Monarch Student VIII - Genghis Khan

Those horses are so far away... looks like the UU won't get any use this game. Maybe a little bit. Very interesting game so far. Settled a 2nd city near the NE copper and axerushed Pacal with 8 axes i think. Went for the capital first, which was only defended by a couple archers, then took the city he built just N of me (on a hill), then his 3rd and final city up to the NE (also on a hill) - in 775 BC he was no more. He had built Stonehenge and founded Buddhism in his capital for me. Research went very fast with 2 furs and silver in the capital.



Got Cathy up to pleased and had a higher power than her so i felt pretty safe, but then this happened in 300 BC..



Crazy Ragnar coming to challenge the Mongols. I only had 1 axe in that city, and not much of an army left - a few axemen here and there fogbusting. I hadn't even switched into slavery yet.

Right at 1 AD i managed to assemble a 2nd army and take it back from him - he won't talk peace still cause he's a madman, but who cares - empire is whole again. His one remaining chariot is running back to tell Ragnar of his armies failure. Ragnar will probably delete that chariot for delivering the bad news.



I'm building the great library in my capital - not sure if i'll get it or not without marble or math for better chops. Can put up courthouses soon and probably get 3 or 4 more cities down. Ragnar is slow on tech, and i just gave him a nice slap in the face taking out his SOD - possibly i could hook up some horses and send a nice sized stack of Keshiks all the way over to him - he decided we were close enough to fight a war apparently, so certainly the fast moving Keshiks can handle it. I'd rather keep Cathy around to trade with until after optics so it's either attack ragnar or just build for awhile. Since the Mongols don't build they attack - i might try that.

Here's tech at 1 AD - going ok - not running any scientists at all since im building GL in cap, and just whipped a bunch of cities for my emergency counter attack against the crazy viking.



I was the last one to finish the last game, and now i'm first in this one - hopefully i continue this sometime soon. Should be a fun game. I'll still probably end up being the last to finish and post after the thread turns into a ghost town...

Settled in place, there is tons of commerce, so lots of expansion is needed. I only got a map and a small amount of gold from huts, but the map revealed that Pacal is right on top of us to the north. That isn't going to last. I settled my second city next to copper to prepare, and then I get this event:



Not as game breaking as promoting all of your melee units to cover, but now, the more Holkans Pacal builds the better.

I built up a force of 14 axes before declaring on him. He had already settled a city between his capital and mine. Anyone that leaves Pacal alive is going to be completely boxed in.

I took his first city guarded by 2 archers, despite some bad luck, and moved onto Mutal. It was only guarded by 2 archers and 2 Holkans, and I took it pretty easily. Checking the trade screen, I see that he has 1 more city, along with Chichen Itza to the north west. I moved my army over to take Itza, guarded by a Holkan and an archer, and I took it losing only an axe. I don't know where his last city is at this point, but luckily the archer that was next to Chichen Itza did. So I followed him to the last city Uxmal, and managed to take it with what was left of my forces:



The city was in an OK position, but it autorazed. That turned out to be a good thing though, as maintenance costs started catching up with me, since I kept all of Pacal's other cities, and then settled Ning-hsia and Turfan far north. One to claim gold, flood plains and block Cathy, and another to claim marble. I can just never pass on marble.

From there, I just researched towards CoL with a huge deficit. I got it a little before I stopped, and so I'm only just now getting all of my courthouses chopped/whipped. I'm a few turns from literature, so I'll build the GLib and go from there. Hopefully Cathy or Ragnar research alphabet soon. They aren't going to be around for long, so they should be useful while they're here. Here are my southern cities:



I'm not sure what to do with the city that I took from Pacal over here. It has production and some riverside grassland and flood plains. I will probably just keep it as a hybrid city. I settled Beshbalik for copper, but its solid with production for now. The capital is great with a ton of production and commerce. Bureaucracy will be huge. I'm not sure If I'm going to finish the SoZ or not, Cathy has ivory, and already built the ToA. I may take a chance that she will build it. I really don't want to go up against it in a prolonged war. And to the north:



Mutal is a great Wall Street city, with flood plains, riverside tiles and the Buddhist holy city. I'll need to pop a GPro at some point, but it will be good nonetheless. I need iron working to clear out the jungle, but all of the cities can at least pull their own weight.

