300AD     Versus Shaka


America was finished, and now the struggle shifted to a two-way battle against the Zulus and Indians in the northern jungles and the Romans and English in the southern hills. I had revolted to Monarchy in 290AD right after the tech came in and fortunately drew an easy 3-turn anarchy. Construction popped out of the Great Library in 300AD - while I was still in anarchy. Gaining techs in anarchy! That was a new one for me. All research went off now that I had Monarchy; I would ride the Library to its fullest. I came out of anarchy in 320AD and got this as a present on the same turn:

This image has been lost.

It looks like my insistence on pushing for cultural buildings had started to pay off. As usual in Always War games, the opposing AI civs had built no cultural buildings whatsoever - the only culture Rome had was their palace! So it comes as no surprise that I was able to flip this city that was so close to my palace. The only question was whether or not I could hold Hispalis, which had no roads reaching to it, from being recaptured by the Romans. I immediately rushed a galley in Macedon and loaded a veteran and elite hoplite into it, which were delivered to the city in 330AD. With a regular, veteran, and elite hoplite sitting behind city walls that I rushed, the city was pretty safe. This flip really brought me into contact with Rome though, who I had largely been ignoring so far throughout the game. I began an ambitious project to run a road down to Hispalis, which necessitated diverting a considerable amount of resources to protecting my workers from capture. Unfortunately for me, Caesar also hooked up an iron resource at about this time and began sending legions instead of archers after me. Things became... more interesting in the south.

In the north I was continuing to advance slowly against the Zulus. I still had yet to see an Indian city; where were these guys? Bapedi was captured in 360AD, and it was bordered by water to the north. Had I reached the northern edge of the continent? No, right-clicking on it revealed that it was a freshwater lake, so there was still more land to the north. My scouting units discovered that Bapedi was right next to the Zulu capital of Zimbabwe, and from the diplo menu I could see that Shaka only had 2 cities other than Zimbabwe. Clearly I was approaching their destruction. The next overall civ picture that I took was from 400AD, which I present here:

By the time this picture was taken, I had carved out a solid core of "safe" cities. Almost all of my most productive cities were sitting in the midst of former America or were American cities themselves; north was really the only direction to expand when the game started. I had now finally located the Zulu capital and an Indian city (sitting under the fog in the northwest) so I had an idea of what I was up against. But just look at all of that jungle! Masses and masses of the stuff stretching completely across the northern part of the continent. Cities like New York, Boston, and Bapedi had so much potential - but it would take an enormous effort to get rid of that jungle to reveal the productive grassland underneath. The next thing that should be interesting to note: again, the prevalence of infrastructure builds all over my territory. Out of 13 cities, only 2 are building military units. Two! This is more of a reflection of my playing style than anything else; I tend to favor improving my cities first and then building military only when no improvements are left to build. This slowed down my expansion but made my civ stronger overall as a whole. It will be interesting to see whether this was a good strategy or not come report day.

Elsewhere, the slow grind continued. Madras, the Indian city in the top-right corner of the screenshot hidden under the fog, was reached and auto-razed in 430AD. Gandhi still had a good 4 of 5 cities remaining, so I assumed that the continent stretched even further to the north. Two turns later I finally got what I wanted: a leader from a defending hoplite! Defensive leaders are rare since the odds of getting one are half that of producing a leader from an offensive victory (1 in 32 instead of 1 in 16). The leader popped in my not-safe outpost of Hispalis, so rather than bring him back and risk his life over treacherous ground, I decided to form an army with him of the three hoplites in Hispalis. Hopefully with the Heroic Epic built, I would get a lot more leaders and be able to snag the Middle Age wonders with ease. Here's Ajax's army sitting in Hispalis:

This image has been lost.

I love the image of those ancient leaders, in part because I see them so rarely. I wouldn't want to try and attack that city with swordsmen! That didn't stop the AI from suiciding against it though... The next notable event was the flipping of Neapolis to me in 470AD; you can see it on the earlier civ-wide screenshot. I again scrambled to get forces there in time to defend it, rushing a galley in Sparta and ferrying two hoplites over that tiny lake to reinforce the city! That was a good one. :) But I was able to hold onto the city with no problems after that, and soon pushed a road down from Corinth that made reinforcing it much easier.

