[BNW] Warmonger strategy for Songhai/Mongolia

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Problem with this tactic is that the AI always builds massive amounts of pikemen. This is of course no problem as Mongolia or Arabia, but as Askia it is a bit tougher.

RR57, the second map I tried I got Chivalry at turn 80, bulbed from GS finisher of course. I guess I was lucky with high production cities (3 stone, 1 horse, 1 cattle capital and 2 horse, 1 stone, 1 cattle 2nd city), all on grassland. I actually sold 6 horses that I wasted on a RA at turn 55 (I literally only got 1 turn from it, forgot to finish up Bronze Working and Sailing). Also I did not get any DoW until about turn 60 (world first? lol).
Not sure what advice I could give you...
 
snarzberry said:
Glad you got some use out of the opening :)

Yeah, managing unhappiness when you're really on a conquering spree is really the wall that you run up against, specifically the -10 :c5unhappy: penalty. If you're going all in for domination then your SP choices should be heavily weighted towards happiness policies, I'm sure you already know that.

A tactic to incorporate into your conquering is to limit the amount of cities that you actually keep from conquered enemies. If it doesn't have a strategic/lux resource that you want, a wonder or some strategic significance then you don't want to take the major hit to unhappiness by keeping it. Raze or puppet - then sell. Selling some of these superfluous cities brings in nice gold.
Click to expand...

Selling is a nice idea, hadn't considered that.

I've actually just tried this with Babylon, but instead of Chivalry went for Education instead. 3 cities all with libraries and the Babylon bonus GS. Got education on turn 70 although had to build the Great Library and Oracle.

Sadly, my civ was plagued with barbarians and had I taken a few turns out of my blind tech frenzy I should have built a warrior or two to keep those workers moving.

Still, shows that the same strategy can be applied to every civ.

After that, with every city building a university and researching theology while they do it you could then build the Hagia Sophia, Porcelian tower and Oxford uni (depending on your cities and get another 3 tech boost.

The problem I found in trying that, is that you quickly get labled as a wonder hoarder and with your low military strength you get picked on quite a bit.

Abandoned that game because of the barbarian issue and England getting a little too physical, but definately experimenting more with getting higher end tech early on.
 
Thanks for a great opener which I've been practising on Immortal for the last few days (prob around 10 attempts). I'm having the same trouble as RR57, and generally seem to have the keshiks up and running between turns 100-110, best so far is turn 95. A lot depends on the neighbouring civs - I've been mashed up by a Babylon bowman rush, a Rome legion rush where my chariot archers were no match in the flatlands, and a double Bismarck/Cathy dow by T40.

I seem often to have "down time" in the 2 cities waiting for Phil to complete to build NC, which I've been using to pre-build Settlers or culture buildings. Sensible?

Questions about SP/tech orders (which I appreciate are situation dependent). Do you generally go for the free worker or free settler first in Liberty? Also, is it a beeline straight for Phil, or complete necessary techs to hook up calendar/trapping luxs first (a lot of Ivory about...)?

As Snarz says "It can take a little practice as you're juggling beakers, culture and hammers to all achieve key targets as near to each other as possible."
 
Karpyan said:
Thanks for a great opener which I've been practising on Immortal for the last few days (prob around 10 attempts). I'm having the same trouble as RR57, and generally seem to have the keshiks up and running between turns 100-110, best so far is turn 95. A lot depends on the neighbouring civs - I've been mashed up by a Babylon bowman rush, a Rome legion rush where my chariot archers were no match in the flatlands, and a double Bismarck/Cathy dow by T40.
Click to expand...

Question: What is the element that is slowing you down? Do you not pop the GS earlier enough or is it the teching to unlock Chivalry?

Karpyan said:
I seem often to have "down time" in the 2 cities waiting for Phil to complete to build NC, which I've been using to pre-build Settlers or culture buildings. Sensible?
Click to expand...