Something happened to Cathy in the beginning. She has had half of the power of Pacal and Ragnar, and ended up with only 4 cities, a pitiful number for the best REXer in the game. I figure a quick Cat/Phant war will take her out. I think there is another civ on my continent, since Cathy converted to Hindu, but isn't the founder. Once I take out Cathy, I'll have such a production advantage that I'll be able to take out anyone. I need to get Buddhism to Ragnar, that should keep him off my back at least temporarily. I could spread the religion to Cathy too, but there's no point, she'll backstab me either way.

Looks like I'm aiming for another domination win. There should be some more wars in the next update, I'll try and balance recovering the economy and expanding some more.

4000BC – Settle in place, start with AH and a worker
3625BC – Hit up two huts and get some gold/map… this is a very nice little area and no “hidden” resources up yet. To the north the map reveals we have a very close neighbor. Dirty, dirty Mayans. I hate him. He must be purged from the map in proper Khan fashion, which leads to my next thought….

The clearing south of the capitol looks like it should reveal something nice. Horses?! Please god?

3575BC – Mayans AND Vikings! You sir have read my mind and inserted some of my most hated AI rulers on this map.

3500BC – AH is done and do we have capital horses?! No. Hopefully BW will give us close copper as I don’t really want to make my first settler go that far when I also want to smear Mayan blood within a century or two.

3450BC – Afraid of the wrath of the worker soon to come locals do his work for him.

3275BC – Hiduism FIDL. Just noticed that Pacal founded Buddhism at some point.
3225 – Mining done start BW
3200 – Catherine of Russia. Maybe, just maybe you rigged this area to be full of pos AIs. That’s my guess. Time settler to finish same turn as BW. C’mon copper!
2950 – No horses in that empty plot but I’m now told it houses prairie dogs! We shall ride these noble steeds to battle!
2825 – Scout finally dies to a lion. So what we got so far?

As of yet no other AI’s so my first guess is that us four love birds make up this continent’s population. Still early but I think this is a safe assumption. What a group of people. Pacal, Catherine, Ragnar, and Ghengis.
2725BC – Settler finishes, BW finishes and what is this? Copper a very short trek to our NE? Don’t mind if I do! Pick back up on the barracks in the capitol. Start researching HBR. Maybe we can catch Catherine in the shower after disposing of Pacal. I don’t like her much either. Diplomacy is usually a weak spot for me if you haven't caught on. So now on to knock off Pacal... I hope… do barracks+axe rushes work on emperor? Maybe I should have looked into this…

2475BC – Judaism FIDL
2175BC – HBR done start on Mysticism. Realize this was way too early to research HBR and kick myself repeatedly for the next 5 minutes. Will kick self for another 5 minutes if I don’t take horses from Pacal.
2100BC – Whip/Chop some axemen and send a warrior with them towards Pacal while telling him I think his mom smells poorly. He gets upset and a fight breaks out.
2050BC – Mysticism is done and I start on Writing. Get within sight range on Mutal and see only one archer. Huzzah!
2000BC – He of course whipped another archer but with roughly 50% odds thanks to C1 and Cover I take Mutal. No horses, but its in the middle of some nice floodplains. If I ever get pottery cottages would look nice here.
1925BC –Find Lahkama or w/e. No horsies here either. Proceed to operation kick self. Stop with axes in the capitol for a moment to finish my queued settler. I want those horses on the coast gdi!
1875BC – Pacal had copper hooked up in this city and whipped up an axe as I approached. In the end I lost everything I had except for one Axeman. He thinks he’s pretty nifty right now.

