How to authority on King?

[salty mud]

I played the first 150 turns or so as an Authority Songhai. I'm not usually a warmonger play and much prefer going Progress or Tradition, but Songhai's bonuses push one towards Authority. After around 100 turns I had taken out my first enemy capital with a big struggle... only 9 to go! My science and culture are very slow and I really miss the bonuses the other trees give in this regard. How does one keep parity with other civs?

I'd love to try a Rome Authority game and have a good phase of classical expansion using my Legions and Ballistas. I just don't know how to pull it off without going into deficit.

 

[Drakle]

Well there is no one authority strategy really. You need to strategise around the civ and it's unique abilities. Some like Aztecs can immediately start hitting enemies. While as Byzantium for example, you are better off setting up your religion and army, before engaging in world conquest. The one universal I would say is play on Epic speed. It gives a lot more time for setting up properly, and warring in a more methodical and careful manner. On normal you barely have any time to attack a civ, before your units need upgrading.

Authority yields are generally slanted tall. Killing units and capturing cities give the best bang for their buck, if you don't have a ton of cities to dilute the bonuses. As Authority set up a few core cities (particularly those with per tile monopoly bonuses) and then mostly puppet enemy cities (particularly those with empire wide monopoly bonus tiles). Then vassal what you don't need. You can get away with a few core cities, if you have strong faith production (like Hero Worship) and Zealotry, to build a army through faith purchasing.

 

[NakFour1]

You want to build army early (something like monument - shrine - unit - unit -), then start to clear barbarian camps. This will give you culture, and that culture (policies) will give you both culture and science. One important thing is to demand tributes from city states. This will give you a lot of yields early, and you will build stronger army and infrastructure fast. I'm not deity player but as immortal player my general plan is to build 3 more cities from turn 40 to 90 (standard speed). Around turn 100 I start my conquest with 4-5 swordsmen + other units. If you don't get iron focus on other units. This may be a little later on your difficulty. Try to get Terracotta Army before you start conquering.

 

[andersw]

You will fall behind especially compared to tradition civs.
I focus on culture and hammers mainly (not sure if this is correct).
There are some nice warmongering wonders, Terracotta in particular and Statue of Zeus to some extent, however if you do early rush you probably wont have time for those.
For tech I go heavy on the bottom path, if you dont rush you can still declare a war with catapults/comp bows and swordsmen for exp or to take out a flat land city or two.
As songhai the early cav is very strong and you can probably rush a couple of cities, if you didnt dillydally with too much other things, remember they also give you gold when attacking a city.
Maybe theres a city state near to conquer?
The very early rush will hurt a bit because you need courthouse so then need to go for earlier philo (unless you can raze the cities), otherwise I go as far as machinery before philo.
A drawn out war can be late catapults going all the way until cannons until you get somewhere.
Make sure not to throw away too many units and no ranged units at all.

Alternatives are to roam around and grab heavy tribute but there is a long down time between each time and a lot of CS will probably be behind enemy lands.