There shouldn't be a lot of downtime, this may be why it's taking longer than optimal for you. I didn't mention absolutely everything in the OP, there are some blanks to fill in, like researching your resource technologies, building monument and granary etc.

Ideally you settle the second city to claim horses, purchase the library and begin work on the NC in the capital. Depending on your luxuries you might tech something like pottery - writing - mining - masonry - AH - philosophy or,
pottery - writing - mining - calendar - AH - philosophy ....

I think the time that the NC should be built most commonly is in the 60 - 65 range.


Karpyan said:
Questions about SP/tech orders (which I appreciate are situation dependent). Do you generally go for the free worker or free settler first in Liberty? Also, is it a beeline straight for Phil, or complete necessary techs to hook up calendar/trapping luxs first (a lot of Ivory about...)?
Click to expand...

Either worker or settler first works fine. If you take settler first then you have to add animal husbandry into your first couple of techs as it is essential to settle that city to claim horses.

Get resources hooked up first.
 
Question: What is the element that is slowing you down? Do you not pop the GS earlier enough or is it the teching to unlock Chivalry?

It varies between :c5culture: and :c5science:, cash not generally a problem. Tried again tonight with a good map (no DoW!), and had the Mongol Terror up and running by T93 - looks like a 1st Immortal domination win on the cards if I keep the pressure up (warmongering isn't my natural style, but I need practice). It's a juggling act, as you say, between all four elements. I was bulbing around T88, but hadn't built all of the army by that time.

A bit more city micromanagement definitely helps. Also I think it's important to steal a worker for the 2nd (or 1st) city if possible; this will save a good few turns or cash. Another factor in the bpt issue is not having large enough cities - so micro-ing food focus etc. should help with that.

Agree that luxs should be hooked up first, even though after Phil the tech time reduces considerably.

Thx for the tips, will keep trying to hit early 80s (although even around T100 keshiks are strong, I just screw up after that as a science game is my normal play, eg, taking out wrong civ first on bad terrain etc).
 
I tried again on a small pangaea map and Emperor difficulty and had keshiks on turn 91. This was almost an ideal map in that I had no early DoWs against me, plenty of cash (3 wine and 1 marble in capitol and 2 cotton in city 2), plenty of horses (4 each in capitol and city 2) and no competition for a cultural CS. The only issues were somewhat low production in my capitol (mostly flat river tiles and no forests to chop) and the fact that I had to research both Tradition and Masonry to hook up lux. This was enough to delay Chivalry to the 90's. So you really need all your ducks in a row to hit the 80's. It would probably require quite a bit of re-rolling the start to find an ideal condition.

As a side note, turn 91 is plenty early for keshiks on Emperor as it was very easy to conquer the whole map before turn 150 with 5-6 keshiks, one horseman and one khan.
 
I fired up a mongolia game yesterday, deity pangaea, to refresh my memory to better respond to Karpyan's questions and I got chivalry, had 5 chariot archers and one horseman ready, on turn 83. I think I am a big favourite to get there by the end of the 80's on a standard settings pangaea/continents map. I don't think you need to be particularly lucky, maybe to hit the really early 80's, but I think some time in the mid to late 80's is pretty standard.
 
RedRover57 said:
I tried again on a small pangaea map and Emperor difficulty and had keshiks on turn 91. This was almost an ideal map in that I had no early DoWs against me, plenty of cash (3 wine and 1 marble in capitol and 2 cotton in city 2), plenty of horses (4 each in capitol and city 2) and no competition for a cultural CS. The only issues were somewhat low production in my capitol (mostly flat river tiles and no forests to chop) and the fact that I had to research both Tradition and Masonry to hook up lux. This was enough to delay Chivalry to the 90's. So you really need all your ducks in a row to hit the 80's. It would probably require quite a bit of re-rolling the start to find an ideal condition.

As a side note, turn 91 is plenty early for keshiks on Emperor as it was very easy to conquer the whole map before turn 150 with 5-6 keshiks, one horseman and one khan.
Click to expand...

lol yeah sub 100 keshiks on emperor = win button :lol:

Seems like production slowed you down but you had plenty of cash, was there a border hill tile that you could have purchased near the capital?
 
