How I beat the Mongol Scenario on Deity

Furiey said:

If found going straight for the Logistics promotion very useful. Yes it delays the city attack for a while but a double attack also means double experience points so it really speeds up getting the later promotions too.

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Which promo order allows logistics on 3rd selection? Not sure how to get siege first...I thought it was a choice between heal, rough, and non-rough bonuses.

Silverfuturist, check your private messages.

Shakira42 said:

Which promo order allows logistics on 3rd selection? Not sure how to get siege first...I thought it was a choice between heal, rough, and non-rough bonuses.

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I've been going for the 3 Accuracy (flat land) bonuses first as that is what most of Jin/Wu's cities are. That gives Logistics on the 4th promotion, I don't think you can get it on the 3rd. Previously I had been taking seige as soon as it was available but have found the extra attack and effecitively doubling the rate of gain of experience more valuable.

Furiey said:

I've been going for the 3 Accuracy (flat land) bonuses first as that is what most of Jin/Wu's cities are. That gives Logistics on the 4th promotion, I don't think you can get it on the 3rd. Previously I had been taking seige as soon as it was available but have found the extra attack and effecitively doubling the rate of gain of experience more valuable.

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Do these terrain bonuses help when attacking cities? They sure don't show up in the mouse-over for combat stats. I know they apply when the city is shooting at you, depending on the terrain you stand on, but I don't usually let my keshiks get shot at all.

Terrain promotions don't have any effect when attacking a city. IIRC, the attack popup used to display the terrain bonuses when attacking a city, even though they didn't have an effect, but the popup was fixed in one of the patches.

I assumed they did and they certainly appear to take down a city quicker than without. I'll check in my current game as I have some with all 3 Accuracy promotions (and a lot of others) but without Siege yet.

edit: just checked and the terrain promotions don't count against a city, it must just be the effect of having 2 attacks that makes so much difference.

Great guide.. I'm a noob to Civ 5... Can't beat the Chinese... any chance you can post a video of this?

Also what is DOW?

Alkanphel said:

Great guide.. I'm a noob to Civ 5... Can't beat the Chinese... any chance you can post a video of this?

Also what is DOW?

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Declaration of War

Ravellion said:

Declaration of War

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Thanks.

I'm having lots of trouble taking Wu out of the game on Emperor difficulty, it seems she techs up aggressively, and got longswordsmen and cannons (!) I was probably too slow attacking her, but basically I didn't have enough power to take the-city-to-the-right of Beijing early enough and gain iron.

Would people be willing to upload saved games to help out? I want to figure out how to beat it on Deity, ultimately, as the scenarios are one of the few challenging things in Civ V at the moment (sad, cuz in Civ IV I'm being pummeled on Noble).

Morningcalm said:

I'm having lots of trouble taking Wu out of the game on Emperor difficulty, it seems she techs up aggressively, and got longswordsmen and cannons (!) I was probably too slow attacking her, but basically I didn't have enough power to take the-city-to-the-right of Beijing early enough and gain iron.

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You don't need Iron this early. You don't need any foot-troops as long as you have at least one Horsemen with 1HP and he only engages cities at 0HP (when bombardment does 0 damage to them). He'll take the city without suffering damage.

Emperor is pretty much the sweet spot for this scenario as you don't have to go wallow in the hell-swamp or island-hop. Ignore Japan and India. Wu should be your first major civ target. She does tech-up too fast and has too many luxuries to ignore. However, you really can't make an effective campaign against her out of the gate.

Thankfully, there are nearby city-states you should beat down first, and in the meantime she'll go to war with North China and get her troops killed or pulled out of position. When you start, get a worker or two on the job harvesting trees. Sell your excess horses (preferably to Wu) and send a horseman on a world tour to collect greetings money from city-states. Use the gold to upgrade two Horsemen to Keshiks and take your Khan, 1x Horsemen, and 3x Keshik's west to the nearby cultural city-state. On Turn 5 you get a social policy. Take the 1.5XP policy and go to war on the city-state, killing their horsemen and pikemen before setting up a city-shoot shuffle. Keshik's can move after firing, so it is easy to move your 3 into range, position your Khan, fire 3 shots, and then move everyone out of harm's way.

