[BNW] Warmonger strategy for Songhai/Mongolia

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Just posting something for the fun of it. Here's the post-capture screenshot of a Quarter-Circle tactic with every Keshik out of harm's way and yet every Keshik was able to attack.

Someone getting steamrolled horribly - the Incans, I see. Never did like them anyways, what with their holier-than-thou greetings.:lol:
 
You've got promoted Keshiks, you'll be alright. Dont upgrade the keshiks until you get to Tanks and even then its kind of a 50/50 if its even worth it then. Lancers are really the only thing that could really hurt you but the AI doesn't know how to use them well. You shouldn't have a problem staying out of range of a cannon or anything of that sort. Push straight for the 2 remaining caps (carefully, dont loose your Keshiks, the promotions are key) with your well promoted Keshiks and with those 10 you should be able to grind up anything in your way. I might consider making a few new keshiks as a defensive force you can move around your territory to chase down any invasion force but dont pull your main group off the front unless Absolutely necessary. Once the AI gets artilery things can get dicey, not an auto loose vs keshiks just dicey so make as much headway before then as you can.
 
Won a 193 turn victory, Mongolia, pangea, standard speed, immortal difficulty.

Settled my capital on a riverside gold hill, had two more gold and one ivory near. Double scout start, followed by a monument.

Turn 10, I found El Dorado curiously hidden behind a chain of mountains. Just a turn before, I thought what a mistake it was to send the poor guy through a terrain so rough. Haven't had much luck with ancient ruins, though.

Used the El Dorado gold to buy a settler, settled three tiles away from my cap, on a fine riverside hill with gold and gems nearby. Unfortunately, that proved to be suboptimal city positioning, since horses were three tiles away. Used the gold luxury gold to buy a worker, mine the luxuries and sell them for cash.

Got dowed by Babylon by turn 30. A few turns later got dowed by Alex. Had to by a couple of horses from India, to produce some chariot archers. Fortunately, rough terrain, and some clever city attacks kept me alive long enough to ally a friendly cultural with 4 horses, produce some chariot archers and repel the first attacks.

I also had to use a liberty settler to settle a completely unoptimal city spot, on top of four horses without anything nearby, since I needed horses as soon as posible to produce enough chariot archers. Finally, somewhere between turn 75 and 80, I bulbed chivlary, steamrolled Babylon, used the pillaging gold for upgrades, and turned to Greece.

By turn 110, I plowed through Babylon, Greece, and India, using seven Keshiks and one horseman. By turn 180, I have finished off the Aztecs, and France, using only five of the seven Keshiks and two horseman. It took me almost twenty turns to get to Moscow, because Cathy had built the Great Wall. Anyway, I suppose I could have won at least twenty or thirty turns earlier if I had been focused on producing new Keshiks constantly (after the initial seven chariot archers and one horsemen, i have produced only one additional horse), attacking with two separate armies, and going straight for capitals, instead of plowing through the whole territory. Also, that was the first time I actually played Mongolia, so I wasted some turns due to poor positioning. And also, I forgot to mention the eight civ, Denmark. Well, as usual they got trashed by somebody else, before I even got to them. :lol:

Not bad for my first game with Mongolia. Insanely powerful unique units. And a great strategy, thank you OP.
 
Pushing on after delaying to fight defensively against 4 civs and 6 city-states, I noticed that my five maxed-out Keshiks seem to be the equivalent of Artillery. I haven't seen the raw numbers but is my perception deceiving me?

Also, what happens when I upgrade said Keshiks to Cavalry? What do I gain and what do I lose?
 
Pushing on after delaying to fight defensively against 4 civs and 6 city-states, I noticed that my five maxed-out Keshiks seem to be the equivalent of Artillery. I haven't seen the raw numbers but is my perception deceiving me?

Also, what happens when I upgrade said Keshiks to Cavalry? What do I gain and what do I lose?

I usually keep 2 horsemen and then upgrade them twice to cavalry.
The Keshiks are a powerhouse for a loooong time in the game.

EDIT:Would this strategy work for the Arabs, Spanish, or even the Siamese?
 
I got a pause in the warfare to regroup. Here's the situation while I am at peace with the Iroquois. I'll have 6 cannon->artillery pretty soon on the front line but given the geography and the other cities, how would you go about setting up the units and attack Onondaga?

ps. I knew I should've kept it at the standard 7 civs, I would've won this game in 1140. :angry:

pss. I think I'm at the end of life for Keshiks as even Level 10 ones only do 1-2 damage against the big cities.
 

