[BNW] Warmonger strategy for Songhai/Mongolia

The Pilgrim said:

Chariot archers would make more sense. Especially for Arabia/Mongolia as they keep promotion after upgrade. But also for Siam/Spain/Songhai. The trick is to pull them back right before they get first promotion or to go straight for HBR and build horsemen. In addition this strategy, afaik, never suggested to ignore luxes techs. This cash is precious. Nothing would have happened had you taken a little detour and delayed Chivalry for few turns. There is no difference whether you get it on turn 80 or on turn 85.

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I've been tending to shy away from chariot-archers because apparently when they upgrade, they keep their terrain-disadvantages when upgraded to keshik. And with this tech-line, I always seem to have horsemen for a very short time before I'm building keshiks anyway.

And no, this strategy never suggested ignoring luxes, and I don't, for the most part. In the start position I described, I could go up AH and trapping, and divert to Calendar, sure, but in doing so, how much am I delaying other things that need to happen? Is the gold worth the time lost diverting tech, at this stage of the game? That's what I'm trying to get a handle on.

But, reading through this, and replying, a big "duh!" just occurred to me. As I said, I consider building any more warriors than I have to a waste for Mongolia, because they're going to be stuck in the classic age until I finally go back and tech iron, and they can't keep up with the Horde anyway; I've found archers to be a much better alternative when it comes to shrugging off an early rush, and then I just leave them as a home-guard when I roll off to conquer. But, unless I get Archery from a hut, that means I have to spend turns researching Archery (yet another diversion).

But... chariot archers are basically archers with more mobility, and should work just as well as archers for city defense... and don't require archery. They're added movement is just a plus, since they can shift around faster. Their terrain penalties shouldn't be a factor when defending cities. Once I get keshik production going, archery is a 1 or 2 turn tech, and I can just disband them and rebuild them as keshiks.

DarthGrumpy said:

chariot-archers because apparently when they upgrade, they keep their terrain-disadvantages when upgraded to keshik.

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No they don't.

DarthGrumpy said:

I've been tending to shy away from chariot-archers because apparently when they upgrade, they keep their terrain-disadvantages when upgraded to keshik. And with this tech-line, I always seem to have horsemen for a very short time before I'm building keshiks anyway.

And no, this strategy never suggested ignoring luxes, and I don't, for the most part. In the start position I described, I could go up AH and trapping, and divert to Calendar, sure, but in doing so, how much am I delaying other things that need to happen? Is the gold worth the time lost diverting tech, at this stage of the game? That's what I'm trying to get a handle on.

But, reading through this, and replying, a big "duh!" just occurred to me. As I said, I consider building any more warriors than I have to a waste for Mongolia, because they're going to be stuck in the classic age until I finally go back and tech iron, and they can't keep up with the Horde anyway; I've found archers to be a much better alternative when it comes to shrugging off an early rush, and then I just leave them as a home-guard when I roll off to conquer. But, unless I get Archery from a hut, that means I have to spend turns researching Archery (yet another diversion).

But... chariot archers are basically archers with more mobility, and should work just as well as archers for city defense... and don't require archery. They're added movement is just a plus, since they can shift around faster. Their terrain penalties shouldn't be a factor when defending cities. Once I get keshik production going, archery is a 1 or 2 turn tech, and I can just disband them and rebuild them as keshiks.

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No no no, you got it all wrong. You don't disband them. You upgrade them! To keshiks. With cash you get through selling luxuries. So the answer to your question whether the gold worth it is yes. Selling luxuries will also finance cultural city state which will help you to finish Liberty earlier. And instead of building the Oracle you'll be able to build units. Many units. And instantly upgrade them all the turn you hit Chivalry. And win.

The Pilgrim said:

No no no, you got it all wrong. You don't disband them. You upgrade them! To keshiks. With cash you get through selling luxuries. So the answer to your question whether the gold worth it is yes. Selling luxuries will also finance cultural city state which will help you to finish Liberty earlier. And instead of building the Oracle you'll be able to build units. Many units. And instantly upgrade them all the turn you hit Chivalry. And win.

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lol... see how one misconception can throw you way off track? I read somewhere that chariot-archers kept the terrain disadvantages when they upgraded, so I've tended to avoid them. Time to rethink, retool, and retry, try, try....

Finally had the time and patience to finish a Mongol Deity conquest game. My strategy was exactly the one explained by snarzberry in the opening post. Had to reroll a couple of times when there were no horses around. Bulbed Chivalry on turn 82 or 83, and rolled the map by turn 159. All settings standard.

Happiness was an issue all through the game, and I ended up conquering some cities twice, because I had sold them to an AI who eventually wouldn't give me open borders (and to halve the population again).

Pretty much used all the tricks I've picked up from these forums, so my thanks go to snarzberry & other active members of this forum. I don't think I could have figured it all out by myself.