Very nice strategy, just tried it out for GOM17, hit Chivalry on turn 104, and now with a little experience I expect to be able to do it a little faster next time, pretty good dry run though, thanks for sharing this!
Oh, and this is a good place to ask too, why do you upgrade from five chariots instead of only horsemen? I had no trouble building five horsemen(I got a brainfreeze and thought that the keshiks would not get the "move after attack" promotion if they were upgraded from chariots, which they ofc do.
Is it because there less hammers and the gold is generally easy to come by? I never managed to afford a CS on my try, I had just enough for the upgrades when I hit chivalry, although, I did not have enough lux to resell so I know where I can improve on this part.
 
snarzberry said:
I fired up a mongolia game yesterday, deity pangaea, to refresh my memory to better respond to Karpyan's questions and I got chivalry, had 5 chariot archers and one horseman ready, on turn 83. I think I am a big favourite to get there by the end of the 80's on a standard settings pangaea/continents map. I don't think you need to be particularly lucky, maybe to hit the really early 80's, but I think some time in the mid to late 80's is pretty standard.
Click to expand...

I suspect my problems are more basic and related to city management, given I've only been playing Civ V for two months, these are the kind of things that the experienced players just "know". For example, your question about buying a hill tile would never have occurred to me. Will keep at it, and appreciate the OP (btw good luck with the Babylon/Korea rifle rush strategy...).
 
xiziz said:
Oh, and this is a good place to ask too, why do you upgrade from five chariots instead of only horsemen?
Is it because there less hammers and the gold is generally easy to come by? I never managed to afford a CS on my try, I had just enough for the upgrades when I hit chivalry, although, I did not have enough lux to resell so I know where I can improve on this part.
Click to expand...

A number of reasons. It's less hammers, if you're aiming to get keshiks by 85 then you're pushed for time. The chariot archers are ranged and ranged units are better defenders so you're more easily able to deal with the early invasions. And the promotions that chariot archers get when you're using them to defend carry over to keshiks, whereas the horseman's are wasted.

Not buying a cultural ally is probably the thing that slowed you down the most as you finished liberty so late, next time I'd make that a priority and you should be able to bulb chivalry heaps sooner.
 
If you can't get a cultural ally, I've played a few maps where they're just hiding somewhere, you really do need the Oracle to give you that free policy.

I've been working variations on this and am now starting with 3 cities standard and strongly aiming for the GL to be built within a turn or two of civil service research starting.

Takes a little balancing but you can get it to work. Playing as Babylon, you should have at least two GS's sitting there waiting for you to get Chivalry and then quickly get Education to follow. The power having built universities, the PT and OU by turn 100-120 makes a seriously notable difference to your game, especially if you've basically turned your capital into a super-beaker city.

Currently trying, with limited success to get a pre-1800 space victory. But I'm a warmonger at heart, and having artillerly when everyone else is showing off their shiny new trebuchets is just too much to pass up....must learn self control...

The problem I keep hitting however, is that the heavy science focus leaves me extremely undefended and weak to other civilisations. That said, because you can suddenly create such advanced units, you only need two or three of them to bring your military score up enough to make your enemies think twice.
 
Just wanted to chime in here with my first post on these forums on which I've been sucking up information for the last month and a half of getting into Civ V. Thanks for the great strategy snarzberry. You helped me to my first Deity win. :D

I started a standard Pangea Deity game (8 Civs 16 CS). I managed to bulb Chivalry on turn 84 with 2 cities. I had my Chariot Archers ready to upgrade with enough gold to do so. Cathy was to my north and had expanded close to my 2 cities. She DoWed me and I started the assault around turn 88. Unfortunately I had not built a barracks in my capital so my Keshiks were a bit slow on the upgrade path. Also, I was not fully prepared as I advanced in the rough terrain for the shear number of units that Cathy would continuously spam at my force. It was a bit of a slog to get Yaroslavl, but after I did and slowly pushed to Moscow some of my guys were upgraded to logistics and the going got easier. She offered me peace and St. Petersburg so I grabbed that, continued to expand my army and then went after a weak Persia with nice Wonders to my east. Took his cap, and 2 other cities and made peace with him.