You'll get a free Policy for taking this puppet. You can finish the Honor tree and get 1/2 price upgrades. Anyway, move on to Western Xia. I prefer declaring war on Wu and causing Western Xia to declare on you. It reduces the chance of being labeled a Warmonger by later Civs if the CS declares on you. Roll that place just like the prior city-state. You get 2x Horsemen for your trouble that you should promptly convert into Keshiks. Don't forget to resell the refunded luxuries from Wu to North China.

Now you can roll up South China moving from West to East. Their northern city is a waste of space, so raze it. Keep the others as they all give good luxuries. Take advantage of a peace agreement if it gives you all her non-capital cities without a fight. Then you can turn your hordes on North China. The Great Wall hampers your movement so launch your initial assault against Beijing and seize it to start your campaign. He falls quickly and then you can finish off Wu's capital since the Peace Treaty expires.

Then you take your horde on the road and lay into Persia. At that point you want to have siege engines and heavy infantry starting to back-fill from the East. These are going to upgrade into Cannons and possibly Riflemen by the end of the game, giving you a chance to tear down especially entrenched cities like Constantinople and Cairo.

- Marty Lund

Thanks for the input, mlund. Response below, using analysis of my situation from my previous games (Emperor and Deity).

I want to war with Xia, but they start out allied with Southern China and have spiky spearmen and pikes. Also, I took out Northern China before southern China--easy enough. Nice shiny tech and gold for my troubles. But southern China comes up with chu ko nus, muskets and cannons in the late game. I know I'm supposed to wipe them out earlier, but I just don't know how. I've gotten lots of gold trading with Darius, but it doesn't seem to be enough to buy all the units I need. I've gotten good at hit-and-running with the Keshiks, and mow down lots that way, but actually conquering cities is tough, my pikes don't stand a chance. That's why I wanted iron early, since I've found swordsmen conquer cities much more easily (esp. when upgraded to longswordsmen).

The world tour netted me lots of cumulative gold, but not much else really. And that gold didn't last very long. In a recent Deity game, I sold a city to China, and immediately planned to reattack it. Wu gave me over 1300 gold for the city, which I used to ally with Xia and Korea, and to buy troops (trebs, longswordsmen). But her muskets and cannons later mowed them down.

I know my major problem is grabbing those techs fast enough so I can get rifles. I just can't quite seem to get there. I can attach a saved game so you can see just how poorly I'm doing. I know I can get better, it's just a loooong road (literally) to that point. God those roads to Almaty are long, lol. =|

You start with enough units to take out both nearby city-states in short order. With the 2 extra horsemen from Xia you'll have plenty of resources to destroy southern china. Do it quickly before they go advanced Medieval and hit you with Longswordsmen and other nonsense. Stop wasting your time with Swordsmen / Longswordsmen. You don't need any infantry units until the very late game. Don't waste any gold on Research Agreements such.

You need 1x Horseman to take a city - that's all. You shoot the city to 0HP and your Horseman automatically kills it and can't be reduced below 1HP himself. Everyone else should be Keshik's. Each Keshik has to be either an Open Terrain or Rough Terrain specialist exclusively. Try to keep your number of Rough and Open Keshik's even and make sure to pick up Siege and March as soon as possible, and finally Logistics.

Remember to keep a solid formation around your Khan so everyone is getting maximum bonuses while you hit-and-run. Use the Khan's healing bonus liberally so you don't suffer any casualties. Your initial cavalry units are not expendable. Your rate of acceptable casualties is ZERO. If you accidentally mis-click and blunder one or more of your starting cavalry into load a save game.

Unless you're on Diety and have to punch out Japan completely ignore Korea once you meet them and hit them up for money.

- Marty Lund

Alright, followed your advice and did much better. Knocked out Cultural CS to left of my capital, then got a free policy (chose 1.5x military experience), then declared on Xia and took it, but 3 CSes declared permanent war on me for that (including Korea).

