Any Songhai fans yet?

[SomethingWitty]

Haven't played a full game myself with Songhai yet, but they seem interesting. I've been playing France, I love the +2 culture per city before Steam Power. But I was last playing on an archipelago map, and lost a lot of embarked units to barbarian ships.

I was thinking the Songhai unique ability would be able to deal with that. They should be particularly good on archipelago maps. But then I noticed that with the extra culture from the mud pyramid mosques, you're basically adding France's unique ability to any city that builds them. It would come a little later in the game, that extra culture's huge in the early game, but it wouldn't time out like France's does.

Don't know about the Mandelkalu (sp?) cavalry. With that, plus catapults, you should be pretty good at taking cities without needing any resources.

 

[Wulf38]

Songhai are my favorite so far. You get just ridiculous amounts of gold from pillaging cities and encampments. The UU steamrolls cities on its own, no need for catapults. The UB is a maintenance-free 5 culture building, which is nice.

 

[punctuator]

I found the water-based bonuses to be meh (even on an archipelago map), but agree that the extra gold from pillaging is amazing! On the map I played, there were lots of unsettled islands all game long where barbarians kept popping up, and I could go destroy them for >100 gold per encampment. Every time, another spawned soon after. I had one or two units just chasing them around the map (definitely get honor bonus so you know where they are).

The culture buildings are also nice. But it's the gold from encampments (and cities, although I didn't do a whole lot of city pillaging) that really makes Songhai strong IMO.

 

[MAntoninus]

Songhai = a Pangea steam roller...playing them early game is an absolute blast, as you can build out your cities very very quickly with looted gold.

I got them (random) on a small Duel Map against Japan it turned out, and I had four cities to his one in no time and blew him off the map.

The Ottomans are the same on Archipelago maps with the Barbary Pirate effect, which almost gets annoying, you just have so many Galleys and Triremes.

 

[better days]

Semi-cheap gameplay tactic, but make sure you leave your units in your territory, so they dont go fog-busting and barbs can spawn. Free gold!

 

[ReusableGore]

Not impressed with the Embarkation ability, but the massive amounts of gold is great. I financed my early empire entirely with Barbarian camps. Once I started waging war I always had more gold than I could spend.

 

[StoneColdNuts]

I just finished up a game yesterday with them, and I was very impressed. I spawned on a continent with 5 of the other 7 civs. It was a cake walk on King level.

I started off with AH, and found 4 horses in my capital (two immediately available), and two between me and China. I picked up Honor, and killed Barb Encampments to get a bunch of money. I was able to settle the horses, beeline Horses, and buy two Horsemen with my plundering money. I built one more in each city, and took out Beijing easily with my Great General.

I hooked up two more horses, bought another Horseman with the money I got from Beijing, and built the sixth. I took out Ramsees with six horsemen. I killed a City State to give me six cities. I teched out peacefully to Chivalry (signing Research Agreements with the other three civs with my gold from Egypt). Once I got there, I upgraded all six horsemen at half-price (thanks to Professional Army SP) to the UU Mandekalu (sp?) Cavalry. Those things are insane. I took out Ghandi's two cities, which had six more horses easily. I built four more, and took out the other two civs by about 1100 AD.

That gave me most of the happiness resources, so I was able to eventually Annex all of the cities. I teched the bottom of the tree, met Washington, who had killed Alex on the other continent. I teched out to Military Science, scouted his continent (to find his cap), then launched about 16 Cavalry. (only defended with two frigates do to River Warlord!) Killed his cap easily in three turns, giving me the win in 1770.


I think he is incredible using the Honor SPs, since you get lots of gold and half-cost upgrades. The Horseman - Mandekalu - Cavalry line seems amazing. You'll have a profitable war in every era, and plenty of gold to make the upgrades.

 

[Louis XXIV]

What does the Embarkation bonus mean? The thing says strength 500 and I know I had a Barb Galley that couldn't harm them. But my modern units got crushed by a Destroyer, so it doesn't seem to scale up over time. I haven't been attacked at sea with other civs, so I can't compare.

 

[qyll]

I'm a fan of Songhai. Take honor early and go pillaging barb encampments. Rush buy more units and start pillaging cities. Avalanche the entire continent.

 

[Grotius]

I had my first win (on Prince) as Songhai, and I was surprised how much fun it was. I'm a builder, not a warmonger, but I roll up random games to make myself play civs I might not otherwise choose. And so I got Songhai! I did some early-game warmongering, but then I turned to the diplomatic round, and eventually I won a diplomatic victory (in 2012).

 

[pi-r8]

The embarkation ability seems like it might be bugged. However, I love the massive pillage gold they get- they're my favorite right now.

