Rhye's and Fall of Civilization - Mongolian strategy
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Mongolia UHV, 600AD start (BtS), monarch
by wr4th
Since you start out very late (1190AD) and all you do is conquer, it is all based on luck in combats and how china has evolved since the start. The game can not be planned like other uhv, so take this as advice but be flexible in your game.
Goals
Control China by 1300 AD
This is fairly easy, although you only have 10 rounds to acomplish this. Just rush into china with all you've got and see them fall.
Raze at least 7 cities
This goal is closely connected to your UP. If you raze a city all smaller cities of the same civ within a few tiles (4?) flip to you within the next two turns. So you have to sacrifice a big city to get all those small cities for free, but good spots for the use of this UP are rare. In china you dont want to lose any city, because its your base of operations. The only usefull spot seems to be turkey where a lot of cities are close together. Remember there is no time limit for this goal so go for it after the third one...
Control 10% of world territory by 1500 AD
This is the hard one. But since its been lowered to 10% its doable. Of course you want to control all of china and mongolia home lands which is about 5-6% for the rest there is pretty much only one choice. Khmer disquallyfies because of the small area and those annoying elephants, India is hard to access because of the jungle and for japan you need ships. So the horde needs to head west. Thats why the silk road is already built. Take Afghanistan, Persia, Mesopotamia and Turkey to complete the 10%.
Techs
First your economy will be crap, but you only need two vital techs:
- calendar for getting all these resources in china. You need them to compensate for the massive whipping that you are doing.
- engineering for +1 speed on roads to get reinforcements by the silk road to the middle east. This can wait until you have conquered china.
Civics
In my game i used vassalage/slavery. You can also ad hereditary rule but it will give you one more turn of anarchy and since you will never have more than one troop in each city its rather pointless. You dont have religious civics at the start and you should never use them later since must not have any state religion. Any non-state religion in your towns gives you -1 stability and in the end its most likely that you will have all 7 religions somewhere in your empire, which would kill you and it also means there is only small profit from any religious civic. There might be one exception, if you conquer the swedagon, free religion (then together with hereditary rule) is an option.
China
After the auto turns save, make it a habit to save when achieving important goals on your conquest. Found Karakorum on spot, switch civics and start teching towars calendar. All your troops head towards bejing. Settle Turfan S of the iron, Ulan Ude N of the horses, Ning Hsia on the river (doesnt matter actually) and Sanchu W of the fur. On the next turn all chinese towns north of bejing will flip to you. I got two Baotou in the destert (useless) and Jinzhou (really good). Distribute the troops you get from flipping within your towns. I also got a settler in Jinzhou which went north to found Kazan. Usually you have to built this settler which is no problem since the southern chinese towns have massive food. It is extremely important that china declares war on you uppon flipping, so you get extra keshiks. If its not -> reload. Crush Bejing and it becomes Khanbaliq and your best production city. Together with Jinzhou (or the town somewhere there), Karakorum, Ulan Ude and Turfan it will built an endless supply of Kheshiks. But first these towns build barracks and ger and after that ONLY Keshiks. Your other towns start of with a settler, then build courthouses and after that one longbowman for happyness reasons. If no religion spreads to them build a library to expand your culture/empire. Split your troops 2 Keshiks head to Korea, 4 to tibet, the rest goes south. Look what troops are defending. In my game Hangzhou was defended by 2 pikemen, thats the time to bring in your crossbows. Qufu should build market and grocer to maximise output of the shrines. Hangzhou and Gangzhou build workboats and build settlers if needed. Scout for workers. China has massive amounts of workers running around, gotta catch em all You have vast terretories to improve. In my game i also took Hanoi and razed it to found another town north of it. Taking complete khmer empery costs to much troops and time and is not advised. If you think you lost to much troops or to much time, just reload and do it better, its just a few turns to conquer china but it determines your whole game.
Consolidation
Get your workers to work. Connect those happyness resources (dont forget the fur and gold at Sanchu). One worker heads to each settled town and builds a road, together with the built one you have two workers per town, which is a good rule of thump. Build 2 or 3 improvements per town, after that focus on chopping. More wont work anyway since you whip them. Karakorum gets irrigation and mills on all tiles. Start moving your forces down the silk road to smarkand which will usually be arabian.