Then I crushed south China, and got 4 cities (!!) with no losses, but was forced to make peace after Darius, Gandhi and Ram declared war on me (lol). I needed the resources she was offering to keep my happiness up. Previously the unhappiness was around 12, and my troops took a -33% combat strength hit for that, so I decided to make peace to remedy that, leaving Wu's coastal cities and her leftmost city in her possession. I crushed Northern China, but still had unhappiness problems. I killed off Korea's pikemen and crossbows who were near the border of my leftmost Chinese city, but couldn't take Seoul thanks to the unhappiness. My Keshiks were doing 1-3 damage to Seoul, rather than the 5+ I was used to when I smacked south China early.

Persia eventually took my left cultural CS and then made peace with me after I killed about half his troops using hit-and-run keshiks. Still wasn't fast enough though! The main issue seems to be happiness, and the sheer wall of troops Persia puts up. Any more tips you can provide? The load game exploit for Deity wins no longer works.

Alright, followed your advice and did much better. Knocked out Cultural CS to left of my capital, then got a free policy (chose 1.5x military experience), then declared on Xia and took it, but 3 CSes declared permanent war on me for that (including Korea).

Then I crushed south China, and got 4 cities (!!) with no losses, but was forced to make peace after Darius, Gandhi and Ram declared war on me (lol). I needed the resources she was offering to keep my happiness up. Previously the unhappiness was around 12, and my troops took a -33% combat strength hit for that, so I decided to make peace to remedy that, leaving Wu's coastal cities and her leftmost city in her possession. I crushed Northern China, but still had unhappiness problems. I killed off Korea's pikemen and crossbows who were near the border of my leftmost Chinese city, but couldn't take Seoul thanks to the unhappiness. My Keshiks were doing 1-3 damage to Seoul, rather than the 5+ I was used to when I smacked south China early.

Persia eventually took my left cultural CS and then made peace with me after I killed about half his troops using hit-and-run keshiks. Still wasn't fast enough though! The main issue seems to be happiness, and the sheer wall of troops Persia puts up. Any more tips you can provide? The load game exploit for Deity wins no longer works

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The start is similar to what worked for me. Except a scout took Western Xia. Wu will DoW Jin at turn 5 unless the apple cart is upset. So meet Jin 1st turn, sell horse and upgrade to kill cultural CS. DoW Jin turn 4 or so before meeting Wu on turn 5. She won't be friendly if you aren't at war with Jin. Sell horse/whatever to Wu. Upgrade all horse. You are ready to hit Wester Xia at turn 7 or so. DoW Wu. Use the 5 keshiks to setup up scout taking city which will garrison (happiness) and yield 2 more horse to be main city takers. Opening build order was 3x scout/HE/horsemen. One will scout will go meet people rest are for garrison.

A person can fight both for a bit. I prefer a short peace treaty with Wu (turns 14-24) to finish Jin. 9 keshiks can finish Wu easily enough.

Edit: IIRC Wu has longswords by turn 3 or 4. She has them fast. So waiting won't really hurt.
Happiness on deity is no real problem w/scout garrisons. It was like -9 after Jin and China, keeping most cities, as India was hit. Briefly @ -25 so got some barb spawn. (Big deal.) Otherwise floated between -7 and -23ish for rest of game.

You can get away with DoW on one City State directly. That's what you should do with the Cultural CS to your left. Don't DoW Western Xia. DoW on Wu and Western Xia will declare on you because they are allied to Wu. Killing Western Xia at that point won't have an effect on the other City States.

You basically get 2 Social Policies in the early game, one of Turn 5 and 1 when you kill the Cultural CS. Use these to complete the Honor tree. Upgrading Horsemen to Keshik's for half price is ridiculously economical.

