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Ken Hinds
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Or for that matter has anyone beat any of his scenarios when played at Deity instead of the default Emporer level?
And Harlan, If you intended that we all fail if we choose the Deity Level I don't want to know that.
So far I've tried several different tactics and nothing seems to work. I always seem to get bogged down and stuck trying to preserve my remaining forces. By the way I'm using MGE not FW. I've had the same problems with LOR 3.1. I haven't tried 4.0 yet.
Ken
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Sloth
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Playing right now, at king level and not winning...but is my first try...I do agree: it's a difficult scenario!
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well, what Mongol scenario are you talking about? Mongol 3.0?
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Ken Hinds
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Considering that I have only beaten the AI to AC in a regular Deity game once I guess I shouldn't expect too much. I think that my biggest problem is probably the fact that I try not to spend gold on building units that are going to get trashed right away. And then I try to preserve most of the infrastructure in a captured city, unless I have the techs to rebuild later. Lately what I've tried is bypassing the conquest of China and heading to Jerusalum as quickly as possible. I've gotten as far as Damascas but ran out of troops before I made to the Dome of the Rock.
For those of you who haven't found out the hard way yet. When Harlan tells you in the read me to not take certain cities be sure to follow his advice. He has rigged things where when you take certain cities all your hard work will come unglued, if you are not properly prepared. Nice job Harlan, I just wished that I could have honestly said "Why didn't he warn me about this?" Unfortunately, I had read the readme and decided to ignore your advice. And that was one of the few where I had been doing so well up to that point. The Chin were nearly toast and I was still on my second Khan. Capture one city and lose my Khan in the process and all hell breaks loose, which killed the game about 4 turns later.
Ken
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Xin Yu
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Emeryville, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 21:13
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I have only played this scenario for two turns  (just downloaded it). Have some thoughts but don't know if it works.
Send food caravans to each other to boost population, and hire taxmen to get cash. This needs time to build up. You build granary, aqueduct, sewing system, bazaar, monastry, bank. Suppose you can grow a city to size 16, and hire all citizens as taxmen. You get 120 gold per turn, no corruption. Plus, it is difficult for the AI to bribe a large city, and under despotism you can support 16 units for free. When food is exhausted, just send another food caravan to the city.
After you build up the cities, build more caravans and trade with Kaifeng or Hangzhou, which you left for the AI to control. Don't forget to build roads to connect your cities with them.
Remains a question: the food box has 50 rows, will a food caravan fill half of it (25 rows), or just 5 rows? If the former is the case, then you can grow a city quickly and one food caravan can support the food supply for a long time. Got to test it.
Spies are cheap. Use them to steal techs, and investigate cities before attacking. You can arrange the attacking sequence according to the defense unit distribution of the city. For example, the first Chin city you want to attack on a hills square has (in order from left to right) 4 units: a siege defense, a siege defense, a fortified chinese pikemen, a fortified chinese pikemen. You know that the two chinese pikemen will be selected to defend first, and they are weak. So you use a Mongol general to attack twice. Then use Ghengis Khan to attack twice. This way you don't waste Ghengis on the weak units. Another example: a city has a strong unit like warrior. You can park a Mongol general beside the city on a hills. The warrior will attack him and die so you don't need to deal with him the next turn. However you don't want to do this if in the city there is a siege tower.
The most important unit is Ghengis Khan, which has ignore city wall flag. Use him wisely. The Chin civ has two generals at the beginning. Kill them before proceed deep into hostile territory.
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Ken Hinds
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Xin Occupying the cities in the early turns is not a problem holding them while you get the rest of the world conquered is a whole nother ball of wax.
Ken
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Xin Yu
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Emeryville, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 21:13
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Some possible ways to get money:
1) trade cities with the barbarians. Barbs start with 30k and events give 3k each turn. If you capture a big barb city, then empty it, then you may be able to let the barb get it, and when you regain the city you get huge cash from them. You can use food caravans to increase the population to 20 then empty it . I don't know if later on the barbs can maintain the high cash reserve. If it does, then I will keep on trading cities with it; if not, it's even better -- since I can bribe usurper cheaper.
