Difficult to conquer your adversaries

Matara

Warlord
Joined
Nov 27, 2021
Messages
174
Selecting Mongolia, flipping Turkic and Chinese cities, whose armies are exiled back to their own territories. That is, a huge stack of crossbows and firelancers sitting at Samarkand or Beijing. And what I have are just little 6 Keshiks and some other troops, even unable to push into the first city if dice is rolled badly.
 
So is there a feasible strategy to play as Turkestan or Mongolia, which always have to defeat a lot of defending units in very few turns? As Mongolia, you have to crush out large exiled troops of Turks and China. As Turks, you have to conquer Persia and face the Arabian expanding troops. Both seems to be huge luck-based.
 
So is there a feasible strategy to play as Turkestan or Mongolia, which always have to defeat a lot of defending units in very few turns? As Mongolia, you have to crush out large exiled troops of Turks and China. As Turks, you have to conquer Persia and face the Arabian expanding troops. Both seems to be huge luck-based.
I haven't played the Turks much, but as Mongolia the key is ger (everywhere) -> spam keshek (everywhere). Once you have a big enough stack then you use the unique power, so that you don't need any siege units. If you can conquer China first then you can spam a lot of Kesheks and the rest becomes much much easier. The difficulty of conquering China can be quite situational, but it is almost always possible on regular speed.

On marathon Mongolia is almost impossible, but that's just one of the quirks of marathon :).
 
Yes, but the time for Mongolia is very tight. China is required to be fully conquered in 10 turns, so there might be even no time to build new keshiks for China conquest. Though other two goals require no time, stability check is enabled after 20 turns (1400AD), and you will suffer huge overextension penalty unless you keep Chinese or other cities small.
As for speed, why Marathon is more difficult? I assume slower speed is always easier because the time of moving troops is not scaled.
 
The time the other civs get to prepare are absurd. China builds up so hard its not even funny on marathon. They will have an enormous unit spam
Unit building in Marathon is notoriously cheap, for its speed
 
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Yes, but the time for Mongolia is very tight. China is required to be fully conquered in 10 turns, so there might be even no time to build new keshiks for China conquest. Though other two goals require no time, stability check is enabled after 20 turns (1400AD), and you will suffer huge overextension penalty unless you keep Chinese or other cities small.
As for speed, why Marathon is more difficult? I assume slower speed is always easier because the time of moving troops is not scaled.
I guess you can lower difficulty. Cannot recall any problems with Mongolia on the easy one.
 
For the Turks, you need to make sure you have a war declared, and just have a couple of Oghuz whose job it is to go and recruit any mounted barbarian units that spawn. (There are a lot.)

For the Mongolians, I would advise switching to both Despotism and Citizenship, running 100% :gold:, and making heavy usage of both whipping and purchasing new units to help further your conquests. Also, you have the Mongolian special ability to cripple defenses, as well as the Keshik, who deals collateral damage. You might have to sacrifice a few Keshik, but really the best case scenario is that the majority of the enemy military is stationed on one tile. That way you can wipe them all out in one blow.
 
Even on marathon it's not too difficult if you run Despotism to use big Chinese cities to whip new Keshiks (this has the added benefit of reducing non-core population).
 
Huh. Not even AI mongolia has been able to cause a dent on AI China lately.... from my experiences watching as Japan.
 
Fortunately I got both of them. The Turkic play is nothing but lucky. Persia had developed transoxiana for me, and their own troops were destroyed by Arabs. So I grasp Persia right after they exhausted their force on their own war. At the same time India was rich but weak, easily to pillage 20 improvements (mostly villages). China is way too strong to defeat or pillage. What I only do is to catch horse archers and Keshiks around Mongolia, and send them to the western front. With a well-developed transoxiana and Persia, everything is easy to manage.
As for Mongolia, I found it vast necessary to whip, especially in Chinese cities with huge population and huge unhappiness. Whipping a Keshik costs only 3 pop, and you don't have to consider any of long term economies. So just whip, whip again as you need. Since Mongolia has a huge expansion area, every conquered city faces no anarchy and provides rich money to slide on your culture. Also, I found that stability is actually not a problem. Select a Chinese city with rich food, hire 4-5 specialists, and generate 2 great people which ensure you two golden ages (another one comes from second UHV). So you are protected for 20+8+8=36 turns, which is even later than 1450AD.
 
Selecting Mongolia, flipping Turkic and Chinese cities, whose armies are exiled back to their own territories. That is, a huge stack of crossbows and firelancers sitting at Samarkand or Beijing. And what I have are just little 6 Keshiks and some other troops, even unable to push into the first city if dice is rolled badly.
Force them to declare war on you?
 
Mongolian strategy, for me personally - was to instantly switch to Despotism and Monasticism (for 50% great people bonus), and get 2 great people in china. If timed correctly, you will have completed UHV 1 and 2 in a similar timespan, therefore giving you 16 turns of golden age, more than enough for UHV 3. China collapsed in my games.
Also, what WOULD be the Uzbek strategy? It seemed fairly difficult for me, considering you need to time your GA's, defend against the mongolians, and make sure to pillage lots of improvements nd conquer
 
If he was talking about the Turks, then he probably meant flipping Uzbek keshiks to use on Mongolia, which is a strategy
I mean, FREE KESHIKS for gods sake. Thats absurd.
 
Why not flip keshiks from China. They spawns around 900AD-1200AD.
Mongolian conquest is a nightmare. If they move their initial troop towards you instead of China, you get damn lose. Just victory before it if there's any possibility.
 
I haven't played the Turks much, but as Mongolia the key is ger (everywhere) -> spam keshek (everywhere). Once you have a big enough stack then you use the unique power, so that you don't need any siege units. If you can conquer China first then you can spam a lot of Kesheks and the rest becomes much much easier. The difficulty of conquering China can be quite situational, but it is almost always possible on regular speed.

On marathon Mongolia is almost impossible, but that's just one of the quirks of marathon :).
Is marathon harder? :O I always play on marathon and found Mongolia challenging but perfectly doable and fun, not even one of the harder civs.
 
The big issue is now that with the units send home, the Mongols start with very few cities (and 1 settler?) just 2 basic X-bow in it, instead of a larger army, Marathon might help or make it worse, as you start at war with China and possibly Turkestan as well, if they did well you pretty much dead on the get go, if they swarm armies to reclaim the areas as Turkestan with their fast oghuz, a unit you not have much answer on with the many open plains.
 
The big issue is now that with the units send home, the Mongols start with very few cities (and 1 settler?) just 2 basic X-bow in it, instead of a larger army, Marathon might help or make it worse, as you start at war with China and possibly Turkestan as well, if they did well you pretty much dead on the get go, if they swarm armies to reclaim the areas as Turkestan with their fast oghuz, a unit you not have much answer on with the many open plains.
The big problem that I've found on Marathon is the lack of collapses. If China has collapsed even once before you spawn as Mongolia then the conquest is very doable. If not then the stack in Beijing will be unbeatable. On regular speed China almost always collapses at least once before Mongolia spawns. On Marathon, this is much less likely to be the case.
 
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