Zigzagzigal's Guide to Songhai (BNW)

Excellent at creating and using puppet empires, Songhai makes great use out of war. This guide goes into plenty of detail about Songhai strategies, uniques and how to play against them.

Introduction

Note: This guide assumes you have all game-altering DLC and expansion packs (all Civ packs, Wonders of the Ancient World, Gods & Kings and Brave New World)



Many a great empire has risen from a single city. Settling in what is now eastern Mali in the 9th century of the common era, the Songhai people would build the city of Gao, establishing it as the capital of the Songhai Kingdom in the 11th. This would fall to the great Malinese Empire in the 13th century, but would achieve independence two centuries later. In the late 15th century under Sunni Ali Ber would take advantage of the growing weaknesses of Mali, and take much of its land in the name of the Songhai Empire. This would be continued under Muhammad I Askia, creating a vast state dominating sub-saharan West Africa.

With such power, Songhai's only problems came from within - or so it seemed. For on the other side of the Sahara, Morocco seeked new wealth. Bringing technologically-superior forces, they rapidly brought the empire to an end. But while the empire has fallen, the people still live - threatened now by poverty and violence. It now falls to you to rebuild the Songhai state - your people deserve better. From new beginnings, from a single city once more, build a civilization to stand the test of time.



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.
Builder Nation/Empire - A generally peaceful nation seeking victories other than domination.
Civilian units - Collective name for Settlers, Workers, Missionaries, Inquisitors and Great People. All of these are instantly destroyed or captured if on land and an enemy unit moves on their tile.
Finisher - The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. Free Great Person for Liberty.)
Meatshield - Soaking up damage on behalf of something else. This can be on the small scale (like a Swordsman taking damage for an Archer) or on a large scale (protecting a capital city with less important cities.) This guide generally uses "meatshield" to refer to the small-scale version.
Melee units - Throughout this guide, "melee units" typically refers to all non-ranged military units - whether on the land or sea. "Standard melee units" refer to Warriors, Swordsmen, Longswordsmen, Spearmen, Pikemen, Landsknechte, and replacement units for them.
Opener - The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +1 culture for every city for Liberty's opener)
Spotter - A unit which allows a ranged unit (usually a siege unit) a line of sight with its target. Typically, siege units have a higher maximum range than their sight radius, hence the need for spotters.
Tall empire - A low number of cities with a high population each.
Uniques - Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Tile Improvements and Great People
UA - Unique Ability - The unique thing a Civilization has which doesn't need to be built.
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.
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.
ZOC - Zone of Control - A mechanic that makes a unit use up all its movement points if it moves from a tile next to an enemy to an adjacent tile next to the same enemy.

At a glance (Part 1/2)

Start Bias

Songhai is biased to avoid tundra. Tundra start locations tend to be fairly weak, so a reduced likelihood of them occuring is advantageous. You're also likely to start closer to the equator as a consequence, making it easier to launch attacks on other Civs.

Uniques

Songhai's Unique Ability is useful from the earliest turns. Their Unique Building comes along in the classical era, and their Unique Unit in the medieval era.

Unique Ability: River Warlord

• Destroying Barbarian encampments grants triple the normal amount of gold (75 rather than 25 in normal speed games of Prince difficulty and above)
  
• Capturing cities grants triple the normal amount of gold
  
  • This stacks with Egyptian Burial Tombs to grant six times the normal amount of gold, but doesn't stack with the double gold Landsknechte get from capturing cities.
• All military land units have a free Amphibious promotion (can attack across rivers or from the sea with no combat penalty)
  
• Military embarked units (civilian units including Great Generals aren't affected) have double defence
  
• Military embarked units receive +1 sight

Unique Unit: Mandekalu Cavalry (Replaces the Knight)

A mounted melee unit

Technology	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Production cost	Purchase cost	Resource needed
Chivalry Medieval era 2nd column (7th column overall)	Military Science Industrial era 1st column (10th column overall)	Chariot Archer (80 )* Horseman (55 )*	Cavalry (240 )*	110 *	430 *	1 Horse

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
20	N/A	4	N/A	2	No defensive terrain bonuses	Can move after attacking

Negative changes

• Costs 240 gold to upgrade in normal speed games, up from 220 (+9%)

Positive changes

• Costs 110 production in normal speed games, down from 120 (-8%)
  
• Costs 430 gold in normal speed games, down from 460 (-7%)
  
• Costs 80 gold to upgrade to from a Chariot Archer in normal speed games, down from 135 (-41%)
  
• Costs 55 gold to upgrade to from a Horseman, down from 100 (-45%)
  
• No city attack penalty

Unique Building: Mud Pyramid Mosque (Replaces the Temple)

Building of the Faith line

Technology	Building required	Required to build	Production cost	Purchase cost	City restriction	Maintenance
Philosophy Classical era 2nd column (5th column overall)	Shrine	None	100 *	500 *	None	None

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Base output	Output Multiplier	Specialist	Great Work slots	Other effects
2 2	None	None	None	None

Positive changes

• 0 maintenance cost, down from 2 (-100%)
  
• 2 extra culture produced

At a glance (Part 2/2)

Victory Routes

Note these scores are a matter of personal opinion based on experiences with the Civilization. You may discover a way of utilising the Civ more effectively in unconventional ways.

Cultural: 5/10
Diplomatic: 7/10
Domination: 9/10
Scientific: 4/10

Domination is the main victory route for Songhai, though gold from city captures offers you an interesting military/diplomacy hybrid option.

Similar Civs and uniques

Overall

Songhai gameplay is pretty distinctive, so no Civ can be clearly picked as being very similar. A possible candidate for the closest Civ is Poland - they also have a mid-game melee mounted UU designed for offensive warfare, gold and Social Policy bonuses. Songhai has better gold bonuses but Poland has a stronger ability to grab Social policies. Poland's UU is very powerful for its era, but has a penalty against cities unlike Songhai's UU.