 

[Martin Alvito]

It's a shame that they scale so poorly to higher levels. Few barbs spawn on Deity because the map gets unit spammed quickly. The AI also cheats and aggressively barb hunts using its knowledge of where they are. Unless you block off a peninsula and farm it, you won't see many encampments after turn 20.

Early conquest isn't feasible, either. The AIs huge cities have huge combat ratings, and eat Ancient and Classical units. They also are heavily defended and pump out reinforcements at an obscene rate. You can take its fringe cities early, but you have to tech up to capture the pillage bonanzas.

 

[pi-r8]

It's a shame that they scale so poorly to higher levels. Few barbs spawn on Deity because the map gets unit spammed quickly. The AI also cheats and aggressively barb hunts using its knowledge of where they are. Unless you block off a peninsula and farm it, you won't see many encampments after turn 20.

Early conquest isn't feasible, either. The AIs huge cities have huge combat ratings, and eat Ancient and Classical units. They also are heavily defended and pump out reinforcements at an obscene rate. You can take its fringe cities early, but you have to tech up to capture the pillage bonanzas.

what are you talking about? The easiest way to beat diety is to rush them with horsemen. The more cities they have, the more gold you get from conquering them.

 

[CornPlanter]

Well I never fall in love with any game's factions which are just very strong or even overpowered. If I feel like steamrolling everything I can always set up myself a Chieftain level game. What I really like is factions that are interesting to play. "Doesn't require any thinking, strategy or skill" is not my idea of interesting, when it comes to strategy games.

Never tried Songhai yet, will do at some point. I hope they are not as OP as many ppl here claim.

So far I finished the game only with Aztecs and France (not to mention a couple of random games below King just to learn the basic concepts). I really like Aztecs, tying culture to war (or rather killing units) is an interesting concept. Not OP, but does help in terms of efficiency.

 

[alpaca]

The Songhai are pretty strong but also very lame in my opinion. Basically, you want to keep waging war against anyone you find to make use of your ability, which is asinine in my book (similar to the German UA that strongly incentivises you to go on an early rush).

Start by building a warrior and find some barb encampments to boost your gold production (75 gold for each encampment on the higher difficulty settings), pour it into buying horsemen and steamroll the AI by razing their cities and keeping only the capital. This will net you awesome amounts of gold you can buy even more horsemen with or occasionally bribe a city state/buy a happy building/buy a mud pyramid. Policy-wise all you need is Military Tradition that will make your units awesome² and then go for Chivalry to get the Mandekalu Cav, which is, did you guess it?, awesome for razing cities. After that, you'll have at least your whole continent for yourself and enough tech, production and infrastructure to leave your competitors way behind or conquer them.

The Mud Pyramid is in my opinion one of the strongest unique buildings, possibly even better than the Burial Tomb (which doesn't have specialist slots iirc), yielding +5 culture for no maintenance and without requiring a monument. So maybe the more interesting way to play Songhai would be to ignore their UA except for barb camps and play for a culture victory.

 

[Martin Alvito]

what are you talking about? The easiest way to beat diety is to rush them with horsemen. The more cities they have, the more gold you get from conquering them.

If that's your plan, the bonus will help you cope with replacing the casualties you will certainly take. But I don't see why you wouldn't run Alex for a better version of the same strategy. The extra movement point on CC makes them effectively unkillable by the AI, Hoplites are amazing at defending Ancient rushes, and your empire will get started faster if you exploit AIs for cash and aggressively buy Maritime allies.

What you propose will eventually work, but is not optimal.

 

[duxup]

The Songhai was the Civ I got in my first game after I hit play now. I was quite happy with them.

 

[pi-r8]

If that's your plan, the bonus will help you cope with replacing the casualties you will certainly take. But I don't see why you wouldn't run Alex for a better version of the same strategy. The extra movement point on CC makes them effectively unkillable by the AI, Hoplites are amazing at defending Ancient rushes, and your empire will get started faster if you exploit AIs for cash and aggressively buy Maritime allies.

What you propose will eventually work, but is not optimal.

Alex is just ridiculous. Playing with him feels like I'm cheating.

 

[Zhahz]

I consider Songhai one of the most powerful civs in the game, particularly if you're gonna be aggressive.

Best UB in the game (IMO), their trait is strong during the entire game, and their UB is a nicely powerful city puncher that arrives at a time when you'd most likely be on a conquest rampage.

 

[Senethro]

Its clear that this game is going to be based around gimmicky slingshots. Can anyone think of good ones for the Songhai? Barbarian farming can give a good gold income for fast building (library for Scientist specialists) or for paying off city states. Mosques give a lot of flexibility for picking up a few midgame social policies. What would good targets be? Chivalry for Mandekalu cav? Steel for longswords?