Zulu early game policies

[76561198799323534]

Having seen how powerful and annoying the Zulus can be in the hands of the AI, I'm strongly considering playing them myself. It will be a domination victory obviously, since the Zulus uniques don't really give them any advantages for other victories. But which social policies would be most beneficial in the early game?
Tradition can be ruled out I guess -- the tradition growth bonuses gets really powerful in the latter game, and can also be utilized for a late game domination victory (did that once with Austria), but the Zulus should obviously get started in the medieval era once the impi UU in available.
The liberty tree is widely regarded as the best tree for early warmongering because of the general production bonuses, the free/cheap settles and the flexibility of the great person from the liberty finisher.
The honor tree is in general weaker than tradition or liberty because it offers no growth or expansion bonuses. But the combat bonuses it offers seems to have a good synergy with the Zulu UA, UU and UB.
With liberty you can found more cities in the early game, meaning more early production and military units. With honor you will probably have less cities and military units when you start your impi rush but the units will be stronger and get promoted faster. And once you capture your first cities it probably doesn't matter that much that you only have a few cities of your own.
Another consideration -- national wonders are easier to built if you only found a few cities yourself and leave most of the captured cities as puppets, and it would be kind of interesting, if I could built a high production city with heroic epic and ironworks that will spit out even deadlier units.
So I think the question boils down to whether I prefer quality (= honor) over quantity (= liberty).

[Phryxo]

If you want to try to finish the world just with Impis, then probably Honor. You can checkout peddroelm's Honor/Commerce/Autocracy guide[forums.civfanatics.com] and LPs if you want to learn how best to use Honor in general.

Here's 2 more good threads for you:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-deity-challenge-lineup-game-1-the-zulus.528421/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/zulu-domination-guide-deity-standard-pangea.504129/

[zxcvbob]

I would go Honor, right side first (you'll fill it faster that way, and you get fast promotions anyway) Don't build any melee units until you build an ikanda (this is when you build your scouts and archers) then build lots of spears and a few warriors. You can start your warmongering before you get Impis, but when you hit Civil Service, upgrade as many spears as you have gold and really go to town.

When you fill the Honor tree and you're waiting for Rationalism to unlock, you probably want to go Commerce, but Tradition's not bad either. Your captured cities will get the free monuments, etc, and the fast border expansion for your capital and the free unit maintenance for garrisons (the units you leave behind while they heal) is nice.

If I have iron, I always build some longswordsmen; they are a lot tougher than Impi (use them for your city-killers) and you can upgrade them to muskets with the "buffalo" promotions.

[Phryxo]

Originally posted by zxcvbob:

...a few warriors...

If I have iron, I always build some longswordsmen

SACRILEGE

[Matthew]

I tried to make Honor work several times. I just don't like it much. I find it way too slow.

[76561198799323534]

Originally posted by zxcvbob:

I would go Honor, right side first (you'll fill it faster that way, and you get fast promotions anyway) Don't build any melee units until you build an ikanda (this is when you build your scouts and archers) then build lots of spears and a few warriors. You can start your warmongering before you get Impis, but when you hit Civil Service, upgrade as many spears as you have gold and really go to town.

When you fill the Honor tree and you're waiting for Rationalism to unlock, you probably want to go Commerce, but Tradition's not bad either. Your captured cities will get the free monuments, etc, and the fast border expansion for your capital and the free unit maintenance for garrisons (the units you leave behind while they heal) is nice.

If I have iron, I always build some longswordsmen; they are a lot tougher than Impi (use them for your city-killers) and you can upgrade them to muskets with the "buffalo" promotions.

Thanks for your useful advices. I have started the game and has just entered the medieval era. I started out with the right side of the honor as you recommended but decided to take two tradition policies (opener + aristocracy) before finishing honor. Because of my starting location I decided to skip early warmongering with spearmen and build up my three cities for medieval/renaissance era warfare. Bad news: my 2. and 3. city are jungle cities with mainly "calendar resources" (= few hammers). Good news: my desert capital (with lot of hills, flood plains, and gem, marble and sheep resources) have become super productive after I got the "desert folklore" pantheon + "religious community" follower belief and managed to build Petra, and is now able to produce impis (with 15 % extra combat strenght from Heroic Epic) in just two turns. In the meantime the Celts have built Stone Henge and Borudur and taken the "holy warrior" follower belief so when I capture and annex the holy city of Edinburgh I will be able to faith buy some more units to capture the Korean city with the very best happiness wonder "Notre Dame". Hopefully I will manage to do that before Korea get access to industrial era military units. Afterward I should be in a good position to dominate the rest of the world (America, Byzantine, Japan, Greece and Arabia).

[GalloglassCA]

Honour is a trash policy tree as your primary tree. Tradition is far and away the best Social Policy tree for the early game of the two viable early game trees. If for whatever reason you get early extra policy options due to culture ruins accelerating your progress,etc it's fine to go that route if you are in a game you can end during your Impi push. The growth and happiness, gold maintainence,etc you'll get from going Tradition is vastly more important than getting the early bonuses from Honour. After key infrastructure is up, you beeline Impi and that's about that.

