of course…

1874 I declared on Willem and between 1874-1880 I captured or razed 9 of them. I only kept the one’s strategically placed to make sure that the area was not repopulated by some other pest. I had several smallish SOD’s at the time, making this possible. My main stack was during this slowly advancing towards Willems’ core cities under heavy counter attack from enemy Airships??? This had no effect on the final outcome but was very annoying because you can’t do squat about them. The stack was 50+ units with a M*A*S*H unit so it healed very quickly. I now had so many units it was almost tedious to move them around, so I found time to finish the Statue of Liberty in Ulundi. Why? Because I could!

1903 I declared on Zara for the last time and 1905 he had gone to the happy hunting grounds, where he could dance in joy together with Bismarck, Mansa, Vicky, Napoleon and wait for Willem to join them. Which he did 1924.

civ4screenshot0000hk0.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

Final Statistics:

47 cities razed, 7 built
405 Land units killed, except workers, settlers, GP’s and animals
31 Air and sea units killed.

And most surprisingly only 49 units lost, I guess I know when to attack :mischief:

A very, very funny game and very different from my normal play. I made many, many mistakes but I won anyway. I have learnt a lot from this game, especially that you can win even though you are way behind in technology. Thank you CAM, for an interesting set-up.
 
@ snow666
Spoiler :
I've only read up to 1000AD as that's all I'm up to.
Nice Warrior-rush, I didn't even know that was possible on Prince.
I'm glad to see you take on Mansa early, I've made the mistake of leaving him be under the illusion that he'd come in handy, but I've just dropped to furious after getting a -20 you're getting to big for your britches modifier from me.

Congrats on the win.
 
"This is madness!"
"Madness? THIS IS SHAAAAKAAAA!"

My first attempt with him too. I normally play Marathon so the speed threw me of quite a lot, but I did aight in the end. The end? Read along... if you dare.

Spoiler :

I choose to settle in place, the spot looked good and I guessed correctly that there was a second seafood to the south within second borderpop. Lots of production and food for the capitol, but happy was an issue at times. Popped the first hut with my scout and got mysticism, which was nice since I didn't need to research it for monuments.



That too wasn't much of an issue either later on, only built two I believe. My capitol grew to size three while building a scout (working cow and rice). Had I been more familair with shaka I might have remembered that he starts with agriculture. :rolleyes: Oh well, you live you learn. I teched AH first anyway, could have gone mining-BW instead if I had known i could improve the rice. Popped a second hut for a scout, fairly neat, and found Mansa to my west. He was closest and for a while I pondered whether or not to go to war with him first, since he can run away techwise if left alone. But I knew that I only had two trade partners so I better leave him for a while.

Got a third hut, which revealed nothing but a seamap :cry: and found Bismark to my south. Little did he know what a madman he had to his north... Meanwhile I built a worker at size 3 and then let capitol grew to happycap at size 5 while building my first and only warrior. He never saw action but was my palace's honor guard. The I proceded to settlerspam. Had spotted copper to my southwest and claimed that spot with first settler and neatly getting corn in first ring. An axeman soon followed but barbs was never a problem. Used to playing with raging on I guess. :p Two more cities getting horses to the northwest and gems to the south. I actually could work the gems right away because I lucked out bigtime...



Gotta love those huts! And that scout was killed shortly after, I had some bad luck vs those pesky bears. I hate bears.
And a snapshot at my first four cities. Two (capitol+bronzecorn) I used to spam axe/impi and the others were cottaged.



At any rate I did not find any iron within my sphere, but both Bismark and MM had some. This made Shaka mad! He wanted shiny weapons. And since that grey moron had settled right on top of an iron hill, one square from the coast :crazyeye: ,Shakas first target was decided. Roar!



Imagine my pain at seeing that city on that iron hill...

That city was easily overwhelmed despite the hill and while an impi pillage the germans horses Bismark had little resistance to put up.



Yes, he refounded that same city spot after I went through all that pain of razing it... Argh the PAIN! At least he was nice enough to build the Stonehenge for me. Awww Bismark, you really needn't have done that... Hence no more monuments for me. :D

At least that last city gave me my first GG. Fittingly for a swede it was the lion of the north and he became a field medic impi. 3 moves and mobility? Yes please!



I was getting hot on the bloodrush now, and soon set my eyes on my other neighboor. Poor Mansa really needs to learn how to train troops.



I did one techtrade with him first, getting monarchy for HR. Happy was... problematic. ;) And of course I should have checked the log and seen that he had built the Pyramids. I figured I could go into representation then to get 3 happy in my biggest cities. Again bad decision. HR would have been much better since I was running cottages rather than specialists. I very much prefer CE over SE thank you. Still even that wasn't the biggest mistake I did, just wait until I realise that... just wait ok.



An overwiev of my land so far. No iron hooked up. Not for a long time actually. My economy was in shambles and I didn't need it that badly yet.

To be continued....


