RFCA strategies

This was an accidental domination victory as the Mongols on eunuch :

I played the Chagtai UHV which means:

1) Make Almalik your capital and the most important city in Asia.

2) Build 25 Islamic buildings and the Jamia Masjid

3) Control 25% of Asian territory including 50% of India.

Of these the last one's the most difficult.

1) First phase :

In my earlier tries I took the whole horde West to conquer the Gokturks and Ghaznavids. I managed to take out around 2/5th of India by 1300 but in the next two or three turns I'd collapse. So this time, I took the horde East to conquer the Jin. Simultaneously I'd send the second starting settler West to found Almalik. The first settler of course builds Karakorum otherwise you can't unlock the UHV goals.

The Keshiks are terrible, and I wiped out the Jin in a few turns. As a buffer to the Manchurian conquests, I took out some Central Chinese cities and Beijing/Khanbaliq as well. Using this base I went Westward having founded Almalik already. My horde was larger as a result of a series of successful conquests. My one mistake though was to leave the Manchurian and Chinese cities undefended which allowed the Koreans to take Beijing after they DOW'd me. (Korea never DOW'd me in my earlier Mongol game, which is why I didn't expect them to DOW me this time either.) I kept building Karakorum and prepared to build the Tumen Amugulam in Almalik.

Next steps :

While moving West, the one thing to keep in mind is stability. In every other Mongol game I played with the Ghaghtai UHV stability would ultimately get the better of me and I'd collapse shortly after my conquests. So I devised a counter-strategy. In my other UHV game in the previous version for the Yuan campaign, I put every city I conquered to building magistrates . Soon my stability would be balanced. I did the same for this game, and it worked for me.

After the 10 turn peace treaty was ended, I pounced on the Gokturks with my enlarged horde and conquered every Gokturk city I could lay my hands on. Before long they were done for. The Ghaznavids seeing my horde in action vassalized peacefully. That gave me a base to start off my Indian campaign. At first I let my troops heal, then I marched them on Delhi and other North Indian cities. Soon I had carved out an empire in india which ran from Delhi to Varanasi. For India, it is wise to excersize some restraint in conquering since this region isn't within the stability zone for the Mongols.

The Tumen Amugulam is essential to counter the draining stability hit you'd get from trying to conquer India. In retrospect, I'd say this should be saved up to the very end of the campaign. In addition it also helps for making Almalik an important city.

Goal 1 :

Almalik is not in a very good spot in the map. There's not much production and very little scope for growth. At the end Almalik didn't get beyond a size 8 population. To improve the city, what I did was build a theater in Karakorum and train Great Artists from there. The Silk Road bonus helped as well. I kept culture bombing Almalik till it became the most cultured city in Asia with over 17000 culture points.

I build the palace only after the Tumen Amugulam. Other buildings built there were the usual islamic buildings and stability buildings like magistrates and court houses.

Goal 2 :

Now I had the bad luck of seeing a predominantly Buddhist Central Asia with only a handful of islamic cities. So I started spreading islam through missionaries as soon as I got a Madrassa built in one of my cities. The silk road plus my missionary activities ultimately led to islamizing the Western Empire. At this stage, my Chinese cities developed and became production centres.

The culture development of the cities enveloped the whole region in one continuous empire from the Westernmost city till Karakorum uninterruptedly. I built a connecting city between Almalik to Karakorum as well.

A Great Prophet spawned at Changan which I used to build the Jamia Masjid Almalik. The second goal was no problem as long as I could hold my empire together with golden ages and stability buildings.

Goal 3 and my 'accidental victory' :

The first component of the goal i.e. controlling 25% of Asian territory was achieved early on by conquering a chunk of China, Manchuria and Central Asia as well as a rather slim holding around India *( and my Ghaznavid vassals controlling North Western South Asia ) . The second component was impossible for me due to stability issues.

So I decided to change tact at that point and go for a domination since I was very close to attaining that victory condition, which became only easier after the Ming spawn. I settled around 4-5 cities connecting Karakorum to Manchuria and a few Siberian cities.