Final Conquest
At around 1400AD you should have a nice amount of keshiks on the borders of Smarkand, the earlier the better of course. Take something like six workers with you to build roads and then let the horde rush into the middle east. Take those persian/afghan towns parallel and after that collect your troops to declare on turkey. If you can do it, trade maps with turkey before, to see which town is best to raze. I razed Bagdad which made Iskenderum and Konya flip on the next turn. In that turn i also took Trabzon and Sögüt, which left Turkey with only 2 towns after 2 turns of invasion. On the next turn the turks had gone to civil war. Most of his troops were in Kudüs/Jerusalem, so i didnt dare to conquer that. I took Tebriz and so controlled all of Turkey, Mesopotamia and Persia, which gave me around 9.5%. I then conquerd the still independent towns of constantinople and athens to expand my borders. At around 1450 stop sendind keshiks to the middle east, instead take the single japanese city of kisi with 4 or 5 Keshiks. After that send them west. With this territory you should have around 11% of the world which is comfortable to hit the goal at 1500AD, which will be only few turns after you take Athens. Enjoy your Golden Age!
Razing towards UHV
Heal and split your troops, which should be plenty at that moment. You still have to raze another 5 towns. One part goes to the arabian peninsula, the other to India. In India you will have only few resistance, raze everything. In Arabia its the same except for Mekka, so spare that and raze the smaller towns. You should hit the UHV within your golden age.
Conclusion
Your time is pretty short, so if something doesn't work out as intended load and do it better. There is no time for a second try. You will loose a lot of Keshiks on your conquest, but your massive production compensates for that. Always make sure to have twice the number of Keshiks than defenders ready. With barracks, ger and vassalage your Keshiks come with a nice 9XP. I always promote combat since you mostly deal with longbows or other cavalry. Put in a medic sometimes. You will produce two to three great generals, settle them in Khanbaliq, Jinzhou and Karkorum (according to production and availability of food for whipping) to make your keshiks lvl 3 when spawning. As in every other UHV, the key is good micromanagement especially make constant use of whipping and chopping.
Have fun with the horde!
Mongolian UHV (vanilla)
by Rikard78
Start
The start is absolutely crucial to achieve the first UHV of controlling China by 1300. For me, it's a no-brainer to settle on the Horse resource North East of your starting position. This gives you the ability straight away to upgrade the horse archers you've been given to Keshiks and let's you produce more asap! You could build one tile west of the horse, but typically I've found China to be so culturally strong that until you gain control of Beijing you're not going to get the horse. So settle Ulan-Ude there...
Immediately declare war on China (1st turn) and head south with 1-2 Keshiks. You should arrive at the gates of Baotou. It should then flip to you next turn..
Send your other settlers North and West. Not only does this get them out of the way from any stray chinese, it will also allow you to quickly hook up the iron and start building citys along the silk road
Next, head south of Beijing (it's probably too strong for you to take immediately) with all of your keshiks and go for the weaker chinese cities. Wuhan should be razed immediately, which, when you approach Fuzhou and Chonqing will flip to you. Pick off any stray units and head back North. By this time you should have achieved goal number one!
Take Beijing and now cocentrate all of your efforts in building the silk road west and more keshiks.
Econonomy and Tech
Your economy will be in the toilet for the whole game. Don't worry about that - you should get enough money from razing/capturing cities. If not, you can always trade away some of the lesser techs to get some more cash.
I agree with wr4th about the importance of engineering and calendar but I have one additional essential tech: drama. Once you've built all of those nice cities along the silk road, what' the quickest way to expand them and get you closer to the magic 12%? (I'm playing it on vanilla - I didn't know it got so much easier - 10%!!! with warlords ). Once I got drama, I killed all research and hoofed my culture to 80%..
Expansion strategy to get that 12%
This was a tricky one for me. Arabia was far to strong even for my Keshiks, India was going to take too long and Russia has the general winter...
I decided to build, build, build settlers. Then I built some more settlers (in the end I built 17 cities). My Keshiks were enough to take the Russian border cities who then sued for peace giving me some more cash. I then took a couple of Indian cities in Persia and let the culture slider do the rest.
I got one great artist in Beijing which I used to culture bomb kazan and that was about it.. Probably could have got to the 12% faster by prioritising another GA sooner...
