The Shrine

Got a few games of hotseat played with Deity settings, which basically means you get no bonus versus barbarians without Honor policy when there are no computers (not sure if City States get the bonus but they're never aggressive anyway). The game is devoid of strategy until the Renaissance era. The only way you can ever take down a city early on is if you grossly outtech/outnumber/outXP the enemy, or you have the iron units while he doesn't have either iron or horse. Until you get the Musketman line of units, you simply don't have a unit that can remotely fight against a iron unit. Also siege weapons are usually too weak to punch through a city defense. The siege units are presumably scaled with wall structures in mind, so by the time you hit cannons you'll be able to find some cities that don't have a castle and actually do significant damage to them. For the game to have any meaningful depth you really should start at the Renaissance era as at that point there are actually decisions to make on whether to expand or not, what to build and what paths to pursue. In all my games, nothing ever happens in the period before Renaiisance era. You're pretty much completely incapable of taking someone's capital city unless you're way ahead of them in tech. In one of my game, the Iroquis are sandwiched between two of the world's top powers (Americans and Ottomans) and they have no iron and horse, but actually managed to hold their capital with crossbowman + mohawk warriors until cannons arrived. In the Renaissance era you also got a lot of interesting tech coming up that can break a stalemate which makes the research actually interesting.

The combat system in this game is pretty messed up with minimum damage set at around 3 unless you're grossly outclassed. This means a range unit, even when it is significantly weaker than a melee (e.g. your range attack is 30, their range defense is 50) you can still do 3 damage to him. This means having 2 range units with double attack can take out a unit that can beat you 10-1 or even 20-1 if it actually got close, so really the unit is way better than you but because of the minimum damage you can take that unit out. I put units on 20 HP which helps a lot with this issue, since the melee unit will kill your unit 20-1 whenever it gets close so the extra HP don't help you when your outclassed badly. That said range units are actually surprisingly durable and 20-1 outcomes are actually pretty rare.

The units still take way too long to build. It seems like unit cost are designed with stuff like Factories in mind because there's no way you can even produce simple units in a reasonable time. Most of the units cost as much as a building, and I know you can spend the whole game just buliding buildings if you've a decent research rate. I turn them to 1/2 cost in my game so you actually see units amassing, and I put the upkeep modifier to 4 (from which lowers the cost somewhat (it's some kind of curve so it's not exactly half), because otherwise you'd never be able to afford your army.

Some interesting things that pop up when all the players are human...

1. Money is actually hard to get. You don't have an AI to rob. The only kind of deal I do with myself is Research Agreement since both parties are locked into that. I never trade anything else because just about any other trade can be abused in some way.

2. Defense Pacts cannot be seen on the diplomatic screen and basically leads to a one person against the world if you dare to declare war. This is because signing DPs are almost always mutually beneficial unless you're planning to declare war on the guy you just signed a DP with. Even if you know that guy is about to get a Declaration of War by the most powerful player, there is no reason to believe the most powerful guy will leave you alone just because you ignored him, so you might as well do it. Unlike computers, a DoW is more like the natural state between human beings and people won't really think worse of you for being perpetually at war compared to peace. If anything having a Declaration of War makes it slightly harder for the guy to launch a sneak attack since the game will warn you when enemy units are approaching.

3. Research Agreements are the deterrent to war, though if you throw RAs with DPs you quickly end up with a world where everyone is at peace with everyone else, and when someone declares war it he ends up declaring war on the world so nobody would declare war. Unlike against AI, nobody's going to purposely sign a RA to make you lose money since money is hard to come by without AI to rob. Money is just too valuable to be wasted like that, not to mention the tech boost is huge.

4. City-states are much harder to keep since money is limited, and if you spend a ton of money on a valuable CS expect that guy to get conquered. After you declare war on City-States a few time you get the Warmonger penalty and at that point you might as well just declare war on all of them. The AI sucks anyway so it's almost like free XP for your units, and even at permanent war they're not very aggressive at attacking and will inexplicably fail to take even the weakest of cities. I had a guy with a city strength of 25 surrounded by a city state with Rifleman (25) and cannons (24?) and the city should've been bowled over immediatey but the AI kept on walk his cannon to point blank range to die and the Rifleman decided to go swimming in the lake nearby. Also, CS is a huge disadvantage if you've any allied, because if you want to protect one you got to declare war, but then due to #2 as soon as you declare war on a player you're now at war with the world. Even if you limit the DPs, having a city-state ally actually makes you an attractive target because someone can declare war on you, which makes the CS declare war on them, and now they can conquer the CS without the Warmonger penalty. Again unlike against AI you don't carry any extra penalty for being at war with someone but the city-states do. Puppeting cities is pretty much the best way to expand early on as you don't have to worry about culture or National Wonder costs, not to mention most CSs are usually sitting on some type of strategic/luxury resource. I think in a human player game it'd probably be best to use no CS because having any allied to you is actually an open invitation for everyone to declare war on you so they can attack the CS without any penalty.

