[R&F] Civ of the Week: Mongolia

[acluewithout]

• Leader: Genghis Khan
  
  
• Leader Ability: Mongol Horde. All Cavalry Units gain +3 Combat Strength and have a chance of capturing cavalry class units. Captured unique units retain their abilities on capture.

• Civ Ability: Ortoo. Sending a Trade Route automatically establishes a Trading Post. Gain an extra level of Diplomatic Visibility when you have a Trade Route in a foreign City. Mongolian Units receive +6 Combat Strength per level of Diplomatic Visibility (instead of +3).
  
  
• Unique Unit: Keshig. Unique Ranged Cavalry Unit. Unlocks at Stirrups, upgrades Field Cannon. Melee Strength 30, Ranged Strength 40, Attack Range 2, Movement 4, Production Cost 180 and Maintenance 3. Gains Medieval Uber ability: can Escort Civilian and Support Units at Higher Movement Speed, and earns 5 Stars if it takes them to the Airport.
  
  
• Unique Infrastructure: Ordu. Unique Building which replaces the Stable. Provides +1 Production, +1 Housing, +1 Citizen Slot, +1 Great General Points, all Cavalry get +25% experience and all units produced in this Stable get +1 Movement. Production Cost 120, Maintenance 1.

• Leader Agenda: Horse Lord. Builds Strong Cavalry Force and likes Civilizations that don't build Cavalry. Dislikes Civs with lots of Cavalry.

• Interesting links: [to come].

Notes:

• Yeah, so, send a Trade Route, and your Cav get +9 Attack. And maybe +1 Movement if you built their super horse tepee.
  
  
• Next week is Shakira. Week after that is either Renaissance or maybe we have a week off...

 

[Archon_Wing]

They're pretty good if not really one note. Also kinda sucks when they don't have horses but rushing a trader and getting that combat bonus is really neat (except vs France but I guess you can negate theirs). I've also never built a Keshig. Should I?

So here's a game from last week. Emperor, Continents



Well acutally it kinda sucks. It's a good harbor spot but no production whatsoever. Better go take something....

So after taking over Korea, I also liberate a CS that holds the only source of Iron for me, so I really wanted to maintain control of the city.... would take it over if needed.

Spoiler :

Originally thought of Science Victory, but losing too many wonders caused me to switch to domination. That Mongolian bonus at work, helped with the Great Merchant that increases visibility

Spoiler :

Why does Korea always get the best capitals?

Spoiler :

 

[Disgustipated]

What can I say, massively powerful. Assuming you start near other vict... I mean other civilizations.

Mongol Horde: This never seems to come up enough for me. Maybe at Deity level, but at King level just not so much. But my game is still early, I will most likely encounter some knights later. I'll just add right now Mongols should probably be played one difficulty level higher than you normally play. My game is turning out to be so easy that I don't have a lot of desire to finish it.

Ortoo: Very powerful, what's not to like? Only downside is it can take a while for your first trader to finish his trade routes. More useful when you have multiple traders, but if you are concentrating on war, it takes a while to get multiple traders.Yes I know you get the trading post immediately, I'm referring to getting your trading post up with your 2nd and 3rd victims.

Keshig: I believe the range strength is the same as a crossbowman? I don't have the game open to verify, but I believe so. It's just an ultra fast crossbowman. The AI can't seem to handle it though. Speed kills in this game.

Ordu: see above comment about movement. I don't have the game open to compare base production costs. It took me a while to get mine up and running. I ran Veterancy for my last one, but I ended up not building any units out of that one (building a wonder instead).

Horse Lord: This actually works better than other civilization's agendas like Norway's. It makes more sense that they would like you having smaller cavalry forces. Where as Norway hates you having a small Navy.

Okay so this game is on King level, continents standard size. Plains hill start as you can see, though you can move, though I don't know why you would. I know plains hills have history with civ, but it truly does make a bid difference. Not sure I could have fended off my first attack without that extra production. Unfortunately this game has gotten easy real fast. I won't spoil who my neighbors were, but they were cultural, and not very difficult to take down. It also helped that they were at war with each other before I attacked, and had taken out many of each other's troops. Despite that, this isn't an easy start due to proximities. I made friends with someone to help keep the peace until I was ready. I could have done an archer rush, but that's completely out of character, and I won't do it out of principle. I instead turtled until my Keshigs were ready.