The Silk road mechanism helped tremendously due to the large number of Caravans available there.

Ultimately I won the game at 1388 with a domination game.

*( bug issues : Almalik had to be named so. The city founded around the area demarcated was "hartal". But it seems renaming it to Almalik is good enough for the UHV to check. Almalik never got to number 1 position in Asia but still it figured as such. Pyongyang with a chalk full of wonders was at number 1 position. Just as insurance I sent a horde to conquer it but that proved unnecessary. )

 

I am so happy that I finally cracked the one UHV I always wanted to do ! Since I first learnt about the Tang Dynasty I've always been fascinated by them especially how the conquest of Central Asia was achieved by them.

Anyways for this game, the UHVs are :

1) Spread Buddhism to five cities ( The easiest goal )

2) Secure 5 Silk resources ( Moderately easy )

3) Create a contiguous empire from Bukhara to HangZhou ( More difficult that the first two combined )

The Tang Dynasty spawns somewhere around north western China North of CHang'an with a reasonably powerful army. The Sui Dynasty doesn't last long after this spawn once you take the capital.

When the Capital falls other nearby cities flip to you except in the North and far East. These would have to be conquered, your initial stack + the flipped soldiers of the former empire would give you enough muscle to conquer most of China rapidly. I achieved unification by around 800 AD while using the three missionaries to spread Buddhism. I achieved the buddhist goal before I got the Silk goal. I simply made wats in the first two cities I got. A side note : running feudalism and state monopoly is useful playing as the Tang.

Goal 2 :

This one is not as smooth as the first goal, but its easy none the less. You'll need the following conquests : Hangzhou for the silk there, Wuchen to make for Southward expansion and a settlement in Southern China. In most games Hangzhou is controlled by barbarians, so you can use your free barb victories to secure that city with only a few forces.

Captured workers added to my workforce, I didn't have to train a single worker in my game. With the Feudalism civic, they rapidly connected the three silk resources in my starting core region and added the fourth silk plantation in Central South China. The Silk plantation at Hangzhou was pre-built so no problems there.

The golden age came in early and I had a huge tech lead before the Song Dynasty spawn. I simply kept up building my troops for the impending doom of the Song. Shenwu Guards are pikemen with a city defense bonus. It helps in dealing with the Song Dynasty troops, but I reckon they'd be average at best in dealing with Mongol Keshiks since my previous experience of dealing with Keshiks using pikes were disappointing. Still, they do their job.

Goal 3 :

There are two spawns which could be potentially fatal for the Tang UHV, the first one is the technologically advanced Song Dynasty and the second is the aggressive Jurchen spawn. Both start out at war with you, but only the Song spawn within China. The two coastal cities of Hangzhou and Qufu flip to them. In my earlier games, the one time I prevailed over them I expended a good number of troops in fighting off the Song Dynasty and then the Jurchen so couldn't expand westward as fast enough.

I took a note not to make that mistake and started expanding westward during the golden age period around 850AD . I settled two cities around the connecting area between Xinjiang and mainland China.

When I did beat the Song Dynasty I slowed down a bit and reconquered the cities lost to the Song. It didn't take a while, after their initial stack was beaten by my combination Shenwu+crossbow+infantry+trebuchet army, they just cave in ( oddly an army of firelances spawned near my Southern city but didn't move to attack that weakly defended city..) . I razed Bianjing because honestly its a useless and redundant city. They collapsed before I could take Qufu and Hangzhou, so I conquered those as independent cities.

Once the dust settled on the civil war I didn't get much respite before the Jurchen spawned. now the Koreans were my vassals throughout the game to that point. The Jurchens went for their cities instead of mine so the Koreans took them up as a buffer. It helped, but not the Koreans very much. My slow moving infantry and artillery based army couldn't reach north in time to prevent the Jurchen from eating up the Koreans completely, but once there we steam rollered them and took 3 Jurchen cities including one with access to horses and a Silk Road Caravan. It was helpful, along with my first western city which had access to both horses and iron.