Same start bias

Songhai's bias to avoid tundra is shared with Assyria and Babylon.

Similar to the UA

Interactions with Barbarian encampments is also a feature of Germany's UA. Germany's UA has a two-thirds chance of giving you the last Barbarian unit present in the encampment as well as 25 gold (which doesn't scale with game speed, unlike Songhai's UA.)

The only other Civ with a direct unique bonus for capturing cities is Assyria, which can gain technologies from doing so. Egypt's Burial Tombs give you double gold for capturing their cities. Songhai taking an Egyptian city can easily gain lump sums of gold in the four-figures.

Double embarkment defence and free Amphibious promotions are features only otherwise found on a couple of UUs - Spain's Conquistadors have the former, while Denmark's Berserkers have the latter.

Extra embarkment sight is also a feature of Polynesia's UA. Polynesia can make better use of it as their units can embark immediately.

Similar to Mandekalu Cavalry

Other uniques that replace Knights include Arabia's Camel Archers, Mongolia's Keshiks, Siam's Naresuan's Elephant and Spain's Conquistadors.

The last unit on the list above is the UU most alike Mandekalu Cavalry. Both units lose the usual penalty against cities, and have doubled embarkment defence (in Spain's case, it's a feature of the unit rather than the Civ.) Conquistadors are more expensive, but come with more abilities (the extra sight and ability to settle overseas)

Similar to Mud Pyramid Mosques

Egypt's Burial Tombs get another mention, this time due to them being a maintenance-free Temple replacement just like Mud Pyramid Mosques. They offer happiness rather than culture - a better bonus but doesn't synergise well with the tall-bulding playstyle Egypt's wonder-centric UA encourages, so it balances out.

Another UB with a culture bonus is Siam's Wat. It's a more consistently useful building with a bigger culture bonus, but comes later in the game and doesn't have a reduced maintenance cost unlike the Songhai UB.

Unique Ability: River Warlord

The most powerful element of Songhai is their complex Unique Ability, made up of lots of small complementary bonuses. Some will be useful almost immediately, some will come into play later. But don't underestimate it - it'll get you off to a good start, help you invade places and give you greater rewards for doing so!

Triple encampment pillaging gold

On a normal speed game on at least Prince difficulty, for any other Civ (except Germany) clearing a Barbarian encampment gets 25 gold. In the earliest years, that's worth a few turns of gold generation but is hardly spectacular. Songhai's UA triples this gold, making it very worthwhile to dedicate units to destroying Barbarian encampments.

In order to maximise gold out of this aspect of the UA, take the Honour opener so you can track Barbarians down quickly, fight them more effectively and get some culture out of them in the process. Clear encampments quickly then move your units away so new encampments can spawn (as they can only appear in places out of line-of-sight with every Civ.)

So, what to do with all that extra gold? One powerful use is to save it up (with gold made from other sources) to buy a Settler, which costs 500 gold in normal speed games. As getting an early Settler will help you get horses for your UU, that's a good route to go down.

As the game goes on, 75 gold lessens in impact, but it's still worth sending units over to clear Barbarian encampments when you're not at war.

Free Amphibious promotion

Above: It's rather useful for dealing with coastal Barbarian encampments, particularly those on small islands, as you can keep safe from their melee units.

All Songhai military units start with the Amphibious promotion. There's two uses of this - attacking from the sea, (which goes well the double embarkment defence your units have,) and attacking across rivers without the usual 20% combat penalty.

The ability to attack across rivers without a penalty is the more useful of the two functions, as Civs' starting locations (and hence usually their capital cities) are located on them. As a result, one of the troublesome aspects of taking on a capital is removed.

Keep in mind that the Amphibious promotion doesn't stop crossing a river or disembarking from using up all of your unit's turns, so be careful about leaving melee units vulnerable by killing a unit on the other side of a river, moving into that spot and getting stuck.

Double embarkment defence and +1 embarked sight

Above: You can see a unit's embarked strength by scrolling over it with another unit selected. Embarkment strength scales with your era, rather than the unit's strength.

Normally, embarked units are incredibly vulnerable to attack when unescorted. This makes attacking new islands or continents a difficult matter, as you have to get loads of naval units to escort all those land units, adding a huge extra cost to war. For Songhai, however, lacking naval escorts is less of a problem (at least until air units and Submarines arrive) as their embarked units are far more resilient than those of other Civs.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't use escort units at all - even with double defence, embarked units are weaker than naval units for their era. That's not to mention the fact your civilian units (including Great Generals) don't gain from this bonus, meaning they're just as vulnerable as ever. However, you won't need as many naval escorts as other Civs.

Aside from being able to defend themselves more effectively, your non-civilian embarked units have a sight of 2 rather than the normal 1 (only Polynesia shares this ability.) This makes your embarked units fairly decent at exploring, and lets you see threats (like enemy naval units) a little bit sooner.

Triple city capture gold

Above: This is in the medieval era. Gold from city captures increases as time goes on, to scale with the increased cost of new units and buildings.

This is the most powerful ability Songhai has. Capturing cities can now give you considerable amounts of money, often enough to cover the cost of buying a new unit (or towards the cost of a new happiness building to offset the unhappiness of having another city in your possession.) While other warmongering Civs can suffer economically from their enemies pillaging their International Trade Routes, with triple gold from capturing cities, you have another way to deal with that problem.

There's a number of factors determining the amount of gold you get from city captures, but to not overcomplicate things, here are three main points to consider:

• The size of the city (bigger cities are worth more gold)
  
• Whether or not the city's a capital (if it is, it's worth more gold when captured)
  
• Whether or not the city's owned by Egypt (their Burial Tombs grant double gold to you if you capture a city with one in, which stacks with your UA to make six times the normal amount of gold.)

Above: An industrial-era capture of a city with all three of the above factors.

Note that the gold does not stack with the double-gold-on-city-capture promotion that Landsknecht units have - you'll get the same amount of gold from capturing cities with them as you would from any other unit.

