Nobles' Club 308: 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 251. 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 Barracks 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 :

Pangaea, Tropical climate, High sealevel.

Spoiler edits :

A few strategic resource swaps to give AIs nearby strategic resources.

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 308 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 what is demigod :

The difference between Immortal and Deity difficulty is akin to the difference between Noble and Immortal. Players eventually reached a point where Immortal was too easy, but Deity was still out of reach, and so neither difficulty provided a fun experience. "Demigod" is an otherwise standard Deity game where the AIs are only given their Immortal level starting units, in an attempt to bridge the gap.

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.

 

[AcaMetis]

1SE is temping, since we're Expansive settling on the plains hill means we don't miss the health bonus from the river, but also because we're Expansive SIP gets a guaranteed 4 to put into the worker. It's hard to tell from the screenshot, but if fog gazing suggests that 1SE can also get the EXP bonus on the first worker I'd say move there and settle the PH. If not...well, SIP for a 4 worker or PH for +1 in the capitol forever? Doesn't seem like a difficult decision when you put it that way, honestly .

What do the experts think ?

 

[drewisfat]

Hill. Even ignoring the fog gazing fph, after 5 turns we'll want to switch to the silk, which compared to SIP will be +1 AND +1. 2E is likely food, so even moving a turn away from the visible corn may or may not be an issue. I also think it's a great idea with Zulu to just go for hammers/speed early. Sometimes even on deity an Impi rush/choke can make sense, but only if you have a fast start.

 

[konata_LS]

Satan's voice : settle on the Corn ! <-- : don't do that. Just don't .

A significant advantage of playing as Shaka is we won't worry about playing against AI Shaka.

SIP or settling on the forest PH depends to some degree on the number of land tiles, I guess...? As the number of land tiles is often related to the length of the game. If this map has 750 land tiles or less, I'll definitely settle on that PH, as such a game probably ends with Cuirs/Cavs. If moving the mouse to the human player's score shows more than 1100 land tiles and if naval invasion is required, the game might be long, SIP will enable EXP harbour and levees. +2 from fresh water is quite nice for the games which go beyond Coal plants.
Have played several Huge continents games under Normal speed in the past. It seems many things which can be ignored in a short pangaea map game become useful or even important in larger maps. For example in a Pangaea map with 6 AIs, the game is often won before Astronomy or AL. By contrast, when I play a huge continents map with 2400+ land tiles and 15 AI opponents, I have to research Astro or even Combustion / Industrialism. So I guess many decisions are map dependent.

For this particular map,

Spoiler :

I put the map info in the spoiler because some players prefer to avoid knowing the map type before they start the game.

Since Acametis mentioned in OP it's Pangaea map, high sea level, I think settling SE is the best choice, especially for Shaka who starts with Agri. If settling SE, Shaka's worker can farm the riverside grass land for 1 turn when moving towards the corn. That grass tile needs to be farmed after all, if we want to irrigate that corn after CS.

Judging from the start, Mining-BW seems a natural choice. Of course, the tech path may change with the scouting results. If the scout finds several pigs or sheeps nearby, AH is tempting. If there is a double coast Fish spot nearby, Fishing is not a bad choice.

The start looks interesting. I might try this when I have more spare time.

 

[jnebbe]

Demigod t60

Spoiler :

Settled on the PH, mining-bw

I suspect the "intended" way to play this was to choke asoka with Impi's but on a map with only 700 land tiles I didn't think it would be smart to delay expansion. Got pretty fortunate to find this rice the turn before I settled on the desert.
Elepult is now possible and I can failgold in the meantime

Suddenly IW is looking pretty good

3rd city, not sure about it honestly but I figured commerce is the bottleneck and being able share cottages should be the most important thing here.

Economy is alright, 75 hammers went into TGW this turn, chopping out a settle in the capital.
There's a huge chunk of land to the north, I'm wondering if it's worth it to block off the land towards the western barb city and then backfill the north. Combined with getting a couple more cities by the gems I should get up to 15 cities or so, I'll definitely crash my economy but maybe I can keep up with bulbs.
Running 0% as long as possible since I can't decide to do that or just elepult asoka as planned.

