A Vox Populi(CBP) Guide: Songhai

A guide on how to play Songhai with the Vox Populi(Community Balance Patch) mod. Songhai is an interesting warmonger, relying much more on a strong infrastructure and economy then a single specific military boost to conquer their enemies.

Introduction

These guides are designed to help players who are new to Civ but still interested in Vox Populi, familiar with Civ but new to Vox Populi, or even those well versed in Vox Populi who just want to see if there's anything they didn't know about a particular civilization. I am actually a big fan of Zigzagzigal's Civ guide series, and it really helped me learn a lot about the game, and I wanted to bring a similar experience for fans of the Vox Populi or Community Balance Patch modpack. For those interested in the modpack it can be downloaded [https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/community-patch-how-to-install.528034/]here[/url]

Anyways, without further ado, onto Songhai!

Before I go into depth with this guide, here's an explanation of some terminology I'll be using throughout for the sake of newer players.

Beelining - Focusing on obtaining a technology early by only researching technologies needed to research it and no others. For example, to beeline Bronze Working, you'd research Mining and Bronze Working and nothing else until Bronze Working was finished.
Finisher - The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. +33% Great Scientist rate and +25% growth in all cities from rationalism.)
GWAM - Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. These are the three types of Great People who can make Great Works, a major source of tourism for cultural Civs.
Opener - The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +25% Great Person Rate and +100% construction of guilds in Artistry)
Tall Empire - A low number of cities with a high population each.
UA - Unique Ability - the unique thing a Civilization has which doesn't need to be built.
UB - Unique Building - A replacement for a normal building that can only be built and used by one Civilization.
UI - Unique Improvement - A tile improvement that can be made by workers that doesn't replace any other improvement that can only be made by a single civilization
UU - Unique Unit - A replacement for a normal unit that can only be built by one Civilization or provided by militaristic City-States when allied.
Uniques - Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Tile Improvements and Great People
Wide Empire - A high number of cities with a low population each.
XP - Experience Points - Get enough and you'll level up your unit, giving you the ability to heal your unit or get a promotion.

Brief Unique Summary

Start Bias

Songhai has a river start bias. Rivers are useful for both your UA and UB, making for stronger and more easily defendable cities, and hopefully a good jump off point for your conquests

Unique Ability: River Warlord

Triple from pillaging barbarian encampments and cities

Land units gain the Amphibious promotion, and move along rivers as if they were roads

Rivers create city connections

Unique Unit: Mandekalu Cavalry(Replaces the Knight)

A mounted unit

Technology	Obsoletion	Upgrades From	Upgrades To	Resource Needed
Chivalry Medieval Era	Combustion Modern Era	Horseman (120 ) War Elephant (85 )	Lancer (160 )	1 Horse

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
25	N/A	4	N/A	2	No defensive terrain bonuses	Can move after attacking Flank attack bonus increased by 150%*. Steal equal to 50% of the Damage inflicted on a City, capping at the City's Defensex10. Is able to use enemy Roads(Raider)

*While it says 150%, it is actually a +20% flank bonus per adjacent friendly unit, which is actually a 200% increase

Positive One-Off Changes

• Has no combat penalty against cities
  
• Obsoletes at Combustion rather than Metallurgy

Positive Stay on Upgrade Changes

• Flank attack bonus increased by 150%*. Steal equal to 50% of the Damage inflicted on a City, capping at the City's Defensex10. Is able to use enemy Roads(Raider)

Unique Building: Tabya(Replaces the Stone Works)

Technology	Building required	Required to Build	Production Cost	City Restriction	Maintenance
Construction Ancient Era	None	None	110	None	1

Base Output	Citizen Yields	Specialist	Great Work Slots	Other Effects
1	None	None	None	+1 to all river tiles in the city +10% when constructing buildings in this city Allows to be moved from this city through internal trade routes Nearby Stone gets +2 Nearby Salt, Marble and Jade gets +1 &

Misc Changes
Salt provides +1& (Changed from just +2)

Positive Changes

• +1
  
• Does not required an improved quarry resource to be built
  
• +1 to all river tiles in the city
  
• +10% when constructing buildings in this city

Strategy and Victory Routes

Strategy Ranking

These scores are merely my personal opinions from playing and examining this Civ, you may find other uses for Songhai's uniques that make you disagree with a certain ranking