In the early and mid-game, it's usually best just to completely wipe out Civs you're invading, so they can't give you trouble in the World Congress later. Raze minor cities which aren't of much use, and generally you should puppet the rest (your UB works very well in puppeted cities, explained later in the guide.) If you've taken a few cities far away from your starting location or on other continents, it's often useful to annex one of the cities so you can buy units there, but keep the rest as puppets so they don't hurt your happiness and Social Policy gain.

In the late-game, resist the temptation to capture every little city for cash. Go for capitals, or cities on the way to capitals. You don't have time to pick off every city.

Summary

• Take the Honour Opener and destroy as many Barbarian encampments as possible when not at war.
  
• Grab a couple of horse locations early on ready for your UU.
  
• It's generally best to hold off on war until your UU is available.
  
• The free Amphibious promotion makes taking capitals easier as they tend to be on rivers and Amphibious eliminates the penalty for attacking in such a manner.
  
• Double embarkment defence and +1 embarked sight means you need fewer naval escorts, but as civilian units aren't affected, be sure to always bring escorts with them when travelling more than a short distance.
  
• Capturing a couple of cities will often give you enough gold for at least one relevant-era unit, or a happiness building to help offset the unhappiness of the new city.

Unique Building: Mud Pyramid Mosque

Not to be confused with the Pyramids wonder, the Mayan Pyramid UB or the Mosque religious building.



While your UA is one of the more complicated ones around, Songhai's UU and UB are rather straightforward. Like most UUs, you'll want Mandekalu Cavalry sooner rather than later, but before then (and after getting any required Worker technologies) take a diversion to Philosophy for this UB. It's the same technology as a powerful National Wonder - the National College - so it's a diversion well worth making anyway.

Mud Pyramid Mosques offer an additional source of early culture, at a time where sources of culture tend to be quite limited. While being on the faith line of buildings (the Songhai have no bonus to faith generation, so it's quite possible you'll be shut out of being able to found a religion) is awkward, at least Mud Pyramid Mosques don't have the relatively high maintenance cost normal Temples have.

Probably the best use of Mud Pyramid Mosques is for puppet empires. While you can't choose what puppet cities build, they can't construct units or wonders and as such they should build your UB fairly early on. The culture Mud Pyramid Mosques generate will be great for expanding borders in those cities, as you can't purchase tiles in puppeted cities. More importantly, puppeted cities don't raise the costs of new Social Polices unlike annexed or founded cities, so Mud Pyramid Mosques make a significant difference toward helping you eat through lots of Social Policies.


Above: Topping the Social Policy leaderboard despite being a non-cultural Civ is quite possible. Of course, killing lots of Barbarians with the Honour Opener helps, too.

In summary, think of Mud Pyramid Mosques as a second Monument. Not too costly for new cities and provides more culture than most other buildings.

Special Bonus Strategy: Instant UB, just add culture

This strategy isn't essential to Songhaih gameplay, but could be worth trying out.

If you want to save time building Mud Pyramid Mosques, one possibility is to get up to four cities with both a Monument and a Shrine (and Amphitheatres if you have Drama and Poetry) and pick the Legalism Social Policy from the Tradition tree. As the UB gives culture, the Social Policy counts it as a cultural building and will give you some for free. This will generally only be viable if you intend to complete the Tradition tree - otherwise, that'll be a rather high Social Policy cost for a small reward.

Unique Unit: Mandekalu Cavalry

A reminder

While Mandekalu Cavalry are arguably the weakest of the five Knight UUs at face value, remember that in addition to their lower cost and loss of a city attack penalty, they also have double embarkment defence, +1 sight when embarked and the Amphibious promotion thanks to your UA. As I've already mentioned, capitals tend to located next to rivers or coasts, so the Amphibious promotion will make quite a difference.

Preparing for conquest

In order to make the most of Mandekalu Cavalry, you'll need horses, and plenty of them. Get the Animal Husbandry technology to find them early, and after getting the Honour opener to help fight Barbarians, head to Collective Rule in the Liberty tree for the free Settler. Saving up cash from destroyed Barbarian encampments towards buying a Settler isn't a bad idea, either.

When you've got the Worker technologies you need, (as well as Writing,) pick up Philosophy for your UB as well as Horseback Riding. Horseback Riding offers Stables which lets you build mounted units faster, as well as Horsemen which you can upgrade cheaply into Mandekalu Cavalry later. Now, just head towards Chivalry.

In action

Above: The bonus against cities is from the Statue of Zeus wonder.

The most notable thing about Mandekalu Cavalry is the lack of the usual 33% penalty against cities that Knights have. That makes them only slightly weaker than Longswordsmen at attacking cities, but with double the movement and the ability to move after attacking.

Before that, though, you'll need to clear enemy defensive forces, especially Pikemen - they're as much a threat to Mandekalu Cavalry as they are to normal Knights. That's where Crossbowmen (or Composite Bowmen earlier on) are useful. Longswordsmen are a bit slow, are located a bit further off your technology route and require iron.

Once enemy units are out of the way, move the Mandekalu Cavalry you have on full health up to the city (in range of its ranged attack.) The following turn, attack the city and pull the units out of range of the city's ranged attack. Repeating this process is an effective way to batter down a city's defences without having to risk any units being picked off on low health (if you have enough Mandekalu Cavalry, you won't need siege units.) Lose any? They're cheap to replace. Just capturing a city may give you enough gold to cover their cost.

As your UA means you don't need many naval escort units, this UU doesn't really require backing by siege units if you can use hit-and-run attacks effectively. At least, until the late-renaissance era where the presence of Lancers makes this unit essentially obsolete. At that point, it may be a good idea to put wars on hold until you can upgrade those Mandekalu Cavalry to regular Cavalry and build Artillery to back them up.

Special promotions kept on upgrade

None, aside from the promotions that all your military land units have anyway.