Unit/Combat thoughts...

The best balance in units is probably the beginning of the Renaissance era. You got Musketman (16), Longswordsman (16 + iron), Knight (18 + horse), Crossbowman (15 ranged). Mustetman costs more hammers so it's worth it to build the technologically inferior units if you got the extra strategic resources, and Crossbowman. Trebuchets suck but because units are balanced you got to have something that can reliably attack a city without getting owned since you don't have a unit that can shrug off any kind of counterattack.

You got Lancer (22 + horse, 11 on defense) and Rifleman (25) coming soon which are clearly superior, but they're pretty expensive to produce and you can still attempt to overwhelm Rifleman with numbers since the enemy cannot have as many of them compared to you. Lancers are the best unit in terms of tactics in the game, as they are cheap and have enough firepower to take out any unit, especially units that are retreating, but they absolutely get destroyed on defense so you really have to be careful using them. They're usually used to trade 1 for 1 against high XP units (most notably Drill 3 + March) that are hard to take out otherwise. Cannons are basically just an update of Trebuchet for the era and do what they're supposed to do.

Then the game pretty much breaks apart. You have Cavalry (25 + horse, lose to Lancer and Knight for some inexplicable reason) coming late in the era that doesn't serve much purpose but would've been okay if the first tech on the Industrial era isn't the Artillery. The Artillery counters everything besides itself. Artillery versus Rifelman/Cavalry on flat or rough terrain results in Artillery winning every single time, and the odds are worse on rough terrain because you might not even catch up to a retreating Artillery with Cavalry. Artillery have a combat rating of 16, which is same as a Musketman, so even if it has to melee against a Rifleman/Cavalry it is not exactly a push over. It's range 3 + indirect fire means it'll probably get 2 shots in before any unit closes the distance. Given it is an era ahead of those two units, those two shots will generally destroy the unit outright, and even if it failed to do so it can either take a third shot and hold its ground, or just pack up and retreat. After all, it's as fast as the Rifleman and Cavalry is barely faster. At this point the game becomes just building more Artilleries and a single Artillery can basically stop an army if it's in an unassailable position (inside city or behind a river) without Artillery. There really isn't any point to build units that are not Artillery at this point except for the one you need to take over a city and the one unit you need for spotter (Caravel works great if applicable).

And then you get Infantry (36) which comes way too late to break the Artillery dominance, but this unit is just as bad. First since it's only got a move of 2 it means it can't ever catch up to Artillery. At 36 strength it is strong enough to withstand two rounds of Artillery barrage so Artillery is no longer unstoppable, but with the minimum damage ~3 for equal era you can't really risk eating two turns of attack even though you can usually kill the Artillery at full strength even at 4 HP. So what happens is you just have Infantry fortified forever standoff, since you get as much (maybe more?) XP for being bombarded than doing the bombarding. You have no chance of losing the Infantry to bombardment assuming you place them in a reasonable way since even if they get two lucky hits you can just retreat. If the other guy is smart he probably wouldn't attack either because attacking gives XP to the Infantry and it helps them more than it helps you, since Infantry with March (level 4) will be able to attack Artillery successfully, even Artillery with Logistics.

And then Mechanized Infantry comes in about 2 techs later, and those guys dominate the battlefield. With no weakness and a 50 combat strength, there's really no reason to build anything else. Tank, for some reason, only has 50 strength (probably should have 60, since the Panzer has 60 strength and doesn't say 'this unit has increased combat strength') so the unit that's supposed to counter Mechanized Infantry doesn't actually counter it until you get all the way down to Modern Armor. Bombers are probably supposed to counter Mechanized Infantry too, but air combat is basically a joke as the combat preview UI is COMPLETELY WRONG. For example take a Fighter to attack a GDR, the preview says 'Ranged attack, 2-0'. But when you attack it, you will see the GDR do something like 150 damage to you if it was possible to do more than 10 HP while taking 2 damage because air attacks are melee, not ranged. What this means is when attacking with air units you have to compute the strength yourself, and then try to guess what the formula is plus any hidden variables you might not know about. So attacking with a Bomber can be a wild success or a total wipeout even if there are no interceptions and you really have no idea which will be the result, so at some point you'll probably just lose your Bombers unless you load after every failure.