Unhappiness is the main factor you have to manage in this scenario. This means you have to manage cities very strategically in development and conquest:

1.) Emphasis on buildings that increase happiness like Circus, Colosseum, and Circus Maximus

2.) Don't Annex any city until you can afford to immediately buy a Courthouse in it

3.) Raze cities that don't connect you to unique luxuries

Rule #3 is what you missed with Southern China in your previous game. Not all of Wu's or Jin's cities are valuable. Most of Darius's cities are trash once you head down the Silk Road too. You want to take Wu's left-most city first since it has Spices and Silk for +10 happiness. You also want her southern-most city because that has Pearls. You have to sack her capital, even though it has nothing useful in it. The two cities in the middle China are lame. One has Gold (keep it), and the other is wedged right between a Jin city and Wu's mining city. Burn that one down.

When you move onto Jin you can probably keep his city south of Beijing, and you have to keep his capital. If you already have Gold you should just burn down the city next to Korea. Likewise you should burn down his city on the Silk Road (Jin's left-most city that Wu usually conquers during their auto-war no turn 5).

You should have all that mopped up in around 40 turns - and have a large horde of Keshik's a couple of Khan's and a designated city-sacker (horseman) tearing down the Silk Road and smashing into Perisa. You keep their capital, their gem-mine, and burn the rest down. Once they are done you need to tackle Arabia and they are beastly if you can't use the roads going through the river City State, so buy an alliance with that City State and then DoW Arabia to have them on your side. If you've advanced enough tech Abbiddos may start throwing out Musketmen or Riflemen into the fray.

By the time you are fighting Arabia you should be receiving some siege and infantry reinforcements from your capital. By the time they arrive you should be able to upgrade some cannons and lead-block for them with Longswords or Riflemen. Use them to finish off Arabia and move up to Byzantium. Your cavalry can probably peal off and hit Russia how. That'll get you 6 dead civs in 100 turns without a ton of angst.

Fighting in India or Japan? I'm of no help to you there. I wouldn't touch them with a 39.5ft. pole.

- Marty Lund

Unhappiness is the main factor you have to manage in this scenario. This means you have to manage cities very strategically in development and conquest:

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Nuts. It isn't an issue even at deity. The only city I burned of Jin's or Wu's was the city with the 2 lux. (Chengdu.) ALL other cities were kept and garrisoned with scouts. It is even possible to knock out a lot of CSs. After Chengdu, I took out Dai Vet (military CS-gets 2 pikes) and went to India next through jungle. 9 keshiks will sweep through India like crap through a goose. (By turn ~50.) Hitting Persia next is easy off road due to plenty of ranged keshiks and catching Darius in unfavorable terrain even in a GA.

Happiness isn't really hard to solve. I did get 5 barb pikes to spawn somewhere in India but didn't really do much raising until Persia.

iggymnrr said:

Nuts. It isn't an issue even at deity.

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Sure it is. If you fight with the -10 happiness penalty, it takes you much longer to kill anything, and the main constraint is finishing within 100 turns. I guess spending money on more units instead of happiness buildings might work.

Sure it is. If you fight with the -10 happiness penalty, it takes you much longer to kill anything, and the main constraint is finishing within 100 turns. I guess spending money on more units instead of happiness buildings might work.

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I could get through the 2 Chinas and India at ~-9 happy by turn 50 or so. After that, a person can coast at ~-19 or even more when razing. My first deity attempt finished around turn 107 and I was consistently below -20 happiness, peaking ~ -39 happiness. (Yeah, lots of barb spawn.) There is a recommendation that shows on screen when capturing/puppeting to garrison with a cheap unit for some happiness. Follow the in game advice. A person starts with the policy that allows it. Use it. Both build and buy some scouts for this. (Aside: if using HE buy keshiks or upgrade built horse, don't buy horse it loses HE edge.)

Good idea, thanks for that. Now my unhappiness is around -7, though once it was +2.

So, after the Chinas (which I killed off around turn 55)....hit India? Persia? Someone suggested the Arabs, but the Persians are in the way.

2 Chinas leaves 6 other civs to kill right....God, how is one to kill them all in ~50 turns? Japan seems to be an option, but because there isn't much room to invade their coastal cities, it's a fairly huge risk. I was thinking I would do 2 Chinas, India, Persia, Arabs, Byzantines. Russia is the weakest, apparently, but I haven't been able to find their cities yet.