[NFP] Scythia, impossible civ

[goatdeer]

Hello hello,

I am about to finish my hall of fame. As in, I try to win a game with every leader under the GS rules. I have yet to win a handful of games, among which one of them is Tomyris.

I am not a minmaxer, I like to play intuitively (not on all aspects, but in general and compared to some of you or youtubers, pretty much). So I don't always win every game. Also I play with some mods enabled (Real Strategy and Smoother difficulty), which is supposed to make the game much harder. But I do win many, I would say, about 85%. And when I do loose, it's almost always because the game is faster at beating me with a cultural or science victory or because of a pretty bad starting position. I mostly play on Demi-God (comes from the Smoother difficulty mod) or Deity when I feel like I can handle it.

However, this is not the case with Tomyris. I have completed 4 games with her, and I lost all of them. Also yesterday I tried again, and started several games (pangea, demi-god, standard speed), but I was overrun by the AI and the barbarians EVERY game within the first 100 turns.

My strategy is pretty simple: I want to do early domination (which should sync well with her UU, CA and LA) and when I have conquered a couple of cities, I either want to go religious (if my conquered neighbor has holy sites) or full domination.

So I start of building a slinger for defense, a builder for improving a pasture so I know where to find horseback riding in the tech tree (I play with shuffle mode). Then I beeline horseback riding, while building some military, builders and settlers. My intention is to full on spam light cavalry and Saka Horse Archers to conquer my next neighbor, before he or she builds walls.

The problem is, is that the AI (and thus the barbarians) outpace me in science, before I'm even able to build horses. And thus they are able to fend me off, or even bluntly declare a surprise war and kill me within a couple of turns. The barbarians and zombies (I like to play religious games with zombies), are constantly attacking and pillaging my lands, which are in very open terrain, which I believe is an indirect starting bias of Scythia. Even more so, because of her starting bias, the production in my lands is mostly very low. The UB does not add any production, just faith and gold. The gold comes in handy when I have lots of cavalry, but it's just too late by that time. On top of that, I rarely spawn right next to horses. It always costs me at least one settler, to make sure I have access to horses, which most of the time are located quite close to my neighbor, who then is very much triggered by the fact I settle a poorly defended city right next to his borders. You know what happens next.

I am very well aware of the fact that I'm making my game as hard as I can, I know. It does sound weird, me wondering why I don't win, when I enable all the features and mods that make it even harder. But this difficult start only happens when I play Tomyris. With similar settings, I am able to win 85% of my games with any other civ. Or I lose because of a ridiculous starting position, or because the AI outpaces me.

So is it just me, or is Tomyris really not that strong as she is sometimes portrayed. In my experience she is the hardest, even most incompetent civ I have played. Her unique abilities come into effect way too late.

Any ideas/tips/strategies?

 

[Buktu]

Don't build the horse archers (apart from 1 pair for the era score) those suck hard because they just have 1 range and a low defense. A few normal archers should do way better, especially if you arleady have a close neighbour. If you want ranged units at all. You heal of your kills so you can use more of your health to kill units.
Try to get a general for you attack. Horses work quite well with one. A general is also nice when your opponents get their walls up to support your swordsmen/catapults.
You can also use the encampment to generate gold (with projects) so you can use your early builder charges to chop/build mines.
If you dont have the opportunity to rush someone with horses (because you have no horses early of a bad tech tree) you can also pivot into a later attack. Double light cav is not only for horsemen its for every unit! So you can still spam horses before unlocking coursers or coursers before cav and launch a midgame attack. Ofc you need more support to take down walls in that case but you can pillage alot more as well to catch up quickly or pay for even more upgrades. Your +5 against damaged units works the whole game as well.
Magnus with the right promotion can help you to save alot of horses so even one horsetile can be enough to crank out a massive army.
If you play zombie mode you can use they modes improvements to secure your empire against zombies and foes quite effectively.

 

[Vargas1]

@Buktu covered three of the key things for Scythia - (i) mostly ignore horse archers (they are weirdly strong when used by the AI, but are pretty bad for humans), (ii) Magnus with Black Marketeer is key, and (iii) you need lots of gold. The other thing I will add is that you can have such a large horse-focused army that you don't necessarily need a quick rush - you can control the battlefield and kill off all units (plus sniping any settlers, builders, etc., and pillaging away) while you take your time getting a few catapults up to the front and ready to knock down walls. Having a GG is key though, so you can move the catapult(s) in range and fire on the same turn - otherwise just the ranged attacks from the wall and/or a ranged unit in the city can still mess you up. But otherwise you can just have a big ole army of horsemen, then coursers, then cavalry that more or less controls all of your known territory.

 

[goatdeer]

I truly get ignoring the horse archers thing, but how sad is this? I like the unique flavours of each civ and I like to make the most of out it, but by making use of the uu of scythia it does nothing to increase your chances to win the game (which a uu should). It actually makes you lose the early game. Why would the devs make a unique unit that makes you lose the game?

Let's say I do ignore the horse archers, which by the way I already did to a certain extent, by also building enough horsemen. And let's say this means there is no need in early war. The AI will still attack me, so instead of improving my lands, I guess I should invest more in defense. And also religion, since that is the path I'm most likely willing to take. And since I'm not taking over early cities with holy sites, I need to build a scout to find a natural wonder and get the prophet points going.

Before this, I finished a game as Sumeria. And man, did I enjoy the early game and the perfect geared game towards it. I guess without any production/science benefits and low production lands, the early war that scythia should be doing (considering her uu), is just not feasible.

 

[Buktu]

I truly get ignoring the horse archers thing, but how sad is this? I like the unique flavours of each civ and I like to make the most of out it, but by making use of the uu of scythia it does nothing to increase your chances to win the game (which a uu should). It actually makes you lose the early game. Why would the devs make a unique unit that makes you lose the game?

I guess this comes down to balanceing. Back in the days when the game came out horses were even stronger than they are now since they worked with battering rams. Plus battering rams worked against all walls up to reneaisance and the wall strength was 50% of what it is now. On top of that the healing on kill was 50 points not just 30.
If you then add the changes that were the most mentioned they were completely op. (An extra range or hit and run.)
Considering everything I would make them 30 (or maybe even 35) ranged (dont forget they count as classical so you can use them with a GG and you can easily get another +5 against damaged units which makes them crossbow level with more movement still with heal on kill) and 25 melee strenght and also remove the double units for them.

 

[eatsleepciv6]

Horse archers can be OK for upgrading to get field cannon and machine gun corps. By then you should have several level 6 veteran units to combine the corps with to get veteran armies.

However usually by then you should have conquered your own continent already, and the difference between bombers and tanks conquering a new continent, and machine gun armies, is big in favor of the former.

I usually make a beeline for advanced flight after conquering my own continent. Also the Computers/Flood barrier tech is close by.