Strategy on Mongol scenario

[E66man]

Hi-

I'm looking ahead to the upcoming Mongol scenario Steam achievements and trying to figure out how I could have done better to finish at Deity.

I didn't really have any trouble winning at my first play-through, I went with a policy of puppeting everything and eliminated the Jin, Song, Japanese, and Khwarazm (Persia) for the win. I was limited in that game by the slow growth of Karakorum and the inability of the puppets to finish any projects so they were very slow in getting Markets and Coliseums up. I pretty much spent the game running at -25 Happiness and nearly 0gpt so I didn't get enough troops out to be able to strike at both the West and East kingdoms at the same time which I expect is required to get the Deity win.

So I'm curious as to what strategies people have been employing that won this scenario at the higher difficulty levels.

 

[bryanw1995]

my favorite mongol strategy:

1. builds lots of horsies
2. kill everything

 

[Monthar]

.... the inability of the puppets to finish any projects so they were very slow in getting Markets and Coliseums up. I pretty much spent the game running at -25 Happiness ....

Going lower than 9 unhappiness significantly reduces your production. This coupled with the new default gold focus for puppets is why they were so slow to build anything.

[...and nearly 0gpt...]

After your Horseman rush, go for markets if you're having trouble in this area. Or make sure to shift some of your cities to focus on gold instead of production, especially those that can make the most of it. Also, don't build too many units and/or buildings or you'll run into this problem. I'd say only coliseums, library and markets in your regular cities. If you need more culture, the puppets will build the monuments.

 

[pi-r8]

I tried and failed to beat it on deity. I also went with the strategy of puppetting everything, and ended up extremely unhappy. I think it might be better to just raze almost all the cities, so that you can stay above -10 unhappy. The combat penalty will just delay your warfare too much for a deity victory.

 

[E66man]

After your Horseman rush, go for markets if you're having trouble in this area. Or make sure to shift some of your cities to focus on gold instead of production, especially those that can make the most of it. Also, don't build too many units and/or buildings or you'll run into this problem. I'd say only coliseums, library and markets in your regular cities. If you need more culture, the puppets will build the monuments.

Does this mean you think it's worthwhile to found new cities? I was just sticking with Karakorum and puppeting the rest of the world.

 

[usi]

Only played once on Immortal, but what I can add are:
1) Don't immediately wipe out Chinese civs, because they can pay a huge amount of gpt for peace (and you can get their cities at the same time!)
2) Pillage tiles like crazy, and capture Workers and then disband them inside your cultural borders
3) Hurry up for Rifling - Arabia can eventually get it, so it's hard to win without it
4) Puppet every captured city; raze one if Happiness goes -10 or below; be sure to pillage tiles afterward

 

[Monthar]

Does this mean you think it's worthwhile to found new cities? I was just sticking with Karakorum and puppeting the rest of the world.

With only 1 city to build/buy units, it will be tougher in any game, not just the scenario.

-Edit-
Ok, now that I've started the Scenario I can give some better pointers.

You start out with all but 2 policies in the Honor Tree and almost enough culture for another policy. The only two policies you don't have are the double exp and reduced upgrade costs. You may be tempted to take the double exp asap, however, if you take Commerce that will help get your income up. With the next policy, which you can get fairly quickly by capturing a Cultured city state, take the Commerce policy to reduce road maintenance, because you will need to get roads built for the trade route income. The one after that, iirc, gives +1 happiness to all luxury resources, which will be a big help on the happiness side.

Since you have the Honor policy that gives 1 happiness for a garrisoned unit, build/buy some archers to use as garrisons. If need be leave a horseman as a garrison until the archer arrives.

You already know how to build markets so I'd make that the first build in the capital and have the workers put up some trade posts. In my game I had them change the 2 farms into trade posts, so I can slow the growth of the capital to help limit my unhappiness until I can get coliseums researched and built.

In a pinch, if your funds are dropping to the point where units might get auto-disbanded, delete a worker or two. You can also sell the barracks that the capital starts with, since exp will be easy to come by. It won't give much cash, but will save 1 gpt in maintenance. The same goes for any other building you start with that's not essential, such as granary, watermill, stable.

Keep in mind the following about capturing City States
Cultured gives a free Social Policy
Maritime gives a free Tech
Militaristic gives free units (I was getting 2 horseman for each on Diety)

Puppets do run specialists even though you don't see them when viewing the city, so when you hit the Renaissance Era, take the first freedom policy so those specialist will only generate half the unhappiness. Then in any cities you have control over (founded or annexed), for every odd number (1, 3, 5, etc) of specialists/unemployed citizens, you'll reduce your unhappiness by 1 point.

 

[Ahriman]

Why do you need to build anything?
On either Emperor or Immortal (I forget):

I puppeted every thing, so Karakorum was my only real city. I built nothing but units in Karakorum, and bought several more with gold. No need for anything except Keshiks and horsemen, mostly Keshiks, with horsemen just to take cities.

I went south for the city state, then east for the north china, and Korea.
Then took out China.
Razed a few junk cities, but kept most of them, particularly anything with a new resource or with horses.

By then I had enough troops for two armies, but was into Very Unhappy, but it didn't really matter since with all the promotions and two Khans, I could still obliterate anything.
One army went south to take out Viet and then west to India, the other went West to take out Uighur, Persia, the Baghdad city state (forget the name), Arabia, Crusader states and then Byzantium.

Won by turn 60, so I imagine that I would have had time to race back and take out Japan if I'd had to take out one more enemy.

 

[Monthar]

I've only tried it on Deity so far. There you start out losing money, not much happiness, no happy resources and have to take out 8 AI within 100 turns. Those AI start with several spears swordsman and archers, but quickly get pikes, longswords and crossbows. By the time I took out the yellow guy above China, China was already fielding their Crossbow UU.

