yes but it doesn't stack the full animation deformation in ram like with the ziva cache.
ziva will stack some information in the ram that's sure, but without zcache it will not stack all frame in cache.
Ziva look like to calculate a maximum of collision point at starting, stack those point in cache and make the sim.
that's why if you have a zcache, ziva will stack all the deformation for each frame and your ram will be full in a few frame (only for zcloth, not for ztissu because of thetraedra).
The thing I can watch in your solver property :
collision : off (if you set your collision off, your will be conpressed at infinity and not collide with your muscle)
collision point spacing : 0.1 (most of the time I'm arround 0.005 and 0.01 but it will stack more information in your ram)
max newton iterration ; if you have no gravity it can be 2
substep : depend of your mesh density and animation but I'm arround 4 or 2 with the sim method explain of the webinar. most of the time I use my 5 first frame at 4 and next at 2 (my key are in step mode)
for the playback by on your preference, I'm not sure to have understand maya 2018 trouble with that. But if you set you alembic step at 1, maya timeline will move to every 1 frame.
I'm still on maya 2016 (I prefere to let 2 years before changing version to be sure of the stability )