How to play as songhai?

[Question]

I tried playing as songhai, and quickly got stuck in the same 3-4 city tall strategy i do with almost every civ.

So im nearing the end of the medieval age and i havent fought a single battle except against barbarians (i somehow ended up with declarations of friendship with everyone on the continent). Siam is spamming cities all over my continent and i think its time to start warring...was i supposed to start earlier? I'm not sure how to make use of the UA.

The UU not having a penalty attacking cities doesnt seem very useful to me....since attacking any city with walls/castle with melee units is sucidal. The best strategy seems to be to block your seige units and just wait till you can one hit the city with a single unit.

 

[gozpel]

Kill barbcamps and get 3 times the money, 75g a pop on normal difficulties.

Beeline to Chivalry and build a bunch of Mandekalu cavalries and kill them all.

Songhai is my absolute fav civ, very versatile and strong, even in culture if you get those Mud-mosques. They are slightly stronger than other civs as embarked as well, but this is moot anyways, since most units of any civ survives a potshot now. Before they were the only ones to have a chance to survive, while embarked, so they are slightly nerfed.

Just focus on my lines 1 and 2 and you'll have a great time.

 

[Corvus corax]

Beeline to Chivalry and build a bunch of Mandekalu cavalries and kill them all.

Right, but it's faster to build a bunch of horsemen first. When you reach chivalry, upgrade and attack. Mandekalu's are great for taking cities, just as most other horse-based units BTW. Because they may retreat after attacking you only need very few accessible tiles near the city to attack from. Often you can use these tiles multiple time per turn! This way lots of cities can be conquered in a single turn, even without using siegeweapons!

 

[Question]

I found it tough to clear enough barb camps. Too many CS/AIs clearing the fog of war (and also killing the camps before i can get to them).

 

[Tich]

The best way to play the civ is to abuse every opportunity that it creates for you. That's not what you've been doing from the sounds of things. You're probably playing too passively and you're probably ignoring religion. Songhai is an aggressive civ and if you're not actively conquering lands then you're not putting him to use. First of all, you might want to rush Philosophy and abuse Legalism to give your civ some free MPMs. Your UB produces culture, so if you have Monuments in your first couple of cities when you take it and you have Philosophy researched then it'll give you those. The faith is what you're looking for at this stage in the game more-so than anything, so getting those "Temples" immediately is ideal. I know that a free Amphitheater sounds better since it saves you ~6 gpt or whatever, but you really want that faith rolling asap. For your religion you're going to want to rush Holy Warriors as your follower belief. Remember, your UU has a reduced production cost which also translates to a reduced faith purchasing cost. Your immediate "Temples" paired with that savings will allow you buy a bunch of Calvalry which have no city penalties. From there you should go on a rampage and take out any nearby satellite cities. If you need siege weapons for Capitals, that's fine, but your Cavs should be fine for the expos. I would have your cities building Archers/CBs early on and worry about buying your Cavs with faith. You'll still have to make/upgrade some Horsemen obv, but faith will do some of the work at the very least.

The UA is "fine" and can help you do things like quick-buy workers and settlers sooner than other civs can. It's also a great way to maintain a large standing army when you're capturing cities. You don't always have 7 turns to wait around for more Archers to come, buy being able to buy a new "something" every time you take a base goes a long way to keeping the war effort moving along.

Still, I highly recommend the Legalism "trick" (if you can even call it that) and Holy Warriors to buy a lot of Cavalry. The hammer reduction may not seem like much on paper, but it's actually quite relevant when you pair all of this together.

 

[Question]

I did end up pushing religion pretty aggressively...almost the entire continent is my religion. I went with desert folklore, ceremonial burial, cathedrals, pagodas and religious texts. I decided not to wait till i had philosophy to get legislation (since i would be missing out on tons of culture from free monuments in the meantime), while with piety i could build the UB in half the time.

 

[Tich]

I did end up pushing religion pretty aggressively...almost the entire continent is my religion. I went with desert folklore, ceremonial burial, cathedrals, pagodas and religious texts. I decided not to wait till i had philosophy to get legislation (since i would be missing out on tons of culture from free monuments in the meantime), while with piety i could build the UB in half the time.

The fact that you got Piety for any reason other than a cultural victory is pretty miserable though. You pretty much always want to get Rationalism second.

 

[Question]

I like piety because it massively boosts cultural gain and it makes holy sites really powerful. Without piety, i always end up with lots of useless GPs.

 

[Tich]

I like piety because it massively boosts cultural gain and it makes holy sites really powerful. Without piety, i always end up with lots of useless GPs.