While dealing with the Jurchen I built up a large cavalry army after researching and trading the necessary techs *( the Tang have an awesome tech rate ) . I built the Chaemosongdae to get military tradition and trained a bunch of heavy horse archers.

Before staging my attack, my mega infantry stack was moved westward in position to attack the Gokturk core. I started the invasion around the middle of the 11th century. Before that I settled a distant desert city called Yuli around the oasis North of Tibet. I got an artist to buff it up and make the cross far and wide. It was a good move which gave me a border with all the Gokturk cities.

Eventually I stormed their cities reaching Suyab in no time. I picked up a few cities nearby which bordered Yuli. Once Suyab fell I brought my full cavalry force including a larger force of heavy horse archers to take on the Ghaznavids. Before this, I had sent scouting missions across Central Asia to gauge the strength of the Turks and Ghaznavids. They defended their cities poorly and were strained by Hunnic attacks from india and Afghanistan.

When the Tang Cavalry army fell on them, both Bukhara and Samarqand fell in quick successions. The cities settled and I culture buffed them to get the bFC and secure the goal by 1182. The rest of the game was just pushing the turns to get to year 1200 to win the game with a score of 6900 .

And that was the end of that chapter B-)

 

Nice one

 

On a side note : The Jurchen get wayy too powerful in the late game. In my Majapahit game the Jin empire was the no.1 power in the game and secured the mandate of heaven after the Mongols collapsed ! I never thought the Manchurians were that domineering . Also the Mongols collapse like only 40% of the time after the Ming spawn. It makes the job of the Ming exceedingly difficult... almost to the point of impossibility. Unsurprisingly I lost the Majapahit game for the third goal .

 

Yes, the AI Ming are quite underpowered when faced with the Jurchen or Mongol behemoth.

 

oh btw in re Majapahit, are you required to conquer territory beyond Indonesia ? Or is it enough if I just control all of the Indonesian archipelago and the isthmus of Kra.

 

All the resources you need for the UHV are on the Malay Archipelago, and so are the islands you need to settle.

 

In my last try I managed a population of 10 million within the Malay archipelago and Kra isthmus. The two Chinese civs Ming and Jurchen had larger populations than me. What's the max population possible within the archipelago ?

 

That is a tough question and pretty much impossible to answer :/ I did play them once, but i remember getting that one, and it should be doable, at least when you settled every single island.
Keep in mind that the population size is measured exponentially, so one city with 10 pop is substantially more than 10 cities with 1 pop.

 

The archipelago can support a pretty massive population if you settle everywhere. I found that goal quite doable; perhaps you were just unlucky.

 

Could you give a strategy ?

 

I didn't really have much of a strategy. It was my first time playing, and I more or less just focused on settling everywhere since there aren't really any threats to you. I suppose I got lucky with the Ming and Mongols constantly at war and ruining each other.

 

There must be some way to ensure victory without depending on 'luck' . ....

 

I just tried a Japanese game.
Goal 1 and 2 are doable I just use Great Spies and spies to scout the East Asian cities. Additionally, I conquer Korea and part of Manchuria it wasn't so hard. Securing the mandate of heaven is tricky, mostly because of stability issues, but if Goal 1 is secured it helps if you take advantage of the Song-Jurchen conflict and pick up some cities along the way in mainland China. The 20 Shinto resource goal is probably less strenuous on stability but I'm not sure how to secure that many in time ( also the counter is broken .. )

Goal 3 however, seems impossible. I ultimately ended with around 35000 espionage by 1330. What's the trick to it ? i did spam as many great spies as I could but it wasn't enough. How many would you need ?

 

Try focusing more on espionage buildings rather than relying too much on Great Spies. If you're conquering Korea and China you may be losing out on production while building units that could be used towards getting more espionage.

 

I think there are ~25 resources from Manchuria and Hokkaido in the north down to Luzon, so 20 seemed like a point to start from; not sure if it's actually possible though (i havn't exactly tested it yet). Claiming the MoH just was a "why not?" inspired goal. You only need one of those, so you're free to try anything.