The game returns to some sembalance of balance with Modern Armor and Helicopter Gunship, though at this point you also have 3 immortal units: Jet Fighter, Stealth Bomber, and GDRs available soon. Jet Fighter can only be killed by other Jet Fighter, partly because it's attack against non air unit is so weak you'll never use them to attack anything that can do significant to it, and since it's an air unit it is never attacked unless it attacks first (or against another Jet Fighter doing Air Sweep). Stealth Bombers are straight up immortal as there is nothing that can attack them directly. They have 100% evade so SAMs, Missle Cruisers, and Jet Fighters do absolutely nothing to them. I had a city with 120 defense and it still did only 1 damage to a Stealth Bomber when being attacked. Now, a Stealth Bomber will take significant damage if it attacks:

1. GDR
2. Mobile SAM
3. Missile Cruiser

However since it cannot be intercepted there's actually no reason it'd ever attack 2 & 3 since it can directly bomb anything next to them with no fear of retaliation. And if someone has GDRs you should be using nukes at this point.

It seems to me they tested this game up to the Renaissance era and call it a day. It's no wonder most games against computer are decided in the Industrial Era because Artillery is simply way overpowered, and the units after it turns the game into just massing identical unit types. While Infantry/Mech Infantry isn't necessarily overpowered (they take reasonable damage from range attack and most reasonable counter), the fact that they have no weaknesses and is cost effective against stuff that's supposed to counter them means you might as well just keep on build more of them.

Oh I forgot the navy. Naval combat is pretty worthless but functional for the most part, but one unit deserves special mention: Submarine. This unit is totally worthless as the same trick in Civ 2 still works. You can't move to a hex the Submarine is in, so all you have to do is see your movement radius and if there's an apparent empty spot in red, that's where the Submarine is. Also, any sea unit can see the sub if they're next to it, which means even a Frigate can destroy a Submarine if it saw the sub first, which is pretty likely with this method. To make things worse, your territory's vision apparently can detect Submarines, so forget trying to camp near a city to snipe at new naval units, not that that'd work since any new naval unit can see your sub immediately by looking at which hex they can't move to. Subs are basically an expensive guided missile that can easily be killed before it even does any damage, and sure they come in way before Guided Missiles but it's not like Guided Missiles are that great of a unit either unless you have 10 of them sitting around.

I don't think Civ is well suited to multiplayer play, as the reasons you point out suggest.

City States would be difficult, simply because - not only would a heavy wealth + patronage focused civ would just go after any military and food states that you may have acquired, then you lose everything.

If you want to play a good city state focused game, Uncharted Waters Online was recently released. I haven't played it, but if it is in the vein of the old SNES titles, then it is probably fun.

Anyway, on Civ 5, multiplayer - I haven't really thought about how I would approach it. My strategy works for single player, but someone with good tactics could chancefully spot my tactics and cut the sapling before it explodes into a technologically advanced military super-power in the Industrial age.

From what I gather multiplayer game either ends with Swordsman rush, Longswordsman rush, or the first person to get to Artillery wins. The first two is only applicable if you either greatly outnumber the enemies (Archer/Crossbowman can fend off against limited number of iron units when backed by Oligarchy) or you can somehow deny the enemy from getting iron/horse, which isn't actually that hard depending on where the enemy's iron/horse is located, if they have them at all. Artillery attack is simply not counterable without Artillery. If you got a Caravel near your Artilleries, nothing is going to be sneaking up on them and there is nothing you can do to stop them without your own Artillery.

One of the biggest problems is that horse units inexplicably went from 4/5 speed (Horseman/Chariot) to 3 at Knight/Cavalry. This means they cannot chase down retreating units effectively, and the penalty against city is just too much of a liability as most major battles in Civ involve a city. I guess the tradeoff is that they're supposed to be the best mobile unit except they're really not at speed 3. Longswordman work just as well as Knights and are generally equally incapable of chasing down any runners.