Offense	Defense	Culture	Tourism	Science	/ Growth/Production	Gold	Diplomacy	Religion
8/10	5/10	4/10	4/10	4/10	7/10	8/10	4/10	1/5

Domination is Songhai's preferred victory route. Their UU is great for mid-game rushes, and their UA helps out their armies mobility, and encourages warfare in general
While the Tabya gives a small amount of culture, Songhai will still likely struggle with it overall, and they lack any advantages to tourism
The Tabya gives Songhai a solid boost to production, especially if they can get good river cities. They do lack any science bonus though
What Songhai really excels at is gold though, with both their UU and UA giving them tons of gold, with the caveat that they need to be actively conquering to get it. Other then strong gold though Songhai lacks any diplomacy bonuses
Finally, with the nature of having early uniques, and an incentive to go to war quickly, Songhai can't afford to invest in founding a religion

Unique Ability: River Warlord

Right from the start Songhai's land units get an extra (technically 2 extra) promotions. Both revolve around rivers


This is turn 1, so the pathfinder could not have gotten any promotions yet.

All your land units get a movement bonus when moving off of a river tile onto another river tile, as if the river tile had a road on it. This is a massive bonus to your early exploration, and also just a nice benefit to your armies mobility in certain engagements. What's also nice to note is that you also ignore terrain penalties on rivers, so you move through forests and hills just as effectively. With major cities (especially capitals) often being on rivers, you should find them easy to take


You know using a boat is faster then walking, how has no one else ever thought about using the rivers for boating as well?

The last domestically oriented part of the Songhai UA takes rivers being like roads 1 step further and allows them to create city connections. It doesn't have to be the same river or anything like that either, as long as the river tiles are adjacent to eachother, it counts. In the picture above for example the river tiles do create a full connection with only a single road, despite being two different rivers. I wouldn't try to build your cities around this ability, especially if it otherwise would be better to put a city elsewhere, but it saves some money. Make sure to build railroads when the time comes though, as river connections won't give the speed nor production benefits of railroad connections

But enough about rivers, what about the second word in the UA?


It'd be 120 gold for any other civ

Suddenly what was a completely negligible part of city conquest becomes almost a primary reason to do it for Songhai. In fact I would argue this is your primary gold bonus. In the very early game you'll want to conquer every barbarian camp you see, use that gold to build up an army, and then go conquer as many cities as possible during a war. Generally speaking you should be at war as much as possible, not only can you afford to, you actually can't afford not to.

Unique Building: The Tabya

The other Songhai uniques focus on conquest and gold, however the Tabya gives Songhai a solid amount of production through a few bonuses


Note the 10% modifier for buildings, and compare the forest directly next to the capital and the forest to the right of that.

Settling near rivers now gives a greater benefit then it already did for Songhai, as river tiles all get an extra production on them, between this and the extra 10% production bonus towards buildings, Songhai can still produce buildings at a good pace, and mostly use their gold to purchase units, although Songhai can still produce units quickly if needed.


Completely unrelated to the Tabya, but I just wanted to point out this was how much gold I had after I finished my first war

Unique Unit: Mandekalu Cavalry

Songhai thrives in the ashes of cities, and out of them comes the Mandekalu Cavalry

Songhai has a lot to gain from conquest, and the Mandekalu Cavalry is their preferred method of doing so. Building on Songhai's gold generating strengths, the Raider promotion makes it so the Mandekalu Cavalry generates gold whenever they damage a city


It isn't a massive amount of gold, but it scales with damage and is just a nice little buff to your wartime economy even if things are stalling a little

The more important part of Raider though is that it gives an increase to the flanking bonus Mandekalu Cavalry get. Now the bonus says it increases the bonus by +150%. So since the normal bonus for flanking is 10% per unit is should increase the bonus to 25% per unit right?



Wrong. It in fact increases the bonus to 30% per adjacent unit, or a +200% increase. I won't say no to a stronger bonus. Just having two Mandekalu Cavalry fighting the same unit gives you a massive bonus.

The other important part of Mandekalu Cavalry is that they have no penalty against cites, and can therefore get more money from raider, and pretty make take out non walled cities by themselves. Even against walled cities they still do well with proper siege/ranged support.