You need to start early though though... There are not many turns for you to achive this after capturing china (only 30!!!)
So in 1500, I get my arch and then all I have to do is raze some more cities in the india sub-continent. By this time I had about 10 Keshiks ready to invade so it was pretty easy. I deliberately did not raze deli to avoid other citties flipping. No goo when you want to raze!!
Game ended very quickly after that in 1520! Here's the final map:
Mongolian UHV (Emperor)
by Pacifist
This is actually one of the easier Emperor UHV's if you play a pacifist game. The idea is that all other civs are way more advanced than you (most of them have gunpowder) so your goal should be to build lots of settlers up north. Also, you'll never get to Engineering in time for the extra movement to work, so getting to Turkey and Europe is usually foolhardy. The hardest part is to get China in 10 moves. If Jinzhou isn't built, you might as well restart, since China won't declare war on you and you will not have that initial destabilization that losing a city will do to China. (Plus you need those extra troops that a Chinese declaration of war will give you). Found a city on the horse so you can upgrade your horse archers to Keshiks right away. If they have gunpowder, make sure you take out their cannon since one cannon will damage all your keshiks and you waste valuable time. Take Beijing, Qufu, Hangzhou and Guangzhou first, and leave Lhasa, Guiyang and Xian alone until you have catapults. Hangcheng should be done as soon as China collapses since it will be a settler factory for the northeastern coast.
Science wise, your only techs needed will be sailing, calendar and drama. (if you win in the 1500's you'll not get any farther than that, since with each city you build or conquer your science will be more expensive). Engineering is punishingly expensive so don't even think about getting there or gunpowder.
All cities should start with a warrior (for happiness), then a monument or a theater (unless religion spreads to it quickly) for enclosing the big cross. I build lots of courthouses for stability.
Your next target should be Khmer, since they will most likely just have archers and the occasional 1-2 war elephants. You NEED those elephants for yourself eventually if you're going to get to the Indian cities in time for razing. Don't destroy Khmer completely but make them a vassal (this will help your happiness in China a lot as you'll be whipping around the clock). Then, when you declare war on Japan, Khmer will likely collapse, giving you an independent city to raze.
Build lots (I mean 10+) of cities up north, along the Silk Road and don't go further than Samarkand. You should get the 10% by 1480 at the latest.
Guiyang, Xian, Hanoi and Angkor should build lots of elephants which can cross the jungle. 2-3 workers should build roads through the jungle.
After your 10% is done, your northern coastal cities should build a navy and all your keshiks and trebuchets should converge for the Japanese invasion (that Kublai Khan failed twice). They have good cities to raze as long as they don't have gunpowder. A correctly promoted keshik (10% strength and bonus against melee) will often be enough after bombardment with siege weapons.
The cities to raze are:
- (not Lhasa since the Himalayas are easy to defend and enclose a reasonably large area once Patna is gone)
- Samarkand
- Merv (if it isn't captured by Arabia or Turkey already)
- Pagan (unless you want the Shwedagon Paya for free religion early on)
- Patna (those shrines won't contribute much gold since you don't have a lot of Hinduism in your territory, and Buddhism you have to spread actively)
- One of the smaller southern Khmer cities (e.g. Phnom Penh) but NOT the one enclosing the elephants early on, and then the remaining city after Khmer collapses
- 2-3 Japanese cities, starting with the smallest (Kagoshima, Sapporo)
With this technique you'll will around 1550 to 1580 at the latest and get a Hammurabi score easily. I never used the unique power since I didn't want city flips to take away candidates for razing.
Mongolian UHV using v1.184 (600AD unlocked)
by blizzrd, amended by AP
The UHV condition form controlling % of the world area has come down through the various patches and is now 12%. This is not so hard to achieve, controlling China by 1300 is the harder goal. A lot can depend on how China has expanded before you spawn. Any cities founded north of Beijing will flip to you on your third turn, and if at least two cities flip I find that China will declare war. This is good, the extra troops are well worth it.