I don't really see too much strategy in Civ other than trying to beeline a certain tech. Machinery (Armory/Crossbowman) is probably the most potent tech to research but since it's next to Steel it's really hard to sneak it in there because everyone is going to be heading that direction too. Rifling can potentially be game breaking since the prereqs on that are pretty low (only 2 techs after Gunpowder) so you can probably pull it off with Oxford University + GS. But of course since this is so obvious everyone else is probably heading the same way too in a competitive game. That said trying to take a well defended city is hard even when you're an era ahead in infantry so Dynamite still is the game winner since Artillery trivializes city sieges. I suppose it's possible to get to level 5 Cannons but that'd require so much HP it'd almost certainly involve just declaring war on a city-state and your Cannon attack it forever, because I can't think of a situatino where there are even enough units made a human player to get a Cannon to level 5.

So far as city-states go, they're not going to be taken down by 3 units since it's almost impossible to have a tech edge on them (they automatically get the most advanced tech of any player), and since they're chock full of units that means whoever conquered them would've amassed a ton of easy XP while fighting their way in. This means whoever has them has a pretty good army that has to have more XP than yours (since you didn't fight anybody) and most city-states tend to be in good defensible position (mostly surrounded by water). I don't see how going peaceful would allow you to defeat a warmonger civilization that has better XP than you. In my game I pretty much always attack city-states that have no possiblity of being 'rescued' unless you're expecting someone to invade your main cities, and in that case you might as well solidfy your area first and again, beating the city-state earns you a ton of free XP. Now of course someone much stronger than you militarily could attack your conquered CS and win, but then that guy can probably wipe you out anyway. I've found that if you can take a city from another opponent, you can take them all unless there's some really unique feature at their capital (Citadel or The Great Wall)

I am playing the latest patch for the first time; I see they eliminated the ability to start with a National College early by pushing it back to Philosophy and removing two raw science. I decided to try the Germans on Emperor, Huge, Marathon; since I always felt they were adequate, but now have 25% cheaper ground forces.

So I played Earth, and ended up starting in Eastern China surrounded by City States; lucky me! =)

English was North of me in North East Russia, Iroquois south in Thailand. Chinese were in Russia. Mongolians, Russians, Babylonians, Indians were all in Africa and Southern Europe. Greeks in India.

First thing I did was play isolationist to see how the politics worked out. I built up an army from allying with the Hanoi and then hitting as many barbarians as possible for free troops.

I went for science and Merchant City States (for food bonuses) as usual, and built 4 cities in locations where new resources were available. The English kept harassing me an eventually denounced me and shortly after invaded. They swarmed me with warriors an archers, but weren't able to overcome my border and the Hanoi who were situated close by the battle site.

I eventually formed a three way alliance with the Chinese and Iroquois, and we crushed the English, and I helped them out against the Greeks and Babylonians, and the three of us essentially rule over Eurasia, and are friendly towards the Mongols and Russians, but the Chinese are sometimes at war with them so they're not included in the Alliance (Currently it's a defensive pact and declaration of friendship between the three of us).

What is interesting is that my allies haven't turned on me, they're very loyal.

I am way ahead in science because I did still build the National College when I could, but I did it after expanding to 4 cities rather than before. I currently have 8 cities thanks to the English. The Greeks and Babylonians are still around, but no real threat.

I have an army of 4 Crossbowmen, 8 Longswordsmen, 4 scouts, and some amoun of pikemen which I just send exploring. As far as I know, the most advanced rival unit is a pikeman.

The Germans are way overpowered now. I am way in first at about 450 points, 2nd is someone (unknown) in North or South America with half my points. Chinese is a very close third, and Iroquois and Mongols are 4th.

I always thought Germany was pretty strong since having 50% chance to get an Infantry is like 50% chance of getting about 1000 gold in the later eras, unless you play with no Barbarians, or that the world is so populated you stop seeing them. I guess the 25% upkeep bonus is so that the Germany bonus is useful even if you choose no Barbarians but I think it does make them overpowered, especially consider players can't just ignore upkeep costs like computer can.

I stopped my game in the modern era. Mech infantry on fortification is pretty much unkillable without using one of the broken units (Stealth Bombers, GDR, nukes). Defense in this game is just way too strong. You just don't have a way to effectively break a good defense within any reasonable resource equity if you're not way ahead technologically.