Promotions Kept on Upgrade

Flank attack bonus increased by 150%*. Steal equal to 50% of the Damage inflicted on a City, capping at the City's Defensex10. Is able to use enemy Roads(Raider)
*Actually 200%

Do note that when upgraded to a lancer it regains its penalty against cities, so after that you won't be able to really bash them into cities very effectively, although they should still do very well against units.

Social Policies

Songhai will do best with the standard Warmonger layout of Authority into Fealty and finishing with Imperialism

Authority

Opener: Little bit of production to help early unit and building construction, plus easier barbarians so you can get your camp gold faster, and some culture on top of it.

Dominance: Get some science out of your kills, and some healing too.

Tribute: More gold and production is more gold and production, can't complain

Imperium: You're bound to be conquering a lot of cities, so this will probably add up to several techs and a few policies

Discipline: Songhai will likely have a pretty large force, and while they do have the economy to maintain it while at war, this will still help during war and especially during peace

Honor: The extra units are nice but probably almost as useful is the reduced war weariness, allowing for less peacetime

Finisher: You got lots of gold, could be a good idea to purchase some of these

Fealty

Opener: Monasteries are a solid building, definitely build them where you can, but it's going to be hard to build them in every city considering how much you're likely to conquer

Nobility: Castles and armories are useful, now they are even more so, and much quicker to build

Divine Right: Reduces unhappiness by a very large amount, plus if you actually manage to keep your happiness up for any length of time, enjoy a nice bit of culture

Serfdom: Solid boosts to pastures, and a bit of culture too

Burghers: You're bound to be conquering lots of resources and getting plenty of We Love the King Days, so get some production out of them.

Organized Religion: Might be some extra faith, but overall not a big deal

Finisher: Whether you've founded your own religion or had one spread to you, some extra yields never hurt

Imperialism

Opener: You'll probably have a good few mounted units, now your great generals can mostly keep up with them

Colonialism: You'll have lots of monopolies by now, get some more use out of them.

Regimental Tradition: Can't say no to better great generals.

Martial Law: You'll definitely have plenty of puppet cities, and conquered ones too. Both of them will be less of a burden now.

Exploitation: If you've been putting lots of farms on your rivers they are now really good tiles

Civilizing Mission: Because you needed more gold from conquering cities? Shame this isn't tripled

Finisher: A stronger navy, and a new way to use air units to help manage unhappiness.

Ideology

As a civ focused at always being at war, Autocracy is a no brainer

Level 1 Policies

Elite Forces: New units start better, old units get better quicker, all you could want for a world-conquering horde

New World Order: Warmongers need every bonus they can get to reduce unhappiness, and Songhai is no exception

Military-Industrial Complex: You've probably got a lot of money sure, but a large army can still eat up your gold, this makes sure they don't

Level 2 Policies

Lightning Warfare: Your generals actually can keep up with your armor units now, not to mention that they are also fighting better

Third Alternative: More resources for more units

Level 3 Policies

Air Supremacy: Free Airports in every city means that you almost don't need a navy as long as you have a city on every continent. Also makes air units quicker to build if you need to.

Wonders

Ancient Era

Statue of Zeus: The faster you conquer and the harder you hit cities, the more gold you get.

Classical Era

Oracle: Songhai lacks culture and science, so this helps make sure you are on pace at this point in the game with both tech and policies

Terracotta Army: You'll be killing lots of units and improving lots of tiles, so this wonder helps a lot

Medieval Era

Alhambra(Authority Only): A bit of culture, and some better mounted units, can't complain

Renaissance Era

Red Fort(Fealty Only): Not necessarily a great wonder for you, but if someone else gets it you might struggle to conquer them, so it's not a bad idea to grab

Industrial Era

Brandenburg Gate: The xp is alright, but it's really the military supply cap increase that you want here.

