Talk about the Genghis Khan scenario

[HardCoder]

I have finally got around to playing some of the Warlords scenarios, and I love the Genghis Khan scenario. It has brought some much needed fun back into Civ for me.

I'm playing it with BetterAI. It's easy at Monarch. I wonder if BetterAI makes the AI players worse in this case. I'm not sure. I'll try it at Emperor next time.

I like the way that there are so many ways to play it. The last time, I started by taking Song and then played a mostly builder type game from there. Maybe this time I will start with Russia.

I love the units. I also love being able to play with the same units throughout the entire game. I've always thought that the tech progression in Civ IV seems rushed.

I also like having a huge pile of Great Generals (they spawn from camps as well as from combat). I need to try tweaking the GG rate in the normal game sometime.

There are some things I'd change.

* There's really not time to conquer the entire map - maybe if you just slash and burn and hold only a half dozen cities, but I doubt even that.

* The winning score seems too low.

I tweaked the winning score to 10,000 and the game length to 750 turns in the scenario map to see how that will work.

* The rate at which barbarians spawn from the north is incredibly annoying if you have cities to the north. In my first couple of games I had to kill a couple of barb horsemen every single turn for what felt like an eternity - I think the final tally was about 230. It's tedious beyond belief. Fogbusters don't work right because you need too many of them (expensive), and the barbs often just blow past them anyway. It's fine, though, if you let the AIs keep some cities in the way. You'll hardly ever see a barb then.

I'd fix that by adding a "patrol" or mission for units, not just for this scenario but for Civ in general. A patrol unit (or stack) would be based at a particular tile and would automatically sally and attack any enemy unit(s) in the immediate vicinity that it had a reasonable chance of destroying.

* When you do get to a point in the game where you can do research, it seems too fast.

All that aside, it's a really neat scenario that demonstrates the flexibility that the Civ engine has.

I'd like to hear what the rest of you have to say.

 

[OctavianFlu]

I like the change of game play in this scenario, as it introduces camps, and depending on where you settle your camps, increases the probability of what type of unit you will spawn. I think that is really neat, but what made me very upset about playing this scenario is that you run a deficit quite easily. Perhaps it was because of how I played the scenario, but eventually I couldn't raze enough cities in time in order to pay my troops. Guess who the CIV Gods decided to defect from my army cause I couldn't pay all their salaries. Genghis Khan. Yep -- the leader himself. At that point I closed CIV IV and never came back to that scenario. Why would the intelligence of this game take my leading general instead of one of the other units. This left me with the same feeling as Omen's did when I first played it -- OMG WTH happened here.

 

[HardCoder]

I like the change of game play in this scenario, as it introduces camps, and depending on where you settle your camps, increases the probability of what type of unit you will spawn. I think that is really neat, but what made me very upset about playing this scenario is that you run a deficit quite easily. Perhaps it was because of how I played the scenario, but eventually I couldn't raze enough cities in time in order to pay my troops. Guess who the CIV Gods decided to defect from my army cause I couldn't pay all their salaries. Genghis Khan. Yep -- the leader himself. At that point I closed CIV IV and never came back to that scenario. Why would the intelligence of this game take my leading general instead of one of the other units. This left me with the same feeling as Omen's did when I first played it -- OMG WTH happened here.

It would be annoying to "lose" Genghis, but you will get him right back as the generals continue to spawn.

You can certainly run a deficit at first, but you just have to keep taking cities and pillaging improvements. Eventually you should have a few cash generating cities. But I doubt you will really need them if you simply keep tearing across the landscape razing cities and towns. The camps will spawn so many units that you will have to use them. If I accumulate too many units I will sometimes give them to a vassal.

The AI civs tend to be broke but you could always demand tribute.

I meant to mention that unit-wise the mounted swordsmen are pretty much useless. They need to be changed in some way. Javelins, on the other hand, are awesome, and can be used to take any city with a few promotions and perhaps trebuchets.

The rate at which camps spawn units, by the way, is not stored in an XML file - it's in the mod's python scripts.

Also - speaking of camps - I usually settle them in cities.

 

[HardCoder]

Also, it would be nice if the AI civs could start settling at some point in the game, maybe after 100-200 turns. I could probably figure out how to change that. I don't think I'd want them settling like crazy (at the normal rate) but it would be nice to see them start filling up the forest to the north (which is actually probably Siberia or something).

 

[OctavianFlu]

I will have to give it another try -- The inspiration of knowing that Khan will be back will be reassuring, plus I'm needing a break from the Alexander Quest. Both the Khan, and Alexander are the two I have yet to complete on Prince, so I am optimistic that with some of your hints you provided, I might be able to get through this one

 

[Rusty Edge]

I meant to mention that unit-wise the mounted swordsmen are pretty much useless. They need to be changed in some way.

I love the artwork on that black-legged Mongol pony & swordsman. My solution was to attach a single general to each, since I had so many generals to work with.


I never tried putting a camp in a city. Is it possible to put an instructor in the city and get experienced units from the camp?

 

[byamo]

Played it for the first time today, struggled as I was burning cash much faster than I could account for given my typical style of play(Space Victory).

Any hints there other than to keep a few cities to generate cash?

