Aksum: how to play and strategies

[awpioreubhnfgvv346260]

Let's talk a bit about Aksum, their design and how they will play in the game. I found the details in this reddit thread. Aksum's details are as follows:

• Families: || Champions || Traders || Patrons || Clerics ||
• unique bonus #1: Mint coin: Capital city Project that gives 1/2/3/4 money per population and +5/10/20/40 legitimacy
• unique bonus #2: When rulers die, you get to build a "Stele" monument, which gives various bonuses depending on which family seat they are in
• unique bonus #3: Elephants also provide the Ivory luxury when you build a camp on it
• starting techs: Trapping || Administration || Labor Force
• unique unit: infantry which can apply "disarm" effect on enemies that applies -10% combat strength on attack for 2 turns.
• Shrines: +2 Training, +10 XP / Unit +1 Train/LM, +20% Mines +20 Money, +20% Nets +2 Growth, +20% Pastures

Really nice to see another Champions civilisation added. These civs are practically guaranteed a smooth early game, with their initial militia and steadfast units making short work of barbarians and tribes. Development of the initial capital city is paramount, as the Mint Coin project sounds rather powerful indeed with generous legitimacy bonuses. Perhaps a Patrons start to capitalise on the culture/civics bonuses in order to speed through the project ASAP, donating the Literature resource to help your culture grow faster.

Elephants are a priority, and instantly exploitable thanks to starting with Trapping. Upgrading any nearby elephants, obtaining the Ivory resource (it reads as if no specialist is required?) and donating it to your city may be a good way to speed up its development and obtain more legitimacy. Shame the Riders family aren't available since Aksum's elephants are otherwise generic.

Little can be said about the Stele yet since we don't know the specific bonuses. I wonder if each family seat will just give one bonus, or if each seat will provide numerous choices.

 

[King Jason]

Aksum gets to enjoy the classic Patrons/Traders synergy that the Hittites were privy to for the last couple of years; the starting fair gets an additional bonus +4 culture to luxury resources sent, so you can send some literature to the traders seat to cruise it up in culture, but the added touch here is that Aksum will be able to pair that with Ivory as well for a whopping +12 culture to the traders seat if the landscape supports it. There's some minor synergy with the gold boost off of mint coin with the fair, too. Traders and Patrons capitals seem solid choices to ramp up that culture and benefit the most from the quick access to the coin.

The Unique Unit was recently revealed to have disarm buffed to a -20% strength penalty on hit. I think this will pair especially well with ranged and routing units, as the UU can move into to debuff targets, while the ranged units can pick them off. Given Aksum's ability to skip ironworking, I'd say a solid early composite push will work well here, and perhaps even a longbow rush: It just so happens that a bonus horsemen card is along the way to that. Additionally, as a Clerics nation, land consolidation is of particular value to the Aksumites provided the map supports it.

Between Clerics and a Labor Force start, the Aksumites will always been two laws away from their UU as an opener: with the output of champs and starting sling, I think this creates an honest possibility of skipping ironworking for the majority of the game unless you have heavy pasture terrain or are prone to relying on your council seats. Patrons and Clerics will make a powerful civics combo to help get these laws online as well. Pushing Aristocracy and then Navigation will fill out your 4.

Aksum has access to both fire and war shrines, so this further enhances the idea of a push up the center tech tree - A champs seat in the woods would have more than enough training to push out UUs, and once more this puts you on the path of land consolidation and ranged units.

The base dynasty starts with a judge as the wife; this gives you classic rush synergy with your traders seat for the immediate elder specialist when developed. Alternatively you can rush in your Clerics cap. Lots of potential options if you chose to pick a judge to start the game, in keeping with the easy access to your laws, and a champs seat for the training, spamming hold court and utilizing the upgrades for your garrisons could be used to great effect here.

The commander generals will be particularly intense in an aksumite army. The +20% adjacency bonus will ensure that any aksumite unit fielding commanders will be attacking into disarmed units at +40%. The impact this will have is that weaker units will go much much further. A 7 law rush strategy can often leave you fielding some weaker units, and the +40% combat bonus attacking into higher tiered units will certainly level the playing field. The UU is interesting in that it enhances the aksumite army signficantly, however on its own it's pretty vulnerable, since it's bonus is only active on units you hit, and for the most part; units you hit are units you're going to want to kill outright. This means from a defensive standpoint, the UU is basically just a regular melee 6/8 str unit most of the time. So you won't want to leave them vulnerable given the amount of utility they can provide non unique units.