Neuschwanstein: Might be slightly hard to get due to terrain requirements, but it should help happiness a lot

Modern Era

Prora(Autocracy Only): Will help happiness problems a ton

Atomic Era

Pentagon(Imperialism Only): Faster built and stronger air units should be a big help

Information Era

CERN: Two free techs to get the endgame units

Hubble Space Telescope: Will also help you zoom through the tech tree, and you're stealing it from a science civ who could really use it

Pitfalls to Avoid

Songhai requires a pretty aggressive playstyle, and it can be easy to falter with it if you aren't careful

Ramming Raider Units Into Cites

This is moreso applicable once Mandekalu Cavalry upgrade into lancers and onward, but you shouldn't be just attacking cities with raider units that are too strong for them, they'll just get killed. Use siege as normal to take down a city, the gold you'd gain from trying to whittle a city down with mounted units isn't that much, and not worth killing units over. Consider it a minor buff that shouldn't effect your playstyle at all once walls come online and/or you get knights

Neglecting Economic Infrastructure

When you are at war you genuinely can keep up your economy, and if you can manage to keep chaining one war into the next this point is mostly moot. However it is unlikely you will able to keep doing so for an entire game. At least one time during the game besides the beginning you'll find yourself without viable targets to war. If you don't have some semblance of money generation during this time your coffers are gonna drain fast.

Staying at Peace for too Long

Even if you try to keep the last point in mind though, it probably won't be enough for you to fully be making much if even any money, especially in the late game. Don't stay at peace for longer then you have to.

Buying too Many Units

You'll have a lot of money saved up as Songhai, and I would recommend buying some units. However you'll need to upgrade units too, and you actually have pretty solid production, so don't waste all of your money buying units, don't feel bad producing units from time to time

Gimping Gao: Counter Strategies

Songhai has a strong economy, even and especially during warfare, and a pretty strong cavalry force to back it up. However, much like a rolling boulder, Songhai has a lot of momentum, but may find it hard to get it back up again if they are stopped from doing what they want.

Reigning in the River Warlord

Songhai gain a lot out of rivers, both domestically and in warfare. Everyone gains from rivers however, I would not recommend trying to avoid settling rivers yourself, the benefits from rivers are good enough it's not worth trying to avoid them. When fighting Songhai, try to put as many of your units as possible on your river tiles to minimize the benefits Songhai can get against you, their river bonuses mostly apply to movement and not combat, so taking up the tiles yourself should make it much harder for them.

As for Songhai's gold from conquering, there are two main things in particular I'd say you can do. First off is you can try to pick off any barbarian camps Songhai is trying to take in the early game. This will be a big blow to their early game engine, and it'll take them longer to be able to war. The other thing I recommend is to not forward settle Songhai. Even a weak forward settled city can give Songhai a lot of money, which will give them the resources they need to start conquering your better cities.

Mangling Mandekalu Cavalry

Fighting Mandekalu Cavalry with your units is going to be tough, no doubt about it. Try your best to focus your fire to take out one unit, as this will significantly reduce the effectiveness of the rest of the Mandekalu Cavalry. Use a combo of anti-cav and ranged units to fight Songhai mounted units

As for your cities, it is a lot easier to fight Mandekalu Cavalry. Castles. Just having castles up will make Mandekalu Cavalry much easier to handle. Once they upgrade to lancers and beyond the defensive building of the era will be even more effective

Tearing Tabyas

There isn't too much to do against Tabyas, as forward settling Songhai is generally a bad idea. One thing to note I suppose is that Songhai will probably have a better infrastructure then most warmongers, so a counter or preemptive invasion of Songhai would give great benefits. If you try to do so just try to occupy as many river tiles as you can, although the mobility isn't as much of a benefit on the defense anyways.

Strategy by Style

Early-Game Warmongers: Bring a good amount of spearman and ranged units, you'll need them. Try to engage Songhai away from their rivers first

Mid-Game Warmongers: At this point Songhai probably has a few cities away from rivers, engage them at those cities first and you should be able to pressure them easier in their core lands

Late-Game Warmongers: Mobility and flanking bonuses doesn't mean much against air units, they should rip Songhai apart

Diplomatic Players: Global Peace Accords probably won't prove a massive detriment if Songhai chooses to keep warring but they will most certainly feel the effects if they stop warring. Banning luxuries should hurt Songhai a good bit though

Scientific Players: Get to castle tech quick, and Songhai will struggle to take you on. Keeping on top of unit techs should also help negate flanking bonuses for the most part

Culture Players: Not a lot to say other then what is said above, build some defensive wonders perhaps.