CatGarfield said:

Finally had the time and patience to finish a Mongol Deity conquest game. My strategy was exactly the one explained by snarzberry in the opening post. Had to reroll a couple of times when there were no horses around. Bulbed Chivalry on turn 82 or 83, and rolled the map by turn 159. All settings standard.

Happiness was an issue all through the game, and I ended up conquering some cities twice, because I had sold them to an AI who eventually wouldn't give me open borders (and to halve the population again).

Pretty much used all the tricks I've picked up from these forums, so my thanks go to snarzberry & other active members of this forum. I don't think I could have figured it all out by myself.

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You're welcome . T159 is really fast, nice work.

snarzberry said:

You're welcome . T159 is really fast, nice work.

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Thanks. I think I got pretty lucky in that game, my starting location was pretty far from anyone else, so I got no early DoWs as the AIs were concentrating on each other. And there was space enough to plant a third city for 4 more horses (for a total of 12 in 3 cities) before I even started conquering, as my closest neighbors Harald and Nebuchadnezzar had some trouble expanding. Plus, when I got most of the landmass scouted, the path to victory was pretty straightforward.

I did get a DoW from Alex around turn 90 as I was taking care of Babylon, but with "only" semi-large India, monstrous Siam, Harald and parts of Babylon between our lands, it was not much of a concern as he was already at war with Siam and his neighboring Korea.

I stayed friends (DoF) with the furthest rival, China, right up to the moment she was the only one left. She did have riflemen by the time I reached Beijing, but they were no match for the highly promoted Keshiks.

I think I'll try again, to see if I'll be able to pull it off from a bit more challenging starting location.

Just wanted to say that this strat using GS to bulb the key tech for UU also works surprisingly well with China and England, of course in this case bulbing Machinery. But of course you know this already. I was trying this out with Elizabeth and yes, fast longbows are quite the killers. Bulbed at T99 though, wished I could be faster.

Those fast longhows with some promotions pretty much 1-shot legions and ballistas. Hated Caesar's guts just because he thinks his iron UUs are soooo OP and shoved it back into his a**. Pacified my continent by T150-ish but there's still one more to go.

prince_caspian said:

Just wanted to say that this strat using GS to bulb the key tech for UU also works surprisingly well with China and England, of course in this case bulbing Machinery.

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Just as bulbing Steel with every other civ. Liberty GP is indeed OP'ed.

The Pilgrim said:

Just as bulbing Steel with every other civ. Liberty GP is indeed OP'ed.

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I agree but I wonder what changes, if any, in G&K will affect this specific strategy? Nerfing GS? Removing the Liberty GP? Putting an extra tech in before Chivalry or Machinery or Steel?

Just moved up to King difficulty, using this strat on a Continents Plus map. Had a great starting location (12 Horses!) took me till turn 95 to get Chivalry and another 10 to upgrade the Chariots to Keshiks. Once I got the war machine started though around turn 110 I steamrolled India, Russia, and Rome with the French still on my Continent. (they are next and just fall within the next 10 turns). I did, however, get held back by a few things:

-Gold was constantly a problem, even with trading, not sure how I can improve on this

-had some difficulty maintaining my population, I am not real good yet at manually controlling my citizens.

- There doesn't appear to be any CS on my Continent so I had to use my own culture to get liberty totally unlocked, I should have fit a tireme in my build order to get out there and find them (I still havent done this).

-Had to build the Great Library and the Oracle to make the timings work out right, I finished Liberty one turn before finishing currency to allow me to use the GS to bulb Chivalry, If i would have been on a higher difficulty this would have been impossible as those wonders would have been gobbled up by the AI long before.

-Happiness was a bit of a struggle early, got bogged down a bit after taking India, but I did learn a lesson, if a city sucks, it sucks, burn it and move on.

All in all I feel like I should probably win my first real King game (Not islands), and learned a lot about using the Keshik, using the trade system wisely, and knowing when to keep pushing, great strat, I just need more practice...Thanks

If I knew how to post a save I would just so you guys could see the starting location with all the horses.

Edgler Vess said:

- There doesn't appear to be any CS on my Continent so I had to use my own culture to get liberty totally unlocked

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Continent plus places the city-states on their own islands mostly.

Buccaneer said:

I agree but I wonder what changes, if any, in G&K will affect this specific strategy? Nerfing GS? Removing the Liberty GP? Putting an extra tech in before Chivalry or Machinery or Steel?

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Million dollar question.
I'm surprised by how little buzz these question make compared to civs/UU/UB/UA etc. guessing, which leader says what and who's the hottest chick in G&K.
Personally, I'm almost indifferent to any info that is not covered by those very questions. Yeah, GS have to be nerfed. I think it's a consensus. And Liberty itself need an overhaul as well. I'd be fine with replacing the finisher with happiness bonus or something. Or just pushing both free settler and free worker down. Devs, however, probably have totally different plans. We'll have to wait.

