How deal with Mongols?

[planetfall]

Wow, so many interesting ideas to try. Thank you all, especially Derrick for highlighting so well weak plays. I have a couple of ideas to try now and it will take at least 2-4 games to see how they work. I had no idea that marshes hurt defense so much, I thought they would show horse units. I had downplayed Moksha because other than Aussies, I hadn't played such an aggressive civ. I know I wasted energy with Stoneridge, but I have been experimenting with making religion important. R&F had nice work ethic, but that is seriously degraded in GS.

While looking at early development, how do you place your first 5 cities after capital? Closer to have shorter supply lines, or further out to lock in potential necessary resources?

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

R&F had nice work ethic, but that is seriously degraded in GS.

While looking at early development, how do you place your first 5 cities after capital? Closer to have shorter supply lines, or further out to lock in potential necessary resources?

Work ethic is arguably the most overpowered belief in the game at the moment, assuming you have the right landscape and adjacency pantheon to leverage.
It's quite possible to get +6 production holy sites these days, that double down to +12 once you get the +100% holy site adjacency card up and running.
That is simply an enormous amount of production early on, but is somewhat advanced stuff to pull off and so I didn't want to complicate things unneccessarily for you by going into that.

It's hard to tell where you should settle based on your screenshot, because I can't see the northern parts of the map.
But as for the southern part of the map (close to Mongolia), Frankfurt and Berlin both look good, as does Mainz.
You should have settled Trier right at the coast though.
As for general pointers, try to see what yields you can get early on (food+production are important, as well as possible improvements), and try to settle cities closer together.
I usually prefer to settle my cities as closely together as possible, because you will rarely if ever be able to work all tiles anyway (unlike in civ 5 where having 25+ population cities is common).
Frankfurt could probably be settled one tile further west to allow for a city in between Frankfurt and Aachen, but that comes at a risk of loyalty issues and pissing off Mongolia even more, so the choice to settle where you did was ok considering that.
If you had settled one tile further west you could also have settled Berlin further to the northwest, and allowed Aachen to settle at the river near the coast, so that would have given you room for 1 more city, as well as ensuring that Berlin and Trier both got river access.

In general I like to settle tight for this reason, but also forward settle to secure landmass before the AI takes it - even if it means pissing off Mongolia (because you can beat him easily if you play the tactical combat game well).
Resources is less important, you can very often secure that one way or another.
For instance, if you dont get horses then iron is good enough, you only want to make sure that you get some high tech units out so that the combat strength of your cities increase (if playing defensively/peacefully).
Other than that, its usually possible to also trade for these resources, so try that if you're struggling.
Heck, even one swordsman can be enough, and then just pile on with archers behind him (those dont cost strategic resources).

No big deal though, you can work with this game quite nicely.
The only exception is Trier, which is a strategic liability at the moment, pisses off Mongolia and gives you hardly any benefit because it lacks fresh water.
You also settled it so that you cannot settle near the coast anymore, so there's that as well to consider.
Let's just say - if Trier had been settled by Mongolia and I had just captured that city, I'd consider razing it due to how poorly placed it is and how it takes away settling spots elsewhere.

 

[planetfall]

Here's NW. Two iron in city3. One of the few geo positives.

 

[planetfall]

oh, how do you stop trade routes placed by AI? We can't capture traders, pillage just outside our civ boundaries?

Warrior was in capital because a scout is roaming near capital and worried about it attacking capital. I find scouts hard to deal with until get knights. They just squirt away and ignore ZOC.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Here's NW. Two iron in city3. One of the few geo positives.

It's fine, but you could have settled a lot tighter to squeeze in more cities.
I do notice that you have a great engineer though, and I would argue that the fact that you have one means you invested very hard in Hansa.
Have you built a government plaza yet? Because that district is important to get up fast, for several reasons:

- You can get ancestral hall built in the Plaza once you have a government, helping you settle faster and giving you free builders from cities you settle. Prioritize this because it racks up really fast.
- You also get free governor promotions and extra adjacency for other districts for building it, and it's very cheap to build. This should be high on your priority early on for that reason, because it pays off hard and fast, much more than an extra campus (or Hansa) does.