Then I finished Cathy leaving her one city and went after Alex who had filled the eastern portion of the continent (and blocked expansion from France and Egypt who spawned on a Cape Cod shaped narrow growth off the south eastern edge of the continent). Alex had a big army and a tech lead but highly promoted Keshik's tore him up, I just needed to be careful of his CCs that did surprise me and cost me a couple of Keshiks. Thus in my first 100 turns (by around turn 179) I had stopped one runaway and taken 3 capitals. I was in a winning position at this point and could have pursued any victory, but wanted to go for a Domination win. During this time I was about 8% behind in tech from the leaders (Alex initially and then Askia).

To my west (behind a wall of mountains accessible through only 3 passes one of which was blocked by Cathy's remaining city) were Askia and the Ottomans. By the time I finished Alex, Askia had crushed the Ottomans and had an army about 3.5 times the size of mine according to the Demographics page). Given the difficulty of accessing this area and Askia's vast army, I kept signing RAs (without the benefit of Rationalism or the PT (built by Egypt)) and built out my infrastructure for science and production. My keshiks had been killing Alex's riflemen at the end, so this seemed a safe and wise course given I had not beaten Deity yet. With artillery in place and a slowly building force of tanks and infantry (with 8-10 super promoted Keshiks for backup) I Dowed Askia on turn 222 and let him beat his head against my defenses for a bit. Once I had fighters built to protect me from his, I began to push west and quickly teched for nukes and lasers and finally ate up the entire western half of the landmass by turn 260 or so.

By that time I had 10 logistics/Air repair promoted Stealth bombers and overwhelming military power so i moved my troops to the peninsula and hacked down the French and the Egyptians for a turn 280 win.

After failing miserably attempting to emulate Wainy's bowman rush with Babylon on deity, I found this much more suited to my style of play. It doesn't hurt, of course, that Keshik's are the most OP unit in the game. ;) I definitely could have performed better with more Deity experience, especially in terms of going more forcefully for HS/PT/ND while prosecuting my initial slow "blitz", but I had great fun with this. Just wanted to post here to say thanks and to encourage other Emperor/Immortal players that have gotten frustrated with Deity to give this a whirl with Mongolia or Songhai.
 
I have questions around this strat as I have not been able to emply keshiks before turn 95 or so.

- The problem for me is typically science, but I may be doing the wrong things at the start.
- My build order is scout-scout-monument and I do not go for luxuries unless they fall under the tree branch that leads to chivalry (Is that a mistake?)
- When I get writing I switch to production to get libraries out fast, but by that time I think my cities are like 3-5 pop at most.

Anyway I would really like a detailed build order if you wouldn't mind sharing it..
 
Infiltrator said:
I have questions around this strat as I have not been able to emply keshiks before turn 95 or so.

- The problem for me is typically science, but I may be doing the wrong things at the start.
- My build order is scout-scout-monument and I do not go for luxuries unless they fall under the tree branch that leads to chivalry (Is that a mistake?)
- When I get writing I switch to production to get libraries out fast, but by that time I think my cities are like 3-5 pop at most.

Anyway I would really like a detailed build order if you wouldn't mind sharing it..
Click to expand...

What works for me (and I stress me, you might prefer to do this differently) is the following (usually):

First City

1. Monument (get that culture up early)
2. Scout (get those villages and city state meets on the go!)
3. Settler (so you can get the liberty worker and get some luxuries)
4. Granary (if you don't have writing) Great Library (if you do)
5. NC - by the time the GL completes you want a library in all three cities. The NC will really help you keep the tech lead.