 

[Ahriman]

By the time I took out the yellow guy above China, China was already fielding their Crossbow UU.

I had this too, but it doesn't really matter; they can't touch you, because you have sufficient movement to get in, get kills, then get out again. So you're never in range.
CKN just ends up getting killed by Keshiks faster than even a normal crossbow would, because it has lower ranged strength.

 

[Montov]

- Start selling the buildings in the capital to gain some gold. (you only need the colloseum)
- Upgrade a Horseman to a second Keshik as fast as you can. Later on, always make sure you have at least 1 Horseman to capture cities, but make Keshiks of the rest.
- Go for Beijing right away (go to southeast), so you own the Great Wall.
- Negotiate peace in the beginning if you can and it is profitable.
- Don't go for city states, except maybe the one located in the south. City states can't be razed and happiness can become a problem if you succeeding in conquering cities. I don;t think the bonuses of CS's are worth it.

 

[sleepingbear]

3) Hurry up for Rifling - Arabia can eventually get it, so it's hard to win without it

This is the one thing I did not like about the Mongol scenario. By the end, I was taking cities with cannons and rifles. The scenario should have had techs cost crazy amounts or had a new tech tree that did not contain any renaissance era techs. Having the special bonuses for conquering city states and other civs was fun. Would be interesting if the bonus vs CS in a normal game could be changed to the scenario's looting bonus on CS's.

 

[alpaca]

my favorite mongol strategy:

1. builds lots of horsies
2. kill everything

This is basically true. Not much more strategy involved on Deity for this scenario. I finished on turn 77, the toughest nut to crack was probably Japan because they had some ships and a lot of archers, which meant that I had to wait for caravels to conquer them (rush-bought in a specially built second city).

Otherwise, just go for Military Tradition, wipe out civs for 1000 gold and a free tech and basically do whatever is fun for you while your Logistics, Indirect Fire, Range upgraded Keshiks destroy everything. Use Horsemen only to take cities and to destroy ranged units.

I had one western army and one eastern army but the money would probably have been there to get a third one. Go with one Khan per army and burn the rest for golden ages. I first went for Western Xia, who give you two horsemen when you conquer them (which was a nice surprise), then Jin declared on me and I wiped them out. Apart from Japan, Jin are probably hardest because they have the Great Wall. After that it was Korea, China, India and Japan with my eastern army, and the western army I built up in Karakorum destroyed Persia, Arabia, Greece and captured Kiev for the win.

Each army consisted of about 4 keshiks and 2-3 horsemen. This is easily enough to capture almost any city in one turn once your keshiks have logistics. I went for an artillery slingshot for fun because I wanted to see an industrial-era Mongol empire but that was just for fun, you never need to build any riflemen (although I admit the two longswords I built were useful to establish a foothold in Japan).

In retrospect, I should have taken things a bit more slowly with Japan and bombarded them with Keshiks over the Yellow Sea before invading. Anyhow, it worked out well enough and I only lost two keshiks during the invasion, one to a trireme and one to combined archer fire. No kamikaze saved them this time!

 

[Shinigami84]

- Don't go for city states, except maybe the one located in the south. City states can't be razed and happiness can become a problem if you succeeding in conquering cities. I don;t think the bonuses of CS's are worth it.

Sure, having too many towns can cause huge happiness drops, which, in turn, cause lots of trouble for your army (you lose 33% of power). But! Capturing 8 towns is easier than capturing 32 towns, especially if your time is limited

Completed Mongol scenario on Deity by eliminating 7 city-states and 2 civs. On my first try I had horrible problems with happiness. On my second try I just razed everything but capitals and it worked like magic. I went after Chinas, Korea and city-states around the place, plus one CS near Persia.

PS: didn't you know CSes count? Counter is broken, after 100 turns you win. I captured 7 and waited about 30 turns and got achievement "Khaaaaan!" - run out of time. Then I captured 1 more CS and when I ran out of 100 turns, it said I won

PPS: I have absolutely no idea how can one conquer 8 civilizations within 100 turns if you don't count city-states.

 

[dubrown]

There's a bug with the achievement for the mongol scenario as you'll gain it even though you haven't reached the scenario goals. As long as you're first in points by turn 100 you'll be declared the winner of the scenario even if you haven't even eliminated one opponent.

So I would guess you where first in points because CS doesn't count towards the needed eliminated civs, unless something changed in the last patch but I doubt it.

 

[Mallow]

One way to combat unhappiness is to build scouts and garrison them. That and happiness policies kept me afloat. That was pre Feb patch of course. I used Keshiks for hit and run, and couple horsemen for the final blow.

In the end You need at least Lancer to take the city.

You could also explore ahead with a scout and use RA for rifles and maybe even artillery. That way is proven to be the fastest way to victory.

At first I conquered China and that army followed the silk road all the way to Russia. By that time I had three armies – one for Japan and one for India.

 

[brasaelal]

What about social policies? What is the best path? How many trees can be filled up to the end?

At my first attempt at king level (gave up after a reckless approach over Persia) I had filled Honor for the gold per unit killed and went for Piety. I don't remember, but I think I only got the opener and 2 more policies.

I believe I had conquered at least 1 culture CS, but maybe is was 2.

So, what's your strategy regarding social policies and culture in general?

 

[callan]

Love the gaps between the posting dates on this thread. Necrotastic.

This thread is probably one of the better resources out there for guidance in this scenario.

 

[elijahfire]

Love the gaps between the posting dates on this thread. Necrotastic.

This thread is probably one of the better resources out there for guidance in this scenario.

Hey don't knock it I still got something from it I didn't know city states counted lol :/