Catherine is very close now but I think I might be crashing my economy just a tad already. Well, no horsies but no Mayans either.
1825BC – SH BIDL. Also Turfan goes up to the east directly next to the horses. Not great placement but oh well. Had my lone worker built by me and my lone warrior not sent to fight prebuild a road out this way earlier so once that pasture is up we have horses! Gers start going up in my original two cities. Can't afford too many more military units atm anyway.

1775BC – Writing done start on Archery.
1575BC – I see LOTS of workers right on my border with Catherine. I have 3. My economy is in the toilet. Can’t… resist… urge… I declare on her with the 7 axes I have gathered up north. For those wondering my infrastructure right now consists of 5 cities, 3 barracks, 2 gers, a monument, and lots of axemen.
1550BC – Oracle BIDL
1525BC – Misclick and miss the worker stack but I do find St. Petersburg and become very confused. Pictures speak a 1000 words right?

1500BC – I take the city and raze it. The fish is nice and the placement is fine, but I’m no where close to IW and can’t afford another marginal until then jungle city.
1475BC – Well I planned on making peace with the skank and trying to recover my economy but then a wise man lets me know something.

All she has left must be her nearby capitol. Marginal jungle city? No thanks. Sweet AI capitol city? Yes please. I stop producing axes and start chopping a library in each of my original two cities. Need some beakers badly.
1425BC – Moscow is in sight and has 3 archers, is NOT on a hill and I don’t see any metals around for her to whip in swords or axes. I still have 5 C1/Cover axes most of which have CR1 now (had to scramble a couple axes back to kill barb archers). The GW would have helped a ton had I known how carried away I’d get. Someone just built it and made me realize this. Anyway I don’t see how I can fail here.
1375BC – Archery finally done and start on AG
1350BC – Nice city. Think I’ll keep it. She apparently has one more city left that I’ll snoop around and see if I can’t just kill her off. Also finally get a 10exp unit in this battle. Leave him behind for defense.

1325BC – Kashi Vishwanat BIDL.
1275BC – Novgorod is a marginal city on a hill one tile from the coast that I don’t really want. It burns. Catherine is gone. My economy is tanked and I’m no where close to CoL/Currency to recover. Heck pottery is still on my “To Do” list. Finally back up to 23 BPT thanks to the two libraries that just came up and the luxury rich capitol.
So anyway here’s the demographics screen and a shot of the empire and some other random tidbits.


At this point I just want to recover my economy, find Ragnar, and attempt to block him off. He’s off to the west somewhere and I have not heard a peep out of him since meeting him. Do I build up a little and Keshik rush him or leave him be and use him as a trading partner since killing him off would leave me isolated for a bit I think. Isolated with a really large chunk of land, but isolated nonetheless. Oh and yes I checked this is emperor haha.


The forested hills and pig/fur/silver in the capitol really allowed this to happen. That city produced well over 70% of my army and is the only reason my remaining army is not being disbanded. This result also makes me feel better about settling right next to the copper instead of on the river which obviously has better long term prospects. Whip/chop in a few libraries and I think I can recover from this overexpansion.

I've put Pacal right there to counter a possible Keshik romp. Resourceless spear UU and easy Jumbo access. But in my game I've seen a grand total of three Holkans.
Problem, he's too close and a lot of people are going to axe rush him (missing a good opportunity to get a nice shrine, imo).
And he never builds enough units.

Should've put Shaka there.

Horses are quite far away relative to copper which pops up right on top of you. While Keshiks are amazing early units, in order to move out and clear some breathing room asap they just weren't the best unit to focus on for this immediate goal imo.

AH - mining - bw - agri - mysticism - fishing - pottery - writing - hbr - archery - alpha - currency - math (Cathy) - meditation, polytheism, aesthetics and masonry (Pacal) - researching CoL


4000 - Settle in place, 58 gold from hut.

3875 - Hut 37 gold.

3450 - Hut 85 gold.

2850 - Ragnar.

2750 - Pacal.

2550 - Beshbalik:



2350 - Cathy. She still has a hut right on her borders. 67 gold from it.