Cavalry are only 13% better against cities than Mandekalu Cavalry despite having 70% more strength, but it's still worthwhile to upgrade (even if the upgrade from Mandekalu Cavalry to them is more expensive than it is to upgrade the generic Knight there.) Take a brief break in warmongering while you wait for Artillery to become avaliable. Artillery is amazing against the unprepared, and will tear down city walls easily.

Militaristic City-States

One use for all that gold from destroying Barbarian encampments and taking cities is to fund militaristic City-States for some free units and a base to heal your units up in. When allied to a militaristic City-State, they can offer you a land-based UU of a Civ not in your current game (if you've got the respective technology and not the obsoletion technology.) Some go very well with Songhai's UA, so favour these:

Ancient Era

Battering Ram (Higher priority)

Rivers and seas often make life harder for Battering Rams, but your free Amphibious promotion offsets that issue.

Classical Era

African Forest Elephant (Lower priority)

The Great Generals II promotion carries over on upgrade, and the African Forest Elephant to Mandekalu Cavalry upgrade path is very cheap.

Companion Cavalry (Lower priority)

Again, has a Great Generals promotion carrying over on upgrade.

Kris Swordsman (Medium priority)

Some of the outcomes here (particularly Ambition and Restlessness) are powerful in offence, and thanks to your UA will no longer be held back by rivers and coasts.

Siege Tower (Higher priority)

Similar to Battering Rams, Siege Towers are often held back by rivers and seas which your UA can partially address. More important, however, is the Sapper bonus (when adjacent to an enemy city, all your units within 2 tiles gain +50% strength versus the city.) That makes your Mandekalu Cavalry attack at essentially strength 30 against that city.

Medieval Era

Conquistador (Higher priority)

Essentially a Mandekalu Cavalry unit that has more sight and can found cities. But there's an interesting twist - they have double embarkment defence on a separate promotion to the War Canoes promotion all your units have, making a Songhai Conquistador have amazing embarked defence. You can safely bring on over to a new continent - without an escort - scout around and found a new city as a base in this new land.

Impi (Medium priority)

Units which are good at attacking go well with the free Amphibious promotion, and the Impi is no exception.

Renaissance Era

Janissary (Medium priority)

Similar to the Impi, a good candidate for the Amphibious promotion as the attacking-across-water penalty only affects attacking units (and Janissaries should be attacking much more than defending.)

Social Policies: Pre-renaissance

If you mostly puppet cities, you can get quite an impressive Social Policy gain rate, especially thanks to the culture on your UB.

Start with Honour's Opener for the bonuses to fighting Barbarians; it synergises well with your UA. Follow that up with the Liberty tree - it'll help you secure horse spots, and is a decent tree for supporting puppet empires. After that, Piety is good if all those cities with Mud Pyramid Mosques have given you a strong religion, or Commerce otherwise, followed by Rationalism once the renaissance era starts.

Honour

Opener

This lets you find Barbarian Encampments much more easily, fight against Barbarians more effectively and rewards you with culture for doing so, which fits nicely with your UA. After this policy, it's probably a good idea to switch to Liberty to help develop horse spots and to help support a large, conquered empire.

Liberty

Opener

Liberty's Opener allows all your cities to spread their borders immediately, which is especially useful for newly-conquered puppet cities which may lack culture buildings as you can't purchase tiles in them.

Republic

1 extra point of production makes quite a difference early in the game, and helps get new puppet cities off to a good start.

Collective Rule

Use the free Settler to secure a spot with plenty of horses, ready for your UU.

Citizenship

Helps to develop cities faster, or repair tile improvements you pillaged after taking a city.

Meritocracy

While the reduced unhappiness from population doesn't affect occupied cities, it does affect puppeted cities, making this policy a decent tool for dealing with unhappiness in a wide, conquered empire.

Representation

Puppet cities don't raise the cost of Social Policies, and conquered cities will regardless of this policy, but if you decide to found more cities beyond this point (such as to get a foothold in a new continent) the increase in Social Policy cost will be less pronounced.

Finisher

Grabbing a Great Scientist to place an Academy, a Great Engineer to rush a good wonder or a Great Prophet to found a religion if you haven't already are probably the best options here.

Piety

Piety is a decent option if you've managed to found a religion, as it makes good use of all that faith generated from your Shrines and Mud Pyramid Mosques. It's not a bad idea to switch to Rationalism once the renaissance era arrives to keep up with technologies.

Opener

This'll make it much easier for cities to get your UB - a Shrine and a Mud Pyramid Mosque together will now take just under double the time it takes to build a Monument instead of three and a half times as much.

Organised Religion

And this makes your UB more rewarding in terms of faith. A Shrine and a Mud Pyramid Mosque together will now be worth 5 faith rather than 3.

Religious Tolerance

Religious Tolerance lets you take advantage of a second Pantheon for any of your cities with two or more religions present (one of which being a majority religion.) This is particularly good if a rival religion took a strong non-faith Pantheon like Messenger to the Gods.

Reformation

See the Religion section for more details.

Mandate of Heaven

Missionaries, Inquisitors and faith-purchased buildings become cheaper with this policy, which helps you save faith.

Theocracy

Now, your Mud Pyramid Mosques not only have no maintenance, but actually make you money. It's particularly good in puppet cities, which have a tendency to favour gold accumulation.

Finisher

A free Great Prophet helps to spread your religion, or enhance it if you haven't already.

Commerce

If you lack a religion, or you just want to make your money go further, Commerce is a good choice. When the renaissance era arrives, switch to Rationalism to avoid falling behind technology-wise.

Opener

Your starting location is always near at least two luxuries (assuming a randomised map rather than a map with fixed resource locations) meaning your capital usually has a good gold output. Commerce's Opener gives you more out of that, which is great for maintaining the costs of having lots of Mandekalu Cavalry or other such units.

