Askia

[ridjack]

Is it that you don’t believe in nerfs to the UU, or you believe that additional nerfs are required as well

I don't think the UU is the problem. It might be able to use some nerfs, but I would be very surprised if said nerfs had any effect on his overwhelming performance. I think the UA is most likely to be at the core of it, but I also feel like his kit as a whole is probably worth taking a critical look at.

EDIT: It might be more accurate to say that I don't have any strong feelings on the Mandekalu Cavalry one way or the other. They felt very strong when I last played with the civ (which was quite awhile ago, now), but going up against him I don't even notice them.

 

[azum4roll]

Emphatically disagree. I'm using Pdan's tweaks mods, which moves Mandekalu from horseman to knight, and Songhai is still bursting out of the gates in the ancient and classical. By the time his cavalry come online, they're just solidifying his already-dominant position. Additionally, Songhai's offensive capabilities are not the only problem; trying to attack him is extremely difficult, sometimes nigh-impossible depending on the map.

Having played with Songhai in the past, I can also say he's even more ridiculous in human hands. The embarked damage makes coastal cities impossible to defend when Songhai is attacking; you just stack his Mandekalu under ships with as many "don't die" promotions as you can get and absolutely destroy coastal cites.

On top of all of this, his economy is literally never in danger. The city connections make sure he always has gold, isolation doesn't exist and you can't even pillage the city connection to try and slow him down.

Songhai is insane. I don't think light nerfs to his UU are going to do the job.

EDIT: To emphasize how dire I feel Songai's situation is, I never disable civs, no matter how overtuned I think they are. The only other times I've disabled civs in VP is Venice before his changes, when he was basically just gifting free land to whoever spawned nearby, and civs that had game-breaking bugs associated with them.

It sounds like it's the combination of Amphibious and no city attack penalty on a high CS unit that's causing the problem. Mounted units can't normally get Amphibious after all. Maybe we remove Amphibious and give them a new promotion that only removes penalty across rivers?

I like the uniqueness of city connection by river, so let's not remove that.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I agree the embarked side is kind of a lot, they can feel more vikings than the danes with the river movement... but intuitively I would think the UB is the snowbaliest side of the kit, so much production so early. The number of rivers that a map script generates has its effect in that regard too.

I think songhai is definitely one of the candidates for a peak period shift towards medieval era. I know people don't want "late" civs to feel generic until they unlock their things, but here the river crossing makes them feel unique enough from the very beginning without needing to be so much front loaded with the UB and UU. If people are not fond of moving back mandelaku to knight (there are indeed plenty of knights replacements and no other horseman), I would definitely move the UB to medieval or at least late classical (maybe back to mud pyramid), or otherwise make the bonus less front-loaded, with % buffs (e.g. to city gold) instead of raw buffs to tiles.

 

[azum4roll]

I agree the embarked side is kind of a lot, they can feel more vikings than the danes with the river movement... but intuitively I would think the UB is the snowbaliest side of the kit, so much production so early. The number of rivers that a map script generates has its effect in that regard too.

We can always change it to 1 per 2 river tiles worked.

 

[Bruhmoment]

Let me Askia a question: How many nerfs should Songhai get?

 

[ridjack]

My personal feeling would be to nerf or axe the river movement first and then see how he does. I honestly think the Mandekalu Cavalry are fine, at worst needing some light nerfs after the main problem is found and addressed.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Songhai is insane, if he gets the right land. It depends a lot on map types. I am mostly playing Milae's map recently. It does have a lot of rivers. BUT the river are often short and don't connect 2 AIs with each other. On this map, I feel Songhai's power is much less consistent. If he does not have a river connection to another AI, I have seen him stall out quite often.

On this map, Zulus snowball much more consistently IMO.

Besides, I don't mind to have some AIs that can snowball consistently. It allows for more challenging games if players want to include them.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[ridjack]

Songhai is insane, if he gets the right land. It depends a lot on map types. I am mostly playing Milae's map recently. It does have a lot of rivers. BUT the river are often short and don't connect 2 AIs with each other. On this map, I feel Songhai's power is much less consistent. If he does not have a river connection to another AI, I have seen him stall out quite often.

On this map, Zulus snowball much more consistently IMO.

Besides, I don't mind to have some AIs that can snowball consistently. It allows for more challenging games if players want to include them.

Just my 2 cents.

There's a poll up right now, in the main forum, asking who the toughest AI is to come up against. Songhai is not only leading the poll, he's leading by more than twice as many votes as any other civ. 71% of people who voted picked Songhai as one of their toughest AI civs to go up against.

It's consistent.

 

[chicorbeef]

I think changing the Mandekalu to a Knight Replacement is fine, after all that's what it was in the base game, and Songhai were a medieval empire.

 

[andersw]

UB is good but probably fine.
Mandelkalu are strong but they still require horses.
Extra gold from camps is useful but not extreme.
Free city connections on rivers is strong but not as good as ex Carthage, its very dependent on land/layout.
However.....
Movement is a strong ability and often costly in upgrades.
ALL Songhai units move ... not one move extra, but DOUBLE MOVE with ALL UNITS including civilians and siege on rivers.
This is the excessive part and this alone would be a great UA on river heavy maps for a warmonger.
This is likely also what they other AIs cant handle from a strategic point and allow them to get overrun so fast when Songhai snowballl gets rolling.

 

[azum4roll]

I think it's consistent that rivers are being treated as "roads" in both city connection and movement (just 1.5x speed and ignore terrain, not double). Iroquois has the same set but with trees.