2) use food caravans to increase Karakurum's population so that it can get like 30 trade. Then rehome caravans to the city and trade with Hangzhou. After you steal 'safeway' you can build superhighways to boost the trade bonus. The following techs also helps: construction (aqueduct), sanitation (sewing system), navigation (junk for sea transportation), bridge building. You can get 400 golds per trade eventually, double or tripple if demanded.
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Ken Hinds
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Xin,
Capturing all the cities in the valley, including Tuanhung is one of my first goals the fact that the city is on a hill is no problem if you go for it early. The mountain to the rear has a road in it. Move Ghengis and a general on to the mountain and wait until the next turn to attack. While you are waiting for the reinforcements to arrive send the heavy calvalry from Hami over to take out the pikeman in the fortress on the east. After killing the pikeman and moving into the fortress he will have lots of movement left and you will be on roads. Have him scout along the road, but return to the fortress. Now keep track of the area around the city. Over by the Wine hill on the west is a fortress that will eventually have a horseman in it and a Chin pikeman will run out of the city and fortify himself. Use the HC to kill them off this will leave the city with one or two defenders and a seige-defense unit. Ghengis can often handle these by himself, if he attacks from the mountain with a road. In the area of Datung there is a weak section in the wall that you attack with two or three generals and Ghengis. This leads to a roaded hill that will let you in to take Datung from there you can start cleaning up behind the wall. If you don't start early enough you will get toasted because the wall units seem to act like railroad squares and the Chin will send everything along the wall. Or you can wait until later, if you reaquire a large enough body of troops.
Ken
P.S. If you get Monarchy then I just turn down the chance to revolt. I do use WLTxD however. Set the Lux to 50% and it makes a big difference.
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RobRoy
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Ah...the classic scenario.
Xin: Try trading with the Japanese islands, as well as Hang-zhou. You get the 2nd continent bonus, and you are more likely to be able to get the demand bonsus, as well (esp for hides, which never seem to exhaust themselves). I've also had some luck building a city in the northern island, and letting the Samurai seize it, but it takes quite an investment of time and settler improvement before it becomes worthwhile. I also find Samarkand becomes a better starting point for trade, once I obtain it. Later in the game, Samarkand is a good alternative Capitol site, anyway.
Ken: Don't bother trying to preserve conquered cities' infrastructure, at least initially. Gut them and use the money like a good barbarian. You can build infrastructure selectively later, once you can get some trade going (weren't the Mongols famous for facilitating trade?) In terms of holding cities, I've found that attack...attack...attack works well against the Chin. If they retake something, I can usually retake right back, so I don't bother to build much but Heavy and Light Cav against them. Once they are pretty much toast, take Harlan's Readme advice, and let the Chin retain the four cities bordering the Sung and leave the barb cities alone. The barbs and Chin can't mount serious offensive challenges, so their units (including the unbreached Great Wall units) will really just be a nuisances. This allows you to focus on the Khwarizmians and Moslems. Defer the Indians too, but you'll have to defend against them yourself - defend at Kabul and Kandahar if you reach those before the Indians, otherwise at Balkh and Herat. I'm curious why you bold the "if he attacks from a mountain with a road"? Is it your experience that Genghis is vulnerable to counter-attack? Or are you suggesting there is some attack advantage from being in mountains?
Harlan: I've always switched to monarchy. I thought the one-time opportunity was a feature, not a flaw. You say it's not against your house rules, but that it violates the spirit of the game - do I infer correctly that you disapprove of this? By the way, you mentioned a Vikings re-do for ToT awhile back, is this still feasible or have various obstacles proved insurmountable?
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Xin Yu
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Emeryville, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 21:13
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Harlan: here's my basic tactics. Tell me which are not allowed.
