Zulu Discussion

I think it could be interesting how the AI handles them - if their UB provides extra promotions, I'm slightly concerned that they wont quite be able to take advantage of that. The warmongers do tend to just like spamming units instead of buildings, so unless Shaka has a very high flavour for military buildings I could imagine going against a force where more than half of his troops aren't as upgraded as they could be. They could be an absolute beast in human hands though.

If the upgrade paths stay the same, and they get bonuses for melee units, then it'd be possible in theory to pass those promotions on right through the anti-mobile line (from Impi upgrading to Lancers) and through the mainline from Longswords through gunpowder like Denmark can.

The anti-gunpowder promotion is going to be very powerful from the renaissance era onwards. The Zulu will simply have superior infantry units compared to everybody else from that moment on.
All in all I agree that the Zulu will be a very strong warmonger civ, I would even say that they will be deadly in both Human and AI hands.
Now we need to put Shaka, Alexander and Attila on a small island and find out who is the deadliest warmonger of all. :scared:
 
I suspect that the vs. gunpowder promotion might disappear from units when they upgrade from melee to gunpowder.
 
The thing is that the promotion is not a unit specific promotion, but a promotion available through the Zulu barracks UB. This makes me believe that it'll still be around even after the research of gunpowder, otherwise the Zulu UB would only be useful for backward civs.
 
I can't wait to see the Impi art. If rampant speculation during G&K is any indication it should be almost indiscernible from the Mayan Atlatlist. ;p
 
Zulu looks surprisingly good to me, and certainly not filler. One aspect I am particularly interested in is the Ikanda and its anti-gun promotion. Finally, longswordsmen are useful! Let's do the maths.

Longswordsman: 21
Musketman: 24
Impi (I'm assuming Pikeman strength): 16

That means:

if it is a 25% promotion, Longswordsmen are stronger than Musketmen;
if it is a 50% promotion, Impi are as strong as Musketmen but have two attacks to the muskets' one. therefore they are stronger.

Hopefully this will fix something that always annoyed me about Civ - in history, swords did not go out of date on Day 1 of gunpowder warfare.
 
I suspect the Impis' combat strength is going to be devalued a bit in order for it to be balanced. Either than or its ranged attack is going to do nominal damage. If it hits like a crossbowman then a pikeman, that would be too powerful.

Can melee units get the vs. wounded promotion?
 
The point is not that the period the western civilization noticed the existance of a specific army. If, so jaguar warriors would replace musketman, and that's a nonsense. For me, the imps should be a replacement for spearmen because of the nature of their equipments and combat tactics. Medieval pikemen were heavy armored and organized units. Imps were spearman with a good knowledge of the terrain and good guerrilla tactics. Unable to defeat the redcoats in open field, of course.
 
I would disagree that Medieval Pikemen were heavily armored. If anything, they were less-armored than the Spearman of old - Greek Hoplites had armor from head to toe. This is because they were the main fighting force, while, in the Middle Ages, the armor went to the Knights.

That being said, I can see an argument for Swordsman as the best analogy to Impi, especially since they have very short spears.
 
Eru Ilúvatar;12405676 said:
The point is not that the period the western civilization noticed the existance of a specific army. If, so jaguar warriors would replace musketman, and that's a nonsense. For me, the imps should be a replacement for spearmen because of the nature of their equipments and combat tactics. Medieval pikemen were heavy armored and organized units. Imps were spearman with a good knowledge of the terrain and good guerrilla tactics. Unable to defeat the redcoats in open field, of course.

Not really. Not all pikes were heavily armoured. May I suggest you to play Medieval II with possibly some good mods like Stainless Steel.

Also from gameplay perspective, another spear UU would be annoying. We already have a LOT of ancient UUs. Impi as a Pike UU would also make sense because then with a 50% bonus or something they could actually stand against gunpowder units like they did historically. And we could have fun exploring roleplaying by delay upgrading Impis & have some interesting new possibilities.
 
The new video reveals uMgungundlovu, Nobamba, and Bulawayo as Zulu cities. The first two are places in KwaZulu-Natal, the last is the second largest city in Zimbabwe.

Oddly enough, the Zulu have plenty of Pikemen in said video, as well as what looks like an Impi.
 
The Pikemen could be gifts from the Belgrade or the Impi is not a pikeman replacement after all.
Muskets maybe?
 
The cities are all zoomed out, in shadow, and lacking walls, so I can't tell whether or not it's a new art style. Looks vaguely yellow-ish (very specific, I know).
 
For the size and era of the cities, I would expect them to look less like a collection of tents. I think it is a new art style. We had a closer look at M'Banza-Kongo. It should be the same as whatever the Zulu are. Does it have a new style?
 
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