Songhai civilians don't get Amphibious so they do have to end their turn when crossing rivers.

 

[DeAnno]

It's the Amphibious stacked onto the roads that really makes it insane in the earlygame. You get to the point where it doesn't matter for movement once you get Engineering, but that is a little ways after the common Mandaleku pushes. Also the Amphibous promo obviously enables the embark attack shenanigans and means they don't even have to worry about river attack penalties.

Maybe they could keep the movement/road general ability and just lose the promo? Units that cared about it could still take it but it wouldn't be like a free extra promo doing tons of incidental work, and it would keep it off their UU.

 

[Grassland Farm]

Forwarding Anon's opinion as he doesn't have a civfanatics account:

 

[InkAxis]

It's the Amphibious stacked onto the roads that really makes it insane in the earlygame

Maybe the UA movement bonus shouldn't stack with roads?

Forwarding Anon's opinion as he doesn't have a civfanatics account:

Yeah several people have brought up the Tabya. I think we could start there as it's a simple nerf.

 

[azum4roll]

Didn't notice that Tabya gives a different yield bonus for Salt (1 1 instead of 2 ) for some reason. That part and the +10% building production can be removed.

 

[pineappledan]

If nothing else, the Songhai UA description could at least be honest about what it does.

the UA gives Songhai road movement when moving along rivers, but says it ignores terrain costs when adjacent to river tiles.

in other words, the Songhai UA *Says* it treats rivers like the Inca UA treats hills: every tile costs 1 point.
What it *Actually* does is give movement when moving beside a river — but not across it — as if the river tiles were a road. It then costs 1 full movement to cross, because of the free amphibious promotion. This works like the Iroquois, who treat forests as roads, but Only inside their own borders, while the Songhai road movement works Everywhere, including inside enemy borders.

so barring any other change, the UA could accurately describe its own function, and it wouldn’t make their OP-ness more baffling than it needs to be.

If the UA actually did ignore terrain costs along rivers, so everything cost 1 movement like the Inca, I think that would be a lot more balanced. That probably interferes with how the free city connections work, but it would be more consistent, comprehensible, and fair if it could be done like that.

 

[Gizmoman]

If the UA actually did ignore terrain soars along rivers, so everything cost 1 movement like the Inca, I think that would be a lot more balanced. That probably interferes with how the free city connections work, but it would be more consistent, comprehensible, and fair if it could be done like that.

Actually, pretty sure those abilities have nothing to do with eachother, and I think the songhai only treats river tiles as roads when they're within their borders, otherwise it just makes movement into river tiles cost 1. The weirdness occurs when you combine the ability to cost 1 to move into any river tile with amphibious, which makes crossing rivers cost less as well, think that ends up with the movement cost to cross a river being 0.5 or 0.7


As far as the rest of you guys goes, aren't you blowing this way out of proportions? Like yeah individual Songhai unique components are fairly strong, but they're in no way the strongest. Yeah AI askia tend to steamroll other AI that settles cities on rivers, but the iroquois steamrolls anyone that starts in forest/jungle the exact same way. The Manducav is strong, but is it stronger than the cataphract? Not really. It is stronger the the conqusitador, but honestly the conquistador is pretty garbage as far as UUs go.
The Tabya is a solid UB, but that's also the only economic boost that the civlization has. If you gut it, can it compare to the Hun UI or the Ger or the Floating garden?

Songhai comes online early and can use that to expand and conquer, but then that's it. They don't have anywhere near as big a bonus from warring as other domination civs, and they don't have nearly as good an economic boost as civs with a mid-game UB.

 

[DeAnno]

This works like the Iroquois, who treat forests as roads, but Only inside their own borders, while the Songhai road movement works Everywhere, including inside enemy borders.

This isn't true. The Iroquois and Songhai abilities work identically now, except that it's Forest/Jungle instead of rivers. Also once you get Engineering I'm pretty sure the Songhai start treating all river crossings as roads as well.

 

[stii]

It is also worse than that in regards to the ability not doing what it says. Because it also applies to siege units countering the movement penalty inside enemies borders. The AI tends to over build siege units so having them be able to move and shoot it huge

 

[pineappledan]

Below, you can see road movement (0.83 moves) along a river inside Songhai borders and 1 full movement consumed (before bridges) when crossing a river.
You can also see the same 0.83 movement consumed when the warrior moves OUTSIDE songhai territory.

Spoiler songhai movement :

Yes, Songhai river roads negates enemy territory half movement. In ancient, you can move up to 3 times in foreign territory

Spoiler songhai Siege movement :

I was mistaken in my previous statement. Iroquois have road movement in forests too, regardless of if it's inside or outside their borders.

Spoiler Iroquois movement :

As others have said, movement along roads is boosted to cross rivers at Engineering, and movement on roads is boosted at Machinery, so Songhai's river movement gets more efficient at those techs as well.

Actually, pretty sure those abilities have nothing to do with eachother,

True:

Spoiler SQL :

and I think the songhai only treats river tiles as roads when they're within their borders

False (see above)

This is what I'm talking about, no one really knows what this UA does because A) it's sort of difficult to isolate in-game exactly how strong the movement options are and B) The UA just straight up lies to you, and actively misrepresents what it does. It's not just imprecise, the UA description is Actively Deceitful. It does not ignore terrain costs adjacent to rivers, like the Inca.

Furthermore, if the UA actually was like the Incan one, and did what it said it did, it would be more balanced and easier to understand.