 

[pokiehl]

Yeah Work Ethic in GS is literally the best belief bar none. No comparisons.

 

[UWHabs]

It's fine, but you could have settled a lot tighter to squeeze in more cities.
I do notice that you have a great engineer though, and I would argue that the fact that you have one means you invested very hard in Hansa.
Have you built a government plaza yet? Because that district is important to get up fast, for several reasons:

- You can get ancestral hall built in the Plaza once you have a government, helping you settle faster and giving you free builders from cities you settle. Prioritize this because it racks up really fast.
- You also get free governor promotions and extra adjacency for other districts for building it, and it's very cheap to build. This should be high on your priority early on for that reason, because it pays off hard and fast, much more than an extra campus (or Hansa) does.

Brings up another good point - as Germany, you want to pack in cities as close as possible, so that each Hansa can be next to as many commercial hubs as possible. They're a civ that I aggressively use pins with, since you ideally want every Hansa/Commerce hub to be in either a diamond shape, or if you have 3 cities share, you can arrange them to get the best adjacencies possible on them. In a perfect world, you basically want to settle a city, chop out a Hansa immediately, and then get started on the commerce hub.

I can't say exactly what I would have done in the game, since depending on what you scout, you see different stuff. But if I did scout the areas, I think my settling pattern probably would have been:
1. Mainz: it has a reef, so a natural campus spot. Close to the capital, but also has some good resources and some nice choppable land.
2. SE by the Silk. I have an irrational fear of settling off any water, that one has some good choppable land.
3. Berlin. On fresh water, and that's the front line city.
4. Frankfurt. Also on fresh water.
Once you have those 4 cities down, you don't need to push more. Your border is only 2 cities wide, one of them with a single tile around a lake. And you have enough land to settle around 12 cities behind that line, definitely no point in wasting resources settling Trier for the horses.
Probably I would end up with the quarry pantheon, since there's a lot of them around. Although you have like 6 banana tiles nearby, so the plantation pantheon for a quick +6 culture early on is super tempting.

Some games, yeah, honestly you'll end up like the first screenshot, where they come at you with horses before you're ready. But even in that one, you have a blank unescorted settler way down south. You could have settled that city probably 10 turns earlier with any of the other locations, and had more time to turn that city into a productive city. There's something to be said for getting a city down, buying a builder, chopping a couple tiles, and just getting that city rolling. Especially early on, if you get Magnus in a city, each jungle chop is like +1 population. Settle a city, pop in Magnus, buy a builder, wait 5 turns. Chop, move, chop, move, chop, and within 10 turns you have a size 4 city with probably a Hansa and a monument complete, and now making enough production that it can actually produce things in a reasonably short amount of time.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

oh, how do you stop trade routes placed by AI? We can't capture traders, pillage just outside our civ boundaries?

Warrior was in capital because a scout is roaming near capital and worried about it attacking capital. I find scouts hard to deal with until get knights. They just squirt away and ignore ZOC.

You can't, unless you are either too far away for them to send a trade route to you, or if you are at war with them before they send a trade route (you cant trade with someone you are at war with).
Mongolia creates a trading post immediately once they trade with you (unlike other civs where it takes a lot of turns), and the second they get the trading post they enjoy a +6 combat strength advantage over you.
Declaring war at that point is too late, they only need the trading post established to enjoy that bonus.
It is doable beating Mongolia despite this, but you gotta utilize the tactical improvements I outlined earlier to make sure you are more even in combat strength. If you attack Mongolia straight up with equal units, you will take more damage than you deal to them, so avoid that.

Ignore his scout, he can't do anything to you apart from maybe pillaging a few tiles.
If he tries to attack your cities, he is dead.
But this is both unlikely and of little consequence to you, so just ignore a single scout (unless its a barb scout).

