[Vanilla] Tomyris unleashes a mother's wrath

megabearsfan

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Sorry this has taken as long as it has to come out. I've been in a Dark Souls bender for a few months and Civ fell to the backburner. But I've finally released my second Civ VI strategy guide -- this one is for Tomyris of Scythia:
Civ VI strategy: Tomyris unleashes a mother's wrath upon Civilization VI
(raw URL=http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2017/05/14/Civ-VI-strategy-Scythia-Tomyris.aspx)

In summary:
Tomyris is one of the most aggressive and military-oriented civs in the game. Scythia's "People of the Steppe" ability grants an extra light cavalry (or Saka Horse Archer UU) whenever you train a light cavalry (or Saka). However, this only seems to apply to units built normally via city production. Units purchased with gold or faith do not seem to get duplicated. This allows Scythia to build up a massive horse army very early in the game. The Saka is also a ranged unit, and so is not affected by anti-cavalry units or by the Maneuver social policy.

Tomyris herself has the "Killer of Cyrus" ability that grants a +5 combat bonus to all military units when they battle a wounded unit. This includes naval and air units. This ability also allows those units to heal 50 HP whenever they kill an enemy unit. This allows Tomyris to press attacks that would likely be futile for other civs and leaders and really put pressure on her enemies. This ability also applies to religious units that engage in theological combat!

This, combined with the Kurgan UI makes Tomyris a formidable religious player. Kurgans get bonus faith from adjacent pastures, and will likely generate enough early faith for Scythia to found a pantheon and religion.

As always, I also include some tips for playing against Tomyris. In this case, if she's your immediate neighbor, you should rage quit and restart the game.
... just kidding. You should build LOTs of units to defend yourself, because she will almost certainly target you for a war declaration eventually. Spearmen should be the backbone of your forces, as she will likely have a large mounted army. You'll want to try to keep wounded units off the front line if possible, and use medics and/or chaplain Apostles to heal them.

If you founded a religion, also make sure that you have enough apostles and/or inquisitors to fight off Tomyris' religious units, as they will also get bonuses against your wounded religious units, and will heal if they kill your units.

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Feel free to check out the full strategy in the link above, and leave comments in the blog post or here on the forums. I'll try to check back regularly for feedback. Civ VI is still early in its life cycle, so there will likely be many changes as the game matures. I'll try to keep the strategy updated as new patches may alter the strategies, and I'll keep a running change log to document any updates that I make.

And don't forget to also check out my Gilgamesh strategy:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a-general-strategy-for-gilgamesh.610833/

Thanks for reaching, and happy Civ-ing!
smile.gif
 
(1) There is a small error. It says "sumerian unique classical era unit" in the description of saka horse archer

(2) I got the impression that the by far best ability of tomyris is her general strength advantage.
There is simply no reason not to do a standard slinger/warrior/archer rush, since all your units
are better than that of the enemy.

(3) The 2 for 1 ability for light horsemen is of course great, but light cavalry has the disadvantage
that its upgrades are very "spread out" (horsemen, cavalry, helicopters), so there are
certain portions of the game were a pure horsemen army is outdated.

(3) Many people find saka horse archers subpar for various reasons, especially their high
production costs & their upgrade line to field cannons.

(4) I'm still a bit divided on district strategy. I'm often running campuses, but I get the impression
I'm "supposed" to go encampments with scythia. Sometimes I would really like a peek into the
brains of the developers :)
 
(1) There is a small error. It says "sumerian unique classical era unit" in the description of saka horse archer

Oops! Good catch. I started drafting this out when I was still in the process of finalizing the Gilgamesh strategy (a couple months ago). Must've had a brain fart when I was writing and never caught it.

(2) I got the impression that the by far best ability of tomyris is her general strength advantage.
There is simply no reason not to do a standard slinger/warrior/archer rush, since all your units
are better than that of the enemy.

(3) The 2 for 1 ability for light horsemen is of course great, but light cavalry has the disadvantage
that its upgrades are very "spread out" (horsemen, cavalry, helicopters), so there are
certain portions of the game were a pure horsemen army is outdated.

(3) Many people find saka horse archers subpar for various reasons, especially their high
production costs & their upgrade line to field cannons.

