OCC + PA + Zara + You = FUN!

[siggboy]

The other night I started an OCC with Permanent Alliances enabled, small pangea, random civs, playing as Qin. The game went pretty well and I got Pericles in my team, who disappointed me slightly.

So I thought to myself, "who would you want to have in your team?" and the rather obvious answer, at least for me, was: Zara Yaqob. In every game that I meet him, he ends up being one of the top AIs.

His tech pace is great, he builds a good military without going over the edge and never overexpands while still claiming good territory. Not rarely he holds the top score for a long time. He also likes to build wonders.

So I made a new map (picking Elizabeth this time) and put Zara on it as well, with the plan to get him into a Permanent Alliance ASAP. To add to the fun I filled the rest of the spots will the most obnoxious war mongers I could think of (Shaka, Ragnar, Monty and Alex).

This game was great. Kissing up to Zara was easy, and he agreed to a Permanent Alliance rather quickly. As expected he had developed some good land by that time without getting into stupid wars along the way that would have ruined his infrastructure. Quite a few wonders he did have as well. At the end I had a front-door domination victory at around 1950 AD (Vassal States were disabled for my game).

So if you want to explore Permanent Alliances and OCCs in particular, I can only recommend to try out this guy. I'm attaching a WB save of my map (with Liz and Zara human playable), give it a try if you like and maybe report here.

I'm also interested in your experiences with OCCs + PA, especially which leaders did work well for you in the past.

 

[oyzar]

Follow the current sgotm...

 

[cripp7]

can you post a savegame on that? are there any sgotm that are OCC

 

[siggboy]

He was talking about SGOTM 7 (the current one). Saves are posted in the respective forum. It's a Vanilla Deity game, though. I'll be following it I guess (not sure which team though, reading through all of them would be way over the top).

 

[lovetramy]

not only zara , any top scorer of your game will do if you plan from the start . I usually buy world map , see who is the biggest guy then start convert to his religion ,trade tech with him alot even give him for free . Any one will be friendly very fast . Beeline Miltary Tradition for Defensive pact , then Comunisim . Bummm , he's all urs GG !
But for god sake never do it with peace monger guys , they just dont have any unit .

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

Interesting. I have tried to play several of the Gauntlets with PAs and choose Zara in teh mix to have as a partner. The problem has been that he is alway smy closest neighbour for a rush, so I attack him.

Those Oromo Warriors are sick!

I just figured that he would be a good ally, as he has low thresholds, I thought. I will keep trying.

 

[siggboy]

not only zara , any top scorer of your game will do if you plan from the start . I usually buy world map , see who is the biggest guy then start convert to his religion ,trade tech with him alot even give him for free . Any one will be friendly very fast . Beeline Miltary Tradition for Defensive pact , then Comunisim . Bummm , he's all urs GG !
But for god sake never do it with peace monger guys , they just dont have any unit .

The point I was trying to make is that Zara will be the top scorer in at least 80% of the cases. Since you have to start kissing up to your future Permanent Ally really early, it helps to know who it probably will be right from the start ;-).