 

[chinemol]

1625 emperor domination... forgot barb techs at the beginning!!!

 

[drewisfat]

---

---

A 1-food start in a NC game? Holy Batman!

 

[CarpoolKaraoke]

• 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

Spoiler Diety Puzzle: Staple of the army :

Going to give these two screenshots as hints to the puzzle. Does anyone else want to try?

 

[jnebbe]

Demigod 1AD

Spoiler :

2 new cities made just to share cottages. Asoka kept asking me to go to war with Mehmed so I just agreed and abandoned the elepult plan.

Why can I do this trade with charlie? I thought I needed to give like 30% extra beakers but sometimes that isn't the case. At one point julius offered alpha for aesthetics+10g which is nearly the same value

Captured both barb cities, the one by bella built a barracks and kept making city garrison archers so I had to wait a while to get that one.
Marble comes online next turn, building glib in capital.
I have a settler ready to settle the fish in the very north, waiting as long as possible since I don't even have fishing

Skipped out on some trades with aesthetics, I don't even have monarchy yet, but I really wanted to be sure I got GLib since it would be great on a map with low food. unfortunately SB got Lit a few turns ago so it's a race to get music and Glib first.
I have 3 chops and a 2-pop axe ready for Glib but it will still be close.
Done a lot of failgold too, wonders are going extremely slowly.

Cuirs probably not possible since tech rate is pretty meh, probably going towards rifles. Lib is maybe open but regardless I should get some good trades from music+philo

 

[Izuul]

Hello everyone!

I had to reinstall Civ IV and I'm having a little issue i was hoping somebody here may have a solution to. I don't want to derail the NC thread so if anyone can help please just send me a PM.

I recently built a new PC with no disc drive. My only copy of Civ IV was an original disc copy so i picked up the Steam version. It's running fine and i got my mods installed without any issues. However, i used to be able to open Civ IV save files from anywhere (saved game folder, email, the forum here, etc) and they would launch Civ and then automatically load straight into the saved game. That no longer works for me. I can get Civ IV save game files to open Civ when i click on them, but they only launch Civ to the main screen and then i have to manually open the saves from there. This is a pain in the butt for the NC games because i used to just be able to open the zip file and launch the save file i wanted to play straight from there. Now i have to copy the file i want into the world builder directory and then launch it as a "custom scenario" to get it to work . It doesn't show up anywhere else. This also reveals a bunch of spoiler info like opponents and map details. I don't really mind seeing the map details that much, but I don't want to know the opponents before i start playing and its very easy to accidentally see some of them when launching the game as a custom scenario.

I'm running Windows 11 now vs Windows 10 before if that matters.

 

[lymond]

Hello everyone!

I had to reinstall Civ IV and I'm having a little issue i was hoping somebody here may have a solution to. I don't want to derail the NC thread so if anyone can help please just send me a PM.

I recently built a new PC with no disc drive. My only copy of Civ IV was an original disc copy so i picked up the Steam version. It's running fine and i got my mods installed without any issues. However, i used to be able to open Civ IV save files from anywhere (saved game folder, email, the forum here, etc) and they would launch Civ and then automatically load straight into the saved game. That no longer works for me. I can get Civ IV save game files to open Civ when i click on them, but they only launch Civ to the main screen and then i have to manually open the saves from there. This is a pain in the butt for the NC games because i used to just be able to open the zip file and launch the save file i wanted to play straight from there. Now i have to copy the file i want into the world builder directory and then launch it as a "custom scenario" to get it to work . It doesn't show up anywhere else. This also reveals a bunch of spoiler info like opponents and map details. I don't really mind seeing the map details that much, but I don't want to know the opponents before i start playing and its very easy to accidentally see some of them when launching the game as a custom scenario.

I'm running Windows 11 now vs Windows 10 before if that matters.

Hey hey hey, Iz! Loading from the save has not worked for me in many years...and, yes, I recall being a bit peeved back then but just used to it now. However, this recent thread in the Tech from, specifically @f1rpo (I've pinged him twice now today), may help solve that problem. I have not tried it myself.