These are excellent points. To be honest, it never really occurred to me to go all-out on a warrior/archer rush rather than focus on the mounted army. I always had a large contingent of melee and ranged units as support, but always built mounted units as the backbone of my army. And you're right, that lead to a few periods of the game in which I kind of sat back and played defensively because the bulk of my units were outdated. Though, against the A.I., this isn't as big a deal since the A.I. so far has been notoriously bad at upgrading its units.

In any case, I'll probably update the post with your points once I get a chance to load up a game and see for myself just how much of a difference Tomyris' ability makes with warriors and archers.

(4) I'm still a bit divided on district strategy. I'm often running campuses, but I get the impression
I'm "supposed" to go encampments with scythia. Sometimes I would really like a peek into the
brains of the developers :)

I had a similar problem, so I figured that this would probably be up to individual preference. I feel that much of district placement is contingent on map conditions anyway, so it's kind of hard to incorporate district planning into a general strategy in most cases. But I've also been neck-deep in Dark Souls for the past few months, so I haven't really been keeping up on Civ community discussions regarding optimal strategies. :/

She's got a decent faith/religion buff, so I would think that some Holy Sites are definitely worth pursuing.
 
In any case, I'll probably update the post with your points once I get a chance to load up a game and see for myself just how much of a difference Tomyris' ability makes with warriors and archers.

The point is that you don't need to wait for horsemen, you can attack a city state or capture settlers immediately. Even in the case that your starting location has no horses, that is not the end of the world. You will be just fine.
This is especially helpful if you are declared war early on. Even if the enemy comes with 6+ warriors, your healing ability & strength advantage will help you lots.

The disadvantage of sumerian warcarts, which I like a lot, is that you have to heal them. When you kill a barbarian or capture a city state, you have to wait a few turns until your warcarts are healed up. With archers, you can attack without being injured & the healing ability of scythia allows you just to go on & on, regardless of wether you use horsemen or any other unit.
 
A very important Miss by most people is around combat bonuses
A +2-4 from military tradition will only give an extra 2-4 points of damage, a +4 from Oligarchy the same... but when it starts getting to +13 the damage really ramps up so getting Military tradition, Oligarchy and Sythia bonus together is quite a jump. That's around the difference between troop era strengths.
 
Which only works for melee units. Really, I don't understand why Oligarchy only works for melee units.
I used to ask the same question and also

Why are ranged units so strong

Then I put them together and it made perfect sense, this game is quite complex.
 
I used to ask the same question and also

Why are ranged units so strong

Then I put them together and it made perfect sense, this game is quite complex.

Well, right now I'm using archers, warriors/swordsmen with Oligarchy & horsemen. It works quite well, but it seems
a little waste to have Oligarchy just for ~3-4 warriors/swordsmen.
 
Waste? The card slots are fine and the melee bonus works for horsemen too.

Oligarchy by itself is only +4 but +4 flanking or support from military tradition makes +8 and in this game the combat bonus means +8 is much more than double +4

Oligarchy without Military Tradition means you really are not grasping how to play properly
 
Ha! All this time I have just assumed that as Cavalry melee they should count as melee
One stands corrected

Me too. Your post gave me a tiny little hope that maybe the developers saw the light & changed it in a recent patch, but apparently, they didn't. Which means, I'm still adopting Oligarchy for 3-4 warriors/swordsmen that have +4 (Oligarchy) +5 (Scythia) +2-4 (Flanking), which is great, but it is only for a few of your slowest, most expensive units.
 
I think I recall Hoplites getting the +4 bonus from oligarchy as well.

The Oligarchy bonus does indeed affect all foot soldiers, including anti-cavalry. This is contrary to the usual where anti-cavalry units do not benefit from any melee-related effects. Naturally ranged troops don't benefit but all units that fight melee style, do.

And, at least in my playthroughs the Hoplites have been getting their +10 battle strength bonus with ot without adjacent hoplite units, making them really strong in the early game, even stacking up well against knights. I'm sure it's a bug but currently it makes Hoplites worthwhile (otherwise they would just be way too expensive to produce as you get two swordsmen for the price of one hoplite).
 
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The Oligarchy bonus does indeed affect all foot soldiers, including anti-cavalry. This is contrary to the usual where anti-cavalry units do not benefit from any melee-related effects.
Does it include immortals?
 
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