warring with Mongols on vanilla

[shyuhe]

Hi everybody, I'm new here and I have a question about warmongering. I was recently playing on standard monarch continents with the Mongols (the aggressive/creative one). The question I have is how much warring should I do with keshiks?

I got horses connected from my second city so I had keshiks really early but I ended up warring too much and while I took over my continent, it wrecked my economy (no big surprise there). When the neighboring continent contacted me, they had a big tech lead and Washington was peacefully teching along on the other continent Do I need to make contact with foreign civs earlier or should I put the brakes on warring? I razed about half of the cities I conquered but apparently that wasn't enough...

While it's really fun to go wreck the AI with keshiks, I realize I needed to tech better (I had recovered to about 60-70% research when the other continent contacted me but Washington was about 400 points ahead of me around 1100 AD). Should I leave the other civs on my continent alone so that I can trade tech with them and lose out on abusing the keshik?

 

[Sisiutil]

Welcome to CFC, first off.

You should definitely not be warring with everyone on your continent early on, for exactly the reason you mention: those are your only trading (tech and otherwise) partners. Pick one opponent and do your best to keep the others friendly.

The Keshik is a souped-up, more mobile Horse Archer, a unit of questionable utility in my book. HAs are best suited for recon, pillaging, diversionary tactics, and stack support, IMHO--though I seldom build any. Remember that they suck as city raiders.

Probably the best use of the Keshik is to rush in and pillage key strategic resources (think copper, horses, iron, ivory). Then your stack lumbers in facing an enemy that can only throw Archers and maybe Catapults at you.

Depending on your difficulty level, it's not unusual for the other continent to be ahead of you by mid-game. If you have territory to expand into thanks to your early wars, do so. Eventually, you'll have a larger population with profitable cities that give you the economic and scientific boost you need to pull ahead.

 

[shyuhe]

Thanks! I probably got a little too carried away. None of the other civs had copper or iron hooked up when I attacked them so keshiks were wrecking their cities. I probably should have taken the hint that I might have been going to war too early. Oh well, lesson learned!

 

[Sisiutil]

Thanks! I probably got a little too carried away. None of the other civs had copper or iron hooked up when I attacked them so keshiks were wrecking their cities. I probably should have taken the hint that I might have been going to war too early. Oh well, lesson learned!

That's definitely not too early! That's perfect! However, it sounds like you were going after everyone instead of focusing on one target. If that leaves you practically alone, it can be very hard to keep up with civs you can't get to in technology.