Songhai Marathon strategy?

Hi,

From recommendations on this board I thought I would try Songhai on marathon next. Any recommendations on strategies?

I thought a chariot archers+Heathen conversion plan looked good. Basically get chariots to barb hunt & worker steal, promotion save, cheap upgrade to Mandelaku. Drill up piety for the cheap temples and get Heathen conversion. Missionaries barb hunt on the ice from there on out while the army goes and overwhelms everybody. Do a two-city opener with intent to puppet and annex.

Where should the gold go? I'm not acquainted with the timings and prices on marathon.

I play Songhai the following way on marathon; Tradition with 2 points or 3 in piety an maybe a point in honor if you need help finding and killing barb camps. The key is to get archers or better yet if you have horses chariots. Kill barb camps and use the gold to buy settlers. You get 225 per camp and settlers cost 1125 gold. You should aim to have your 4 city empire up by t90-t120 which is equivalent to turn 30 to 40. Barb camps spawn at a static rate so they'll be there. Depending on the level you play at there are other things you can do but the camps are universal in nature.

Once you finish tradition you can drop into piety for faster temples. From there it's open ended on higher levels you probably want to go into rationalism.

I'm doing immortal the first time. I hoped to worker steal everybody I meet at first.

So do you just raze and resettle? Can you raze and let the AI resettle before discovering other civs and get some respectable plunder the second time?

When I play Songhai I like to go a tradition/piety mix. Take the first 2 tradition policies for culture (you get a free mud pyramid mosque in cap if you build a monument first) then open piety and get the temple policy from piety quickly. Build 3 more cities and workers asap and the build order will be shrine then temple immediately, no exceptions. Settle your first prophet. After you get your second prophet spam missionaries and use the free prophet from finishing piety to enhance. Now I usually take the +2 gold mosques and pagodas for my religion and then sacred sites for reformation culture victory. You will be able to just spam cities and buy both buildings asap for 4 tourism. Ive won before turn 130 on emperor by doing this. Alternatively, I was thinking of taking holy warriors instead of mosques and going for all out war after I purchase my mosques. I can normally get up to 90 faith per turn with 5 or 6 cities.

Turn 130 CV...on Marathon?

Well anyway I rolled a strong desert Petra start, Mt Sinai. Clearly I will not be short of faith.

No he's talking standard times just multiply by 3 to get equivalent time on marathon.

Well, my Songhai "game" is done. Not much of a game, though--I conquered my continent and half the civilizations by mid-medieval, and 3 of the 5 remaining civs are DOF with me. All the Songhai barb camp money easily funds the RA's with all 3. My heathen conversion strategy blew up in my face, though, but the Iroquois whom I conquered got Holy Warriors and I got an extremely faith-heavy start. I planned on a D-Day invasion of the other continent using Songhai UA, but Ethiopia immediately offered me open borders and Rome offered to DOW Babylon together--whom turned around and offered a size-9 puppet city in a peace deal without me doing anything. I got interfaith dialog and evangelized the entire map using Mosque of Djenne (even though interfaith dialog is weak on marathon), which fulfilled a couple of science CS quests. It's early renaissance and I've already got the science lead and over half the map--on Immortal. I called the game. It's clearly over.

However, I LOVE this game setting. It's hilarious how I did a full-on domination strategy and my diplomacy is better than I did with Sweden or Holland. I'm going to try again on Deity.