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I got a pause in the warfare to regroup. Here's the situation while I am at peace with the Iroquois. I'll have 6 cannon->artillery pretty soon on the front line but given the geography and the other cities, how would you go about setting up the units and attack Onondaga?

ps. I knew I should've kept it at the standard 7 civs, I would've won this game in 1140. :angry:

pss. I think I'm at the end of life for Keshiks as even Level 10 ones only do 1-2 damage against the big cities.
Having such a huge empire the is no reason to fall behind in science. Even with no more than 7 opponents you should have annexed some cities with good production and pump beakers. Build universities, fill scientists slots and beeline Combustion. Keshiks are enough (usually) for standard number of civs, but things can get wrong, so you need some sort of insurance.

Assuming you don't have Steam Power and Replaceable Parts you're too far away from tanks in this pace. If there is some way to get there (GS's, Oxford) do it. But since it's unlikely at first I'd concentrate on cleaning land units and Montreal to gain some maneuvering space. Are these three cities all Hiawatha has? If so, by this point most of his army is gone. Maybe you can even clean the surface up and start slowly pushing forward while waiting for Dynamite to kick in and then annex Osininka and rush buy siege units in masses so you can sacrifice some if needed. Terrain and cities placement definitely don't make your life easier.

Otherwise, if several logistics keshiks take shots at it in the same turn Montreal should fall eventually. Is there a way to approach it from the south? If not, use couple of suicide rifles/cavalry for ZOC and bodyguarding the keshiks.

BTW, you could easily finish off some of the past targets completely. Diplo penalties don't really make a difference in such game, but this prevents annoying DoWs later on.
 
EDIT:Would this strategy work for the Arabs, Spanish, or even the Siamese?
To the extent. With Camel Archers you'll be able to take some of the opponents down, but they get obsolete, so you'll have to upgrade them eventually. Also they need a constant reinforcement since they are more vulnerable than keshiks.
Elephants are strong, but slow. They get obsolete when run into rifles, besides, AI tendency to build tons of pikes also make them not incredibly effective. You'll have to delay progression due to healing or build many of them. Although, if you get them out fast you can capture enough good cities to secure a decent base for the rest of your game both production-wise and science-wise. Another point to their defense they keep all promotions when upgraded to cavalry.
I don't know much about spanish UU.
 
Pilgrim, thanks for the advice. You're right, my failure in keeping up with techs allowed me to get an era behind the last two civs (Iroquois and England). I went for speed and it worked - 7 capitals were gone by 1140. So I knew the speed and Keshils easily worked on Immortal, standard Pangaea. As far as this particular situation, Iroquois had the cash to swarm Infantry, Anti-Tanks and Artillery; while I was fighting with 6 Artillery awkwardly placed and Cavs (upgraded all Keshiks since I needed firepower on the ground and Keshiks weren't doing any damage to the modern units). I did annex Osininka just to rush replacement units. It would have taken everything I had to get into Onondaga (or Montreal and Onondaga) that I couldn't even attempt the last capital (England already had fighters by this time). Even though Keshiks can do great well into the Industrial Era, I would've needed to plan ahead to make sure I wouldn't be an era behind by the time they stopped being useful (and not add more capitals to the victory condition).
 
This is such a great strategy for the civs that have Chivalry UU. I've successfully beaten Deity as Mongolia and Askia using this strat. Especially on Mongolia it is really easy (Keshiks/Khan FTW). As Askia it was a bit harder, due to pikes.
But Domination turns into a joke in de Modern Era. In the Askia game I had Brandenburg Gate in my capital, and the military buildings, and commerce, and at the end of the game I had 15+ Stealth Bombers all with Repair and Double Fire. I was taking 2/3 cities per turn for about 20 turns, completely OP, and way stronger than Keshiks. Anyway, I think I'll try this strat as Siam now, although it won't be as strong.
 
Fighting pikes with initial bunch of horses is the biggest obstacle during the whole game. Once you have conquered several cities and got enough cash and resources to rush more manducavs, it becomes a joke indeed. I had one of those sitting in saves folder for two months. Never finished. Early 130's, IIRC, and already boring since there was no way to lose it.
Siam is much slower. Limited cash causes constant dilemma between UA and UU.
 