Start
I recommend founding your first city on the horses just to the NE of your spawn and sending the initial horse archers here to be upgraded into Keshiks on your second turn. Your first turn is going to be spent in anarchy in any case so you won't lose any time by shifting your settler. Just where your other cities are founded is actually not critical. Try and spread them out as much as possible, it will help later with the 12% UHV condition. Locations next to forests are preferable to locations just on plains tiles as you can chop the forests to build quickly. The Mongols are all about speed, not long-term placement. Although it has no trees to chop, founding just SW of the sheep will get you a citiy which can grow quickly. Also pick up the iron to the N (but found next to it, not on the resource) and the deer to the NE and the sheep to the NW.
Switch to Slavery (essential) and Vassalage (not essential but nice and doesn't cost you any more anarchy). Hereditary Rule is not required and once you hook up some of the luxury resources in China happiness will not be a problem for you. Don't adopt a State Religion or any religious civic. You'll have so many diverse religions that your stability will be awful if you choose a State Religion.
Build catapults first. Some of the cities in Western China are going to cost you many Keshiks if you don't bring any siege weapons. Siege weapons move slowly, so get going building them straightaway. I start my first two cities on catapults and also build a 3rd and a 4th once the first 2 are done.
Conquering China
You need to take Beijing and Qufu. Don't raze them, other targets will present later for razing. Depending on how the Chinese developed they may or may not have captured the independent city on the coast to the SE of Qufu (Hangzhou). You need to secure this city also for the first condition. It can be razed, but it is faster for your growth if you capture it. Unless Jinzhou flipped to you, I usually raze any city that is between Beijing and Seoul. You will easily be able to culturally fill this area with a newly settled city.
Don't worry about defence too much. Use the starting longbow to cover in case any Chinese come out of the hills near Tibet while you are moving around the coast. Bring the Crossbows down as fast as they can manage and use them to mop up any Macemen who may spawn when you raze cities.
After taking Beijing-Qufu-Hangzhou, you'll have a few less Keshiks that you began with, but the damage will have been done to China who should collapse very shortly afterwards. You may be able to extort a peace treaty at this point and I sometimes get some techs. It will be one of the shortest-lived peace treaties as China will still collapse. Get goodies with the deal if you can.
Expansion
You only really need Sailing (for trade routes to link your resources) Calendar (for luxury resources) and Drama (for the culture slider) to win the UHV. Music is nice too because you can then devote all hammers to culture. I always research/trade for Sailing, Calendar, Aesthetics, Drama and then start Engineering. Engineering is not absolutely necessary, but is nice for the road movement bonus it gives. Once Engineering is researched, put science on 0% and raise culture to as much as you can afford without going bankrupt. The later you wait before going all out on the city founding (see below), the better your research effort will be in those early turns. I once made contact with an Arabian Great Merchant on my first turn and was able to buy Sailing straight up. But this is a highly unusual circumstance.
You will need lots of workers and lots of settlers. You will need around 10-12 settlers to get to 10% in world area. Some cities are far quicker at producing settlers than others. Do not be afraid to whip Qufu and Khanbaliq into their first Settler as soon as possible. Your capital should only build settlers. Other cities which would take more than 11-12 turns to produce a settler should just build workers instead. You don't really need to build any more Keshiks either, but bad luck may necessitate some replacement builds. Use your catapults rather than suiciding Keshiks and you will have saved on the hammers overall. Even if China does't declare war initially to cause your starting army to expand, I often don't have to build any additional Keshiks.
Once China is gone, you don't need any defenders in your cities. Nobody is going to attack you unless you declare war on either Japan or Khmer, and you aren't going to do that without a bunch of Keshiks on hand. Don't waste the hammers on building units if the city is going to be connected to your trade route, because your happiness then will be just fine. Make connecting your cities by roads/rivers a top priority instead.
Don't build any monuments. They'll go obsolete too fast to be of any real use. Chop-rushing a library instead is a much better way to get the city's cultural borders to quickly expand, if a religion doesn't spread to the city.
(AP edit: I disagree, monuments' 1 culture does not expire even after calendar is learned. In fact whipping a monument with your first cities will help you get to the 1st big cross much quicker, and some of these northern cities will shrink from 3 to 2 pop anyway because of lack of food, so why waste the population?)
War with either Khmer or Japan is not required to get 12% unless Japan has expanded to the mainland. In this case, you should declare war on Japan and send them back to their islands. They will suck up to you with a peace treaty after you raze about 2 of their cities and then will leave your fishing boats alone. Sometimes it is not possible to reach the Khmer if plantations haven't been built to remove the jungle to the north of Hanoi.