Second City
1. Monument (yes, moar culture please!)
2. Library
3. Horse units
4. Granary (if you run out of horses!)

Third City (founded with the liberty settler)
1. Library (by this time you should have writing and enough gold from exploration, meeting city states etc to just buy it)
2. Worker/Monument - depends on how much your worker has to develop and what techs you have
3. Granary


But that might not be what others are employing.

You do need to get those cities up and running quickly so you can get some military units out, otherwise you're just a sitting duck.

You might also want to consider replacing City 2's granary with the Oracle depending on how your game is going, getting that free GS.

I always go for the GL so that I can use it to get Civil Service. If one of them gets to 1 turn to go, I'll stop the project and build something else, but they have to be close together as I think you start to loose hammers\beakers if you delay too long.

It works for me, but using Snarz's guide you should be able to find a variant that works for you best.

Sounds to me however, like you're not either not building your horse units to upgrade as soon as Chivalry pops or you're getting that Liberty finisher in a little late due to a lack of culture.
 
Becomedeath said:
What works for me (and I stress me, you might prefer to do this differently) is the following (usually):

First City

1. Monument (get that culture up early)
2. Scout (get those villages and city state meets on the go!)
3. Settler (so you can get the liberty worker and get some luxuries)
4. Granary (if you don't have writing) Great Library (if you do)
5. NC - by the time the GL completes you want a library in all three cities. The NC will really help you keep the tech lead.

Second City
1. Monument (yes, moar culture please!)
2. Library
3. Horse units
4. Granary (if you run out of horses!)

Third City (founded with the liberty settler)
1. Library (by this time you should have writing and enough gold from exploration, meeting city states etc to just buy it)
2. Worker/Monument - depends on how much your worker has to develop and what techs you have
3. Granary


But that might not be what others are employing.

You do need to get those cities up and running quickly so you can get some military units out, otherwise you're just a sitting duck.

You might also want to consider replacing City 2's granary with the Oracle depending on how your game is going, getting that free GS.

I always go for the GL so that I can use it to get Civil Service. If one of them gets to 1 turn to go, I'll stop the project and build something else, but they have to be close together as I think you start to loose hammers\beakers if you delay too long.

It works for me, but using Snarz's guide you should be able to find a variant that works for you best.

Sounds to me however, like you're not either not building your horse units to upgrade as soon as Chivalry pops or you're getting that Liberty finisher in a little late due to a lack of culture.
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks for the reply.

So you go 3 cities instead of two as suggested in the original build. I guess that means that you HAVE to get the luxuries even if it means setting you back like getting calendar or masonry?
 
It does, although I generally wait until they're under 7 turns to take them, I generally hope for a mining luxury and then trade it with any other civ for their luxuries.

Balancing act, but the pay off is that when you come to research currency, you've cut it's research time down sufficently that you've regained that time.

I'm usually getting Chivlary by turns 80-90. Came very close to getting it by turn 70, but had misjudged my culture costs and shot myself in the foot!

It takes a little practice to find a way for the strategy to work the way you like to play, but once you've nailed it, you'll wonder why you played any other way!
 
Cybelirrae said:
Just wanted to chime in here with my first post on these forums on which I've been sucking up information for the last month and a half of getting into Civ V. Thanks for the great strategy snarzberry. You helped me to my first Deity win. :D

I started a standard Pangea Deity game (8 Civs 16 CS). I managed to bulb Chivalry on turn 84 with 2 cities. I had my Chariot Archers ready to upgrade with enough gold to do so. Cathy was to my north and had expanded close to my 2 cities. She DoWed me and I started the assault around turn 88. Unfortunately I had not built a barracks in my capital so my Keshiks were a bit slow on the upgrade path. Also, I was not fully prepared as I advanced in the rough terrain for the shear number of units that Cathy would continuously spam at my force. It was a bit of a slog to get Yaroslavl, but after I did and slowly pushed to Moscow some of my guys were upgraded to logistics and the going got easier. She offered me peace and St. Petersburg so I grabbed that, continued to expand my army and then went after a weak Persia with nice Wonders to my east. Took his cap, and 2 other cities and made peace with him.

