Nobles' Club 251: Shaka of the Zulu

[AcaMetis]

The Nobles' Club series started out as a way for Noble-level (and below) players to improve their game. Most of the original participants now play at much higher levels, so this has become a way for advanced players to help others learn to play better. You can play your own game at any level and with any mod, but it would be nice to comment on the games of other players and give them advice.

Our next leader is Shaka of the Zulu, whom we last played in NC 177. The Zulu start with Agriculture and Hunting.

• Traits: Shaka is Aggressive and Expansive. Aggressive gives all Melee and Gunpowder units a free Combat I promotion, and gives a +100% bonus to Shaka's unique Ikhanda and Drydocks. Expansive adds +2 to all cities, gives a +100% bonus to Granaries and Harbors, and a +25% bonus to Workers. Note that the worker bonus doesn't apply to excess directly converted to .
• The UB: The Ikhanda, a Barracks with -20% Maintenance. Little under half the effect of a Courthouses at a quarter of the price, and that from turn 0 on a building that's genuinely useful in it's own right, Ikhandas are fantastic buildings to shave off some costs while building up for the inevitable conflicts that are bound to happen.
  
• The UU: The Impi, a Spearman with 2 and a free Mobility promotion. A very fast and manoeuvrable unit, but one that's not going to be a staple in your army as it's still a 4 Spear at the end of the day. Still, if you're going for an attack with Mounted units it's a better stack defender against enemy spears than another horse, and short of asking the Celts for a Guerilla II Archer this is definitely the most defensive, best scout you're going to get in the Ancient era. Sure, spears die horribly to axes, but Scouts do so even more so, and barring multiple promotions archers can't move onto a forested plains hill (or just leave) whenever they spend a turn moving into trouble.

And the start:

Spoiler map details :

Lakes, Tropical Climate, Medium sealevel, +1 AI to balance out the field (as much as Civ IV is capable of doing so ).

Spoiler edits :

Swapped the starting position of two AIs.

The WB-saves are attached (zipped; they are bigger than standard saves). To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (if you use one, if not, check out the BUG MOD), select "Play Scenario", and look for "NC 251 Shaka Noble" (or Monarch, etc., for higher levels). You can play with your favorite MOD at the Level and Speed of your choice. From Quick-Warlord to Marathon-Deity, all are welcome! We stuck with the name "Nobles Club" because it has a cool ring to it.

Spoiler what's up with specific difficulties :

In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Prince. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

Spoiler for players on Monarch or above :

You should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows:

Spoiler how to add techs to the barbarians :

1. Zoom in all the way so you can't see the rest of the map.
2. Use the CTRL-W key (or the menu) to enter the worldbuilder. Avoid looking at the mini-map in the lower right corner.
3. By default you're in "player" mode (look in the box in the upper right; the icon that looks like a person should be selected). You'll get a drop down menu labeled with your leader's name. Barbarians are at the bottom, so cover the rest of the list with your hand if you don't want to see who else is on the map. Select "Barbarians".
4. Select the "Technologies" tab in the box on the left.
5. Find Archery (the arrow head icon; 8th row, 3rd column from the right) and click it.
6. Exit the worldbuilder.
7. Zoom out again after the map fades, and start playing.

If you're playing at higher level than Monarch, consider also giving them Hunting at Emperor, Agriculture at Immortal, and The Wheel at Deity.

Spoiler huts and events :

Note: The standard saves have no huts and have events turned off. If you want tribal villages and random events, choose the saves with "Huts" in their names. If you want huts but no events, select the Huts saves and use Custom Scenario to turn on the option that suppresses events.

EDIT: Updated the .zip with fixed scenario files. Hopefully these ones work .

That works!

I compared the wb saves, found that in the original team 4 has hunting twice and team 3 has an extra character in Civic=CIVIC_PAGANISM0. Fixed those two issues and now the original works.

 

[AcaMetis]

Delicious . Honestly SIP seems perfectly fine to me, but one should probably move the Scout just in case there's something better out there in the fog, you never know. I'd say send the scout to scout out the north a bit, contemplate whether there's any merit in moving either 2N (plains hill) or 2N1E (stone tile), and if there isn't, SIP?

Do the experts have any alternative suggestions? Perhaps of the "well, there's this lovely tile 1E" variety ? I'm presuming not since wet corn and wet wheat should be more than enough to counter the -2 Gold tile, but hey, you never know .

 

[elitetroops]

Normally I wouldn't like settling towards the edge of the map, but on this map script there shouldn't be too much risk of getting boxed in quickly, so I'd at least check out what is up there. Settling on stone or PH 2N does have a lot more river and seem to have more forests, but it'd probably take more than that to make me want to move.

 

[soundjata]

omg but this is a sampsa special

Need to... kill the... gold...

 

[migalhone]

Compared to Pangea, what does a Lakes map brings to the table? I assume more Lake tiles than usual, is there something more?

 

[sampsa]

@soundjata I know you are joking, but if we didn't stand on a ph, I'd strongly consider settling 2N or 2N1E. If they weren't 2cc-tiles either, well then especially with an EXP leader it's not even close IMO.

