Mongol domination strategy questions

I've been playing a game as Mongols - standard, pangaea, Immortal difficulty - and doing pretty well so far but I have a few questions. I basically rushed to Chivalry using a GS from Meritocracy for Civil Service, plus several RA's, allowing me to complete Chivalry around turn 70ish (I blocked the whole bottom of the tech tree at Mining since I had no mining resources). I had built/bought 4 horseman by that time and saved the cash to upgrade immediately to keshiks. With my 4 (eventually increased to 6) keshiks, plus the khan, I conquered 2 AI civs by turn 110 or so. It took a little while longer than anticipated since Alex declared on the first civ I was going to conquer (Egypt) 2 turns before me, and I waited for him to lose a bunch of troops and sign a peace treaty with Egypt before I started my push. This allowed me to quickly take Egypt and Alex. However, I have a few questions going forward.

1. My map is naturally split down the center with water and mountain barriers, so I will need to go NE to take 2 civs up there then circle back to the NW to take out the remaining civs. This will take some time so I was wondering what the window of opportunity is for keshik dominance - for example, approximately what turn do they lose dominance (or what level of city defense does it become difficult to take with keshiks)?

2. What unit do you normally use for final city taking? I have been dragging around a longsword to do this and he holds my horse army back.

3. What promotions do you normally take with keshiks? I have been going for 3 in either the ranged smooth terrain or ranged rough terrain to start, but I guess these will be useless if I eventually need to upgrade my keshiks to a more modern unit, i.e., if I don't make it all the way to the last civ during the keshik window of dominance. Would taking city siege bonus have been better?

1. Keshiks vs rifles is pretty bad. But keshiks can 10-shot anything if you deny your opponent the chance to reach you.

2. Horseman to start, then longsword and rifles are needed when a full health horseman can't beat a 1hp city.

3. Logistics! You need 100xp keshiks ASAP. I generally go with smooth terrain promos, and avoid fighting in rough terrain where I can't maneuver easily.

DaveMcW said:

3. Logistics! You need 100xp keshiks ASAP. I generally go with smooth terrain promos, and avoid fighting in rough terrain where I can't maneuver easily.

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But if the enemy city is settled on rough terrain, or if there are a bunch of enemy units coming at you that stop on rough terrain, then the ranged rough terrain bonus can be useful to have with at least a few of your keshiks. That's my thinking anyway. The problem is that I don't believe that these ranged promotions would convert to something useful later if I have to upgrade my keshiks to a more modern unit. Which is why I am wondering if city siege promotion may be better, since this would carry over.

I've found that eventually keshiks w/ siege do approximately the same amount of damage to a city as keshiks w/ logistics. The main difference is that the double-tapping ones are getting XP twice as fast (and are more versatile against units). Once you get logistics, you'll easily be able to add siege to the mix. And +1 range. And indirect fire. Combined with Honor, you get some nasty, nasty units pretty quick.

IMO, logistics easily makes up for taking two terrain promotions that won't survive an upgrade. Most of their good promotions won't upgrade nicely, but at least beelining to logistics means your future cavalry & tanks will have an extra attack.

So it only takes 2 terrain promotions to get Logistics? I guess I missed that when I gave a couple of units the third terrain promotion. I did see the March promotion but decided to skip that since the khan provides such good healing (and since only the longsword has been taking any damage so far). The Honor policy that increases combat exp is next in line so promotions will start to speed up. I only have 3 settled cities (the rest are puppets or razed) so I'm still getting policies at a good clip. All-in-all thus far it's been a surprisingly easy strategy for Immortal (I usually play at Emperor level, but had never tried Mongols before).

Heh, sorry I wasn't clear. You definitely need three terrain promotions to get logistics. When I mentioned "makes up for taking two terrain promotions", I was talking about the two EXTRA terrain promotions you'd need for logistics (since you need at least one anyway to take siege).

It's not about the Keshik. The Keshik is useless for all I care, and will be until it's capable of capturing city. It's all about the Khan. Once you reach the point where you can get march, it's over for the enemy cities.

NEVER SKIP MARCH. EVER. Also, there's a bug where the unit that the Khan is stacked upon will not receive the healing bonus, so yar.