Do note that with the Steam version you should install the Beta version if you have not already. In the library go to Properties > Betas > choose "original release" from the drop down. Steam will reinstall stuff. This reverts back to the original assets steam jacked up a few years ago for their own MP platform and is better for mods.

Also, while you need the Steam client running, I recommend running BTS from the exe rather than the library. Also, run in Win 7 compatibility mod.

And welcome back!!! Hope the fam is doing well!!

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Questions to @jnebbe

Spoiler :

Why did you abandon the elepult plan on Asoka? Why did you accept Asoka's invitation to declare war? Asoka won't love you for accepting since you declined a few times already. Mehmed is not next to you so you can't gain any cities.

Isabella is Buddhist, powerful, and next to you. Buddhism is in your cities. Why aren't you in Buddhism?

 

[MasterofDisasta]

Immortal NHNE @1600 BC

I've taken up playing offline again lately and am hoping to join for some of these NC games to compare my play to stronger players. Hopefully improving my game enough for a future run at diety difficulty.

Spoiler :

Settled on plains hill and opened worker.
Teched Mining -> Bronze Working as without removing forests there are not many tiles to improve in capital.

After that it felt a little awkward. No close food to expand to other than plains cow. Finding the ivory to the East convinced me to prioritize early commerce and go for a fast Elepult rush on either Sitting Bull or Asoka. I have been practicing Elepult lately and this seems a great chance to aim for a better rush date than my last few games.

Teched Wheel->Mining->Writing. 1 chop + 2 pop whip yieleded a fast library in Northern city. I ran 2 immediate scientists in hope of bulbing math and speeding up the rush date. I know this generally works best with Philo leaders but I am really trying to pull out all the stops to get a better attack date than in my recent attempts.

While Great Scientists generates I will tech Animal Husbandry->Masonry->Horseback Riding.

Meanwhile work as many cottages as possible and settle a city on the jungled rice to work even more cottages.

A few questions for anyone who knows better than me

Spoiler :

Is it generally worth trying to bulb math for a construction rush if not a Philo leader?

On Immortal i rarely self tech calendar. I generally prioritize other techs and trade the AI for it. In a start like this would you actually consider fast calendar? There is certainly a lot of commerce in the capital to be gained from it with 2 dyes & 2 silks.

There is a lot of land here which normally would make me consider peaceful expansion. But I dont really know how to do that when there is so little food. Is this map a good candidate for peaceful play or just good for a rush?

 

[BornInCantaloup]

This is what I did, to T44 :

Spoiler :

Tech Path : Bronze, Animal Husbandry, The Wheel (researched this turn). This is a little ugly, commerce-wise.
Asoka settled ivory/rice very early, so my target was the plains cows in the SE (improved this turn), locking the NE corner.
With the 3rd worker (out this turn), I can connect Ulundi + uMgungundlovu, then make my way towards the copper.
Ulundi is tied up working all riverside tiles to stay afloat. uMgungundlovu can provide a 4th worker at size 2 (working 8H from cows + mine). I secretly want a 3rd settler to plant on the plains hills, claiming Horses and Spice. There is a pig further down to the SE but I don't think I can reasonably claim it.
Isabella founded Buddhism and Judaism (and Hindu ? didn't check). I may or may not be able to rush her, from this spot.
I sort of quick played and haven't revolted into Slavery. Maybe heading towards HBR. I want to farm my riverside so I may not research Pottery first (need to inquire). Pottery + Writing seem kinda weak, at this point, with little food and no rivers.
Ulundi went Settler (1 chop), Settler (2 chops), Worker (1 chop) all at size 3. uMgungundlovu provided the 2nd worker at size 1 (1 chop).

Shaka Zulu is my favourite leader. He has the best city names.

 

[jnebbe]

Questions to @jnebbe

Spoiler :

Why did you abandon the elepult plan on Asoka? Why did you accept Asoka's invitation to declare war? Asoka won't love you for accepting since you declined a few times already. Mehmed is not next to you so you can't gain any cities.