Mercenary Army

Landsknechte have a promotion that gives them double gold when they capture a city. Unfortunately, it doesn't stack with your UA, so there's no point trying to get the last hit on cities with them. Instead, use their cheap cost and the fact they can move after being bought to spam Landsknechte where a defence is needed.

Mercantilism

Making gold purchasing cheaper goes really well with your UA, letting you get more out of the sudden rush of gold you get when you capture a city. Additionally, gold buildings now give you a little science - useful considering puppet cities have a tendency to favour maximising gold.

Wagon Trains

The main advantage here is the halved road and railroad maintenance costs, helping to retrieve a sizable amount of cash, but consider the fact double embarkment defence encourages you to keep a slim navy, making naval Trade Routes riskier. +2 gold for every land International Trade Route will help compensate for the possible loss of naval routes when at war.

Entrepreneurship

By now Rationalism's almost certainly available, but if you're finished with it, it may be worthwhile to come back to Commerce in order to grab Protectionism's happiness bonus. Entrepreneurship is on the way, and while it's more worthwhile for you to focus on generating Great Scientists or possibly Engineers instead, puppet cities often fill merchant specialist slots and generate Great Merchants themselves. When puppet cities generate Great People, it doesn't raise the cost of them, so faster generation and doubled trade mission gold is still useful.

Protectionism

Every type of luxury resource is now worth 6 happiness rather than 4, which is excellent as a reliable extra source of happiness until your puppet cities get around to building happiness buildings.

Finisher

Extra gold from every trading post is powerful considering puppet cities tend to favour maximising gold output. All that gold will be useful for supporting late-game warfare.

Social Policies: Rationalism

Rationalism

Opener

So long as you can keep your happiness positive, Rationalism's Opener offers a 10% bonus to science generation, helping to offset the science penalty puppeted cities have.

Humanism

Use Great Scientists to keep ahead with military technologies. Prior to around Plastics, use Great Scientists to build Academies, and after that use them to rush technologies. As in the very late-game, military and peaceful technologies are on the opposite sides of the technology tree, rushing technologies can give you quite an advantage.

Free Thought

Puppet cities like maximising gold output, so they're likely to work lots of trading posts. Now, you can get some science out of them thus making up for their science penalty. Plus, Universities produce a higher science multiplier than before, making this an all-round good policy for keeping your research rate high.

Secularism

To take full advantage of Humanism, you'll need a good specialist city. Secularism gives you more science for those specialists. While a wide puppet empire won't get as much out of this policy as a tall one, a little science is still useful for everyone.

Sovereignity

You're not going to be taking cities every turn, so getting more per-turn cash is important for the maintenance of your armies.

Scientific Revolution

While capturing cities will give you plenty of gold, many other Civs may question your warmongering and may be reluctant to run Research Agreements. Still, Rationalism's finisher is worth one hard-to-use policy.

Finisher

Use the free technology to get an expensive technology (saving you on science) or one useful towards military means. Artillery, bomber-class aircraft and Rocket Artillery are particularly useful for battering down cities' defences, so try pushing towards them.

Ideology

Autocracy is generally the best fit for Songhai, though Order is useful if you need more science.

I'm covering both here and assuming you're aiming for a domination victory, covering the first "inverted pyramid" of both ideologies' tenets (three from level one, two from level two, one from level three.)

Level One Tenets - Autocracy

Industrial Espionage

Helps you keep up with other Civs' technologies by speeding up the tech-stealing rate of Spies.

Mobilisation

Triple gold from city captures scales well with time, meaning that even now capturing a city will roughly cover the cost of a unit. Mobilisation cuts unit purchasing costs by a third, meaning you can get even more out of city captures.

Elite Forces

Helps to narrow the gap between wounded units and those on full health.

Fortified Borders (Alternative or additional fourth option)

This turns Castles, Armouries and Military Bases into maintenance-free sources of happiness. Considering puppets have a tendency to build defensive buildings, you can get quite a lot out of this policy. It's a good choice of policy to get if you need more time before taking Clauswitz's Legacy.

Level Two Tenets - Autocracy

Nationalism

A significant cut in unit maintenance costs means a lot more gold per turn, excellent for covering the costs of more units or supporting your economy if all your International Trade Routes get pillaged.

Lightning Warfare

Those Mandekalu Cavalry of old will promote into armoured units - this policy helps you make more out of them. They're now faster, attack better and can ignore Zone of Control, which is brilliant for slipping through enemy defences to get the last hit on a city.

Level Three Tenet - Autocracy

Clauswitz's Legacy

Time this right for maximum effect. 50 turns of a 25% attack bonus if well-timed will be enough to conquer the rest of the world, so make sure you're either ready or in war already when you take this.

Level One Tenets - Order

Socialist Realism

An incredibly easy source of happiness to support your conquests.

Skyscrapers

If you want to rapidly build up defences in a newly-captured city, or quickly develop a city's infrastructure with the gold from city captures, Skyscrapers will make that significantly cheaper.

Hero of the People

Faster Great Person generation is useful for everyone. Puppet cities will gain from this bonus like all your cities, but when they generate Great People, it won't raise the cost of them for the rest of your empire.

Level Two Tenets - Order

Workers' Faculties

A strong bonus to science, helping to offset the increased cost of technologies per city you own and the science penalty puppet cities have.

Five-Year Plan

A significant boost to production, great for producing more units faster.

Level Three Tenet - Order

Iron Curtain

Can't get any International Trade Routes going without them being pillaged? Never mind, just use internal ones instead. They'll be 50% more effective than before, which is excellent for maximising unit production in a city. Additionally, if you want to annex a city you capture to quickly buy defences, (or new units,) this policy will give you a free Courthouse, dealing with the extra unhappiness without costing you in building maintenance.

Religion

To take full advantage of your UB, it's helpful for Songhai to found a religion. If you don't manage one, then consider that you can stockpile faith for buying Great People once the industrial era arrives.

