Songhai, a very good rush civ

[Palomino]

They are pretty insane if you focus hard on exploring, getting Honor to know when camps spawn and then taking them out quickly for 75gp a camp. It won't be long till you are rush buying a nice military to take out every other civ on the continent or winning a very early domination if you're on a pangea map. I just won a fast game on King taking out every reachable civ very fast with just warriors and archers, then adding a few spearmen, then a few chariot archers that could catch up and then finally upgrading my warriors to swordsmen to take out the last civ on the continent.

I razed every city I could that didn't have a resource I needed and left the continent fairly wide open and sat tight with my 8 cities while I teched up to go abuse the other continent. I spread my military out 1 or 2 to each city and just waited for barb camps to spawn and took them out. I probably took out a camp on average every 3 turns so it was a free and easy 25gpt essentially.

Triple money from conquering cities isn't bad at all either to keep the war machine rolling.

 

[Haig]

I'm playing with Songhai at the moment, and too had a nice wealthy start by just building a couple of warriors and scourging(spelling?) for barbarian camps. Remember also the pillage bonus gives more money from cities too.
Also embarked units can defend themselves so maybe Songhai can become a naval nevesis for the English?

In my game I've ran into some trouble now as I was a bit cocky on my attitude with other civs and city states, because I thought I'm going to soon get the Mandekalu cavalry (with city siege bonus!) and other nations should show some respect.
I found out you get them at late medieval instead of ancient times, and now I've maddened Siam to a point where I'm clashing with them..
loooove this game!

 

[Senethro]

Does the triple pillage bonus also include pillaging improvements? What techs/abilities affect embarked units movement speed?

 

[Haig]

Does the triple pillage bonus also include pillaging improvements? What techs/abilities affect embarked units movement speed?

Good question about the improvements, didn't think of that.
Also as the Mandekalu cavalry has a city attack bonus, I'm wondering are barbarian encampements counted as cities or give defense bonuses?
That way the Mandekalu would be a even more sweet as mobile camp strike force..

About the embarkement speed I don't have idea!

 

[Martin Alvito]

The Songhai synergize very, very well with the current OP unit upgrades. Even more efficient than rush buying Warriors is building them the hard way, then upgrading them all to Swordsmen.

You can deploy a monstrous army of Iron units with the Songhai very early, if you have the Iron available.