I'm trying Siam but I'm getting the worst starting spawns ever. So far 3 games where the start is an absolute joke (1 game tundra, 1 game 6 sugar, 4 wheat, but ZERO hammers, and no room to expand cause rome/babylon next door). Meh.
 
few things not included in the OP that might help

- you can build catapults(mathematics) without iron working[BUG/Exploit/Feature ?] if any allied city state provides the iron; after the first 6 horse units build 2 catapults to help deal with city defence (Siam) and pikes (Songhai & Spain). You can spot CS with improved iron tiles [before iron working] by checking production values on their tiles..

- chariot archers can get "Siege" as their second promotion {30XP early war defence work} and it will carry over on Mandukalu , Conquistador (& Siam Elephant ?) upgrade ...It will delay late game wonder promotions such march and blitz but it might be worth it ...
 
Yeah it'll obviously be the same for the other chivalry civs like siam or, as puyo played, arabia. And yes Siam does gain extra culture too so it's even faster. Thing is with both of those civs is they play such a good peaceful game I rarely go down the warfare path with them. Have you ever tried actually attacking deity map civs with those elephants? I find they burn out against cities. I had 8 elephants on turn 80 recently, a veritable stampede, and got hardly anything done before they started dying.


Siam's got what it takes and then some ... The elephant dish just needs a few catapults sprinkled on top to enhance the flavour ...And the extra culture from wats and city state allies help getting the critical happiness policies earlier ...As a general remark most other non-mongolian civs need war machines to deal with cities..But math is already a prerequisite for chivalry and iron working is easy to grab after the chivalry pop ...


Spoiler :
 

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Yeah it'll obviously be the same for the other chivalry civs like siam or, as puyo played, arabia. And yes Siam does gain extra culture too so it's even faster. Thing is with both of those civs is they play such a good peaceful game I rarely go down the warfare path with them. Have you ever tried actually attacking deity map civs with those elephants? I find they burn out against cities. I had 8 elephants on turn 80 recently, a veritable stampede, and got hardly anything done before they started dying.

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. I mentioned in the op about building a temple in the second city sometimes. In that order I researched theology earlier to get a head start on h.sophia but this slows down the attack.

Even playing on Prince, I am only getting Knight replacements at turn 100 or so.
Even then, it is really hard to get the gold needed to ally the CS, buy a library, and upgrade 6 horsemen. Any suggestions on this?

Someone should consider making a LP for this strategy. Probably for Songhai.
 
...As a general remark most other non-mongolian civs need war machines to deal with cities..

]

Or crossbows, they do the job nicely early on until cannon and artillery can be phased in. Move + attack and no iron requirement make the crossbow a pretty attractive alternative to siege during the turn 100 - 150 part of the game.

Yeah, I've become a believer in siam's elephants now. Since I wrote that post I've played a couple of great games with siam, they're just a bit trickier to use due to the melee attack and slow speed, compared to say a camel or obv a keshik.
 
Even playing on Prince, I am only getting Knight replacements at turn 100 or so.
Even then, it is really hard to get the gold needed to ally the CS, buy a library, and upgrade 6 horsemen. Any suggestions on this?

Someone should consider making a LP for this strategy. Probably for Songhai.

I think w a i n y already did one.
 
Due to the nature of the difficulty levels, gold is less of an issue the higher the levels you play. The AI will happily buy luxuries for 240 gold, even if it has 30+ happiness. Money becomes an issue when the AI is broke, but that happens rarely on deity or immortal level.

So it can feel hard to get the money on prince, but it is relatively easy to get in higher difficulties.
 
Due to the nature of the difficulty levels, gold is less of an issue the higher the levels you play. The AI will happily buy luxuries for 240 gold, even if it has 30+ happiness. Money becomes an issue when the AI is broke, but that happens rarely on deity or immortal level.

So it can feel hard to get the money on prince, but it is relatively easy to get in higher difficulties.

Early game - yes - luxuries and strategic AI sales make for most of your gold income ...

Med-late game {past economics} - in domination games - most AI start to hate you // disappear // go broke // at war - luxury trade will only generate a fraction of your gold income - from this point on your own GA supercharged economy will provide most of the gold income (+ extra fun activities such as pillaging cities )...
 
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