Playing Askia

dthompson32

dthompson32

Warlord
Joined
Feb 20, 2012
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197
Location
Florida
I'm trying to make my way through playing all of the Civs, since there are so many I've not played because they didn't "pique my interest".

Askia is one of those civs that I've ignored because I didn't see the advantage. Triple gold from barb camps? During the course of a game I'll clear maybe 3 or 4 of them, so that is maybe 200 gold total. Amphibious promotion? Seems kind of situational.

I've started an Immortal games with him, and it is going quite well, I've already knocked out and puppeted Byzantium. There doesn't seem to be any disadvantage to playing this civ. But is there an advantage that I'm not seeing? Some map type where they excel?
 
I've been of a similar mindset to you. I never really looked at Askia and wanted to play him. I just rolled him in a game randomly yesterday and I've actually been really enjoying it.

Getting 100 gold from taking barb camps is fantastic! I didn't think it would be, but it really helps purchase some extra tidbits for your empire. I started off expanding and put down 3 cities before getting DoW'd by 3 neighbors. I barely fought everyone off and lost a city in the process and I thought I might be doomed, but I stuck with it and have been loving the civ.

The extra gold from pillaging cities is huge. I got like 800 gold from sacking Atilla's capital. Almost 1k from taking Monty's capital. War canoes looked weak on paper, but having no penalty from attacking over rivers is awesome. The mud-mosque also doesn't strike me as the strongest unique, but I have been enjoying that as well. I grabbed the first policy in Piety, and took feed the world as one of my religious beliefs. My religion is spreading like absolute wildfire, and since puppet-governors seem to love to build unique buildings, every puppet city eventually builds one, for +2 food (from shrine also) and I'm generating absolutely ludicrous amounts of faith.

The embarked bonus is also a lot stronger than I anticipated. Monty had spawned across a large inland sea, and I ended up doing an early-medieval era amphibious landing.

Overall, I think he's incredibly solid for domination strategies, and I found myself to have been seriously underestimating his uniques and ability.
 
The Songhai special ability is tailored to water-heavy maps. It's not great but it will increase the number of your units that survive amphibious invasions.

You also want to knock out as many barb camps as early as possible, because the gold bonus, while very useful in the early game, it quickly becomes negligible.

All in all imo the Songhai UA is pretty meh; it's their UU and UB that make them worth playing.
 
iirc the pillage bonus also applies to pillaged tiles
 
Askia received an advantage and disadvantage in G&K. The advantage is that, as the above posters have said, when they found a religion, it does exceptionally well. In my current game, there are six religions and Askia's has about five times more cities than the second placed one.

The disadvantage is that the Amphibious promotion is practically useless now. It is much easier to invade navally than to use embarked units, even if you're Askia, because a naval attack basically renders all your enemy's melee units useless for the duration of the assault. Amphibious invasions, on the other hand, leave you with a slightly damaged force at the mercy of any defenders your enemy decided to leave there.
 
dthompson32 said:
I'm trying to make my way through playing all of the Civs, since there are so many I've not played because they didn't "pique my interest".

Askia is one of those civs that I've ignored because I didn't see the advantage. Triple gold from barb camps? During the course of a game I'll clear maybe 3 or 4 of them, so that is maybe 200 gold total. Amphibious promotion? Seems kind of situational.

I've started an Immortal games with him, and it is going quite well, I've already knocked out and puppeted Byzantium. There doesn't seem to be any disadvantage to playing this civ. But is there an advantage that I'm not seeing? Some map type where they excel?
Click to expand...

He can be fun to rush with, at emperor at least :)
 
Nothing special, nothing awful. Just a very "meh" civ. Then again, most are.

I've been playing Askia in the last three or four of my "ant farm" sessions on continent maps. I'm basically setting myself up not to win, since I'm not staying small enough to do culture, and it's unlikely I can win on domination or science when there's always someone running amok unchecked on another continent. Anyway, here's what I have to say about Songhai.