Just focus on espionage right away. Build the Itsukushima Shrine, research the techs for Magistrate, Dungeon etc. and get a hand on both Whale and Rice for Shinto. Great Spies are useful for exploring, and settling, conducting a Mission doesn't count. Building the Artashastra should be an Option; but usually the Indians beat you to it (i might move it further away on the tech tree). Once you got the cities visible goal, turn up the slider for Espionage points and steal techs from your neighbors instead.

 

I personally like that Mandate of heaven goal, its like an alternative history replicating the Japan of WW2 in an earlier era. Its much better than the rather dry "settle 5 island" goal. Even so, the espionage goal I find quite difficult. Not so much the others. Could you post a strategy ?

 

I was about to play it again, but i ran into some python exceptions when i reversed it to rev 158; rev 159 causes a crash if you go into the WB and i don't know what possibly could cause that :/. When i fix that, i'll play it again and make a guide out of it.

 

Great. I just started reading about this right now : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_(1592–98)#War_brutality Apparently they had temporarily conquered the whole Korean peninsula :O . The mandate of heaven goal actually fits into Japanese history, only its beyond the timeframe of the game. I actually wish it could be extended to year 1600 but that's for you to decide . The Ming IMO needs more time to be played to their full potential and 'show their glory' so to speak.

 

It was at the very beginning of the mod, with Mughals being planned to be playable etc. It has been moved to 1500 then, for good reasons, because Delhi, Majapahit and Timurids collapsed around that time, and it was, just as in America, the breaking point for european intervention. Both Sikhism and Christianity elevated from that point, too, and needed to be included. Ming would be the only thing that would benefit from moving the timeframe.

I played and finished Japan, but found some things that need to be changed along the way -___- But i'll write the strategy anyway, because with the things fixed it should be more or less the same.

First of all, try to build the Itsukushima Shrine before anything else. It's of enourmos help, but you can still win without it, like i did.

Spoiler :

Your other initial moves is to send a settler to Mimana on the southern coast of Korea. It doesn't make much sense as of now, but you can both hook up the stone and have a future beachhead for the invasion of Korea. The techs you need are Aesthetics (for the Itsukushima Shrine), Feudalism and Administration (for the buildings), and Canal System and Stern Rudder to hook up the resources. After you get them, role up the slider to go for Espionage.The civics aren't that important in that game.
After you found Mimana, go and conquer Aomori. Use your 2 wins against barbs and make an amphian attack to get those precious Experience points.

Spoiler :

If you don't get the Izumo Shrine, at least try to get your hand on Itsukushima for the Espionage points.

Spoiler :

The next settlement should be in Hokkaido. Beware of animals around, so don't just send a settler there.
In the future, i'll move resources to make Sapporo (1 SW) a better spot.

Spoiler :

In some games, Indie Seoul is incredibly well fortified, so conquering Korea can be harder, but you need it to have a base on the continent.

Spoiler :

To make every cities visible, you first of all need enough EP points, but that shouldn't be a problem, if you concentrate on having Spy specialists. Use Great Spies to explore the land, and ships to explore the sea (Sri Vijaya and Butuan).
I felt a little anxious if i got all the cities, so i'm looking for a way to implement a counter for that to give you some sense of security.

Spoiler :

As soon as you got the visibility goal, you can go and spend those hard earned Espionage points for something more useful. Rob all the techs! (Btw, notice that at that point i almost got +500 EP per turn)

Spoiler :

At that point it was the first time i noticed that the Artashastra wasn't build yet. Combining it with settled Great Spies is very much recommended.

Spoiler :

Switching to spies in every city can skyrocket your Espionage Point output, notice the increase from 500 to 900. At that point i got 44 more turns to get 25000 more points, so it was just matter of time with that rate.
To get the hand on some more resources, i settled Taiwan and the Ryukyu islands. Very juicy. But i'll move some resources to make the nothern tip the best spot on Taiwan.

Spoiler :

Also, Mongols didn't conquer much, and both Jurchen and Song survived until the end. So no need to mention it, i'll fix that.