Isabella is Buddhist, powerful, and next to you. Buddhism is in your cities. Why aren't you in Buddhism?

I guess I was afraid SB could be dragged in if I attacked Asoka. Now that I think about it, it's probably not smart to befriend the closest ai since they're the most likely civ that you'll attack later. Even if I go rifles I'm kind of forced to go for Bella now since I'd have no allies left if I attacked Asoka. Hm

 

[ariosto]

Hello everyone
Trying to climb Deity. I completed one game successfully already (NC 305), but I used some reloading, so it's not completely fair. Will try not to use reloads this time

Spoiler Deity T43 :

Settled NE plains hill. Tech path mining -> BW -> The wheel -> Pottery. I think, tech path is obvious here.
Build order is something I had to think a lot of. Decided to go worker -> ichanda -> grow to size 4 (warrior) -> one chop 2nd worker -> finish warrior -> chop + 2 whip settler. Settled second city T37 on rice + phant.

Spoiler Then this happened :

Deity barbs are nasty for sure . Single archer killed two my aggressive+cover warriors (30%*4%).

Seems like I'll have to use reload button today

 

[MasterofDisasta]

Continued up to 75 AD (on Immortal)

Spoiler :

Wish I had seen the western rice so many settled on! Seems I need to improve my early scouting.

I teched as planned towards my construction attack. While the tech pace was ok (both construction & HBR by 400 BC I was sidetracked by ...

DOW from Charlie. I am in his religion for diplo points but am not up to pleased. I think a favorable tech trade with him could have avoided this. Sitting Bull was the only leader with Alpha before this and I didnt want to trade his way towards construction since (at the time) I was considering him as my first target. In retrospect I wish I had sucked it up and traded for Alpha so I could have had better control over diplo like this.

As it turned out Charlie's attack just cost me a few catapults. I weakened his stack with suicidal collateral and then mopped it up. The loss of some catapults did delay my attack and Sitting Bull was beginning to stack a fair number of units and walls in many cities. I decided to go for the softer Asoka as a first target.

State of the Empire:

At 75 AD I have added most of Asoka's cities to my empire. I now am turning my thoughts towards a 2nd target. Most of the world (including me) is Hindu so I am considering targeting Izzy. She is hated by all, fairly low in unit count, and shares a considerable Eastern border with me.

Sitting Bull is the other tempting target. While he would put up a tougher fight he would also be a greater prize. He is somehow the tech leader (which I never expect from him) and he has built several useful wonders.

I'm not tech leader but I holding my own so either way I think the best path forward is to keeping pumping out elepult and grab enough land to put myself in a winning position.

Izzy seems the safer play (both for easier war and a better diplo situation) and since I feel in a strong position I am leaning that way. But killing SB is tempting ....

 

[ariosto]

I replayed my game from T42, so I didn't die from barbarians this time

Spoiler Deity T84 :

My game plan was to use axe-impi rush one of my neighbours. Didn't decide, which one should be my target, though.
On turn 51 Charlemagne DOW'ed Asoka. Also, Asoka's border pop took my stone and phants - and signed death sentence for him.
So I declared war to Asoka T67 with 3 axes 2impis and warrior.

Meanwhile I settled 3rd city T50 on top of banana. 3food city is nice and I will get Bronze from capital's border pop. Also claims some good land. Teched AH -> Writing.

I captured border city T68 and Dehli T74.
My economy was sinking, so I had to do something about it. WIth stone I decided to go for pyramids (and failgold was also good outcome). So I make peace with Asoka in exchange to masonry and started to build them in 3rd city. Will finish them T85, also will redeclare Asoka. I hope I can capture 2 north indian cities.

Now I'm thinking, what I should do next with my economy. I have 6-7 resources (4 of them calendar) AND representation. My main concern now is what to do with all that happiness with so little food. Maybe pyramids was a mistake? At least, I don't have to choose religious side yet.
I will build farms everywhere and gain commerce from calendar resources mostly. I've already built 4 cottages and it is probably too much.

