Ghengis Khan and the Mongol Terror

[Infiltrator]

How hard is it to just let players respec their promotions if a melee unit becomes ranged and vice-versa? Thought the Firaxis would figure that one out during development.

 

[biohazard72]

Everybody posting about "horsemen well managed don't take damage" is wrong. You will take damage when you attack cities. And this is where the Khan is amazing - if the horse has March, it will heal 5HP if left in the city and next to a Khan, which is HUGE. Your assault will literally never stop, because you never have to stop to heal. Or when you do, it's for one less turn.

On the Khan: amazing. Speed allowing it to keep up with a Horseman assault, and the healing is almost broken when your units start getting March. Very versatile as well - units in one area can get the combat bonus, then you can move him to injured units away from the frontline to heal them. Better than Chinese GGs.

Keshiks: Save some XP on the Horsemen you begin your warmongering with, and spend it when they become Keshiks. Being able to attack and then move to an unreachable position is amazing. With Logistics they can attack twice and still have enough movement points to get within striking distance of their next target. With Honor, these guys level up very fast - I have one with 3x Barrage, Logistics, Extra Range, March, Siege, Indirect Fire, and some other promotions. It is deadly. Still, they need support - leave a couple Horsemen as they are until Cavalry for taking cities.

UA: Extra mounted movement is huge, as elaborated earlier. The city state bonus is nice, as on the warpath you might find a city state allied with an enemy on the way worth attacking, or it might be valuable to kill a city state to earn allied status with a maritime.

Summary: unquestionably a top tier civ. Sometimes wish they had a high-strength melee horse (i.e. a Knight) to face Longswords, but Keshiks can do fine if used well and are better units, especially at damaging cities. It's having to keep Horsemen in the army (for capturing cities) for so long that is my only gripe.

EDIT: Hey, maybe Lancers would actually be useful! They're not in the best spot on the tech tree (not on the way to Cavalry) but if managed well maybe they could act as the high-attack melee horses that take cities while Keshiks bombard them to rubble.

 

[Lyoncet]

Keshiks: Save some XP on the Horsemen you begin your warmongering with, and spend it when they become Keshiks. Being able to attack and then move to an unreachable position is amazing.

Unless other people's updates are wrong, they can't do this until you get Logistics. I know you probably meant that but just wanted to clear that up. Also, it's not so much being able to move to an unreachable position that's useful, since your ranged units should be unreachable anyways, but rather the ability to fire and then get out of the way for another ranged unit to fire from the same square that's pretty potentially game-breaking. At least that's my experience with Camel Archers. I do like that they differentiated CAs from Keshiks a bit too, giving camels more power (15 vs 13 ranged) and inherent move-after-attack while giving Keshiks more movement and XP/GG bonuses. Since historically both emphasized mobility and flexibility as compared to their heavy, armored European mounted units I was afraid that they'd end up being pretty similar.

EDIT: Hey, maybe Lancers would actually be useful! They're not in the best spot on the tech tree (not on the way to Cavalry) but if managed well maybe they could act as the high-attack melee horses that take cities while Keshiks bombard them to rubble.

That's a good point. So that would make for a total of two of twenty civs who could actually justify fielding Lancers!

Do agree though; despite the kinda meh city-state aspect of the UA, they certainly look like they'll easily be a top tier contender. I'll probably end up sticking with my traditional favorites since I tend to like a build-and-tech strategy, but for warmongering games it's hard to say no to those UUs.

As an aside, does anyone know if they've fixed the oversight where chariot archers, camel archers, and presumably keshiks got ranged penalties against spears/pikes/lancers? If not, we may end up seeing Bismarck: Slaughterer of Mongols! (Yeah that's mostly a joke btw.)

 

[elthrasher]

As an aside, does anyone know if they've fixed the oversight where chariot archers, camel archers, and presumably keshiks got ranged penalties against spears/pikes/lancers? If not, we may end up seeing Bismarck: Slaughterer of Mongols! (Yeah that's mostly a joke btw.)