Edgler Vess said:

- There doesn't appear to be any CS on my Continent so I had to use my own culture to get liberty totally unlocked, I should have fit a tireme in my build order to get out there and find them (I still havent done this).

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If you find yourself in that situation then an alternative is to squeeze a temple into the build order in one or both cities and run the specialist artist/s for some turns to up your culture rate. I've got to Chivalry in 85 turns before like this, no cultural citystate.

The Pilgrim said:

Million dollar question.
I'm surprised by how little buzz these question make compared to civs/UU/UB/UA etc. guessing, which leader says what and who's the hottest chick in G&K.
Personally, I'm almost indifferent to any info that is not covered by those very questions. Yeah, GS have to be nerfed. I think it's a consensus. And Liberty itself need an overhaul as well. I'd be fine with replacing the finisher with happiness bonus or something. Or just pushing both free settler and free worker down. Devs, however, probably have totally different plans. We'll have to wait.

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Or the exclusion/inclusion of irrelevant civilizations.

Some people simply like to dwell on the superficial.

I've had a TON of fun with this as Mongolia on Deity, it's fantastic(x5 Logistics Keshiks yes please). However, with Songhai, I've run into the same problem several other people have: the AI LOVES to spam the hell out of Pikemen. I've had trouble finding an effective way of dealing with this(mixing Longswords in, bringing siege weapons and luring the pikemen in range, etc.) but they all seem to slow me down to the point that my UUs are no longer effective. Any suggestions?

Light Cleric said:

I've had a TON of fun with this as Mongolia on Deity, it's fantastic(x5 Logistics Keshiks yes please). However, with Songhai, I've run into the same problem several other people have: the AI LOVES to spam the hell out of Pikemen. I've had trouble finding an effective way of dealing with this(mixing Longswords in, bringing siege weapons and luring the pikemen in range, etc.) but they all seem to slow me down to the point that my UUs are no longer effective. Any suggestions?

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I tend to give more units medic and use more instaheals than usual. And more important than everything else spam the hell out of manducavs. Flank, kill, replace the wounded guys with fresh guys and keep moving. Prioritize cities with more horses. I always end up having enormous army with Askia which becomes an overkill later on but is the only way (I've found) to break through those pikes earlier. On the positive your economy can easily support that.

Well this strategy seems to have some problems:

1) Horses. Well great if you have them at your capital city, but what if there are none or they are far away?
If only your second city has horses, it will slow you down with everything(improvements, gold, security=hammers, the future Keshiks/Mandekalu will be delayed).

2)Barbs. They are out there and you need to take care of them. In this particular game a barb camp stood right where my sec city should've been placed.
With this pretty build focused strategy, it's pretty annoying to fulfill your goals while your being chronically raided, and can't build the necessary army to deal with them, especially if your cap city has no horses.

3) Luxury resources. 4-5 Lux combined by two cities is a very optimistic estimation. In my current game i had only 2 at my capital city, one of which were whales the other was fur.
The border wouldn't expand to the whales(50 gold for tile), and even if i'd buy the tile, i'd need to waste / to improve that tile. The second city had 1
lux(gems), but 4 horses, which weren't at the other side of the map).

4)AI aggresion. Since i needed the horses bad, i was forced to settle near Japan(we all know how much the AI loves that, don't we).
Around turn 50'ish he had 4-6 warriors knocking on the doors of my second city, which fell in no time. All i had for defense was 1 warrior, who fell fast to the enemy while defending my worker at the cap city(this made me RQ).
How am i supposed to deal with such aggresion while simultaneously building the scouts/library/NC?

I'm not a good player(just reinstalled the game a few days ago), but i've used this strategy b4 with pretty good results, but it seems that lately i'm running against a brick wall here.
Will be trying another game today and i'll see how well it goes.

I'm kind of stuck where you are. There are a few things to try.

Build a warrior instead of a worker. Steal a worker from a CS as near to you and shortly after turn 20 as you can. Try not to steal it from a CS that is protected by a power or you will be at war with them earlier than you wanted.

Use your 2 warriors and your scout to bust the barb camps that are closest to you. They are usually in a place where you might want to found your second city.

Try to find a cultured state with horses to ally with. This is the only saving grace if there are few horses for you.

It seems you have to anticipate an early rush and get masonry for walls and by the time you do that its pretty hard to get the tech tree to Chivalry done by turn 85.

Note in passing:

Chivalry rush doesn't work as well in GAK anymore. As OP noted the strat relies on bulbing the liberty GS for the tech. We all know bulbing GS in GAK is neither optimal nor does it grant the tech automatically, and Chivalry has more prerequisites now. Still the basics are there - get horses, built horsemen, tech Philosophy and build NC, get liberty GS by pumping culture but settle it instead for the academy, and hopefully get to Chivalry asap. You need to build more than 6 horsemen if possible, because once you reach Chivalry you cannot build horseman anymore and you cannot upgrade as many as in vanilla.