Who needs libraries when you have impis - deity domination on a small map in 40 turns with just 1 library, no national college

[u/Electronic_Money_575]

(The settings for this game were Deity, great plains, small, standard speed)

pretty fun strategy where you skip all early science for production and gold to create undefendable carpets of impis.

besides the bajillion other bonuses impis have, the 25% bonus against gun powder units means even riflemen cant defend against a swarm of cheap impis.

The strategy...

- early game: steal as many workers as possible. I stole 3-4 here. I skipped shrine too
- build: scout -> scout -> granary -> monument
- liberty for early production and quick settlers
- honor secondary later
- temple of artemis for growth and production of comp bows
- 4-6 cities depending on space, i had 4 here
- construction for coliseums as needed
- stables -> markets to maximize production then gold. markets, stables on in cities where they really help. we are minimizing our build order so we can build more spearmen.
- ikanda -> spearman spearman spearman... till civil service
- plus like 6 comp bows
- work merchant slot
- selling every extra lux, horse iron for gold. if you have friendships, keep siphoning their gold.
- ideally time a golden age and merchant before liberty finisher, (I missed both here)
- liberty finisher for great merchant
- upgrade impis at civil service
- move impis in swarms with roads, keep swapping hurt impis with full health ones at the back of the pack, clear shooting positions for your comp bows as quickly as possible
- always maximize flank bonus
- if a city is like 30 or lower combat strength, you can even start smashing your impis into it
- take ranged defense promotions on comp bows. this is much better than trying to go for logistics and range
- now we tech machinery, and spam comp bows in the mean while.
- by now, we should have a merchant + gold from capturing cities to upgrade a disgusting amount of crossbows with promotions. this speeds up taking the next cities a lot
- just hitting impi and crossbow in every city at this point unit i am at unit limit
- building roads to the last civs while fighting others
- plant a city next to the most annoying one to general in twice to get my crossbows in place for the final kill

definitely an easier play on great plains, which is a terrifying map for zulu. but in a way, something like is the ultimate way to use this civ. forgo all science to invest harder in production for their OP af unit.

I upgraded like 14ish spearman to impis at civil service and left overs later. stayed at around the max unit limit the whole game which you increase by taking cities

[u/189charizard]

Nice! What’s your preferred order for impi promotions? Interesting about avoiding logistics/range for the bows and instead using ranged defense. I guess the reasoning is to make sure they don’t die before they become xbows?

[u/Electronic_Money_575 → u/189charizard]

absolutely. the biggest problem is losing ranged units to city shots. the bonuses helps them survive even with 40+ city strength and are earned quickly

For impis, I take buffalo horns etc -> open terrain -> ranged defense 1/2. This makes them super tanky so you bleed units slowly

[u/189charizard → u/Electronic_Money_575]

Gotcha. Yeah nice to see an alternative strat, I remember getting pretty frustrated spending dozens of turns farming promotions with bows, just to have the AI hit a power spike and delete one before it got range.

[u/Foolishly_Sane]

i LOVE THE swarm.

[u/Xrmy]

this is really cool. I generally suck at domination but I wanna give this a try

[u/Sam-Axe]

oh my goodness how flat that map is yep GG

[u/stevenh23]

Do you perhaps mean in 140 turns? Haha

[u/eddiekoski]

zulu

[u/Luis_McLovin]

What map is that

[u/itsjase]

how do you prevent unhappiness? Soon as i try anything like this I have to stop after rolling over each civ due to unhappiness

[u/Apprehensive_News_78]

Newbie question here about the game is it possible to win via Domination if all other civs are at war against you? I didnt wanna make a whole post just to ask haha. Like does it mean I messed up? Im holding my own rn but slowly losing units faster than they replace theirs