Then I finished Cathy leaving her one city and went after Alex who had filled the eastern portion of the continent (and blocked expansion from France and Egypt who spawned on a Cape Cod shaped narrow growth off the south eastern edge of the continent). Alex had a big army and a tech lead but highly promoted Keshik's tore him up, I just needed to be careful of his CCs that did surprise me and cost me a couple of Keshiks. Thus in my first 100 turns (by around turn 179) I had stopped one runaway and taken 3 capitals. I was in a winning position at this point and could have pursued any victory, but wanted to go for a Domination win. During this time I was about 8% behind in tech from the leaders (Alex initially and then Askia).

To my west (behind a wall of mountains accessible through only 3 passes one of which was blocked by Cathy's remaining city) were Askia and the Ottomans. By the time I finished Alex, Askia had crushed the Ottomans and had an army about 3.5 times the size of mine according to the Demographics page). Given the difficulty of accessing this area and Askia's vast army, I kept signing RAs (without the benefit of Rationalism or the PT (built by Egypt)) and built out my infrastructure for science and production. My keshiks had been killing Alex's riflemen at the end, so this seemed a safe and wise course given I had not beaten Deity yet. With artillery in place and a slowly building force of tanks and infantry (with 8-10 super promoted Keshiks for backup) I Dowed Askia on turn 222 and let him beat his head against my defenses for a bit. Once I had fighters built to protect me from his, I began to push west and quickly teched for nukes and lasers and finally ate up the entire western half of the landmass by turn 260 or so.

By that time I had 10 logistics/Air repair promoted Stealth bombers and overwhelming military power so i moved my troops to the peninsula and hacked down the French and the Egyptians for a turn 280 win.

After failing miserably attempting to emulate Wainy's bowman rush with Babylon on deity, I found this much more suited to my style of play. It doesn't hurt, of course, that Keshik's are the most OP unit in the game. ;) I definitely could have performed better with more Deity experience, especially in terms of going more forcefully for HS/PT/ND while prosecuting my initial slow "blitz", but I had great fun with this. Just wanted to post here to say thanks and to encourage other Emperor/Immortal players that have gotten frustrated with Deity to give this a whirl with Mongolia or Songhai.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you had a cool game. Even though if you really nail the early game you can end up sweeping everyone up significantly faster than the late 200's, I have to say the games where I have the most fun are pretty similar to the game that you've just described. Using late game military units when you have supreme production capability and a massive empire leads to a really satisfying end game, even though the turns take forever.

congrats on the deity win.
 
Infiltrator said:
I have questions around this strat as I have not been able to emply keshiks before turn 95 or so.

- The problem for me is typically science, but I may be doing the wrong things at the start.
- My build order is scout-scout-monument and I do not go for luxuries unless they fall under the tree branch that leads to chivalry (Is that a mistake?)
- When I get writing I switch to production to get libraries out fast, but by that time I think my cities are like 3-5 pop at most.

Anyway I would really like a detailed build order if you wouldn't mind sharing it..
Click to expand...

Here's my way -

scout (if pangaea then a second scout, if continents just the one)
monument
worker (possibly granary first if the position cries out for it)
library
NC
horseman/chariot archers...

I purchase the library in the second city to give immediate access to the NC
monument
granary
chariot archers...

That's the essential stuff, try focusing on that and then adapting to the situation if you're flush with hammers.

Hook up the resources before you build the NC that way you will get two sales out of each excess lux before turn 80 increasing your total gold by quite a lot.

Growing pop is important, sometimes people can get fixated on the turn count on how long it's going to take to finish a certain build so they switch to production focus not realizing that growing pop leads to more long term hammers anyway. If the start requires that you stagnate growth and focus on hammers to get everything done then I'd not recommend switching to production focus until during the NC build at the absolute earliest.
 
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