2200 - Turfan:



1425 - Ning-hsia:



320 - Justinian.

305 - Roosevelt.

140 - 4 cities pumping Keshiks are enough. DoW Pacal:



Lakamha captured.

95 - Reason to keep Pacal around for a while:



5 - Chichen Itza captured.

55 AD - Calakmul captured.

115 AD - Uxmal captured.

160 AD - Circassian captured and some backfilling:



Empire:





Techs:



Pacal still has a single city surrounded by russian culture.
I think I'll declare war on Cathy very soon, before she gets longbows. A few lbows are still manageable by Keshiks, but not if she starts amassing them.
Probably I'll move the capital to Mutal.

But when your closest neighbor has a resourceless spearman and your horses are far away, axes seem to make much more sense (playing the map and all that). This way actually utilizes Genghis' traits better, too, since Agg is wasted on Keshiks.

Settle in place. AH first, obviously. Meet this turkey first – super close.



Rigged close resourceless spear UU. Doesn't matter - holkans don't scare me. He founded Buddhism on turn 13 - Pacal, you are too kind. How the hell will I get a prophet to shrine Mutal? Meet Rags next. Horses are kind of far, but not horrendous, especially when all four huts gave gold. 250 gold in total - that is really bad news for everyone else. Mining to get silver up, then HBR and archery. This lady wants closer relations with me:



I’ll have my horse UU before her - she'll be lucky to get to hers. As my settler is headed to claim horses, one of my scouting warriors spots an opportunity to demo mongolian diplomacy. I had already decided Rags will die, so this is a no-brainer:



City 2 goes here, for obvious reasons.



See Rags's worker coming to build me a pasture? City 3 here:



This was probably stupid - should have stopped at two. Oh well - that’ll be it – time for keshiks. Tech Ag next to get my rice farm going, then mysticism for a couple monuments, and finally BW. Mongolia is the only civ where it takes me almost 100 turns to get BW. Look at that nice road my two workers built. Horses are hooked up.



Keshiks everywhere and it's go time! Check it out - I like to rush by turn 90-95 with axes. 20 turns later with keshiks - even better.

Holkan Schmolkan:





Genghis has pieces of Holkan in his stool. Oh, and see that mayan worker? I'm such an idiot - I totally forgot to claim him with one of my keshiks. So I lost a free worker there. Like it matters -bye bye Pacal:



2 capitals, 1 buddhist holy city. 3 holkans and 2 archers won’t get it done defending 11 keshiks. No time to rest. More keshiks will be heading toward Ragnar tomorrow – time for bed. Empire – a 5-6 turn break from keshiks to produce granaries and a couple more workers.



Only mistakes I think I made were probably bothering with city 3 and missing that Mayan worker. It shouldn't matter.

Holkans won't prevent a keshik romp. Impis won't prevent a well played keshik romp either. Every keshik has 7 XP - first one withdraws, second one wins. My only fear is that if this isn't pangaea, I'm not going to be able to kill everyone with keshiks.

1050BC – Meet Justinian via his fishing boat.
900BC – Meet Roosevelt via another fishing boat.
750BC – Pyramids built in Ragnar’s capitol. Too bad my economy is at least a century off being able to handle that.
575BC –Silver eh? I’m waiting for something bad to happen. RNG is being too kind.

470BC – GS born and builds academy in Mutal. Seems dumb atm but this city will end up carrying me once the cottages mature.
410BC – Trade around a bit and with three capitols it’s no surprise we have iron.

380BC – Another trade

170BC – GLighthosue BIDL and half built in Moscow. CHACHING! Also this is getting kinda funny now

140BC –Trade Lit and CoL to Roosevelt for Math and 20g. Start on CS. Courthouses being built EVERYWHERE!
95BC – Huzzah

40AD –. Trade Justinian Lit for Meditation.
100AD – GS born and teaches me Philosophy.
145AD – Ragnar declares war on me… uh… I don’t think he’s thought this through or I’m missing something.

