rjg85
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2010
- Messages
- 68
A lot of it depends on what size/type of empire you intend to build. France and China are the best for ICS and rapid expansion and Greece are awesome for conquest and CS bonuses.
If however you are going for a cultural victory or want to micromanage a small number of powerhouse cities then in my opinion Songhai is hands down the best choice. Make sure you have barbs on (maybe even raging barbs like I do) and adopt the first Honor policy asap: every cleared camp nets you 225 gold instead of 75. You have no idea how much this fuels development.
I played a One City Challenge with Songhai on a huge Earth map (King difficulty) and because of the barb gold was I able to buy every beneficial building as soon as they became available, pocket loads of city states, fund a large army for defence, and allow for the building of every single wonder from the classical age onwards in my one city. My city borders grew ridiculously quickly to the point where they capped at 5 tiles out from the city round about the Renaissance (disappointingly), but I extended them with great artists. It amused me that my one city was about as big as Australia.
In terms of unique stuff Songhai has a mosque that provides +5 culture with no maintenance (awesome in any game strategy) and a knight with a 30% city attack bonus (brutal).
By the time I reached Industrial era I had just conquered (razed) 30+ French cities with the largest in-game army. I was also the tech leader and population leader (yes that's right! one city yet the largest empire pop) in demographics. My deficit was something like -30 gold per turn but the overall total kept going up due to money from pillaging French cities and routine barb hunts (helped by the AI spamming of roads across the continent, which was now deserted after my systematic city-razing of AI's who dared declare war on me - ie all of them).
Songhai has over-powered gold bonuses in the extreme if you ask me, just depends on whether your play type fits their advantages. If you love the idea of having a massively developed powerhouse small empire rather than the generic Infinite City Sprawl empire that has all trading posts and no personality then there is no better choice than Songhai, so long as you religiously barb hunt.
If however you are going for a cultural victory or want to micromanage a small number of powerhouse cities then in my opinion Songhai is hands down the best choice. Make sure you have barbs on (maybe even raging barbs like I do) and adopt the first Honor policy asap: every cleared camp nets you 225 gold instead of 75. You have no idea how much this fuels development.
I played a One City Challenge with Songhai on a huge Earth map (King difficulty) and because of the barb gold was I able to buy every beneficial building as soon as they became available, pocket loads of city states, fund a large army for defence, and allow for the building of every single wonder from the classical age onwards in my one city. My city borders grew ridiculously quickly to the point where they capped at 5 tiles out from the city round about the Renaissance (disappointingly), but I extended them with great artists. It amused me that my one city was about as big as Australia.
In terms of unique stuff Songhai has a mosque that provides +5 culture with no maintenance (awesome in any game strategy) and a knight with a 30% city attack bonus (brutal).
By the time I reached Industrial era I had just conquered (razed) 30+ French cities with the largest in-game army. I was also the tech leader and population leader (yes that's right! one city yet the largest empire pop) in demographics. My deficit was something like -30 gold per turn but the overall total kept going up due to money from pillaging French cities and routine barb hunts (helped by the AI spamming of roads across the continent, which was now deserted after my systematic city-razing of AI's who dared declare war on me - ie all of them).
Songhai has over-powered gold bonuses in the extreme if you ask me, just depends on whether your play type fits their advantages. If you love the idea of having a massively developed powerhouse small empire rather than the generic Infinite City Sprawl empire that has all trading posts and no personality then there is no better choice than Songhai, so long as you religiously barb hunt.