540AD was a black day in the history of the Macedonians. Despite the presence of city walls and a barracks, my 13hp hoplite army was killed by a couple of Roman legionaries and Hispalis was retaken. This was nothing other than simply horrendous luck; one legion took 9hp off my army. NINE! And it was 3att versus 6def... but enough of dwelling on the bad news. I vowed to retake Hispalis ASAP, though the city walls I had put in there made it more difficult. This was balanced somewhat by the progress of the northern forces, which captured Zimbabwe in 560AD. By this point, the Zulus and Indians were all but dead, being unable to muster more than an archer every 4 or 5 turns. I began pushing them harder to make the struggle on the continent come down to only one front, with the consequence that my offensive stalled somewhat in the south. Such is life.

The Heroic Epic completed in 580AD, prompting hope that more leaders would appear. For that matter, I finished a manual construction of the Great Wall in 610AD:

This image has been lost.

At only 200 shields, the Great Wall was a steal in this game. Waste of time? Far from it, as I had city walls in many of my small towns. I had wanted to rush it with a leader, but with none appearing just built it myself in a backline city. I got a great deal of use out of it, and never regretted the move at all. Note that this was again a case of pursuing an infrastructure project rather than simply units, units, units all the time.

Ulundi fell in 630AD, reducing the Zulus to one city. Shaka still refused to give me anything good for peace - not that I could sign peace with him in any case. At this point, sick of the total lack of tech output from the Great Library (did everyone else on my continent just stop research altogether?), I turned it back on and began researching Currency. I desperately needed marketplaces to fund my large military and extensive infrastructure projects. Currency was researched in 640AD and I entered the Middle Ages, pulling Monotheism as usual as the freebie scientific-civ tech. This gave me two new structures to build, and after I had markets and cathedrals up in the major cities, I was finally able to dial the luxury tax down to 0% for good. On a side note, Ulysees (shouldn't that be Odysseus for the Greeks?) popped in 650AD in a minor skirmish up in the north:

This image has been lost.

The choice for Ulysees was a no-brainer. There was only one wonder available to be built, so he was used to rush the Hanging Gardens. Up there in the jungles of the north, the final Zulu city was sitting just to the east of Ulundi. And in 700AD, the mighty Macedonian army finished slogging its way through the wilderness and took it, prompting this message:

This image has been lost.

The Zulus were DEAD, despite starting a very long distance away from me. I bet most people are going to claim a different AI civ as their first victim. So 700AD was the year I killed my first opponent; pitifully slow, but keep in mind I had reduced America to one city in 290AD, which sat down south past Rome. Regardless, it was a great day for the Macedonian people as they celebrated the fall of their first opponent. And perhaps just as importantly, I had reached the sea! Ulundi is sitting on the northern coast of my continent, which meant that I had finally reached the end of it. Of course there was an Indian cultural border to the north, which meant that there was another island to the north of it. Grrrr.... The next priorities for the game would be to eliminate India and press further into the deep south, to pierce the heart of Rome and figure out where on earth England was located.


Combat Table
  Greece America England Zululand Rome India Total AI Civs
750BC 2 19 5 4 7 1 36
250BC 9 38 9 6 11 6 70
250AD 21 55 15 17 26 15 128
650AD 45 59 18 40 67 35 219

A couple of notes on the combat table. You can see that I almost doubled the number of total AI kills over this span, but my losses were way up as well. This was due entirely to the use of Rome's legions, which were 3 times harder to kill than the archers they had formerly been sending. I think it's interesting to note how the numbers for America barely increase at all (since I was no longer doing much fighting against them) while the numbers for the Zulus and Indians have increased dramatically as I took the fight to their homelands. And of course the numbers for Rome were way up as as well, as I struggled to defend Hispalis and Neapolis against their legions. I was still maintaining a 4:1 ratio overall though against the AI forces.