This guide shows the best choices (which aren't highly situational, such as most terrain-dependent Pantheons) for each kind of belief, in decending order of power.

Pantheon

Note that highly situational Pantheons aren't covered here. Faith Pantheons in particular are useful for reaching a religion sooner.

Messenger of the Gods

Rather good for science in the early-game, and helps reduce the science problems from having a wide puppet empire.

Ancestor Worship

This turns Shrines into mini-Mud Pyramid Mosques. With those two buildings, this belief, a Monument and the Liberty Opener, that's 6 culture a turn in every city without too much trouble.

Faith Healers

This helps your Mandekalu Cavalry recover much faster after attacking cities.

Founder

Tithe or Church Property

Both of these are good for per-turn gold, helping to support unit maintenance or for any of the other many uses of gold. Church Property is probably stronger earlier in the game, when many cities are smaller, while Tithe's good for its long-term potential.

World Church

Helps build upon your strong Social Policy gain, with even more culture.

Follower

Pagodas

An excellent policy for dealing with excess faith and unhappiness problems in one. Also useful for making even more faith and culture.

Asceticism

An easy source of happiness, especially as you need Shrines to build your UB.

Mosques

Not to be confused with your UB. These Mosques are bought with faith, and generate 1 more happiness and 1 more faith than your UB does. While not as powerful as Pagodas, they're still good for offsetting some happiness problems.

Cathedrals

A backup if you can't manage Pagodas or Mosques.

Religious Centre

Your cities will have to grow quite a bit to get to this point, but this belief makes your Mud Pyramid Mosques into a maintenance-free (aside from the 1 gold maintenance of a Shrine) source of happiness.

Choral Music

This belief makes your Mud Pyramid Mosques worth 4 culture a turn to cities that are large enough, which is very significant for a single building.

Enhancer

Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers

Makes it easier to spread your religion without having to use up faith. Particularly useful if you took a religious building (or two) as a follower belief.

Holy Order or Missionary Zeal

These both help establish your religion in new cities faster. The former makes it cheaper to buy Missionaries and Inquisitors, while the latter makes Missionaries more powerful at spreading religion.

Just War

If you can manage to spread your religion into rival lands, you'll make them easier to conquer. Certainly, an interesting way to put the faith generated from your UB to work.

Reformation

To the Glory of God

Both Liberty and Piety don't let you faith-purchase a Great Person as part of their finishers, so this belief makes up for that.

Religious Fervour

Late-game units are expensive to faith-purchase, but it's a decent way to spend faith if you've got nowhere else to spend it.

Heathen Conversion

The Honour opener will tell you where Barbarian encampments are. Any Barbarians still around? You can bring a couple of military units and some Missionaries to convert them. Keep the encampment standing so you can convert more. While this may seem a strange course of action considering your tripled gold from destroying Barbarian encampments, by this point in the game, the gold doesn't make as much of a difference.

World Congress

A possible use for gold from city captures and destroyed Barbarian encampments is to buy City-State alliances to prevent the World Congress moving against you.

Here's a list of voting choices and how you should probably vote on them. Note that "priority" in this section refers to how high a priority it is to vote on each decision, not how high a priority it is to put the vote forward.

Arts Funding

Medium priority
Vote no

Cultural Heritage Sites

Low priority
Vote no unless you captured a lot of wonders earlier

Embargo City-States

High priority
Vote no

Trading with other Civs becomes too risky when they hate you for warmongering.

Historical Landmarks

Low priority
Vote no

International Games

High priority
Vote no

International Space Station

Medium-High priority
Vote no

Natural Heritage Sites

Low priority
Vote no

Nuclear Non-Proliferation

High priority
Vote yes if you have plenty of nuclear weapons, you lack uranium and other players have them or you're the only player with nuclear weapons. Vote no otherwise.

Sciences Funding

Medium priority
Vote yes unless you're in the lead technologically-speaking

Standing Army Tax

High priority
Vote no

World's Fair

Low priority
Vote no

Wonders

While you should be careful not to waste too much time building irrelevant wonders, there's a few decent ones to consider building or capturing. Here's a selection of the best wonders for Songhai, arranged alphabetically in each era.

Ancient Era

Pyramids (Liberty Only)

Helps develop new cities faster, getting you off to a good start in the early-game, as well as helping to clean up pillaged tiles faster once you've taken a city.

Statue of Zeus (Honour Only)

Mandekalu Cavalry with this wonder fight cities more effectively than Cavalry without. It's certainly a great help towards making the most of your UU.

Stonehenge

A great help towards getting an early religion.

Classical Era

Oracle

Coming at the same technology as your UB and the National College, it's not too hard to get this Wonder. Offering a free Social Policy, it can give you quite a head start in that regard.

Medieval Era

Alhambra

Comes at the same technology as your UU. With an Armoury, this can take your new melee units (including your UU) straight to Drill III, and if you manage to get a Military Academy and the Brandenburg Gate in the same city, you can get new melee units straight to March.

Angkor Wat

You can't buy tiles in puppet cities, so a bonus to the cultural acquisition of tiles comes in handy. Of course, this wonder also makes it cheaper to buy tiles, but the cultural acquisition is the main advantage here.

Borobudur or Hagia Sophia

If you've taken Just War, these are powerful wonders for helping out with conquests, but otherwise the time spent building these wonders is time that could have been spent building Mandekalu Cavalry. Still, the Hagia Sophia has a second use, as a backup option to rapidly found or enhance your religion if you haven't already.

Great Mosque of Djenne (Piety Only)

Generally the most powerful of the three Theology wonders as it remains useful throughout the game. Getting more out of your Missionaries means you'll either spread your religion further or have more faith to spend on other things - either way, that's useful.

Machu Picchu

A good way to increase your per-turn gold, particularly useful for maintaining your army.

Notre Dame

Often one to capture rather than to build, as it's a rather competitive wonder and you get its full effect if you capture it.