Also, both Isabella and SB built their shrines. I will try to elepult one of them after Asoka

 

[jnebbe]

At least I wasn't last

Spoiler :

 

[BornInCantaloup]

@ ariosto :

Spoiler :

This seems good, good job getting the elephants and securing the NE corner. I'm not too sure about your tech level. I suspect you only have Writing + Masonry or did you manage to research Aesthetics ?
If you did not... maybe it was premature to take peace with Asoka, especially so since he is still at war with Charlemagne.
Sure, you would dig a deeper hole in your economy but :
- you could still capture Bombay (and other cities ?) ;
- amass more war success to extort more techs. <-- I think this is the crucial point, getting him to offer you all he has. Alphabet and Iron Working, in particular (gotta clear that jungle in the NE).

Now, you have options. The Pyramids are excellent and should allow you to catch up.
However, finishing Asoka (while he's still at war) and building up Libraries + hiring scientists are two objectives that are at odds with each other.
The fact he's still at war... I believe you should take advantage of it. Do some libraries, ok, but don't go full on recovery just yet. Actually, if you're DoWing next turn, consider not completing the libraries in uMgungundlovu and maybe even in Ulundi and going Axemen instead. The one in Ulundi is fine, I suppose.
Capture gold will take you closer to Iron Working and, eventually, Calendar, than those Libraries.

Given that, you could also consider Military Police as a way to help you push through Asoka.
Keep an eye on the 2 barbarian cities in the NW. They would be a great addition to your Empire. I'm not sure when your peace treaty expires ; I'd definitely make them a priority if you're stuck in peace for some more turns. I think your stack is in Delhi, yes ? So, Navajo looks very far away. You could go West first, then Bombay, then make your way up north to the end of the peninsula.

You probably need to reposition some workers to help chop around Delhi/Pataliputra and help get the burst of units you need.

At this point, with a dead neighbour and 10 cities, I think Calendar is a better mid-term tech target than Construction.

Spoiler Diety Puzzle: Staple of the army :

Going to give these two screenshots as hints to the puzzle. Does anyone else want to try?

I took the hint and played to the same point (1 turn away, t84) :

Spoiler :

A Bronze rush from 2 cities doesn't mean the same thing as a Bronze rush from 3 cities. Probably an earlier attack date and an earlier dead opponent. However, rushing from 3 cities comes with its own set of advantages, like :

Spoiler :

Swordsmen ! This is the DoW turn. I capture Seville then Salamanca with the reinforcements, before it becomes troublesome as a hilled city with culture, units and walls.
Having 3 cities means better sustained production, so there's that.

Spoiler :

The units from Seville have healed up and moved on. Impis are used as scouts and help hold chokepoints.
We favour flatland cities with 20% culture like Seville and Cordoba to kill production.

Spoiler :

Like Toledo, too, which we target with reinforcements. This is the same turn, by the way. It's been a while since I split stacks of Axemen...
Barcelona was shrined in 1440 BC and has 60% culture. Is it good ? Is it bad ? It goes both ways.
We can see uMgungundlovu doing its thing in the corner. I started the attack with 4 workers and captured a settler. All cities are just working hammers at happy cap (or size 3 in the case of uMgung).

So, one of the benefits of the 2 cities attack could be that you would avoid the STRIKE :

Spoiler :

It was a while ago since I went on strike, too. I kept my slider at 0% during that time, which was most probably a big mistake. I could have researched Mysticism, for example.
Barcelona was captured at a heavy cost.
Fortunately, there's a saying like "Developping nations should work together to catch up."

Spoiler :

And Isabella agrees.
Madrid is on a hill. I'll take peace, get a settler out, a couple workers and settle the gems, consolidate the economy before killing the charming lady.
Only 2 other AIs have Alphabet, so that deal gives me that tech over 3 different AIs. Peace means my Spanish cities are suddenly happy and the commerce situation isn't that dire.
Barcelona coming out of revolt also represents an instant +15 gold per turn due to its shrine. The shrine + the peace deal are huge compensations.

Stats :

Spoiler :

I also built 5 Impis and lost 4 of those. I could check the logs but probably half of my lost Axemen died trying to cut the walls of Barcelona, maybe 4 of them.