It reminds me of Civilization 3 now. I am watching a war in North America now between Egypt and Rome. Rome has a single trebuchet in their capital, and occasionally pops out a Legion. Egypt has longswordsmen, Pikemen, and cannons; they are also about three times as large as the Romans, but seem completely incapable of taking the capital. The Cannons pound the walls down, but any ground forces that get near are crushed almost immediately. Rome has three cities situated in the central part of the continent, Egypt has the rest of the continent. South America is all Persian.

The Germans are very strong on large maps and marathon games, simply because there is a HUGE amount of time that they can actually use to get free troops. I am still picking up free troops in Oceana about 700 turns in.

The Egyptians are the #2 Civ in the world, but they're so far behind me that it doesn't even matter. I am sitting on a nest egg of about 10,000 gold (that's with maximum or higher on the Alliance bar with every Maritime City State in the game), make about 250 per turn, and pump out 400 science per turn - I am not sure the bonuses that other civs get on Emperor, but I believe I am far outpacing them. At the same time, I have huge cities, I am way ahead on population, and have +25 happiness - the weakening of the happy buildings hasn't done much except kept me from holding onto any cities I conquer. I am also able to keep up with upgrading troops as my army is now converted to riflemen and I have built a bunch of artillry. For a Navy, I own the oceans with a few caravels, I see little reason to upgrade to Ironclads, which I can very easily - I have just one Port, one small one which I annexed - I was happy to see that Court Houses can be bought now, that probably changed a while ago, but I actually haven't annexed a city since I first played the game. I had to this time because I wanted a port, and the closest location with resources was already occupied.

I think given the fact that the last patch eliminated my early National College strat; one city > Monument > Worker > Library - which can sometimes be bought > National College > Expand to 4 cities; and that I did as good without it using the Germans, that the Germans are now overpowered with big game settings. It's probably not the same for people who customize their maps to be filled with rival civs (my co-workers who play the game do that). Furor Teutonicus should be moved from 50% to 15%. Having a bunch of spears to be easily upgraded to landsknechts for 10 gold also ensures German military superiority in the Middle Ages - although they're 200 raw gold more expensive to upgrade to riflemen than Pikemen (pennies to me now).

The current issue I see is that beefing happiness puts huge limits on expansionism. In my current position, I see little reason to ever go to war again as it would only end up hurting me if I expanded. Which is a shame; my military us far more powerful than everyone elses - if every other civ in the world declared war on me, I would win easily; my biggest obstacle would be defending my city states, as some of them are far away. Right now I have all I need to win, all the resources, and some of the best real estate on this map (China).

Courthouses give more happiness than expected so it's probably a good idea to annex cities if you have the gold to buy courthouses, as an annexed city gives less unhappiness than a puppet one, and even compared to one you founded from scratch. With the unhappiness change you probably have to leave some cities around population 4-8 with the 'Avoid Growth' and I think it's just silly that you have to stop growing to fill some artifical requirement.

You can buy courthouses? As far as I can recall it never let me do that unless that was a recent change.

One of the earier patches lets you buy Courthouses and even though the notes say they're expesnive, they're not.

Happiness is the current largest issue I have with the game. Although I understand the use of the stat. In Civ 2, the game was about restraining onesself from sweeping across the world with a super-sized army of crusaders.

I think that I would be nice to have an option which doesn't incoporate them into your empire, but rather makes them independent cities. Essentially, the conqueror can transform conquered cities into city states that had no bonuses to their allied civ, other than they would aid their ally militarilly and have trade options (resources go to the allied civ as what happens with City States).

I gave Immortal a shot on the latest patch on a Small Map. I unluckily ended up with the Mongols and Aztecs as neighbours and had to deal with both of them. I managed to get in front in the tech race, but after razing the Aztecs to the ground, I found that I had to deal with both economic and happiness issues. Just as I recovered, the Mongols declared. I fought a massive battle against them where I ended up losing many of my best units; but for every military unit they took out, I took out 2-3 of theirs. Still, it was not close to enough. The battle ended up pretty much with me defending my border, after killing what must have been 40-50- Mongol units, they wiped out 15 or so of mine reducing my military to shambles. I quit after peace was made, even though I was still #1 for Literacy; this was mostly because I felt that they would rebuild their military and invade again, and they had caused me to focus too much on military, and not enough on the essential economic, production, and science buildings I need to keep up.