I've been playing the Mongols on Deity and warring with Bismarck (and Hiwatha, and Catherine and eventually probably everybody if I live that long) a lot. Keshik kill Landsknechts very efficiently. I haven't managed to take a ton of cities yet due to how many units the AI can spam. I advance a little and maybe grab a city, then fall back and kill like a dozen attackers, then I can press forward again. I think at my last save it was like 250 AD and I had won 6-7 cities as well as settled a number of my own, so not really that amazing, considering I'm still dead last in tech.

Keshik are pretty good. The 5 movement means that they can attack and retreat like crazy. In one instance, despite only having one good tile to attack from (everything else was rough terrain which is VERY DANGEROUS for poor Keshik), I was able to funnel five of them in turn to bombard a city and then take it with my one horseman I keep around for attacking 1hp cities. I was also able to sink a Frigate in a single turn of bombardment.

I don't know for sure if I'll win this game because it's a Pangaea and the AI are very close to rifles. The three close AI are all warring on me and the three distant ones are peacefully teching away. I think Gandhi is in the modern era while I'm still in the renaissance, heh. Fortunately, he's the most advanced and I'm sure his people think my powdered wigs and puffy shirts are really retro cool. Maybe he'll keep the other AI down or I dunno what. But it's fun.

 

[biohazard72]

Unless other people's updates are wrong, they can't do this until you get Logistics.

You can definitely shoot and move with Keshiks before Logistics - at least if they're upgraded from Horsemen. I'm not sure if it's that way normally. And yes, it is very nice to use just one square as a base of operations to shoot and retreat from, which they do very well.

 

[Lyoncet]

You can definitely shoot and move with Keshiks before Logistics - at least if they're upgraded from Horsemen. I'm not sure if it's that way normally. And yes, it is very nice to use just one square as a base of operations to shoot and retreat from, which they do very well.

Thanks for pointing that out; looks like 1) either other folks just forgot to mention that 2) perhaps that's not displayed on the mouseover or 3) it's only after upgrading from horsemen, who start with that ability. If it's not that last scenario, that would make me a little sad since that basically just makes them Camel Archers +2 move -2 strength instead of really having a differentiated mechanic. I don't really count GG spawn rate and +XP as a differentiation since you'll still be using those units in exactly the same way, as opposed to something like musketeers vs. minutemen or Narusuan's Elephant vs. camel archers.

 

[Swiftest]

I wanted to mention that last night I had a Keshik with Shock 1-3 (from his days as a horseman) and Accuracy 1-2 that I then upgraded (somewhat sadly) to a cavalry. I'd almost have left him as a Keshik but since the enemy has rifles he'd be a little bit outclassed. I noticed the next time I attacked something in open terrain that he had the 65% open terrain attack bonus *and* another 40% *ranged* attack bonus on open terrain, which seems to suggest that the range open terrain attack bonus is actually working in melee for the cavalry. This would mean that range upgrades (at least accuracy 1-3 and it's counter for rough terrain) are *not* a waste on upgraded keshiks! Has anyone else experienced this? I will explore further.

edit: Yep, tried it again with another keshik/cavalry and confirmed -- the range upgrades do indeed work on melee cavalry. I'm surprised people haven't tested this before with camel archers, or perhaps I misread the people claiming this wasn't so earlier in the thread. I have a feeling that logistics would *not* work with cavalry (of course) but then for that there's blitz anyhow. This seems like a nice way to increase your attack strength on a specialized bit of ground.

 

[Lyoncet]

I believe that the way promotions work for "semi-archer" units (so chariot archers/war elephants/camel archers/keshiks) was changed in the last patch. So that's only been the case for a few days.

 

[elprofesor]

One thing I think they will patch:
I was playing a game with Siam at Warlord level, trying to get a diplo victory.
I had completely explored the sp that gives bonus to allying city states (dont know its name).
Through the game, I got one great scientist, one great artist, one great general... and 3 khans...
As fun as it was, being able to get khans while not playing as the mongols shouldnt be possible, hum?

