Curse of the mongols

It is not possible to destroy cities. NO WAY. Switching to republic/other governement doesn't work

 

I wonder what happens if your capital city is 1 turn away from building a settler and then gets nuked taking it down to size 1. Would the settler still build or not?

 

You can simulate this easily, even in the first couple of turns of the game. Start a game as the Romans, put both your workers on trees and set your city to build a settler. The turn before your settler would be finished, change government to despotism. You'll notice that you even though it says you can rush the settler for 0 gold (maybe a turn later), you can't do it until you get up to 3 pop.

Note that this is a horrifically bad strategy and should only be used to demonstrate how you can't destroy a city by building a settler. You can destroy a city by letting barbarians eat it though.

The Mongols are difficult to play, but they can be extremely powerful. I've been playing them a lot in H2H lately and I win pretty regularly as long as I'm not pressed too early. The key is not to play them with the intent of making every one of your barb towns into a great and self-sufficient city. Instead think of your empire as the sum of its parts. A 1 population city is useful if it contributes to the overall science or gold your empire can accumulate. It is useless if it has to build its own armies.

The +50% trade (not gold, but trade, so science or gold) bonus is one of the best bonuses in the game. It can be somewhat difficult to leverage in a FFA game as well as on Deity (it's doable, but requires some practice). In H2H it really shines because the AI is so weak and you should always be able to get a couple AI cities. I've had at least two games in which I was able to quickly take over a 3-population Thebes with the Colossus of Rhodes which means that I could instantly do 18 science or gold from that one city early in the game. That's not easy to compete with.

 

Agreed. I quite like playing as the mongols because i find that they offer a completely different challenge to the other civs. If you can survive the early stages where you will have a large number of potentially weak cities then once you get into the 2nd half of the game you can reallly become a powerhouse.