As long as you have prioritized settler spamming in Siberia from the outset, you should be able to get to 12% of the world area well before the 1500 deadline, in the about the 1470s or 1480s.
Razing
There are more than enough targets to find 7 cities for the UHV condition. I prefer razing and then rebuilding after the initial grab of cities along coastal China. If you are building settlers as fast as possible, you will be able to replace all of the good sites in no time. Some of the initially founded cities (such as in western China) are not optimally placed to grab land with so you won't need to replace every city with a newly settled one. Japan founds Toyohara and 2 other smallish cities in Manchukuo that should be ideal for razing, but just build some triremes to counter theirs.
Getting 2/3 UHV conditions once you raze your 7th city gives a nice Golden Age which helps to power out those last couple of settlers and allows you to bump up the cultural slider a notch or too usually also.
Enjoy conquering with the horde!
Mongolian guide to UHV
by Yaroslav K.
Starting location
Because of historic location of Beijing it is somewhat better to build your first city at Ulan-Ude, one step to the NE from the starting location. This allows you to get access to horse in 4 turns. Also your city when founded is size 3, so it is not worthwhile to settle in West Mongolia (Ulaangom), as you would immediately lose population. Send 2-3 settlers to Siberia and 1-2 settlers to Amur area and Far East. In Amur/Far East area it usually makes sense to settle near deer resources directly, so that you grow faster. In Siberia choose any location - there is a lot of forest, so you can chop it all game along.
Conquering China
The objective is not to conquer all cities in China, but just to destroy Chinese civ. To do this you need to capture Beijing. After this Chinese move into civil war, and your objective is complete.
Beijing is really close to you, so you can start war on turn 1. Then it can become your capital (and Ulan-Ude an ordinary city) :-) The other option is to conquer some other Chinese cities first - this will give more money into your coffers, as capturing Chinese city is much more profitable then independent one.
Finally you are not lucky, if Chinese built Great Wall and being safe from barbs discoverd gunpowder by 1170 AD. In such case you will have to restart. Absense of Chinese civ altogether is also not very good, as independent cities are usually underdeveloped and bring little (if any) cash on conquest.
Having captured Beijing capture well located and raze poorly located Chinese cities. Capture Korea. Build a galley, and raze Hanoi, Angkor and Singapura. If independent, raze Pagan from sea too.
Technologies and 10% territory
To get as much territory for your 10% territory objective you need to be able to build theaters. And you will not be able to discover much between 1400 and 1500 AD, as the number of your cities will be growing every other turn. So the path is Alphabet, Calendar, Drama, Literature, Music, and you have to discover them fast. Try to meet Indians, Russians and Arabs - if lucky you will excange some knowledge (especially Alphabet and Calendar). With these technologies you are a culture king, and your borders expand fast. With music your city reaches 10 points and grows for the first time in 3-2 turns, whic means you can settle cities 4 turns before 1500 AD.
So the plan is
1) Develop Chinese cities and create a cizable number of workers.
2) Discover at least till Drama.
3) Start settling the world around 1400 AD.
Now you can settle west Mongolia (just have workers to farm one of the squares). It is generally good to develop into Siberia - forest helps build theatres. Also you can settle Tibet, and even IndoChina, but they are not as attractive. You need around 20 cities with 10 culture points to get to 10%. This means you have to build settlers and settle real fast. If in time trouble, you may conquer rather than plunder Indocina. But this leaves you with no easy picks for razing 7 cities, as Japanese usually develop faster, and are not very friendly.
Raze 7 cities
If you have completed conquer China and get 10% area objectives, but have not razed 7 cities you can easily achieve this by 1) Offering the needed amount of your own cities to opponent (say India)
2) Starting war on them and immediately recapturing and razing these cities with pre-located keshiks saved during Chinese war.
If you feel such apprach disinteresting (as it is effectively an exploit), you can:
1) Raze north Japan and island Japanese cities.
2) Build road to Central Asia, settle there, and raze independent cities to the South (if any)
3) Start war on Russia from Middle Asia conquering peripheral towns.
Just keep in mind, that militarily you are not advanced, and keshiks also become obsolete as time passes by.