There, hope it's readable. :)

Part two and three soon since I had 42 images... :mischief:
 
Part two then:

Spoiler :



My first GP, a prophet, which I wanted since Mansa had "forgotten" to build the hindu shrine. Gave me a bit of a boost and I began spreading it later. But what is the first rule when you have no money? That's right, go find someones head to smash and take theirs.





Yep, she had teched Feudalism right before the war started. And had only axes. My losses were... staggering. At least Shaka enjoyed it, atop his throne of skulls. Still, numbers prevailed and the English empire fell.

Two of my mines near Coppercorn spawned both a second gem source and more copper around this time. Nice.

Killing mansa and adopting Hindu had left me without trade partner. (I accidentally opened borders with Nappy once but realised my error and reloaded from quicksave 3 turns back. No harm done I hope.) The only other option, Zara Yaqob was happily Jewish along with the rest except Viccy, who was Christian. At that point I figured I could become Jewish too, since I had no religious civic anyway to draw benefit some. Cost me some happy temporarily but the dipolomacy with Zara made up for that. And perhaps the really brainy bunch out there has a clue as to what my big mistake was here? Yes, I never switched back to hindu... I never got the benefits of my theocrazy or OR switches later! Stupid! Stupid! STUPID!



But enough misery, this was a time of cheer and joy. The mighty Zulu empire spanned across the continent, except the part that were blue, and green, and I suppose you can't count the orange or black parts either but it was big enough. Saka wasn't to great at those concepts anyhow, he just wanted to see blood. Which is why this was horrible on him, all building for a long time and no fighting. Nothing to be done about that, I spotted maces along Zaras border and everyone had LBs at least. And to much culture for my liking. Needed something bigger, something badder, something like... elephants! Yes I did have construction now, except nobody in Shakas empire had figured out how to ride yet so Viccy's pets were of no use. Another great plan out the window. Could have teched it I guess, had the land to tech at least. Which I did. A lot. And have no pictures of because it's dull. Went through Paper and Education almost for liberalism, but then:



Eeek! :eek: At least my troops were posted along the previous English/French border already. And I laughed when he tossed a stack of 5 units against the might hordes of Shaka. I soon choked on that laughter when I realised he had a few more troops than that:



Luckily the AI can't war and after a massive slaughter I could launch a counter attack! Forgot to catch it but I did capture a french city and then I got peace (fair trade nothing given or gained and the only peace I made all game) when I spotted a second french stack that had lurked in Zaras land and was threatening my core cities. Who says the AI always go head on like fools? Although since he accepted peace before I took any damage from his clever move... :lol:



Yep, I was going for rifles through some strange route. Plan was to win with those. London became Globe/draft center but with all my production capacity it was barely needed. Nice addition to my forces though. But that was way later. My second GG, earned in he slaughter, was settled in my main production center my capitol for some better troops.

Also "built" my first wonder:



An my second sometime after that. Mostly to make sure a didn't face it.



Yes, not all images are in perfect order but I'm taking some artistic liberties here.

The world and the only graph that matters:





Note the dip in nappys curve... ;)

So what happened next? Obviously it was time to settle the score:





He put up quite the fight I tell you! Despite my rifles he resisted a long time, I had to resort to cannons to finish he job. Had I known Nappy hade the Mausoleum of Maussollos I might have delayed this one:



I'm the king of missed information and mistakes. :king:



Yep, all those cannons, rifles, cavalries and later machineguns, grenadiers, frigates and galleons made sure this one was in the bag.



Part 3 coming in moments...
 
And the concluding part 3 as promised.

Spoiler :

In the bad as stated, still, plenty of Dutch and Ethiopian culture to wade through. Was worried that mr Orange was going cultural (three cities over 11k) so he went first.

Hmm, imageshack being freaky so switching to Photobucket.



Got a little cocky shortly after:



Bwahaha! Puny enemies have no chance against Shaka. Tremble! My capitol:



Production, production. Nearer to the end:



Was running 80% culture and burning my GPs on Golden ages to cope. But peace was not an option now.



And so:



Conquest Victory in 1874. Gave me a score of 69k. Decent considering I was unused to the speed and made a gazillion mistakes. :goodjob:
This was plenty of fun to play. Hope I made Shaka proud, I really tried to roleplay a warmongering butcher.
Although if that is all there was to the real Shaka can always be discussed... :p
 
I got a error saying I can't load version 301 or something. Anyone know what this is? Bhruic's patch maybe? (I don't have it)
 
Patch 313 uses Saveformat 301. I dont know in what game-version this save-version was introduced. You can look in MainMenu->Advanced->Version what version you got.

Running BTS 313 - latest patch - you should be able to load it, with or without Bhruhics patch.
 
A bit under my current level but i'll see if i'll give it a go
 
yeah it told me "can't load 301, expected version 300" but if everyone else it up to date i don't get the problem. oh well
 
if you get that error it means you don't have 3.13 ...
 
i just reinstalled 3.13, i think it's bhruic's patch
 
You can just try Bhruics patch - you dont need to worry about messing something up. It's just the dll, to can switch between using and not using it easily, if you prefer not to for other games - just keep copies of both - Bhruics and the original - dll and use whatever you need.
 
Back
Top Bottom