Renaissance Era

Porcelain Tower (Rationalism Only)

You might not get any Research Agreements going, but a free Great Scientist is a free Great Scientist, and by getting this wonder, you deny anyone else it.

Sistine Chapel

Considering your high culture generation thanks to your UB, this wonder goes quite a long way. While its technology appears to be slightly off your tech route, all Acoustics requires is Education, a technology you should be getting soon after Chivalry.

Industrial Era

Big Ben (Commerce Only)

The sudden rush of cash you get when you capture a city encourages you to purchase items with gold. Big Ben makes that cheaper, and helps that money to go further.

Brandenburg Gate

With a Military Academy, all new units start with three promotions. For Artillery, that's just one promotion away from Logistics, for example.

Modern Era

Kremlin (Order Only)

While its main effect isn't particularly powerful to you seeing as you'll have plenty of armoured units from upgraded Mandekalu Cavalry, a free Social Policy is alright.

Neuschwanstein

Turns Castles into a source of gold, culture and happiness. Puppeted cities like building defensive buildings, so it's nice to get something useful out of that.

Prora (Autocracy Only)

Songhai's good at getting plenty of Social Policies and Prora rewards this with a decent amount of happiness, helping to support more conquests.

Atomic Era

Great Firewall

The main point of picking up the Great Firewall as Songhai is because of your high culture generation - you'll be one of the main obstacles to cultural players winning, and blocking their doubled tourism output from the Internet technology makes their task significantly harder.

Pentagon

Saves some cash from all those old units being upgraded.

Information Era

CN Tower

By now, you may have quite a significant number of cities, whether founded or conquered. The CN Tower gives you an unhappiness-free point of population in all of them, as well as a free Broadcast Tower (helping to build upon your already above-average culture output.)

Pitfalls to Avoid

Songhai's more powerful than its uniques may at first suggest, but there's still plenty of mistakes in gameplay you could make which are best avoided.

Researching Animal Husbandry late

Putting off Animal Husbandry may mean you don't know where horses are until it's too late to settle in such spots, denying you use of your UU.

Using Mandekalu Cavalry alone

Mandekalu Cavalry are just as vulnerable to Pikemen as regular Knights. Crossbowmen make a good choice of unit to help deal with those pesky things.

Not leaving an escape route for Mandekalu Cavalry

Always make sure that wherever Mandekalu Cavalry are, they can get out of harm's way in a turn to avoid them getting killed. If that's not possible (such as a city surrounded by rough terrain) then leave those spots until last.

Deliberately getting the last hit on cities with a Landsknecht

Unlike any other Civ, there's absolutely no reason for you to go out of the way to capture a city with a Landsknecht. Its double-gold-on-city-capture bonus doesn't stack with your UA.

Holding off upgrading Mandekalu Cavalry

Even with the 33% penalty vs. cities, Cavalry fight them better than Mandekalu Cavalry do. Because it's quite expensive to upgrade Pikemen to Lancers, for a brief time other Civs often lack a counter to Cavalry.

Askia Askew: The Counter-Strategies

Songhai has a range of utilities to help them out, but you can render many of them useless if you play carefully. Make sure if they're at war with you, the war's on your terms...

Playing against the UA: River Warlord

Triple encampment gold

You can deal with this part of Songhai's UA in one of three ways. One, you could keep lots of areas of the map near Songhai uncovered so Barbarian encampments can't spawn there. Two, if you've taken the Honour Opener, you could try taking Barbarian encampments before Songhai has a chance. Three, you could just ignore this aspect of the UA. It's not game-changing in itself, and dedicating so much to deal with a small part of one Civ's uniques is probably not worthwhile for most Civs.

Triple gold from city captures

Songhai will have no use for this bonus - probably the most significant of theirs - if they never get around to capturing any cities. Having lots of Pikemen will put them off attacking you when their UU's available, but that might just steer them in the direction of other Civs. Still, it's better that they invade other Civs than you.

In the late-game, ensure even your small cities are reasonably defended, for even a tiny one captured by Songhai will be worth plenty of gold, allowing them to buy a new unit or upgrade plenty. This shouldn't be too difficult - this is something you should probably be doing anyway.

War Canoes and Amphibious promotions

Songhai units may receive double embarkment defence meaning they can do quite a bit of damage when defending, but embarked units can't initiate attacks. Try using Galleasses, Frigates or other such ranged naval units to pick them off. If Songhai has to build a navy to escort their units in, that's made their double embarkment defence redundant.

Land-based ranged units are effective at dealing with the Amphibious promotion. Plant ranged units two tiles from the coast or a tile away from a river tile so Songhai has to disembark or cross the river to retaliate against your units, leaving them vulnerable.

Playing against Mandekalu Cavalry

Mandekalu Cavalry only fight better than normal Knights against cities. As such, using Pikemen or Landsknechte will work effectively against them. If they never reach your cities, they're not using their advantage.

To really cause them trouble, try sending Landsknechte into their lands to pillage their horse pastures. With no movement cost to pillage, you can run in, pillage the pastures and run out again. If Songhai's got more Mandekalu Cavalry than horses, the 50% strategic resource penalty kicks in, making them weaker than Horsemen.

Playing against Mud Pyramid Mosques

Mud Pyramid Mosques work best if Songhai's got a good-sized puppet empire, as puppeted cities don't raise the cost of Social Policies, and this UB gives them plenty of culture to fuel Social Policy gain. On the other hand, puppet cities are vulnerable to attack as the controlling Civ can't just buy units there to repel attacks. Threatening some of Songhai's puppet cities might just encourage them to annex them, and take the hit to happiness and Social Policy gain.

A point about Siam

Songhai will find it particularly difficult to deal with Siam. Thanks to Siam's UA, they can grab a religion reasonably early on, shutting Songhai out of some beliefs or potentially even a religion. Siam's UB generates more culture than Songhai's, but the main reason Siam acts as a counter to Songhai is their UUs.