Emperor is the last comfortable level to play on. After Emperor, the AI civs become quite powerful. I think I could handle 2 of them, but not more than that. I feel like I could have defeated the Mongols given the opportunity, but I had 3 other Civs to deal with aside from them - each of them now caught up in sciences, and vastly more productive and wealthy, with no need of the resources I had.

I think this is the first time in Civ 5 that I have been so humbled =P

I would say, if they wanted to make Immortal and Deity frustratingly difficult, this patch worked. At least for players of my skill level.

I don't find losing to an AI that has 5 times your resources to be humbling, especially given how simple the combat system of Civ is, it really should've spanked you every single time. If you've even an average player controlling the Immortal/Deity side, that guy will easily crush the best human player alive. The problem I have with Civ 5's combat is that there's really no pressure on the attacker when you're dealing with the computer's level of resource, but even if you have a standard human level, at some point maintaining a huge army just happens because you ran out of other things to build. As an attacker I can go in and pillage all your mines and deny you a large number of hexes to work on. Even if my army gets completely wiped out, I still come out ahead as long as the defender is not able to launch an effective counterattack, and they almost certainly won't be able to if I defended in a minimally competent manner. The standard contain strategy works far too well in Civ 5. In fact, I'd say it's virtually uncounterable. If I have even slightly more resources than you and I can stop you from expanding, at some point I'll be able to amass an army to make a risk-free attack (i.e. even if I lose it all, I still have enough left to defend) so it just becomes a matter of time.

I just mauled the game on Deity using Songhai on Huge Map Marathon settings. Essentially:

Songhai get 225 gold for each Barbarian camp they overrun, and Archers cost 460 gold, going Honor (after getting the Tradition opener) is very beneficial at this point. This is better than Germany in my opinion; because there is no chance involved, every 2 barbarian camps conquered = 1 free Archer or if they're not needed or wanted, save the money and get something else. Workers cost 700, but I have found that they're hardly worth building since so many of them can be acquired for free. Sell everything for gold to the highest bidder, 50 gold per Open Borders treaty, all of that builds up.

* Explore and find closest neighbours
* Get a Worker asap (I built since they cost 700)
* Get Archery when convenient (I managed to get it from a goodie hut fairly early on, but it is also a cheap tech).
* Only take the tech you need to get the resources around your capital, tech towards Philosophy (for National College).

* Sell all of your luxuries to anyone not too close by.
* I was able to get 1 Spearmen and 7 Archers (I was oversized militarilly, 20% penalty).
* I called on Siam to declare on Germany, Germany was my closest neighbour and also had the most powerful military.
* I snuck in soon after. Denounced + declared (all they had was Berlin, I wouldn't need to worry about relations afterwards).
* Sold Open Borders to everyone except Germany and Ottomans
* After taking out Germany's army, I moved in and took their capital, no archers lost.
* I took out the Ottomans soon after, they had 4 cities, I got three of them, kept the capital and razed the other two.
* While waiting for my deals to run out, I took out all barbarian camps I could, and began expanding military. Happiness is a huge problem, but largely because I have my luxuries sold, and they're coming back soon. Cash is not a problem, I am fairly wealthy.
* I allied some city states for bonuses, and my happiness is now +3
* DoW from Egypt, I took them out at Berlin.
* Conquered Egypt
* National College finally built (a little later than I expected)
* Conquered barbs, got a couple horsemen, explored.
* I upgraded to Crossbowmen at this point and started moving North, and took out Siam, then the Aztecs.
* Went Piety after honor, as I feel like happiness is much more important to my Puppet State empire than my typical strategy (I usually go 4 core cities + a few build luxury cities, and then everything else puppet state, this time it is just a capital + puppet states made up of former capitals, so lots of luxuries).

This is where I stand. Although, at this point, I don't expect to lose the game; particularly considering how upgraded my crossbowmen are - they either all have logistics at this point or almost have it (that's 2 attacks per turn, and for ranged units, that's two unanswerable attacks). I was actually a little surprised at how over-powered this extremely aggressive money + military strategy turned out to be.

I find in my hotseat games the nation with the most money tends to be ahead, and it's not just because the guy who is the most ahead tend to generate the most money either. Songhai can buy a lot of extra stuff with those camps and Research Agreements are actually pretty costly.