If you ever hear yourself saying something like "what's 200 gold over the course of a game? Nothing!", you should stop yourself. It doesn't matter what it's worth over the course of a game. It matters what it's worth within the context that you're getting it. 200 gold is significant in the ancient era. The 75 (not 100) gold from clearing encampments helps you afford an early settler. Kill those encampments before your neighbors do.

The extra gold from capturing cities can be huge...or rubbish. I've gotten over 2000 on one city, and 42 on the next.

The knights are a waste. They have no special ability, they just lose the unnecessary nerf that was applied to mounted units post-launch. Smashing mounted units into a city isn't the way to capture it. Pelting it with flaming crossbow bolts is. Promote the knights to cavalry and they gain the nerf right back.

The mosque is +2 culture and no maintenance. Nothing really to talk about. It's just one of those buildings that does something extra. Can't complain about it, but can't rave either. Since it's free, build it.

I've tried numerous times to milk Just War, but inevitably someone else with a religion spreads it faster, mainly because they have an enhancer that actually enhances. I haven't been too lucky with my starting positions though. No major faith sources.

EDIT--Oh, forgot about the amphibious war canoe crap. Basically, you can send embarked units unescorted without being utterly at the mercy of whatever you run into. A barbarian galleon won't wipe out your rifleman. I do like that you can ignore the penalty for attacking across a river. Overall, I prefer the vikins in this area, because they stress speed over safety.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. I happen to be on a flat fractals map with a lot of horses, so I will play it out and see how he does overall.
 
Songhai was what I was going to try next. If the pillaged tiles are 3x too, now there is something to talk about.
 
The best thing about the Songhai is that you can conquer the world with a civ that nobody's heard of until they ask about it post-CiV.
 
dthompson32 said:
I'm trying to make my way through playing all of the Civs, since there are so many I've not played because they didn't "pique my interest".

Askia is one of those civs that I've ignored because I didn't see the advantage. Triple gold from barb camps? During the course of a game I'll clear maybe 3 or 4 of them, so that is maybe 200 gold total. Amphibious promotion? Seems kind of situational.

I've started an Immortal games with him, and it is going quite well, I've already knocked out and puppeted Byzantium. There doesn't seem to be any disadvantage to playing this civ. But is there an advantage that I'm not seeing? Some map type where they excel?
Click to expand...

Most civs in Civ V don't have disadvantages; it's normally generic civ plus an advantage.
The one UA exception is India. (Early game the UA is worse than having no UA at all.)
The one UU exception is the Korean Turleship. I'd rather have a Caravel.
(The other UUs are at least as good as the units they replace and all UBs are at least as good as the buildings they replace)

There are various situations which cause civs UA to have no impact at all, while others are powerful.

Basically the main advantage this civ has is extra gold taking cities. Its also very suitable for barb camp farming. (On purpose leaving a large fog of war; waiting for the camp to form, then taking it; then creating fog of war again)

The naval aspect helps the AI when its playing; chances are a human isn't going to have embarked units attacked by AI naval ships.
 
I have never had any luck playing as Askia. I always tend to get bogged down with no gold, or cities that can't generate production.

Time I had another go I think....
 
The moment they added Spain into the game Songhai became obsolete. Mandekalu barely qualifies as a Unique Unit vs other civs Ranged Knights or Spains Mandekalu+++ unique unit.
 
Songhai and Ottomans are two civs I've tried to get a grasp with but I've never used to much strength. I think it was mostly my lack of combat skills in vanilla and since GnK came out I just havent given either of them much thought. There's still about 10 civs I just dont play. I might never get the 'win a game with all the civs' achievement purely out of other civs remaining so interesting.

I tried with songhai at immortal for that no ranged challenge but that was only because id heard so much about the Janissary. I never got deep enough in a game to play with Jani's but maybe one day ...
 
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