Spoiler :

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

One cool thing about Mongolia that sometimes gets overlooked is that their massive visibility bonuses also apply to religious warfare. Your apostles hit pretty hard when they're doing +12 or +18.

The challenge of course is that Mongolia doesn't get any bonuses to faith or religion otherwise, so it's not exactly a walk in the park, but you can potentially get the strongest apostles in the game if you put some effort into it.

 

[Tech Osen]

Ortoo: Very powerful, what's not to like? Only downside is it can take a while for your first trader to finish his trade routes. More useful when you have multiple traders, but if you are concentrating on war, it takes a while to get multiple traders.Yes I know you get the trading post immediately, I'm referring to getting your trading post up with your 2nd and 3rd victims.

I think you miss the point of this ability. The trader is cancelled the moment you declare war and then free to send to the next victim.

 

[KayAU]

I actually haven't played as the Mongols yet. It's not that they are a bad civ, but they are completely focused on one thing, and that thing is probably my least favorite aspect of the game. With the AI being what it is, Civilization VI simply isn't a good war game.

I would say that Mongolia's abilities are pretty good overall, and with all of them being focused on a specific strategy, intelligence based cavalry assault, they should synergize well. Again, the problem with their abilities for me is that, yes, I could be a complete terror and wipe out my immediate neighbors early on, to then snowball to an easy victory of my choosing. However, I could do that with any other civ, by just building 4 archers and 2 warriors early on. It might take slightly longer, and my reach might be a little bit shorter when using slower units, but this strategy is already so effective, anything that amplifies it seems kind of redundant.

 

[acluewithout]

They’re another Civ I don’t want to play (for the same reason as @KayAU) but they’re fun to spawn next to.

 

[Disgustipated]

I think you miss the point of this ability. The trader is cancelled the moment you declare war and then free to send to the next victim.

True, I was just trying to get some trade routes built up during my peaceful turtling phase. At the very least you want to wait long enough to get those roads built to your next victim.

Another downside is my road infrastructure within my empire is pretty crappy right now. Especially since I have no near city states sending trade routes to me. But it's understandable, there has to be some downside. Conquering so many cities is massively overpowered as it is. And the lack of roads isn't a big issue when I have 4 and 5 move units.

Actually loading up my game it wasn't as bad as I remembered. It's been a few days since I played this game. I did build another commercial hub fairly early because maintenance on the Keshigs was becoming a problem. And of course the original route I ran from my capital to St. Petersburg is now within my empire since I own that city now. And Same with Mbanza Kongo. And my opponent to the North also ran trade routes within his cities setting up roads up to the North for me. So one or two trade routes isn't as bad as I remembered.

And I got a 3rd as well, like I said maintenance costs are a serious issue. I am running Caravansaries and with 3 trade routes my gold surplus is only 13.1. I won't have time to finish this game today, but maybe tomorrow. Actually I probably won't finish until the following day.

If you look at those pictures you'll see that iron was a serious problem in this game. I tried to build the wonder to give me 2 iron, but I failed by about 2 or 3 turns. Once my first 2 opponents were dealt with I settled that iron near my next victim just for the iron on the right side of the first picture. Only 1 iron, but good enough to get my knights going. Horseman aren't going to cut it soon.

My next victim will be more challenging because of his uu, so we'll see how that goes.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

/spoiler]

 

[N_M_L_C]

Had one of my most entertaining game with them.
Game was in emperor, continents, normal settings.

I restarted 2 or 3 games after a few 100 turns to really get them.

I ended up spawning on flat land, large plains with room, next to horse for my capital and close to Germany.
I settled only 3 main cities at the beginning, 2 campuses and one encampment, and then 2 or 3 smaller cities.
I took quite a slow start to set up properly aiming just for stirrups. i managed to took Germany's capital with footmen though. Prepared 1 or 2 siege tower for later invasions.

But once I got to keshiks, ho boy...
Built 3 of them and 3 knights rapidly with policies.
And then I rushed (that's the word) north, passed through a narrow pass between a range of mountains and literally descended upon Kongo who was not prepared.
I took his 3 main cities and razzed the others in the blink of an eye, pillaging tiles, rampaging his land.

Then I pushed on to Egypt leaving only ashes behind me. Here again my horses were just too fast for her to react and yet she was 2nd in score. Same, I took her main cities and razzed the others to the ground in just a few turns.

