wurstburst
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 301
Just playing my first game as Askia (emperor, pangea). I held off playing him because I wasn't impressed on first looking at him, and I haven't seen a lot here touting his power. But, I really have been pretty impressed with his usability, certainly for certain play styles.
By way of background, my typical play style is to horse rush, build 2 cities and puppet anything I capture. I hold off on using any SP until I get to rationalism. Use up 4 SP there to get a science boost and with a couple of GS, pop almost immediately to industrial era. Once in industrial, I aim to be in a position to grab the 4 order policies down to communism. Which means I need to have enough culture for 8 SP by the time I get to industrial (turn 180 or so if I do it right).
Askia is one of the better civs for this style. His UA gives plenty of early gold to buy units, CS and/or libraries (to get to those GS - with only two cities, need the libraries built asap so they're not clogging up the unit queue). The puppets love to build the UB (mud pyramid mosque) and with +5 culture and no maintainance, you can be churning out as much culture as France (assuming same cities and buildings), with less gold maintenance cost. Sure, you don't get as much early culture, but this is a nice tradeoff for mid-game efficiency. Finally, his UU is a great followup to early horse rush. Change all those early horses to Mandekalu Cavalry and you have a city crashing powerhouse. Instead of having to divert to the lower half of the tech tree to keep conquering, you can stick with the horse units until you beeline industrial in the quicker upper half.
In my recent game, I got to industrial around turn 185 (a few turns later than I do at my best), and had enough culture for 9 policies. So, I was able to take the 4 rationalism policies I needed to get the two free techs, take the 4 in order to get the mega production boost from communism and I still had enough left for one more SP (took Freedom). Still churning out lots of culture, so I expect to continue to get lots more SP as the game progresses.
I actually think Askia may be better than France for culture wins, especially since their culture boost doesn't disappear at Steam. +2 culture/city for the last 100 turns when you have 20+ cities is better than +2 culture/city for the first 100 turns when you only have a handful of cities.
Just my impression.
By way of background, my typical play style is to horse rush, build 2 cities and puppet anything I capture. I hold off on using any SP until I get to rationalism. Use up 4 SP there to get a science boost and with a couple of GS, pop almost immediately to industrial era. Once in industrial, I aim to be in a position to grab the 4 order policies down to communism. Which means I need to have enough culture for 8 SP by the time I get to industrial (turn 180 or so if I do it right).
Askia is one of the better civs for this style. His UA gives plenty of early gold to buy units, CS and/or libraries (to get to those GS - with only two cities, need the libraries built asap so they're not clogging up the unit queue). The puppets love to build the UB (mud pyramid mosque) and with +5 culture and no maintainance, you can be churning out as much culture as France (assuming same cities and buildings), with less gold maintenance cost. Sure, you don't get as much early culture, but this is a nice tradeoff for mid-game efficiency. Finally, his UU is a great followup to early horse rush. Change all those early horses to Mandekalu Cavalry and you have a city crashing powerhouse. Instead of having to divert to the lower half of the tech tree to keep conquering, you can stick with the horse units until you beeline industrial in the quicker upper half.
In my recent game, I got to industrial around turn 185 (a few turns later than I do at my best), and had enough culture for 9 policies. So, I was able to take the 4 rationalism policies I needed to get the two free techs, take the 4 in order to get the mega production boost from communism and I still had enough left for one more SP (took Freedom). Still churning out lots of culture, so I expect to continue to get lots more SP as the game progresses.
I actually think Askia may be better than France for culture wins, especially since their culture boost doesn't disappear at Steam. +2 culture/city for the last 100 turns when you have 20+ cities is better than +2 culture/city for the first 100 turns when you only have a handful of cities.
Just my impression.
The quick buildings mean you're soon mounting up the culture points (if that's what you're going for) just as fast as the French and yet you have the flexibility to swap to another bias if you want.
and no maintenance cost and replaces the Temple which is only 3 
. This is unlocked with Philosophy, which can easily be completed around turn 60 even if you beeline Construction first. Even sooner if you beeline it first. So compared to Napoleon's +2 culture per city, you really only lose about 30-60 turns of the bonus in 1-4 cities depending on how you beeline the early techs and how fast you can get your settlers out. So that's about 60-480 culture. The 480 would only be possible if you started the game with 4 settlers, so it's probably closer to a max of 240 culture in 60 turns.