[Phryxo]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1450904536

Upgraded 7 archers up to crossbows, 5 spears. I also bought a granary and a stables in Ulundi. Of course, this dirt is so good that both Liberty and Tradition would do more than fine, but it shows that Honor (i)is(/i) viable. I've also spawned 4 GGs (I think) and, obviously, I have many more promotions than I'd otherwise have.

As a side note, I settled Ulundi on turn 3 or 4 (could've been 1 turn sooner, but I had no prior knowledge of the map).

[76561198799323534]

Originally posted by ComradeC:

Honour is a trash policy tree as your primary tree. Tradition is far and away the best Social Policy tree for the early game of the two viable early game trees.

Originally posted by Phryxo:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1450904536
Of course, this dirt is so good that both Liberty and Tradition would do more than fine, but it shows that Honor (i)is(/i) viable.

Well, I have gone tradition many times and also tried a liberty-piety game with the Celts. The honor tree is the only that I haven't explored fully yet so I want to try it. And if full early honor isn't a viable option for the Zulus and other civs. with a strong medieval UU it is not an viable option for anyone. Honor openings are obviously not useful if you want to skip warmongering until you are the technological leader. It is not useful either for very early game warmongers with ancient/classical UU. The Huns should obviously build battering rams and horse asap, and not waste time building baracks and settles -- therefore they should go liberty. The Zulus can wait a little longer and built up their infrastucture while waiting for the impis, and therefore don't need the initial momentum from liberty quite as much.

[GalloglassCA]

Originally posted by jakob_haahr:

Originally posted by ComradeC:

Honour is a trash policy tree as your primary tree. Tradition is far and away the best Social Policy tree for the early game of the two viable early game trees.

Originally posted by Phryxo:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1450904536
Of course, this dirt is so good that both Liberty and Tradition would do more than fine, but it shows that Honor (i)is(/i) viable.

Well, I have gone tradition many times and also tried a liberty-piety game with the Celts. The honor tree is the only that I haven't explored fully yet so I want to try it. And if full early honor isn't a viable option for the Zulus and other civs. with a strong medieval UU it is not an viable option for anyone. Honor openings are obviously not useful if you want to skip warmongering until you are the technological leader. It is not useful either for very early game warmongers with ancient/classical UU. The Huns should obviously build battering rams and horse asap, and not waste time building baracks and settles -- therefore they should go liberty. The Zulus can wait a little longer and built up their infrastucture while waiting for the impis, and therefore don't need the initial momentum from liberty quite as much.

Honour is an okay start at lower difficulties, but that's the nature of low difficulties. ANYTHING works. In terms of actually viable strategies that work as difficulty rises, or you're playing against people that know what they are doing. Then Tradition and Liberty are the vastly superior options.

[Matthew]

Actually it is kind of the other way around, ironically enough. Honor does okay on Deity because the AI pumps out a ton more military, which means far more $ from kills and xp for upgrades. Plus other things like being able to steal workers quicker, science from trade-routes, etc.

I still don't like it, but I know there was quite a following for Deity Honor games a few years back.

It is on lower difficulties where you really feel it being much slower, since you cannot abuse the AI as much.

Just throwing that out there for what it is worth. What it comes down to in the end is whether you are actually using what the policies give you. If you aren't going to be heavily farming xp's to abuse certain promotions and gold, then you are missing out on the entire reason to go Honor. May as well go Tradition/Liberty, which you can still warmonger just fine.

[Phryxo]

Yup, that screenshot I posted earlier is from a Deity game I'm playing (inspired by this thread, actually :))..

I don't see the reason to bring up multiplayer in a thread that's clearly for singleplayer. Every MP player that's worth his salt plays with mods (like NQMod), so it's even more pointless to do so.

[GalloglassCA]

Originally posted by Matthew:

Actually it is kind of the other way around, ironically enough. Honor does okay on Deity because the AI pumps out a ton more military, which means far more $ from kills and xp for upgrades. Plus other things like being able to steal workers quicker, science from trade-routes, etc.

I still don't like it, but I know there was quite a following for Deity Honor games a few years back.

It is on lower difficulties where you really feel it being much slower, since you cannot abuse the AI as much.

Just throwing that out there for what it is worth. What it comes down to in the end is whether you are actually using what the policies give you. If you aren't going to be heavily farming xp's to abuse certain promotions and gold, then you are missing out on the entire reason to go Honor. May as well go Tradition/Liberty, which you can still warmonger just fine.

Not really. Unless I'm gaming the settings to specifically set up where that scenario is good, I'd rather go Liberty for it's military advantages and every other advantage that Honour doesn't have at all instead.

[Phryxo]

What are these military advantages Liberty has over Honor?

What Matthew said is as true as it gets—Honor is most viable on Deity where you'll get more kills (so more gold) and more (and quicker) promotions.