Will the # of units overly impact my burn rate?

 

[Jon Shafer]

You can play without ever owning any cities, as long as you keep burning everything you come across. If you own no cities then how much cash you make (or lose) is irrelevant. All that matters is how many points you generate.

 

[byamo]

it took a little mindset change as I typically don't go for the slash and burn. Also noticed that I shouldn't have split up my camps and headed everything in the same direction.

 

[occam]

Notice that you get (victory) points per pillage, even for roads or city ruins.

You get more points for razing cities, it is easy to run science on 100% and still have a ton of money with lots of razing and pillaging. My first win, I only kept the capital of Korea. Burned all the rest until I hit Europe. Researched 1 tech, +200 victory points, FTW.

The barbs from the north were without fail mounted units, making the lack of a good mounted counter in the line-up of units I could build really annoying. Any road network over the razed areas just helps the barbs more since you can't place a fortified pikeman at choke-points. So no great silk road here.

To earn points and deny them to barbs, I was building roads at the front of my invasion with a herd of workers and pillaging them behind.

 

[Watiggi]

In one of my games, I split my camps into three. Moved one to the west towards persia, one towards korea and the other towards china. Once taking out korea, that united with the china one and finished off china. Then moved them west through india taking out all that, eventually meeting up with the first group I sent to persia. Cleaned up the Mamuluks and then headed north towards russia and poland. I've pretty much cleaned up russia and started war against poland, but I haven't played it since.

I never captured any cities - just razed everything.

I found myself accumulating too much victory points and ended up playing half the game after the victory.

I was at about 2000 gold and slowly increasing. Pillaging feeds your troops and allows you to build a bigger military. After your force gets above a certain number (12 I think), it starts costing gold per turn to support the rest of them. I think I was sitting at around -20 or so most of the game.

One of the good things I like about not keeping any cities is that you don't get hit with war wariness!

I tell ya! Mongol horsemen with combat 6 is pretty much fun and so is the javilin with tactics (for a total of +80% withdrawl). The trebuchets were pretty weak though - more like catapults.

.... I just wish they made a mod of it so that it can be played in a normal game like setting with random maps. That'll be cool!

 

[Ecofarm]

Easy win on deity. Note that no saving or loading is ever required as game lasts 1-3 hours depending on how many techs or eliminated civs you want before victory.


I raze all cities and pillage nothing (any pillaging will cause your score to increase and your game to end prematurely while giving the enemy time to build troops) - never stop moving troops over 50% strength unless they get healed by a medic_3. Promote swordsmen shock and horse archers formation. GGeneral 2 swordsmen with the starting GG (spears cause most casualities and a couple shock swordsmen are a huge boost in the beginning). I like to raze 2 cities from orange then yellow IIRC then red (for the techs). I start by parking my camps on a hill to the west of starting location untill I get recon_tech by razing orange's capital + the city southeast of orange capital and move troops to yellow. Then I beeline camps (they have sat for 2-3 turns) to the hill+forest+plains 1w of a red city (Chang?) while razing 2 yellow cities. At that forest hill, camps sit and generate a few trebs. 2nd GG = Javalin_medic3_morale. Troops should never move less than maximum on any turn, except camps (which move once every few turns when a new target civ is selected and is sufficiently far away to warrent moving the camps), unit is healing with camps, or unit is (1-2) horsemen guarding the camps with javalins.

Save at this point in strategy:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/112297/Genghis_Khan_Temujin_AD-1218.CivWarlordsSave


To continue strategy:

3rd General = Javalin_drill_combat. Super_javalin and medic_javalin stays with the camps always (gets defensive bonuses).
4th General = Medic_3 Unit to travel with attack group.
5th+ General = Blitz

If I do 2 Blue cities, I go through India instead of racing west across the desert north of the mountains (which generates a ton of horsemen instead of trebs along the way). I don't seperate camps by more tiles than needed to diversify troops/generate trebs (sit in forrested hills mostly, maybe 1 nearby in flatland for swords). I can raze cities in the middle east or europe until my score gets too high and I win. Generally, you can either do all of the european or all of the middle eastern techs after getting the 3 basics (orange, yellow, red IIRC) from Asia. The only challange is # of techs/cool combinations attained before win. You can race directly to Arabia or Greece and get their techs 1st instead of the standard orange, yellow, red opening. You kinda need cannon tech from red before heading west though.

 

[Rebelo]

Donot serperate your forces or keep any cities. My first general was used to make a super medic with %25 healing.

First take the Xuan Zong cities that dont have walls to get Trebuchets.

Dont bother destoying entire civ in the beginning, focus on taking a civ 2 weakest cites to gain their technology.

After getting Treb tech I head south to get away from the Endless barbarian horse men.

Keeping cities seems to be more trouble than its worth. But i'm going to try and hold some to make chinese cannon.

Richard Rebelo, life long Civ fan

P.S. I have had a lot of fun exploring the mods in Warlords. Omens rocked, after I figured it out.

 

[Cyrus_the_Great]

With all this talk about this scenario, I think I'll give it a try.

 

[Civfan333]

With all this talk about this scenario, I think I'll give it a try.

Good for you, it's the best scenario in warlords