Other Guides

Meta Guides

These guide cover every civ in the game, and can be used as a quick reference

• Civ Summaries

Civ Specific Guides: Alphabetized

• America (Domination/Science/Culture)
  
• Arabia (Culture/Science)
  
• Assyria (Science/Domination)
  
• Austria (Diplomacy/Culture)
  
• The Aztecs (Domination/Science)
  
• Babylon (Science)
  
• Brazil (Culture)
  
• Byzantium (All)
  
• Carthage (Domination/Diplomacy)
  
• The Celts (Domination/Culture/Science)
  
• China (Domination/Culture)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Culture)
  
• England (Domination/Diplomacy)
  
• Ethiopia (Science)
  
• France (Domination/Culture)
  
• Germany (Diplomacy/Science)
  
• Greece (Domination/Diplomacy/Culture)
  
• The Huns (Domination)
  
• The Inca (Science/Domination)
  
• India (Science/Culture)
  
• Indonesia (Domination/Culture/Science)
  
• The Iroquois (Domination)
  
• Japan (Domination/Culture)
  
• Korea (Science/Domination)
  
• The Maya (Science/Domination)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Culture/Diplomacy)
  
• The Netherlands (Diplomacy/Domination)
  
• The Ottomans (Domination/Science)
  
• Persia(Domination/Culture)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Culture)
  
• Portugal (Science/Diplomacy)
  
• Rome (Domination/Science)
  
• Russia (Science/Domination)
  
• The Shoshone (Domination/Science/Culture)
  
• Siam (Diplomacy/Science/Culture)
  
• Spain (Domination/Culture)
  
• Sweden (Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomacy/Culture/Domination)
  
• The Zulus (Domination)
  

[lifeordeath2077]

Impis still are a tercio replacement, and while that is a change from BNW Civ V, they've been a tercio replacement ever since I first made the guide. No other units (Besides the one here) have changed what they replaced since the guide was first made far as I can tell looking over them and the current patch.

[jayeye2011]

Might be worth rechecking the civs with early UUs. I think some more got nerfed by moving the UU to a later era, like Zulu Impies? It's like the main devs did not like early city conquest rush so archers got nerfed and really powerful early UUs got moved to later techs and like wise the map resource generator in AssignStartingPlots.lua got changed to make iron and horses much sparser (2 iron or 2 horses which are usually not in range of your first settle). Seemed like an indirect way of nerfing the Authority policy tree to favor more peaceful play I guess. Also, my experience is that strategic balance now does nothing in any of the default map scripts. The Communitu_79a map script did away with it completely so I am pretty sure the co-author who re-coded the AssignStartingPlots.lua file did not bother to implement strategic balance in the recode.

[lifeordeath2077]

As for the start biases, fair enough. Was going off the vox populi wiki for the start biases (I know that it's very out of date) and I wasn't sure where else to look for them. That's actually quite helpful, so thank you

[lifeordeath2077]

Small oversight on my part for the early rushes. I actually really dislike them moving the UU to being a knight replacement, I felt it being a horsemen UU gave it an interesting and powerful niche, but as a knight replacement a lot of it's abilities aren't as useful, namely the city attacking ones. It is still a powerful combat unit due to the flanking bonuses, and definitely on the whole still a good unit core to Songhai's domination; I just think it's less interesting

[jayeye2011]

Also, all the guides information regarding start biases need be cross checked against against how start bias prioritization works in Vox Populi. The following information is presented in are VP GitHub pull request by LessRekkless at https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/pull/8867

"Please note that this is "Region Selection". Each Region is designated as one of:
FOREST | JUNGLE | HILL (no feature) | PLAINS (no trees or hill) | GRASSLAND (no trees or hill) | MOUNTAIN | TUNDRA | DESERT
based on the percentage of the denoted type of land. A region can only be designated one of these types.

The tables sort civilizations based on an Order of precedence:
Ocean -> River -> Priority -> Avoid.
If a civilization appears in a higher priority, all appearances in lower priorities are ignored. "
So if I understand this right, Songhia's river bias is used, and the avoid tundra bias is ignored. So you can start on a river in tundra regardless.

[jayeye2011]

"Their UU is great for early rushes, " - this is incorrect now that the UU is a knight replacement requires Chivalry tech. All you have at the start is the horseman unit, not going to take down any cities in the early game anymore.

[lifeordeath2077]

Songhai is updated to 1.0.3

[lifeordeath2077]

It's a small thing on paper the gold but it makes all the difference

[ArandomLatios]

Post-buff Inca is soooo fun to play now

[Urzamax]

Welcome back, and thanks for all your hard work! These guides have been really helpful in understanding the changes wrought by VP.