Which is why you should unlock Rationalism and purchase Great Scientists instead . Bulb key military techs with 'em and wage war with your incredibly advanced army (relatively speaking of course). Alternatively, get Holy Warriors and buy an army of MD Cavs and keep the war effort going. GPs are a fairly miserable use of faith once your religion is enhanced and you should actively avoid creating them. They cost waaaaaaaay too much for what they do. Holy Sites aren't worth all of that faith which could be spent on much more relevant great people.

Culture and conquest don't go hand in hand nearly as well as science and conquest do. With science you can overpower your opponents with advanced weaponry. I don't know if you've played much with Bombers and/or Artillery, but holy Hell do they ever change the game. Like, Bombers are completely absurd and the sooner you get them the better. Trade for every bit of oil that you possibly can, build some fighters to do some air sweeps if needed, and start churning out as many bombers as you possibly can. Razing armies and cities becomes a breeze and pretty much everything with crumble before you. Artillery are super sweet too. Range 3 means that you can shoot cities further than they can fire back, so you can take 0 losses from 40+ strength cities with complete ease. Your MD Cavs are great at supporting them and swooping in to take 1 HP cities. Really though, I feel like you don't appreciate how important science is to a conquest game. Culture is cool and all, but if you're only using it to acquire more faith and culture... well what good is that? I know, it has other minor benefits, but I think you'll just have to trust me on this and put a bit more emphasis on science and warfare. I feel like you should be playing a Persia or Ethopia game and going for a culture victory given what you've told me. All of this focus on faith and culture which is being used to gain more faith and culture just seems pointless for an aggressive civ like Songhai.

 

[Galgus]

Is Barbarian gold gain relatively weaker in Marathon mode?

 

[apocalypse105]

go liberty for the free settler and production bonus and finish it to get a great scientist

go into piety as soon as possible to built temples

Its important as songhai to found a religion and get happiness benefits especialy the temple one So you can conquer more cities the Idea is to build up faith( and culture of unique mosque) and get happiness

So the early game :

Expand fast and built shrines and mud mosques build horseman and keep trading luxuries for gold. go to chivalry upgrade you're horseman and go and conquer you're neighbours and get a lot of money of pilaging cities!!!!!! After that go domination

and use great scientist for chivalry and then upgrade you're horseman to knights

Mid game:

Conquer as much civs with unique knight and get massive gold and spend it on city states and upgrades to cavalry and artillery By the time you have this you basicly allready won

End game :

Mostly cleaning up go to flight for bombers and finsih them off


A question :
I am actualy wondering would you get a free temple out of legalisme if you have philosopy and allreay built amphitheaters? If so going liberty with tradition is verry usefull.

 

[Poopin Thelift]

I found it tough to clear enough barb camps. Too many CS/AIs clearing the fog of war (and also killing the camps before i can get to them).

Take the honor opener as one of your first SPs, then you shouldn't have much problems killing enough camps. Scout a lot, build/buy one more scout than you would with other civs.

Is Barbarian gold gain relatively weaker in Marathon mode?

No. Not only the pillage money is tripled again, you should also be able to clear a lot more camps with slower game speed.

 

[Question]

I tried songhai again, this time with raging barbarians on. Worked okay...managed to clear a couple of camps, but my warriors were mostly tied up with defending my city.

The kngiht wasnt that useful though. I mainly used it in hitting composite bows...i simply didnt dare to attack a 20+ strength city with it when the nearby enemy units could charge in and take out the wounded knight the next turn, or kill it via bombardment. Terrain wasnt very open either. So i just resorted to trebutchets and using knights as shields.

But the triple pillage gold is pretty useful...i got 600+ from denmark's capital.

 

[Furycrab]

The fact that you got Piety for any reason other than a cultural victory is pretty miserable though. You pretty much always want to get Rationalism second.

If you are playing as Songhai, or a lot of Civs for that matter with a Liberty/ICS approach. It's no longer the cut and dry decision it was in Vanilla because of the swap they did with the opener and the SR. There's also important problems/bugs with RAs which still skew victory turn times (even without SR). Makes it kinda hard to recommend any other approach if you can just make the tech tree implode even unintentionally in the late game <.<

Oh and Liberty openers are now kinda a niche in singleplayer on higher difficulties. <.<

 

[ScantilyCladLad]

what do you mean they are a niche? i understand what niche is, just not sure what you mean. do you mean that they only apply in very select situations?