 

[elitetroops]

@migalhone There's no proper ocean but more land. Land is usually quite good, decent resources and lots of forests. With no ocean you won't have coastal cities wasting half of their BFC or more on ocean tiles, so usually a lot of powerhouse cities. Especially if game goes into the later eras and you workshop it all in SP. Overall a great script!

 

[Pangaea]

Actually playing a Lakes map right now because I lacked it (and almost every other one, haha) for a Hall of Fame thingy. Unless I was fortunate, the map type has lots of rivers, so you can get some nice cottage cities, or levee goodness for games that go into the later eras. Not much seafood obviously, but there should be the odd fish and such here and there in the bigger lakes. It's a big mapscript with close to 1400 land tiles. Think a normal Pangaea has around 750-800, so it's considerably bigger.

Agree with some of the others that if we weren't on a PH already, I'd be tempted to move 2N or possibly onto the stone (don't like that we'd move towards the tundra though, from the look of the snowy trees). So if I play this one, I'll probably settle in place. It's a fine spot. Ph, double food (and both wet), plus the excellent gold of course, which is also riverside, so no need for a road there. We also start with Agri, so that's comfortable. Suppose Mining-BW is a fine opening here. Improve both food and gold, and maybe slowbuild the first settler unless we can grow to 4 and pop it faster (would temporarily lose a powertile, though). Maybe chop out the Mids fairly early as well. Many options, which is always fun.

 

[coanda]

I can't recall the last time I played Lakes, if I ever have, so I rolled a handful of random tropical lakes maps just to get a feel for it. Seems to be usually 1-3 tiles snow, 1-3 tiles tundra, 1-3 tiles plains/grass with snowy forests at the top (~5-6 tiles total). Then another 5-6 tiles of normal grass and plains before you start hitting jungle; we're probably close to equidistant between tundra and jungle.

 

[Imploding]

Looks like a really good shaka start!
SiP gives fast worker (11 turns i think).. and some extra commerce the first 5 turns.
Double agri and gold + stone makes for a really powerful start. Wonder how i should play this

Technical issues:
Was looking forward to playing this game.. but it happens that my game just crashes after I press end turn on the first turn.
I have tried it w/o mod, barbs starting techs etc. Anyone experiencing this?

 

[AcaMetis]

Technical issues:
Was looking forward to playing this game.. but it happens that my game just crashes after I press end turn on the first turn.
I have tried it w/o mod, barbs starting techs etc. Anyone experiencing this?

I tested the Deity NHNE save and no crashes happened for me. And if I messed up creating the scenario files it should crash before even loading the map, I've done that before, so I don't know what issue you're having unfortunately .

 

[Imploding]

I tested the Deity NHNE save and no crashes happened for me. And if I messed up creating the scenario files it should crash before even loading the map, I've done that before, so I don't know what issue you're having unfortunately .

Thx for testing. I tried both deity saves and one Immortal save and experienced a crash on all three.
Tested a random fractal map (which worked) and NC250 (which worked).
So for me it seems like a corrupt file or weird setup on my part? I don't have much experience with these kind of game issues.

 

[elitetroops]

Was looking forward to playing this game.. but it happens that my game just crashes after I press end turn on the first turn.
I have tried it w/o mod, barbs starting techs etc. Anyone experiencing this?

Same thing happening to me with immortal NHNE save.

 

[AcaMetis]

It did take a few attempts to create the scenario files, but they worked for me, so . I'll do some testing...

 

[nate46]

Despite how awesome a settle in place city here is, looking at this map, I'm actually somewhat leaning towards settling 2n. You lose the wheat but the north has at least four more riverside spots and isn't going to orphan any possible seafood. Settle in place also lacks the river stone in the inner ring, so you don't lose any time by moving. (shaka is expansive, so working that stone asap is going to save you a turn and also make up some lost commerce). Of course we should scout first, to make sure the land up there isn't all tundras and peaks.

 

[AcaMetis]

I'm not able to replicate these crashes at all. DLed the .zip from the OP, Deity NHNE and Immortal NHNE both play just fine up to turn 12. Nothing strange on the map or in the scenario file as far as I can see either. I've got no clue, does the game generate any logs that say what caused the crash?

 

[nate46]

Was looking forward to playing this game.. but it happens that my game just crashes after I press end turn on the first turn.
I have tried it w/o mod, barbs starting techs etc. Anyone experiencing this?

I had the same problem.

 

[AcaMetis]

I...have no explanation for this . I didn't change anything since I made NC 250 and I can't find anything wrong with the scenario file, so barring any crash logs I've got no idea what's going on here.

 

[chinemol]

just tried it. it crashed. could solve by doing the following:
start the game
enter world builder
save as sth else
exit
load the scenario with the new name
no clue what causes it, maybe the name of the files(?)

 

[elitetroops]

That works!

I compared the wb saves, found that in the original team 4 has hunting twice and team 3 has an extra character in Civic=CIVIC_PAGANISM0. Fixed those two issues and now the original works.