[R&F] Zulu First Look

[Tiger Genocide]

True. As a neighbour he's probably never going to be your friend, but at least if you're further away and meet him later in the game there's a chance you can be in a position to fulfill his agenda.

You could send a trade route, give him a gift, keep your government the same as his, and send a delegation. Declare friendship and ally later. Constantly renew it and keep open borders after you have filled out your main area. It isn't tough to do that, but you have to focus on it. Doing that might make the other AIs hate you especially if he attacks everyone else too much. May not be worth it unless you are trying to quietly and peacefully get a science or culture victory and he is next door to you.

Scythia, Mongolia, Sumeria, and Alexander now have a strong counter to them. If Shaka can hold out against an initial Sumeria Warcart rush, the followup knight push will fail against the Zulu. Doing a swordsman/musketman rush as Sumeria makes no sense, but bogging down in a nasty fight against Zulu corps would require sending non Cav units. Only Nubia as a T1 civ does not have a disadvantage against Zulu. Alexander has units that can work against them but they may need to jump ahead in science by taking other neighbors and city states to leapfrog ahead of the Zulu to beat them back.

Multiplayer games will be very interesting.

Shaka will make for a strong culture civ too. You will want to drop theatre districts early at least one or two. Getting to Mercenaries fast will be important. More captured cities = more chance for more culture.

Does anyone know yet if spearmen directly upgrade into Impis?

 

[criZp]

Banning is childish.

Look, someone who is defensive about preferring to use OP civs. Banning is there to increase variety, or everyone who wants to have a chance at winning will be forced to use the best war machine civ.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

you'll have to be careful about whether you want the stable or barracks.

With the Zulu you don't need to bother with either as the Ikhanda let's you build Corps and Armies anyway .....

 

[Tinker]

Pretty much as expected, but I always really enjoyed the Zulu in all previous game (both to play and to play against), so no complaints. A lot of this expansion is completely new, left-field civs, so one of the mainstays is nice.

 

[NegativeZero]

Zulu are terrifying.

The Impi look fantastic to use! Would anti-cav's Square promotion (double support bonuses) stack with the Impi's boosted flanking bonus? and is there a cap on support bonuses?

Shaka really benefits from culture. I could see rushing monuments and encampment specialists early for quick Mercenaries. Theater Squares would be nice, but unless I conquer an early wonder it will be worth going state-workforce to unlock government buildings.

 

[Havendish]

Warmonger Shaka is back, nice! However... the abilities and the UU are way Overpowered in my opinion. Ikanda provides additional warmonger boost too.

Impi should replace Swordsmen, not Pikemen. Did the Impi ever fight against Cavalry in reality? Not too often I bet, perhaps against British and Boers only. South African tribes used infantry, so why are the Impi an anti-mounted type unit? Were their leather covered shields that great at stopping lances, or their shortened spears better at reaching horsemen above? I don't believe so. Perhaps if they were able to throw them like in Civ5, but looks like that ability is gone now.

To me Impi are purely fast moving-cheap in production-swordsmen replacement, excellent at melee fighting.
The build cost as compared to Pikemen is too low, should be 150 to 200 prod units.

GREAT MUSIC! Perhaps the best of all Civs in Civ6 to date.

Overall, the Zulu look like a very tough warmonger AI opponent (OP!) when playing against them.
Great to play AS when aiming for a Domination Victory.
Especially when in the previous game you played you aimed for a different victory type and didn't win, and they beat you to several wonders and you're just peedoff big time.
That's when you go, oh yeah? Going to kick your butts with Impi now, see if those wonders help you out much this time around!

Could make for a very quick conquest when forming alliances as the Zulu with another warmonger (or not) against another civ.

Zulu colors could have been instead Green and Yellow (or Gold). Their flag is: Yellow-Green-Red.

 

[Scaramanga]

Look, someone who is defensive about preferring to use OP civs. Banning is there to increase variety, or everyone who wants to have a chance at winning will be forced to use the best war machine civ.

Assume much? I usually pick Spain in MP.

 

[dunkleosteus]

...or maybe I do, if he runs around like that all day.

Let's not treat character designs like pieces of meat

 

[drubell]

With the Zulu you don't need to bother with either as the Ikhanda let's you build Corps and Armies anyway .....

While true, I was just pointing out that you wouldn't get the experience boost for your impis if you build stables over barracks. So while I was responding to Victoria's point that you could make godmode knights in the Renaissance, it would mean less experience earned for your UU which is arguably going to be a better unit for that point in time in the game considering the flanking bonus and the cheapness/maintainance cost.

Knight corps would be very strong, but if you're going to build corps, perhaps you'll want to use a unit that high combat strength vs the hammer cost to build them, like the impi.

 

[Krajzen]

Any word on his Agenda?

Yes, Shaka hates when I am alive and likes when I am dead.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Also: Shaka died over 50 years before Isandlwana...

TIL

I agree the spear throw promotion in Civ V was weird. Not just from an animation point of view but also you could never know for certain if your Impi can kill another unit (cos it wasn't reflected in the preview calculation).

Apart from that the creation of corps earlier might have been equally suitable for Greek Hoplites (instead of that ridiculous +10 bonus). The hoplite formations were some of the earliest in history (as popularised in the movie 300). IMO Civ VI Zulu are a step back in comparison to Civ V Zulu, in design.

 

[oski90]

The music of Civ VI - and, especially, some of the themes of R&F civs - is nothing short of spectacular. Zulu ain't my playstyle, but I'll play them just to hear that.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Well this is a civ that can be very fearsome even if behind in tech and a complete monster at tech parity.

The flanking bonus on the impi may be hard to use without cavalry so that is something to keep in mind. However the impi looks to be a rather powerful unit that have all the defensive advantages of the anti cavalry while being overall just better. It pretty much don't have to fear melee or cavalry units because it will unlock the bonus against thouse units very quickly and when you factor into the corps it is basically an strong renaissance era unit that cost less than a standard medieval era unit.

 

[Boyan_Sun]

In vanilla, Mercenaries-Knight timing rush may be the most efficient and powerful wave for human players. Each knight only costs 44 prod and 90 gold but has 48 strength and 4 movement, ignore ZOC. Now with Zulu we will have 63 strength knights at the same timing by capture enemy cities, or just merge.

 

[Krajzen]

After heated discussion, Firaxis devs decided to recompensate us the boring addition of same civ-leader-ui-uu with good design of all those elements and amazing music

Although I kinda hoped they'd troll us by Shaka's mother being the leader, this would be so bad it'd overflow to being amazing

 

[ChocolateShake]

Civ 6: Rise of the Jocks

 

[Kimiimaro]

Their music sounds good!

I also like their design. Looks like the Zulu will be one of the first Civ I'll play as!

 

[drubell]

In vanilla, Mercenaries-Knight timing rush may be the most efficient and powerful wave for human players. Each knight only costs 44 prod and 90 gold but has 48 strength and 4 movement, ignore ZOC. Now with Zulu we will have 63 strength knights at the same timing by capture enemy cities, or just merge.

Not including the potential +4 from Oligarchy, along with great generals (which Zulu will be very likely to have because of the half-cost encampments!).

 

[WillowBrook]

Not a warmonger, but I'll enjoy stomping all over everyone else once.

 

[Zaarin]

Boring civ. Beautiful music.

The real question, though, is will Shaka come throw his lion helmet at me every few turns for not declaring war on everyone? (Joy. I just needed three leaders complaining I'm not at war. )