I don't know about that. I used to prioritize march over logistics, but my Keshiks rarely ever used it. A 5mp ranged unit that can move after attacking should never get hit. Those units have been far from useless in my mongol games.

Thry said:

It's not about the Keshik. The Keshik is useless for all I care, and will be until it's capable of capturing city. It's all about the Khan. Once you reach the point where you can get march, it's over for the enemy cities.

NEVER SKIP MARCH. EVER. Also, there's a bug where the unit that the Khan is stacked upon will not receive the healing bonus, so yar.

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Keshik useless??!! My man, this is the best unit in the game! It just needs support, but when you combine it with a horseman, who also has 5 moves for mongolia, then you can steamroll through civs like no other army can.

About march, it's a great promotion sure but it's a defensive one. You are on the attack, so if you can see that the enemy is there for the taking I think it's better to focus on attacking. I think if you can tell that your attack is going to stall and you can foresee a distant future of a late game keshikTank war then march is not a bad idea, but if you're going for the win here and now, focus on what you're doing - attacking.

1. Once you start seeing cavalry, it's time to stop. You can't beat them, and you can't really kite them. Songhai are pretty annoying too - their UU knight isn't any better than a regular knight against you, but they love to build lots of them.

2. A horseman is the clear choice. Any melee unit automatically beats a 1hp city - the only randomness is in how much hp he loses, but if he started with 1hp, then he always takes the city without losing any hp. It's kind of silly, but so is ranged units not being able to capture cities.

3. Logistics/Range/Indirect Fire are the awesome ones (in that order). However, March can be useful. I get it on my first keshik that loses some hitpoints (but only the first one). His job is to permanently be on 6-8hp, so that if I ever need to end turn with some of my keshiks in range of a city, he'll always be the one getting hit. This keeps you from ever having to heal your other keshiks, plus he gets so much xp from being shot that he's not too late on the logistics/range party. It kind of relies on the AI being a failure at keeping units inside cities to defend though.

Also, like any glass cannon strategy, it's worthwhile using captured workers as scouts/blockers. When you're sieging a city, spend a turn capturing a worker (especially great if your 1hp horseman has nothing to do anyway), and have him stand 1-2 hexes ahead of where your keshiks are shooting from. If the enemy captures him back, you get a free kill, otherwise you get to see slightly further ahead to make sure nothing scary is coming. Plus, if you mess up your keshiks, he often blocks a pikeman from getting to you.

snarzberry said:

Keshik useless??!! My man, this is the best unit in the game! It just needs support, but when you combine it with a horseman, who also has 5 moves for mongolia, then you can steamroll through civs like no other army can.

About march, it's a great promotion sure but it's a defensive one. You are on the attack, so if you can see that the enemy is there for the taking I think it's better to focus on attacking. I think if you can tell that your attack is going to stall and you can foresee a distant future of a late game keshikTank war then march is not a bad idea, but if you're going for the win here and now, focus on what you're doing - attacking.

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March is not a defensive promotion. I never said it was.. The reason you would take march is so that you can continuously attack a city.

Keshik's fail because in the current meta-game of Civ V, units are not the threat, cities are. Horsemen by the same token are useless, ever since the nerf to cities. Keshiks also can not upgrade into something useful with their promotions afterwards, without wasting most of them.

I can choose to build a Keshik, or I can build 2 swordsman, whom I immediately upgrade to longswordsmen.

Those two longswordsmen will get 2 open terrain promos off the bat, and eventually quickly get another open terrain promo, march then finally blitz. These promotions will be useful no matter what I upgrade the unit into.

When I started playing civ 5 I used a keshik and made barracks, armory etc to get the two bonus and 1.5x combat experience, if you can get them to +1 range you can clean up quickly. But this was on the easier levels, harder levels mongolia isn't so great. Their great generals are awesome, I found the keshik to be more or less useless without their great general at some point you run into a terrain bump and the keshiks get low on health needing the general. I would keep a few horesmen in back and take the first city or two with them after its bombarded, when the AI is basically beat (u knw when they stop sending units every turn) you can afford to sit a longswordsman in front of the keshik and set him on heal till their city is down.

