Part One: 1206-1213AD

By Joe "snoopy369" Matise
July 29, 2006

Welcome to Part One of my "Genghis Khan Walkthrough". In this feature I'm going to be showing you the Genghis Khan scenario, one of the most interesting scenarios available with Civilization IV: Warlords.

The basics to the scenario are fairly simple. You control the Mongolian Hordes in thirteenth century Asia. Your mission is to put the fear of the Mongols into the hearts of the people of Asia. You may do this peacefully, by building up a civilization to rival any other, or (perhaps more fun...) by razing cities, gaining capitulating vassals, and pillaging square after square of Asia and Europe. The victory condition is fairly simple: 3000 points. You earn points for pillaging squares (1pt per pillage), conquering cities, razing cities, and for controlling territory. 3000 doesn't sound too hard... except for the fact that you lose a certain amount of points each turn, and lose if you hit zero. You have to move quickly in this scenario, or you'll find yourself at the cellar of the point standing, with no way out... I'll be playing at Emperor level, which is two levels above where I typically would play a game of 'vanilla' Civ. Difficulty levels in this scenario affect the number of points you lose per turn, and the size of the armies you're going to face (although not as much as it would in the regular game). I suggest trying this scenario out on a somewhat harder difficulty level than you typically play at; for a first game, most people will probably want to play on prince or monarch level.

1206AD (500): Heading to Xi-Xia (yellow) with a Combat VI jav thrower + the other jav thrower. Generally, Combat VI Jav Throwers are the uberunits of this scenario. They have a 50% withdraw by default, meaning they won't generally die on attacks, and a 14 default attack value is pretty good. Add on that they get first strike(s), they aren't mounted (meaning they don't have problems with the major defensive units, spearmen) and they have a short recovery time (being only 8 to start with), they're great units to base your force around.

My general strategy is to build two forces: Jav thrower armies for repeated attacks on one enemy, and horse archer or mounted swordsman armies for massive attacks where I don't mind losing a few units, and faster armies for moving quickly. Some horsed units with the jav archers is generally a good idea for combined arms benefits, but generally the second army is all horsed units due to the 3 move points. In the first few years, the camps can stay undefended as long as they're out of the enemy territory; no barbs come for around 20 years. This allows the crucial early push.

I generally try to get the camps onto some hills as early as possible, so I get more Javs. You always get fewer Javs than any other unit, excepting trebuchets, so it's a good idea to get them early.

1208AD (470): Notice that two turns later, I have only 470 points. Playing on Emperor, you lose 15 points per turn. That's important to remember, as it means technically I could lose the game in just over 30 turns if I don't start doing some serious attacking. (Try playing at Deity... you have much less time than that. )

There's a reason I sent my javs east and my horses west. This way, two cities fall at the same time from Xi-Xia, giving them less of a chance to attack my units. Note that with the fall of the second city, I now have a new tech – the ability to vassalize a civ! Also, my score has risen – once I raze this second city, my score rises further, to 535. You get some points from taking a city, and more from razing it. The size of the city matters, as well. My strategy in this game is going to be to raze until I get into the west; however, it can also be an effective strategy to take cities in the east, particularly in the Jin territory. It all depends on your strategy.

1209AD (522): Notice how my score has dropped by only 13 this time. That's because I was attacked during the inter-turn period, and each won battle gains you 2 points. Also notice how I spread out my horsemen. That is in order to pillage squares. You get a point for each time you pillage something; although a single point doesn't seem to be much, there is a lot to pillage out there, and every point matters (especially when you're losing 15 a turn!)

1211AD (545): I've finished off Xi-Xia, and need to quickly move on and pick my next target. In this case, I've decided to go after Jin China (red). This is due to the tech they give me – the ability to make trebuchets, which are mobile artillery units that can be very useful when taking on the larger civs to the west, that often have dozens of units. Jin is much harder than Xi-Xia – they have five cities, and a pretty decent sized army.

1212 (593): My first Great General (GG) has emerged! Subadai will become another Combat VI Javelin, which is the best unit for me at this point. GGs always are generated at your camps, and they don't appear during the turn, unless you control a city (in which case they should act like normal GGs).

1213AD (609): I've gained what I came here for – trebuchets. I've also increased my score a decent bit, up to 664 after I raze Kaifeng. However, my forces have met some difficulty, and are getting weakened significantly. I'd need reinforcements – which are largely quite far away, over near the Uighurs with my camp. I've got what I came for – now I'm going off to greener pastures.

This wraps up the first part of my Genghis Khan walkthrough. I've completed my conquest of eastern China, and earned the ability to produce the fourth major unit, the trebuchet. However, my score hasn't really gone up by very much and my army is still pretty small. In the next part, I will move west, and try to capture some territory of my own, to produce more units and start eroding the score drop-off. We'll also start seeing the dreaded Barbarians, and start facing larger Artificial Intelligence (AI) alliances.