190AD – Trade around Philosophy and decide that while I can’t take his cities Ragnar’s improvements will now pay for my research.

265AD – Was not paying attention and one of my random cities running a few merchants gives me a GM. I have a use for him but later.
280AD – Meet Egyptian chick and trade resources with her. She is Justinian’s worst enemy and quite weak. The very next turn she peacefully becomes Roosevelt’s Vassal. Additionally Ragnar still refuses to talk after I razed two of his undeveloped jungle cities and have pillaged at least 200g off of his core area. How do you have THAT many villages/towns and yet fall behind in the tech race this badly? I don’t get it

325AD – One more city razed and Ragnar has finally had enough. He really doesn’t have anything I care about but I don’t feel like dodging around his counter units with Keshiks any longer so whatever.


490AD – Bored Keshiks find a Barb coastal city. I’ll keep this one.

610AD – GS born. Save him for later. Sell Ragnar Poly for 110g because why the hell not?
700AD – Trade around Paper and get Compass/MC/gold. Have another GS coming soonish and decide that despite it wasting some of the beakers I want to use my loitering GS to bulb Liberalism. I take Nationhood since I’m unoriginal.
760AD – Move capital to Mutal now that it has a lot of villages soon to mature into towns and uh… it makes more sense to begin with. I’m just late on this one.
820AD – Ragnar declares war again and sends 7 horse archers and 5 catapults at London which has my veteran raiding party of Keshiks in it. This is the begging on his end.
920AD – Finish Music and start PP. This is because a GS is also born and I burn his bulb. Extra commerce won’t hurt. Still don’t feel comfortable with my economy.
960AD –Start Oxford in Mutal. This is why I gave it the academy.

1030AD – Remember that GM a while back? I shipped him off to Constantinople and well… this happened.

Oh and just a friendly reminder about how screwed over he is. No longbows quite yet. I’m not going to even bother with siege. I do swap to Nationhood/Slavery however to quicken the pace.

1120AD – Ragnar finally has Longbows!
1250AD – Ragnar’s down! Ragnar’s down! His land is pretty awful though. It is as if someone pillaged it all oh say a thousand years ago. Glad Emancipation is coming in two turns or I might be hurting again. Also Oxford will be up in Mutal next turn. With that and my army of 20ish workers this shouldn’t be too big of an economic stumble.


And of course some state of the union.


AI's on the other continent are peaceful pushovers so far and I'm not sure if I want to just wipe one out for the rest of a domination or beeline Mass Media for the UN. I'll sleep on it.

My first mistake was probably building 3 cities having looked at another spoiler. Still in the long term it wont matter too much.

Anyway I went AH, mining, HBR, archery, agriculture and bronze working.

With all the commerce resources it seemed pointless trying to oracle HBR.

In terms of city placement I lost my scout before i found the northern horse resource. My scout did collect fishing, mystism and sailing before it died. I suspect this is why the Ai are given 2 scouts at start!!

I built 1 worker to work the 2 sheep. I then grew cap to size 3 and built a settler. No BW meant less things for worker to do. I went mining for the silver.

My new city was set to worker. Grew cap to size 4 and built a second settler and a second worker before starting on a Ger.

Around 1400bc I was ready for war. 2-3 Holkans were no real match for KK mongol UU as most of them retreated before dying. When I got a great general I attached them to a unit.



The mayans now have one city left that I take with ease. A holkan and archer on the hill die and I capture 3 workers!!

Who to bash next.



Russia is my next target and she has 5 cities. Two of which are in my sights.



Moscow soon to go!



Moscow captured a cease fire seemed wise to heal units and stop her axe killing a KK! I am not worried about negative diplo points as Ragnar is next and I have yet to meet another AI!! As for finances I still have 200 gold or so to play with.

Its fair to say at this point I have been whipping KK in my smaller cities whilst fighting Maya and Russia.

Once my units are healed I will bash Rahgnar or kill off Russia. I am tempted to wait for alphabet! The tech side of things might be a slight issue.