Just some thoughts, I don't find mongolia to be effective on harder levels. The terrain differences and mass influx of AI units at the beginning of a war favors stronger bombardment units for the human player. Arabia does it better I prefer their camel archer over keshik. Camel archers upgraded to city attack are sick, basically trebuchets with more movement and better defense. If you like the horse thing russia gets them close also as starting bonus and makes mad production which is very good on level 7,8.

pirsq said:

1. Once you start seeing cavalry, it's time to stop. You can't beat them, and you can't really kite them. Songhai are pretty annoying too - their UU knight isn't any better than a regular knight against you, but they love to build lots of them.

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this is my argument for china. I know its completely not in this topic, but the dual strike of a few upgraded chukonu and trebuchets upgraded to a cannon can wipe up attacking cavalry, they are still relevant far beyond the point where they should be, unlike most bombardment units. didn't mean to drag this off topic

I agree songhai just isn't all that. I find them to only be useful buying an early worker,settler or RA and thats about it. I dont usually play for culture so the pyramid mosque isn't relevant to me. The horse bonus isn't worth it because of the AI's poor range IQ strategy on attack and defense human player should be using lots of bombardment weapons.

I finished my Immortal game on turn 247, which only lasted that long due to the map. I had basically won by turn 180 or so when my last 2 opponents (Iroquois and Songhai) didn't have much in the way of troops left. At that time they both offered peace treaties giving all of their gold, etc. away, but I refused and plodded on for the domination victory. The Iroquois capitol was tucked down into a large patch of rough terrain and the Songhai capitol was isolated in the far NW on its own peninsula. I had conquered all of the previous civs with just my elite squad of 5 keshiks, one longsword and one khan, but for the Iroquois I fashioned a second army of rifles/trebs since I was fighting the war on several fronts by that time. My elite keshik squad was able to hunker down at a bottleneck (thin land bridge connecting Askia's peninsula to the mainland) and decimate all of the troops he sent down (mostly rifles and cavs). He was leading in troops at the start but I killed them all with 3 highly promoted keshiks. I was one-shotting any rifles/cavs that he sent into the water, sometimes getting 2 kills in one turn with logistics. Even on land I could easily focus fire down anything he sent. So I would disagree that keshiks are not effective against rifles/cavs.

In fact I kept my keshiks until the end (see screenshot in the spoiler), by which time they had almost every promotion available. However, I never faced anything tougher than rifles/cavs/cannons. They still did a good job cleaning out enemy stragglers, etc. even after I had combined my 2 armies.



So all in all this was a very easy Immortal win and I barely had any challenge from the AI. There were a few things I would probably do different next time:

1. Liberty tree was nice but probably not necessary. I could have grabbed Civil Service by doing a third RA instead of the GS from Meritocracy. I only settled 3 cities the whole game (plus one annexed coastal city later), the rest were all puppets. Therefore, getting to Theocracy faster would have helped early mid-game when I was having unhappiness issues. Plus going Liberty first delayed the Honor policy that gives 1.5x troop experience rate. The one thing nice about Liberty was the late policy that gives a Golden Age - between that and the policy from Piety, plus extra GPs, I was almost in perpetual GA from the mid to end game.

2. I should have made 2 armies of 4-5 keshiks, 1 GG and 1 LS each so that I could have sent them in different directions. This would have saved a lot of turns on this map.

3. Even though I eventually ended up with almost all of the possible promotions on my keshiks, I should have skipped March until later since my units never got hit. The only unit that was ever hit was blind sided by 2 of India's knights (basically India's only 2 troops besides a couple of warriors) and was insta-gibbed so March didn't help that one anyway. Logistics and range were by far the most important to get ASAP.

