The Deity Challenge Line-up #33 - Songhai

[peddroelm]

this has got to be the most frustrating map I ever restarted 10 billion times without success ..

After hours of trial and error I can drop 7 cities before T65 with no happy issues in the near future + a religion + decent gpt, good shot at pyramids ..But settling too many cities is like 99% double DOW from the freak pair ..Last hope is to try and placate them with minor gifts and join them in phony wars against distant AIs to delay the INEVITABLE back-stabs ..Perhaps buy enough time to get some decoy units to intimidate them long enough until the hate for settling dies off ..

Happy, culture, gpt not an issue (although it is a rather poor map starting location resource wise) -> the freak pair is the issue ..I'll give it a few more shots ..

 

[consentient]

I recommend putting the Southern one on your payroll and letting him have OB to attack the Northern one, ASAP. It worked a charm for me. Was really disconcerting to see those units coming across, but he was true to his word, at least in my game, and pummelled the Northern one and slowed her down the rest of the game.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Freak pair is the Yelling Nomad and the Daughter Of Beheaded, yes?

 

[sun8119]

Spoiler :

I am a bit struggling with them both too - they are both crazy But so far after T180 I still have enough troops to defend and also good friends to DoW them both for a reasonable gpt. I will probably turtle this to SV or Diplo but it will sure be slow. And my best friend Morocco is insanely powerful culture and science runaway so far. His capital was 19 pop before T100

 

[consentient]

Spoiler alert!

 

[sun8119]

consentient, was your comment directed towards me? OK, I will not deny my little guilt but seriously people should not be reading post #45 anyway if they do not want any spoilers

 

[beetle]

this has got to be the most frustrating map I ever restarted 10 billion times without success ..

I feel better now quitting my tries with HCA and Liberty. Are you fixated on making wide Liberty work? My Tradition play has been okay. Northern neighbor was difficult, even though my cap was as close as I got. Finally I got the six Freedom FL right in time to stop the last assault and then take a city even. The Southern neighbor DOW'd late, but hardly sent any units, and is all but dead now (not my doing, well except for the bribe). I blocked the southern pass with my starting warrior for maybe 100 turns. That seems to have done the trick when things could have been a problem.

I am well behind the two run-aways, DOF with both, but also Freedom when one is Autocracy and the other Order, so that cannot last. The map looks quite tedious for a late dom push, and I did that last game. I will probably just turtle up for SV.

The Songhai's advantages are: Extra gold from barb camps, Extra gold from city capture, Amphibious promotions, Mandelaku Cavalry and Mud mosques.
[note, the below analysis is pending a thorough testing on Deity. If the Songhai are chosen for a DCL, I will take note of how people explored these dynamics. These comments then are more theoretical in nature]
...
Mandelaku Cavalry. 10 less hammers is negligible (its less than 10% of the total) but no city penalty is sizeable. Only problem is, to be in a position to do well out of conquest you will have to have built a load of XBs, won't you? Is it viable to just built horses until Cavalry and then try to take a load of cities with them? My intuition and limited experience says not. These are not keshiks. We shall see if they ever get picked on the DCL, but for now, UA rating = 2/5.

Anyone make a Mandelaku rush? Consentient, do you find any reason to revisit your ratings? (I don’t think so.) I had six of them on deck the second time the northern neighbor came calling. I used the Mandelaku to finish off melee units, so my cap was down to zero health for a while. Then I uses them to mop up the sea of XBs. Only two were left when I finally got peace. I don’t usually bother with horsemen or knights, so this experience really makes me want to reconsider my tactics!

 

[consentient]

Consentient, do you find any reason to revisit your ratings? (I don’t think so.) I had six of them on deck the second time the northern neighbor came calling. I used the Mandelaku to finish off melee units, so my cap was down to zero health for a while. Then I uses them to mop up the sea of XBs. Only two were left when I finally got peace. I don’t usually bother with horsemen or knights, so this experience really makes me want to reconsider my tactics!

Actually, I was going to do this fairly soon.

Mandelcavs completely underwhelmed me. Given that XBs are going to be doing the brunt of damage to the city, the lack of city penalty doesn't actually matter. Having them in the 1st ring to soak up damage made them very much like any Knight, and they don't fare well against Muskets AT ALL. Plus they don't keep the city attack thing when upgraded, so they are literally obsolete after 30 turns at most. Compare that to Keshiks, which are good for 50+.

The Mud Mosques I think I will improve the rating of by 1. The culture, the maintenance cost and so forth worked really well when I had so many cities. I think it means that you have to play wide with Songhai, which we all know is not great, but if you do, then it makes them much better than temples.

But I will probably upgrade the UA significantly. The triple gold on city capture makes Domination, or any conquest for that matter, a lot more lucrative.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Well, considering you get 200ish gold for capturing a city, a triple that amount should fund your conquest just nicely

 

[peddroelm]

I will have to do this in 30 minute episodes (with ability to redo episodes) - cannot do this in in stream mode like the last easymode LPs ..

 

[beetle]

I really wanted to Dom with Songhai, but I could not make that work on this map. I have only taken two cities and the 3x payout was nice, but not enough to snowball. The triple gold from Barb camps was a nice early boost. I agree that no city penalty does not matter. Pretty much everyone only ever takes cities with horsemen/knights when the city is at zero health anyways.