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Thanks for this I never get Moksha, and never knew until now he had this ability

That's interesting. I always thought it was just for religious units. I looked it up and it was for R&F but GS made it for all units.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

That's interesting. I always thought it was just for religious units. I looked it up and it was for R&F but GS made it for all units.

It's a very underrated ability.
In fact, whenever I do domination victories, Moksha is often my go to guy (assuming I also play with religion, because of the synergy) because of how fast you can recycle units that are damaged when pushing cities.
On the defense, and assuming you dont get taken out in one blow, he is nigh broken as a defending unit is virtually unkillable.
Have had scenarios where a single melee unit held off a huge wave before, because the AI really likes to throw units away when something is exposed.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

It's a very underrated ability.
In fact, whenever I do domination victories, Moksha is often my go to guy (assuming I also play with religion, because of the synergy) because of how fast you can recycle units that are damaged when pushing cities.

I now have to try out a Moksha with Grand Master's Chapel game.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I now have to try out a Moksha with Grand Master's Chapel game.

The synergy is pretty good.
If you play around with work ethic (why wouldnt you?) and crusade (why wouldnt you?), you can do some very strong timing push in the late ancient/early classical era, with warriors/heavy chariots/swordsmen/horsemen and a battering ram (depending on what you have available tech wise) after you get a religion up in 2-3 cities.
You use the obscene production from work ethic to pump out units rapidly, while meanwhile seeding your neighbours city with a missionary to spread crusade before the invasion.
Crusade effectively lets you "catch up in tech" for the time you spent on your religion, as +10 combat strength roughly equals a tech level for units (swordsmen become as strong as men at arms for instance).
Moksha then doubles as both a source to faith buy districts (4th promotion), and as a way to heal units near the front (or you can even plop him down in your conquered cities, and enjoy instant heals after 5 turns while you harass the other cities).
The guy is quite good if you play the religion+domination combination, and this works very consistently on Deity even because you can ignore science altogether in favour of the religion (your conquered cities provide that).

 

[planetfall]

Thanks to all your help, the Mongol game has morphed into a normal game, except I have no cav units, which makes play more difficult.
I was going to test the crusade belief, but changed mind as it looks like it requires first a spread of my religion to that city and I didn't have inquisitors generated yet. I have 1 niter to his 3, but one niter is by coast, next the SW horse location. So natural target city.

I was too slow getting a city there and the sucking troops into city #2 worked like a charm, once I moved it back one tile to hill and defended with normal unit instead of spearman. I lost spear and city to injured Mongol horseman. Now I have rebuilt the city and Mongols just sued for peace. Gives me time to pump up cash and science and hopefully get across sea before next attack.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I was going to test the crusade belief, but changed mind as it looks like it requires first a spread of my religion to that city and I didn't have inquisitors generated yet

You need to spread Crusade with a Missionary to his city/cities, and fight within the borders of a city that has your religion as its majority.
You won't gain any benefits from it if you fight on your territory, that's the Defender of the Faith belief.
This is also one of the reasons why Stonehenge isn't always that great to begin with, because if you want to play around with Crusade you need a Holy Site anyway (with a Shrine) in order to buy a Missionary, so you might as well get your religion through the Holy Site and save the cost of building the Stonehenge.

If you really want to play around with Work Ethic and Crusade and start using that strategy to attack your neighbour early, I recommend playing with Russia one or two games to get a feel of how things work.
Russia basically gets an almost guaranteed tundra start with extra faith from tundra tiles that lets you get the Dance of the Aurora pantheon very fast, and immediately building Lavra (on tundra) gets you the first religion in the game without much trouble.
From there on you will have a metric ton of production and enough faith to convert neighbouring cities to start your crusade (pun intended).

This is a very agressive playstyle though, and nothing you really need to do if you want to play without religion and go peacefully.
It does work for all difficulties up to and including Deity though, so there's that.