Perhaps the most interesting mechanic the Aksumites have are the Stelae. Each Stele is not constructed, yet rewarded to the player upon the death of their ruler, and based on the cognomen of that ruler. Stele have a different effect with each family, and they have 3 different ranks depending on how high your cog is. The highest rank stele requires at least Magnificent. What this means for players is gaining a better understanding of how to acquire cogs and understaning the points system behind cognomens which is most likely ignored by many, will be advantageous to ensuring you get the best versions of the Stele. We know the champions seat Stele granted another +50% training to the city when the highest version was offered. We can likely assume based off of how certain urbans work that the lower rank versions are probably 20% and 30%. Traders is probably a gold boost. These seem incredibly strong, but are limited - it's generally not in a players best interest to have a large dynasty of several rulers, so odds are most players will see about 3-5 Stele in a given game and, if I were to guess, odds are only 1 or 2 Stele of the highest rank. At least on average. So maximizing the output of these unique buildings will require an interesting approach. War and conquest are often one of the quickest ways to rank up legitimacy, and with the champions family and a UU that buffs your entire army, I'd say the Aksumites are primed for conquest. Ensuring you're completing your ambitions in a timely manner is key as well, since ambition credit is often the most reliable way to get to a +80 cognomen and beyond on a single ruler.

 

[PiR]

Thanks for your comments!

The +5/10/20/40 legitimacy project seems very powerful, it may have to be buffed in the next patches. (EDIT: I mean nerfed)

What this means for players is gaining a better understanding of how to acquire cogs and understaning the points system behind cognomens which is most likely ignored by many

Is there a good source of information ingame on this topic?
From my pov the game clearly displays how you've got your current cognomen, but not what else you could reach and how.

 

[King Jason]

In terms of tracking progress the game is a bit light, and I suspect that's actually intentionally since I don't think cognomen farming was part of the initial concept of the system - however in terms of the raw information of what you need to do to get which cogs, it's all in the pedia if you type in "cognomen".

It's also in the manual. So I use that information and Rote memorization when aiming for cogs with rulers.

 

[awpioreubhnfgvv346260]

Thanks for your comments!

The +5/10/20/40 legitimacy project seems very powerful, it may have to be buffed in the next patches.



Is there a good source of information ingame on this topic?
From my pov the game clearly displays how you've got your current cognomen, but not what else you could reach and how.

Do you mean nerfed? It does sound rather powerful, especially when you consider how quickly Aksum seem to be able to develop their capital city.

 

[King Jason]

It's interesting because that mechanic does seem to favor a tall/culture rush dynamic.

If we consider Kush's pyramids as a different example: you get 4 legitimacy and a few civics from each of those buildings but it requires a heavy investment to set up.

An empire of 10 cities could see
+40 legitimacy from kush pyramids across their empire.

The Aksumites, on the other hand, can achieve the same scale of legitimacy boost by rushing to legendary in a single city and clogging up the build que of their most powerful city for a bunch of turns.

Both abilities are strong. But both abilities are very different. If we assume that it works like the rest of the projects, and the max legitimacy output is 40 (and the different projects don't stack, same as the other non-repeatables) then I think it's fine where it is.

A 40 legitimacy reward on a legendary city is pretty awesome - plus, when you combine with the way the Stele works... I think Mohawk has just, essentially, introduced the first "late game civ" - both in terms of theme; as the aksumite empire is the latest empire of the whole bunch alongside the Roman's... but also in it's mechanical benefit: the best perks of the empire only kick in when you're well into a game of Old World: mid-game at the earliest, essentially.

 

[PiR]

In terms of tracking progress the game is a bit light, and I suspect that's actually intentionally since I don't think cognomen farming was part of the initial concept of the system - however in terms of the raw information of what you need to do to get which cogs, it's all in the pedia if you type in "cognomen".

Thanks! I hadn't played in the last 2-3 years and only restarted recently. I think there wasn't that level of detail at the time. It's good to have the information clearly displayed and the cognomens sorted in a thematic order. As usual for OW, a lot of care given by the devs.

Do you mean nerfed?

Yes of course!

Although I must confess that I thought the project would be repeatable. Now I understand it probably will be a permanent project, like Forum/Treasury/Archive. So +40 legitimacy which is +4 orders is OK for a legendary city. By the time you get a legendary city this should represent an increase lower than 10% of your orders, not game-changing, but a nice bonus and reward for a legendary city.

 

[Verrucosus]

The cognomen are great for flavour. The one time I took a deeper look at the rules was when was confused why one my ruler didn't become "The Old" in spite of being really old. It turned out you need to get really old while doing nothing that earns you a higher cognomen in the meantime!

This week's patch notes mention a new game option: "New game option added: ‘Allow Negative Cognomens’. Disabled by default" I wonder whether it has anything to do with the Stele.