 

[Lyoncet]

One thing I think they will patch:
I was playing a game with Siam at Warlord level, trying to get a diplo victory.
I had completely explored the sp that gives bonus to allying city states (dont know its name).
Through the game, I got one great scientist, one great artist, one great general... and 3 khans...
As fun as it was, being able to get khans while not playing as the mongols shouldnt be possible, hum?

OK I've gotta go patronage a few times before they fix this!

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

One thing I think they will patch:
I was playing a game with Siam at Warlord level, trying to get a diplo victory.
I had completely explored the sp that gives bonus to allying city states (dont know its name).
Through the game, I got one great scientist, one great artist, one great general... and 3 khans...
As fun as it was, being able to get khans while not playing as the mongols shouldnt be possible, hum?

This happened to me as well:

Spoiler :

Having that Khan may have saved the game for me (it was OCC).

 

[Martin Alvito]

That's a pretty severe bug.

 

[Setis]

One thing I think they will patch:
I was playing a game with Siam at Warlord level, trying to get a diplo victory.
I had completely explored the sp that gives bonus to allying city states (dont know its name).
Through the game, I got one great scientist, one great artist, one great general... and 3 khans...
As fun as it was, being able to get khans while not playing as the mongols shouldnt be possible, hum?

Actually I recall in one of my first games after launch, I was playing as America and a CS gifted me a Legion....

 

[edcrane]

On the one hand, the Mongol civ is great because it gives you an incentive to adopt new tactics. On the other hand, it's tough to really have fun with them because the AI is so incredibly bad at dealing with mounted units. I guess we'll have to wait for a real AI patch.

 

[Nunya]

I think what they did with Chariot Archers, Camel Archers, and Keshiks is that they are classed as archery units rather than mounted units. It's a simple change which would result inthe following:
1) The units get ranged promotions.
2) Spearmen, Pikemen, and Siamese elephants don't get a bonus against them.
3) Keshiks wouldn't get extra movement from Mongol Terror.

As for promotions, it works both ways. Ranged promotions work for close combat and close combat promotions work for ranged units. At least the strength bonus promotions do (Accuracy, Barrage, Drill, Shock).

 

[fromar]

Has anyone been playing the Mongol scenario? I played through it, and really enjoyed the battle. The mechanics were switched up to grant gold when you sacked civs. The only way to win was to kill a bunch of majors before 100 turns.

Does anyone know if there is a scenario with the Babylonians? I'll buy the DLC if there is.

 

[Gunship_Down]

Don't think there is a Bab scenario.

But yeah, Mongol scenario is pretty damn awesome. I finished my first one on Prince last night, doing in order Siam, China, Japan, and finally India.

Persia is another option but they have Immortals, and are a general pain in the ass.

Japan is actually surprisingly easy, they only have 3 cities, poorly guarded by Samurai. You can easily hit the little island from 2 directions, then land a horsey on the empty strip and take the city. As for the main island, there is lots of forest cover so use upgrades against rough terrain. Should be easy to dispatch the few samurai, who do murder you units if you let them come close.

The only problem is losing a bit of time because you have to take Korea out first, then cross the ocean. So for King and above it's probably better to save them until last.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

Yeah if there's one unit that really needed a boost, it's the horseman, right?

This. Honestly, making the knight ranged changes things somewhat though.

 

[Rathelon]

That's a good point. So that would make for a total of two of twenty civs who could actually justify fielding Lancers!

I always ignored lancers myself, until my last game when I noticed they are 22 strength (cavalry is 25), with more movement than a knight or cavalry.

 

[Nunya]

The main problem with Lancers is that they are not part of any upgrade line. You can't upgrade any older units to Lancers so much like Musketmen you have to make all of them from scratch. And it's simply more effective to upgrade your higly promoted Knights to Cavalry. And any Musketmen you make will at least upgrade to Rifles (and eventualy Mech. Inf.), while Lancers are stuck being Lancers until the end of the game.

The Ottoman Sipahi can at least pillage for free and outrun Mechanised Infantry thanks to their 5 moves so they have a use even in the Modern Era, but regular Lancers will just go obsolete before they can make a meaningful impact.