futurehermit
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2006
- Messages
- 5,724
I played an immortal game last night as Songhai testing out my hunch that they have massive synergy with the honor tree. I just wanted to report that it went really, really well.
Synergies:
-The first honor SP gives you bonus vs. barbs and identifies barb camps--great synergy with UA.
-With all the extra cash floating around early, I just started by building warriors and a straight beeline to IW. I timed my 1st settler with the arrival of IW and settled on a 6 iron patch (was a bit out of the way, delaying things a bit, but still effective). Used the extra cash on upgrading the warriors to swords.
-Rushed Alex, who had a lot of iron, giving me all the iron I would ever need. Also, sacking his cities gave extra gold meaning I could upgrade more cheap hammer warriors to swords.
-Once Alex was turned into a puppet, I was churning out good science, gold, and culture. By that time I had 2 GGs (one from the 2nd SP and one from killing). They would help immensely in my next war against the lone remaining--difficult--AI on my continent: Persia. They were large and had a lot of military. I also had the 3rd SP for 2x xp at this point, which was great for getting some highly-promoted units, but also a fair number of timely insta-heals.
-I teched through metal casting while assigning scientists in my capital. Once the GS popped, I used it on Steel and started upgrading to longswords. I had 5-6 longswords when I first started attacking Persia. I also had the 4th SP which gave a bonus to units with units in adjacent tiles. I tried to maximize that bonus with the GG bonus and flanking wherever possible. I killed a lot of units while making progress sacking his core cities (his capital was distant though still). Meanwhile, he was starting to sack former Alex cities. I thought things would go bad for me, after he sacked all the way to Athens, but eventually I was able to come along behind him and retake those cities after killing a LOT of units.
-Eventually as I was making progress in this long war, I hit the final SP, giving cheap upgrade costs. This was great as I had a number of highly promoted units, but also another excellent point of synergy: As I was taking Persian cities, my bank account was growing at a rapid rate. That meant that I could build the cheaper swords and then upgrade them cheaply to longswords. Given that I had a near-infinite (for practical purposes) supply of iron (like 30+ spare), I kept using this tactic and soon had a huge army of longswordsmen.
-The UB was awesome for keeping my culture output rolling along to get all those SPs, as the puppet cities liked to build them and I built them in my two cities as well. Didn't get as much use out of the UU, but it is awesome in the right situations as well.
-When I was wrapping up, I had secularism to keep my tech rolling along and was next planning on going for militarism for added synergy to the produce/purchase-then-upgrade-for-cheap approach.
Overall, despite having a powerful opponent in Persia, I was really impressed with the combination of Songhai and the honor tree. Lots of synergies and if things break right for you, you can end up with a huge, powerful army. Would be fantastic on pangaea (I was playing continents).
Synergies:
-The first honor SP gives you bonus vs. barbs and identifies barb camps--great synergy with UA.
-With all the extra cash floating around early, I just started by building warriors and a straight beeline to IW. I timed my 1st settler with the arrival of IW and settled on a 6 iron patch (was a bit out of the way, delaying things a bit, but still effective). Used the extra cash on upgrading the warriors to swords.
-Rushed Alex, who had a lot of iron, giving me all the iron I would ever need. Also, sacking his cities gave extra gold meaning I could upgrade more cheap hammer warriors to swords.
-Once Alex was turned into a puppet, I was churning out good science, gold, and culture. By that time I had 2 GGs (one from the 2nd SP and one from killing). They would help immensely in my next war against the lone remaining--difficult--AI on my continent: Persia. They were large and had a lot of military. I also had the 3rd SP for 2x xp at this point, which was great for getting some highly-promoted units, but also a fair number of timely insta-heals.
-I teched through metal casting while assigning scientists in my capital. Once the GS popped, I used it on Steel and started upgrading to longswords. I had 5-6 longswords when I first started attacking Persia. I also had the 4th SP which gave a bonus to units with units in adjacent tiles. I tried to maximize that bonus with the GG bonus and flanking wherever possible. I killed a lot of units while making progress sacking his core cities (his capital was distant though still). Meanwhile, he was starting to sack former Alex cities. I thought things would go bad for me, after he sacked all the way to Athens, but eventually I was able to come along behind him and retake those cities after killing a LOT of units.
-Eventually as I was making progress in this long war, I hit the final SP, giving cheap upgrade costs. This was great as I had a number of highly promoted units, but also another excellent point of synergy: As I was taking Persian cities, my bank account was growing at a rapid rate. That meant that I could build the cheaper swords and then upgrade them cheaply to longswords. Given that I had a near-infinite (for practical purposes) supply of iron (like 30+ spare), I kept using this tactic and soon had a huge army of longswordsmen.
-The UB was awesome for keeping my culture output rolling along to get all those SPs, as the puppet cities liked to build them and I built them in my two cities as well. Didn't get as much use out of the UU, but it is awesome in the right situations as well.
-When I was wrapping up, I had secularism to keep my tech rolling along and was next planning on going for militarism for added synergy to the produce/purchase-then-upgrade-for-cheap approach.
Overall, despite having a powerful opponent in Persia, I was really impressed with the combination of Songhai and the honor tree. Lots of synergies and if things break right for you, you can end up with a huge, powerful army. Would be fantastic on pangaea (I was playing continents).