What turn are the Liberty folks completing Pyramids? It seemed to go early in my game, but I started it kind of late. My enthusiasm for Liberty greatly diminishes if I miss the 'mids.

 

[consentient]

Yeah, I've revised the list to reflect my re-evaluation, and they now sit proudly towards the top of the 2nd tier. It goes to show that one really strong ability can make a big all the difference. Just like Poland

 

[Redaxe]

I really wanted to Dom with Songhai, but I could not make that work on this map. I have only taken two cities and the 3x payout was nice, but not enough to snowball. The triple gold from Barb camps was a nice early boost. I agree that no city penalty does not matter. Pretty much everyone only ever takes cities with horsemen/knights when the city is at zero health anyways.

What turn are the Liberty folks completing Pyramids? It seemed to go early in my game, but I started it kind of late. My enthusiasm for Liberty greatly diminishes if I miss the 'mids.

Well maybe the optimum strategy in this game is to play boring old 4 city Tradition and let the AI fill in all the space around your cities and hit them with an artillery rush around turn 180-200. Use the triple gold you gain and buy your research labs etc...

If it was a salt start I'd imagine that early expansion would be a lot easier.
Someone should edit the map and turn that citrus/spices into salt just so we can compare the difference

By the way how many barb camps are all of you getting? I think I got about 8 on mine. Sometimes my scouts finds them empty just sitting there unclaimed lol so that's a free 75 gold.

 

[consentient]

If you turn all the citrus and spices into salt, you'll make Earth Mother>Holy Warriors completely broken, but I'd love to see what someone could do with such an edited map. I think Liberty CB rush with Holy Warriors could kill 3/4 neighbours before XB, with such a map.

 

[beetle]

T234 Update = Victory! by 'Sacred Domination',...

This is just amazing to me, especially given that it was a fallback plan!

With the benefit of hindsight, aiming for a domination run from the beginning, would you play this differently? You made wide Liberty work, but would a three city CB rush on the northern neighbor been even smoother? I want to replay this map getting something beside four-city Tradition SV (which might still be a challenge for me).

Social Policies:
Liberty Left-side, Piety, Finish Liberty, Commerce Opener+Wagon Trains, Rationalism Opener, Patronage Left-side, Autocracy

In particular, anything you would change from the above?

 

[Olodune]

@peddro

this has got to be the most frustrating map I ever restarted 10 billion times without success ..

Spoiler :

After hours of trial and error I can drop 7 cities before T65 with no happy issues in the near future + a religion + decent gpt, good shot at pyramids ..But settling too many cities is like 99% double DOW from the freak pair ...

Sorry Some AIs really don't like those extra cities. Defending/bribing should be possible, no?

 

[consentient]

Finishing this game (in a single push) was so exhausting to me that I'm not really able to think about how I could have done things differently. Although conquest was a fallback to my SS push, I actually think that having so many cities was instrumental in my later conquest. For one thing, it gave me an insane economy, with Church Property and city connections. It also gave me a crazy amount of faith. Had I taken Honor as the 3rd tree I could have won faster, for sure. But I was still disappointed that it wasn't a PURE SS win, only an assisted one by wiping those two cultural guys out.

 

[sun8119]

I quit after 200 turns but I think there is a bug in AI's behavior.

Spoiler :

I have noticed that with some AI's, for example, England or Huns as in this game at some point of the game they are programmed so that they need to be at war no matter what. I've made a few reloads to confirm this and it is true. For example, I do not bribe another AI to attack Huns and the next turn they Dow me. OK, fine with me. If I bribe another AI to attack Huns then they do not attack me the next turn. However, as soon as they make peace with the AI I bribed the next turn they DoW me even though they have no troops at my border. And their troops start appearing in my territory only after 5-6 turns (assuming they have troops at all) even though we are neighbors. It seems weird to me. I have noticed this behavior in some other games too.

As for this game after my bribed civs made peace with Huns and English they both DoW me and I kept fighting for 20 turns or so but eventually lost my southern and northern city.

 

[peddroelm]

@Olodune

Spoiler :

bribing is difficult ...The map is not that rich .. Free temples, but you still pay for a lot of buildings with liberty - there is potential for later endgame economy but is not there from the start ..Getting religion buildings (even with production bonus) on top of the regular ones doesn't leave much hammers left for intimidation force. And if you do build them then you must feed them gpt to keep them looking tough.. Money + luxuries for DOW cuts into CS - happy /culture/faith .. My latest attempt (different comp) made it to T99 keeping Liz at war with Austria/Morocco/Austria ...She and the hun still hiss and spit in my direction

 

[Olodune]

@peddro

Spoiler :

Yes, well a Liberty-Piety strat is going to be a good challenge on a Medium difficulty map. I applaud you for the attempt.

The way this is going a Medium-Hard label might be more appropriate here, but there should be many possible paths to victory, I think.

my test game t80

Spoiler :

I also was attacked in my test game by an aggressive Liz, but she was easily deflected and is now ready to make peace. I played a little quickly, so it shouldn't be too hard to beat this position.

The plan is to expand to 5 or 6 cities after the NC. I lost a caravan in Liz's attack which was a back-stab, as others have reported.

Roads were just completed this turn so GPT is not really a problem.

Were there additional map changes?

Spoiler :

Not really. No boosts to that surprisingly strong AI - that's just they way he was born. The land was smoothed out a bit to allow for easier access to [from] the NW. One Natural Wonder was moved to make the start a little worse (not a faith NW).