Economic Victory With Zulu

[Syiss]

This is designed to get a quick economic victory with Zulu's, works well on Deity or any of the easier difficulties. I am a big fan of Economic victorys as they can generally be done quicker than tech or culture victories. Obviously domination victories can be done faster, but they tend to get boring after a while. This strategy takes advantage of all of the bonuses of the Zulu civilization.

To begin, move all of your workers onto production squares so you are pumping out Impi Warriors every 3 turns. Set your first Impi to exploring and find the nearest civilization. If there is a hill next to the city I would advise trying to take the city right away as this will give you a huge boost in getting to the next civ since you dont have to wait for 3 warriors. If there is no hill, continue exploring (or attack a nearby barbarian village) until the rest of your warriors arive, make an army and take the city. Continue pumping Impi Warriors in both cities. Start looking for the next civilization. Consider taking a couple turns to attack a barbarian village to get your army to veteran status (while your single Impi Warriors do the exploring), as you may run into an archer in the next city. By the time you reach the second civ you should have 2 warrior armies and have no problem taking it. Unless you took a ridiculous amount of time exploring it is highly unlikely they will have an archer army or even two archers. After taking the second city, run around to all the huts/barbarians you found while exploring and take them out. This should easily net you 100 gold and possibly even 250 for currency (the computer will probably not have attacked any camps yet). This concludes phase one.

Now that you have 4 cities (3 capitols and a planted city from the 100 gold bonus) continue exploring and pumping Impis (depending on the map you will probably need at least 5-6 lone units, probably more) until you locate the other civilizations. You should have made tons of gold and probably gained a couple technology's to make up for the fact that you have not been growing your cities or producing science. Once you locate the other cities, set your warriors to defend in key spots that block them from moving settlers outside of their city. Mountains, oceans, and bottlenecks are your friend here. The more you can limit their movement the better, as the computer will just move back and forth with their settlers and never plant another city. If you can, capture a settler and then sue for peace the next turn. This early in the game and with the size of your army the computer will accept peace for no price. Now that you have successfully blocked off the AI players from expanding you can start pumping some science and growing your cities. Go for Irrigation right away, you should be the first to get it and this will help your growth immensely (at least 4 population, more if you managed to capture any settlers). Make sure to plant all of your cities near lots of desert or sea squares, production isn't very important after phase 1. This concludes phase 2.

Now you just sit back and watch the AI fall behind. They may start planting cities on islands but dont worry too much about that. By now you should be into the medieval age and the combination of Irrigation and the Zulu bonus of faster city growth, you will expand exponentially faster than them. You could honestly go for any victory type at this point with little to no fear of losing the game. Just make sure you build enough army units to stop them from threatening you every couple turns, or just pay them off with technologies as there is no way in hell they will ever catch up to you. Continue pumping science until you get currency and banks and reach the Industrial Age which will give you +50% gold production. By this time all of your cities should have 8-10 pop or more and once you build banks you will be bringing in 500-1000 gold every turn. Use your Industrial Age benefit of half price rifleman to defend your cities when the enemy civs come after you when you start making the world bank.

So far this is the fastest and safest way to pull off a non-Domination victory on deity that I have come across (outside of megacity strats) because you don't have to worry about all 4 civs ganging up on you or even getting another victory before you. You would be surprised at how little the 2 remaining civs both you when you have 10+ Impi warriors floating around and defensive units in your cities. The only thing I have run into a problem with is when another civ starts on an island. They expand very quickly (and always onto more islands) and you can't do anything to stop them, but they usually go for cultural victories and you should be able to beat them to the punch. They will probably not be too far behind you in technology either so expect a lot of military action from them when you start the world bank.

Questions, comments and flames welcome. If anyone tries this please let me know how it worked out. I don't usually post strategies and what not so sorry if it isn't in a very good format. I know its kind of long and brick wall of text-ish but I'm not very familiar with this kind of thing.

[xbman22x]

wow... this is my exact single player strat with the zulu, the only difference being that i like to keep my warriors in my capital until i can make an army so that i can overrun the barbarians. good post.

[IceCube]

and what if your attack failed ? you just make defenders stronger and all there is if if if you take city .the best counter to zulu is china just go early bronze and get those archers quick and watch zulu quit once you get tech lead .

[Syiss]

This is a single player strategy only. Notice the liberal use of the term AI PLAYERS throughout, and up at the very top where it says ON DEITY OR ANY OTHER DIFFICULTY LEVEL. As for the failed attack, I assume you are talking about when I suggested attacking with only 1 warrior if you had a nearby hill to attack from. If you fail that attack, you might as well quit and restart, you are only a couple turns in and that missing warrior could easily cause you to not be able to nab the second AI city.

That said, this strategy could be adopted moderately well for multiplayer though there are obviously things that would need to be dropped out or modified. I highly a doubt a human player is going to sit back and let you surround his city so he cant get settlers out for 100 turns.

[Desert Rat]

Great post, and it's the reason I was poking around this forum.

I'm new to the game, and have been frustrated by trying several times to get an economic win with the Zulus but it always ending in failure. Admittedly, I always went straight into gold production which would get me close (King level), but not close enough.

I realised my strategy was flawed and that I probably needed to approach the problem from another point of view. I'm going to try your battle plan next time I play, and I'm sure it will help me to think more creatively in future games. Thanks.

[Syiss]

No problem, let me know how it works out for you.