 

[ScantilyCladLad]

The best way to play the civ is to abuse every opportunity that it creates for you. That's not what you've been doing from the sounds of things. You're probably playing too passively and you're probably ignoring religion. Songhai is an aggressive civ and if you're not actively conquering lands then you're not putting him to use. First of all, you might want to rush Philosophy and abuse Legalism to give your civ some free MPMs. Your UB produces culture, so if you have Monuments in your first couple of cities when you take it and you have Philosophy researched then it'll give you those. The faith is what you're looking for at this stage in the game more-so than anything, so getting those "Temples" immediately is ideal. I know that a free Amphitheater sounds better since it saves you ~6 gpt or whatever, but you really want that faith rolling asap. For your religion you're going to want to rush Holy Warriors as your follower belief. Remember, your UU has a reduced production cost which also translates to a reduced faith purchasing cost. Your immediate "Temples" paired with that savings will allow you buy a bunch of Calvalry which have no city penalties. From there you should go on a rampage and take out any nearby satellite cities. If you need siege weapons for Capitals, that's fine, but your Cavs should be fine for the expos. I would have your cities building Archers/CBs early on and worry about buying your Cavs with faith. You'll still have to make/upgrade some Horsemen obv, but faith will do some of the work at the very least.

The UA is "fine" and can help you do things like quick-buy workers and settlers sooner than other civs can. It's also a great way to maintain a large standing army when you're capturing cities. You don't always have 7 turns to wait around for more Archers to come, buy being able to buy a new "something" every time you take a base goes a long way to keeping the war effort moving along.

Still, I highly recommend the Legalism "trick" (if you can even call it that) and Holy Warriors to buy a lot of Cavalry. The hammer reduction may not seem like much on paper, but it's actually quite relevant when you pair all of this together.

i just tried an immortal/continents/standard speed/standard size map with songhai and didnt get very far, if you could add comments i would appreciate it:

i went the standard tradition 4 cities opener (buying 2 settlers) but held off on legalism untill i had shrines/monuments and philosophy. i also had libraries quickly and made NC in my capital. it seemd like a great start

i was located in between babylon and siam (who was going OCC by the looks). babylon had CBs before me even tho i went for them fast, but i managed to kill his invasion. However, he had walls of babylon in his cities so i figured my 5 cbs and 2 spears are not match, we made peace.

from philosophy i rushed to chivalry ASAP, whilst building several horses to upgrade. however, before the time i got there, siam already had his elephants and attacked my bottom city, which i held off. however, babylon later attacked my top city just as i got to chivalry, and his trebuche and mixture of forces was too much for my split army.

once i popped legalism i was generating 12 faith per turn, but only my second GP was born before chivalry and i didnt have enough faith built up to buy the cavalry. is this enough faith?

basically, i had a strong start but got tag teamed by babylon and siam. Oh, also just before i reached chivalry babylon built the great wall :/

any suggestions or things that i may have done wrong or overlooked? is 12 faith per turn really enough to justify going holy warriors?

 

[Furycrab]

what do you mean they are a niche? i understand what niche is, just not sure what you mean. do you mean that they only apply in very select situations?

Ok your opener can be Honor, Liberty or Tradition.

Tradition you want 3-4 "good" city spots that can grow a lot. This happens fairly frequently and you can "standardize" your build order quite easily.

For Honor to be on par with the other two as an opener, you need to be able to "take" 2-3 cities from the nearest civ with the extra oomph that represents either the 15% melee strength or the free GG. This is actually kinda rare, more often then not, you are better off starting with Tradition and going into Honor a little later once you have good cities settled.

With Liberty, you want to be able to have 5-6 cities in decent spots by mid game, and a whole lot more before you go into late game. That in itself is a bit of a niche on higher difficulties, because you might get your 4th or 5th city down and find yourself out of space to keep expanding. This isn't terrible, but someone who opens and finishes tradition will quickly outpace you if you can't keep expanding. On certain maps, it's not an issue (like the "Plus" maps) but for example, on a standard Pangaea, I'd say that about 1/2 starts you can make a liberty opener work, and only about 1 in 3, maybe 1 in 4, can you make it truly shine.

 

[slapshot2119]

Along with the Aztecs, the Songhai are the most versatile civilization in the game. the extra gold from barbs gives a very early infrastructure or expansion lead, either of which is universally applicable. All land units having amphibious makes rivers your best war-time friend: while you suffer no penalty attacking across rivers, your opponent does suffer a penalty in its counterattack. Mandekalu cavalry are incredible, knights that attack cities without penalty and when they take that city, you'll get three times as much gold. MPMs really facilitate religion- temples usually arrive at a time when economic conditions are really tight and the 1:1 ratio of faith:maintenance can be a deterrent, but songhai get 'em free maintenance, with some extra culture to boot.

Songhai question: If Askia takes an Egyptian city with a burial tomb, does he get SIX TIMES the gold from it? (Askia normally gets triple gold from conquering cities and a burial tomb doubles this)

 

[DutchJob]

When you play as Askia and have the Egyptians near you have your "WOOHOO!" moment.

 

[WideCoast]

How much of this applies in BNW? I got interested in Songhai amd was just curious. Liberty(settler+worker)->somethibg from piety->finiah them in some order, but what then? Landschneck seems like an tempting thing to go for in commerce tree.

VC is pretty open I guess since you can buy different sorts of stuffwith the xtra gold you get or with faith.