Mandekalu Cavalry fight mounted units at 20 strength. Naresuan's Elephants fight mounted units at 37.5 strength - that's an 87.5% difference if they were fighting each other. Arabia and Mongolia can avoid this problem through use of hit-and-run attacks (and the 50% bonus vs. mounted units doesn't work on Keshiks and Camel Archers) while Spain has the Tercio to help deal with Naresuan's Elephants, but Songhai is the one Civ with a Knight replacement with no help against mounted unit counters.

Strategy by Style

Early-game Aggressors - Songhai is likely to have an above-average size early army in order to deal with Barbarians. Just be cautious and watch the back of your army for any ambushing Songhai force returning from fighting Barbarians.

Mid-game Warmongers - Bring plenty of Pikemen or Landsknechte to help fight off Mandekalu Cavalry. Try to pillage their horse-pastures so they suffer a 50% combat penalty.

Late-game Warmongers - Songhai's worse at defending than attacking. It's probably a good idea to make them one of their earlier targets. Target their puppeted cities to force them into a dilemma of whether to annex them or not.

Cultural Players - Make sure you have a few Pikemen ready in the medieval era, and some ranged naval units to fend off sea-based attacks. Songhai has a high culture generation, but being a warmongering Civ, it'll tend to suffer with happiness (making it easier to make use of Order's Dictatorship of the Proletariat's tourism boost) or you can join in with one of their wars (for use of Autocracy's Cult of Personality.) For Freedom Civs, it's a little tricker - try to use your tall cities to deny them the Great Firewall wonder.

Diplomatic Players - Landsknechte are excellent units for repelling Mandekalu Cavalry, but regular Pikemen are still good if you're not taking Commerce. The cash Songhai gets from its UA may be spent on City-State alliances, but chances are, Songhai will have difficulty maintaining those alliances as their UA's extra source of income isn't constant.

Scientific Players - Once again, Pikemen will be good for repelling Mandekalu Cavalry, and ranged naval units for possible sea-based attacks. On the other hand, if you befriend Songhai, they're a fairly good Civ for making Research Agreements with due to the sudden rush of income they get when capturing cities (rather than just spending money before they can reach the threshold to make a Research Agreement.)

Other Guides

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Meta-guides

These guides cover every Civ in the game and can be used as quick reference guides.

• Civ summaries (Gives a brief overview of how each Civ plays)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Compiles the lesser-known features of each Civ)

Civ-specific guides, in alphabetical order

All 43 Civs are covered in in-depth guides linked below. In brackets are the favoured victory routes of each Civ.

• America (Domination)
  
• Arabia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Assyria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Austria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Babylon (Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural)
  
• Byzantium (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Carthage (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Celts (Cultural)
  
• China (Domination)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Cultural)
  
• England (Domination)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Greece (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Huns (Domination)
  
• Inca (Scientific)
  
• India (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Indonesia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Iroquois (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Mayans (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Diplomatic)
  
• Netherlands (Diplomatic, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Cultural)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Domination)
  
• Shoshone (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Siam (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Sweden (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomatic)
  
• Zulus (Domination)

[Zigzagzigal]

The huge advantage of Landsknechte is that they're spammable; you can buy one, move it, buy another and repeat. The policy is mainly useful for the one it leads into though, and Songhai will rarely finish Commerce before Rationalism rolls along.

[Wulfram]

I am surprised that you don't mention taking Patronage at all. I think for all civs that have SOME advantage in dealing with CS's, it is an extremely powerful tree, no matter the victory condition. [that being said, i think CS's are a bit too important in civ5...]
Commerce is only really powerful if you actually finish the whole tree IMHO beacuse Landsknechte and Entrepreneurship suck.

[Emperor Norton]

and here I thought I was being all smart. Thanks for the reply

[Zigzagzigal]

Privateers get gold based on the damage they do to cities; this is separate to the gold you get from capturing them. As such, the Songhai UA doesn't make any difference there.

[Emperor Norton]

Hey you mentioned several times that the bonus does not stack with landsknechts, but what about privateers?

[Munchie]

nope just tested it. My puppet city created a great merchant and it raise all my GM, GE, GS cap by 100.

[Zigzagzigal]

A Great Person generated by a puppet city never raises any Great Person cap, whether it's a Great Engineer, Merchant or Scientist (the only three Great People puppets can generate.) So, while generating a Great Engineer/Merchant/Scientist in a normal city raises the cap for all three, generating one in a puppet city doesn't affect it.

[Munchie]

Great Guide, It's marvelous how much information you posted for this game. I want to ask to raise the question about great persons and puppet cities. Annexing Cities doesn't raise the GP cost as the game tooltip suggest (in fact annex or not have no effect on GP). But you wrote here with Order Tenent Hero of the People that when puppet cities generate a merchant, it doesn't raise the cost of them. I want to clarify this... Does this mean that generate a GM from puppet city doesn't raise the cap for Great S M and E?

[Zigzagzigal]

I'd argue Songhai currently lacks direct advantages to cultural victory, hence my 5/10 scoring. It's a shame, really - Songhai used to be very much a culture/war hybrid Civ, and each expansion shifted more towards pure war due to how their UB was changed.

In Vanilla, Mud Pyramid Mosques replaced Temples and offered 4 culture instead of the normal 2, for no maintenance. This made them excellent for puppet empires, allowing you to chew through Social Policies quickly and push towards the old-style cultural victory.

In G&K, Temples became a faith building, meaning Songhai's UB had weaker synergy with cultural victories; you had to build more buildings for the maximum culture output.

In BNW, culture no longer directly contributes towards cultural victory, leaving Songhai's UB as no longer pushing towards any particular victory route. All I really want is for it to get a late-game bonus to tourism (e.g. +2 tourism with Flight) and the culture/war hybrid would work effectively again.

[Patachungus]

The Songhai are great for a Domination victory, but I won my first (and only) game with them with a Cultural victory, and trust me they're pretty great at culture.