This thread inspired me to buy the Mongol pack and try playing as the Mongols. The keishek is easily the best unit in the game. Playing on Emperor, Contenents, I'm starting to run around with infantry, artillery, and a bunch of crappy upgraded Calvary. I kept 4 Keshiks and they are still very relevant. A ranged unit that can move five spaces, doesn't have to load, and is guaranteed 2 damage a turn from three hexes away? Yeah. I like that.

lol, buy moguls? i dont even see that as a DLC... plus i remember seeing monguls in my game...so. and i didnt buy it =\

1TimeCivPlaya said:

lol, buy moguls? i dont even see that as a DLC... plus i remember seeing monguls in my game...so. and i didnt buy it =\

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They are a free DLC and automaticly downloaded.

Saying that the Keshik is bad at higher difficulty levels... I got my first Diety win with the Mongols and the Keshik was pivotal in this win. I wouldn't say it's the best unit in the game, but it's sure in the top 5.

What I just don't get working is the Songhai Mandalaku cavalry. (is that spelled right?) Perhaps I should've made a mixed army with normal defensive units, siege units and the cavalry as my heavy city hitter. I decided to make a full Mandalaku army and even when I had 7 Mandalaku, I soon hit the spot where they just couldn't damage cities fast enough anymore. At that time, my enemy was using cavalry, riflemen and cannon but that really wasn't a match for my army... It was just the cities healing too fast.

I think what happened that game was that due to the lower movement Mandalaku have (only 3), your army is moving hence and forth before getting in position to attack a city because they are pretty vulnerable to counterattack so you need to clear before you can attack the city. This in the end made me take cities too slow and in the end, the enemies overtook me technologicly.

The real life Mongols actually proceeded in this way: they'd round up a bunch of "civilians" (generally peasants whom the nomadic Mongols regarded as "parasites" on the land) and advance behind them, using them as arrow-catchers. Ruthless, weren't they...

"Also, like any glass cannon strategy, it's worthwhile using captured workers as scouts/blockers. When you're sieging a city, spend a turn capturing a worker (especially great if your 1hp horseman has nothing to do anyway), and have him stand 1-2 hexes ahead of where your keshiks are shooting from. If the enemy captures him back, you get a free kill, otherwise you get to see slightly further ahead to make sure nothing scary is coming. Plus, if you mess up your keshiks, he often blocks a pikeman from getting to you."

When do the keshiks need to be upgraded? Or do you keep them around forever as city garrisons? Are logistics keshiks still viable against rifles? How about against cavalry? When the other side has aircraft, I'm pretty sure they are done. Logistics and March promotions will still be good for cav/landships/tanks, but the Accuracy and Range (etc) will be useless. Don't know about Siege.

I'm playing the latest GOTM, about to attack the last remaining civ on my continent, Arabia (2 of the other 3 civs are still alive, just crippled; I'll take them out completely next.) Arabia has camel archers and muskets and almost as large a military as me, so I'll have to be careful and focus fire.

I haven't met the other continent yet. (I have researched Astronomy, but I don't want the AI's across the seas knowing what a warmonger I am, so I haven't explored) I don't know what my strategy is once I have an entire large continent with about 20 cities to myself. Switch to peaceful science victory?

I have 1 horse and 1 knight (my city capturers), earning melee promotions; they'll make fine cavalry units and tanks someday.

I like to upgrade my Keshiks into Cavalries once they start faltering in the damage department, and use them alongside Artilleries. Upgraded Mongolian Cavalries should have March and Logistics already considering that Keshiks get promotions like no other. Mongolian Cavalries have 5 movement and should heal 25 HP every turn thanks to Khans, not to mention being able to pillage more easily thanks to their extra movement point, so they have great survivability. But, of course, cavalries should never be used to attack cities. You might want to keep around a few Keshiks so that you can use them to scratch enemies before a Cavalry with the Charge promotion (higher combat against damaged enemies) mauls them. Once you upgrade cavalries into landships (and together with Lightning Warfare), you can easily crush whatever couple enemy civs that got left over from your Keshik conquests. Keep in mind that Keshiks upgraded into Cavalries then landships retain their bonus experience promotion - this is important because you can eventually get warships/tanks that attack 3 times per round because Logistics and Blitz stack together. But more important than that, the Khans that can keep up with and heal Mongolian warships/tanks every turn is what makes them good. I've completed several Deity Pangaea Domination games with Mongolia. Mongolian landships are great (thanks to Khans).