Once a large (>=5) city is conqured, sell all city improvements except the money-enhancing series (Bazaar - Bank), and hire all citizens as taxmen. When food is exhausted, send a food caravan to the city. One food caravan can provide enough food for 15+ turns since you have changed the food box to 50 rows.
Alternatively, in addition, do not sell the granary (and aqueduct, sewing system, if available) for a while. Once the food is exhausted, you can send two food caravans to the city, to resupply the food and increase the population by 1. You don't need to wait till food is exhausted but this way you don't waste food. After you get to the maximum size, sell the granary and aqueducts.
For small cities, and those home cities which will support randomly generated Mongol Cavalries, build granary and use food caravans to increase the population then repeat the above process.
The above process works better under Monarchy than Despotism since irrigated grassland will give one more food under Monarchy. Which means, large cities under Monarchy will not have food deficit even if you hire some entertainers to deal with the unhappiness problem. Thus, with a granary you can continue to send one food caravan to a city each turn to boost the population under Monarchy. Under Despotism it is more difficult and you may need two food caravans per turn to boost the population (that's why previously I memtioned do this when food was depleted to save food).
Revolution to Monarchy gives you a chance to celebrate in the capital city and make it generate a lot of trade, thus double the trade income.
After you have a lot of money you let two Khans be killed, and use money to buy the Usurpers (18a 7d 4h 4f ignore city walls).
AI always pick the unit with the highest defense factor to defend without considering hp and fp. If you know the spearman is going to be the next defender, then you do not need to use Ghengis since a Mongol cavalry is good enough (unless the city is on a hills square, then you need a Mongol General).
Ken: I meant to use the two Mongol Cavalry units in the home towns to get some cities. Ghengis is in the NorthEast at the moment. When he comes back you can attack Tuanhung.
RobRoy: I don't know if it is possible to reallocate the capital. But trading with barbarians in Japan is worth experimenting. You can even send some food caravans to there to boost the barb city's population. That will be interesting.
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Harlan
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Berkeley, CA, USA
Aug 2005
time: 21:13
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Xin,
As I said, none of the things you mention would be against any house rules. What I don't like is the general direction: figuring out ways to manipulate food and trade so you can generate huge amounts of gold, then build tons of units, then cakewalk to victory. What I mean about the spirit of the game is that the Mongols obviously were fighters, not clever managers, so the point is to fight fight fight, not win through clever management. Of course I'm not saying one shouldn't try to switch to monarchy or set up trade routes, etc, cos one should, but you seem to do it SO well that the fighting becomes a foregone conclusion, and that's no fun.
I haven't seen anything so odious that I'd say that's not allowed, though I would have said that if the switching to Fundamentalism worked.
Sorry if that's kind of a mixed message. Howabout this: a Xin-only house rule. No food caravans for you and you only. That should prevent some of the wierder things you do, like a size 16 Republican Karakorum. To be honest, I think you'd have a funner game if you try it that way.
Oh and about the Vikings scenario redo, something else has come up for me in the past few months preventing me from finishing that. But I just found out last night that someone else may be wanting to carry on and bring it to completion, so I hope that happens.
[This message has been edited by Harlan (edited September 21, 2000).]
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Xin Yu
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Emeryville, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 21:13
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Harlan: The restriction of no food caravan is not very harsh to me if you allow me to revolt to Monarchy.
With refrigiration I can use some citizens to work on farmland and keep the rest to be taxmen. 3 people working on farmland grass, plus the city square, can give as many as 16 food, sufficient to support a size 8 city. I just need to build two more infantris for martial law, and the benefit is almost the same since I saved the cost of food caravans (could even be better in some cases). For cities of larger than size 8 I need to put more people working on food, but that does not necessarily mean I'll lose income. With the help of Bazaar, Monastery, Bank, and safe roadway, I can make them celebrate and get republican benefit as well as bigger bonus from trade routes.
I cannot grow Karakurum to size 16, but using settlers to add to the city I can still get a size 8 republican Karakurum. Which means I still get several hundred bucks per trade, although much less than a size 16 capital.
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14-09-2000 16:20
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