I got around the continent so fast! The only thing that could stop me was the ocean.

I managed to to get to the other side but much later and had to make war with tanks which was a bit less fun.
They're really fun to play, well deisgned, and extremely powerful and FAST when you build the proper set up.
I believe their main strength lies in keshik who can escort civil units (i.e. siege towers) as the same speed as them.

Bonus point for the medieval theme accompanying your horde in your firsts conquests. Epic.

 

[liv]

Are they the most powerful civ in single play?
It is very easy to get 6 intel and probably 12 after awhile so no stopping you if you start with two horses. I think last time I played them I did not get two horses but one and encampments was still very fast win for me

 

[Disgustipated]

Are they the most powerful civ in single play?

We will see. I still think Macedon is more powerful, but I may actually get a quicker victory with Genghis. Macedon can certainly pump out more science/culture however.

One minor thing to note, is with such fast units, loyalty flips after conquest is almost a non-issue. You can conquer cities so fast, it will be hard to lose a flip. I picked up Victor regardless, but he's hardly been necessary.

And I finally got my first cavalry capture, a Saka Horse Archer. Yes even though Scythia is running around with Ironclads, they apparently feel their Saka Horse Archers are worth keeping around. edit: and my Saka Horse Archer is gone just like that. That's why I don't care for this ability. When you get the capture, the unit is too wounded to survive any kind of counter attack. And I would have gave Scythia a free heal (though he attacked with a fully healed crossbowman, so at least she didn't get a free heal out of that). Yeah this ability is kind of worthless, and certainly not something you want to count on to help you win the game.

So the question is, how long can I keep these Keshigs going? 60 strength cities are a little tougher, but I have corps now, so that makes things easier. Very soon I will have armies as well. I'm actually delaying getting field cannons, and delaying steel as well. Not that I need my battering ram all that much. Keshigs are powerful enough to take down walls. I have been using the right side of the promotion tree for this purpose.

 

[Disgustipated]

Finished my game, whatever you say about this civ, it's a fairly fun civ. Who doesn't enjoy riding across the continent on horseback conquering everything in sight? My final ranking was: #3 Abraham Lincoln. Which is about usual for my conquest victories. As I mentioned before, I don't just conquer capitals, that's way too easy and cheesy. I conquer every city in the world. I think in my India game I missed one because I couldn't find it, but otherwise I take every city in the world except city-states.

Certainly not my fastest time, it's actually my slowest conquest victory for my civ of the week games. My Japan game was much faster, 52 turns faster, though that was archipelago (and almost all naval combat), but still standard size. My Chandragupta India game was faster as well by about 22 turns. Macedonia was faster by 43 turns. Part of the problem was waiting for Keshig's. It just didn't seem right to start with archers and warriors, I felt like I had to be on horseback. Even if I had started with archers, I do not think I could have beaten my Macedonia time. This civilization shines a little bit later, but that's okay. When they kick in, they are very fast. I really felt like I was going fast, even if my end game victory time doesn't show it. My score: A for conquest victory. Otherwise I'd rate them much lower. And for the fun factor they are an A as well. Certainly a civ I enjoy playing, and will play again in the future.


Ortoo: I didn't pay great attention to this. At one point I had +18 intel bonus. Which means I had 3 levels of diplomatic visibility. One was my spy (listening post), second was the trading post. What was the third? Printing? So if I establish a trading post in a city, and I later conquer that city, I'm assuming I lose that +6 combat bonus, I forgot to check on this. Sometimes the trade route you establish is with the closest city, and subsequently the first city you conquer. So that's something to consider. Try to send it to the last city if you can.

On a side note, if I had waited one more turn, I could have gotten a Keshig with all the promotions. Level 7. I believe I needed one more attack to get the promotion. Level 6 was my highest Keshig level.

Spoiler :

 

[liv]

That looked pretty impressive. I think you are right that the Macedons are also quite strong. Their horses upgrade to knights. It is pretty hard to beat

I like to start the war with horses. A horse will be strength 50 for the Mongols if you have 6 intel and a general. That is quite powerful unit in the early game. I then try to hurry for feudalism and knights to try to finish off the game.

I finished my game. I ranked as Neville Chamberlain but it was fast win as it was still the medieval era. I had 12 intel against the Americans the last civ I eliminated (well I took Washington) I was playing deity on a small pangaea map.