Mongols Strategy

[Xin Yu]

Genearl tips as Mongols:
Make notes on which cities have king/emporor units. Also note that Emporors may get reincarnated once in another city.
Make sure your spies can steal a tech before you occupy any city.
If a city is on grass/plain, use Mongol cavalries to attack twice followed by Mongol generals. If a city is on defense bonus terrain, use Mongol generals to attack twice followed by Ghengis Khan. This is because that cities may have siege defenses plus two other units. Siege defenses are seleted last as defender but are tougher to kill. However if the city has king/emporor or fortifications (some Chin cities close to Sung Chinese have fortifications), use Ghengis Khan first.
First two cities to attack are Shantu and Dading. Then use Ghengis Khan to punch a hole on the great walls (there is one great wall on grass north to Ta-tu). Rush build barracks in Dading to recover your Khan and generals while attacking cities north to Dading. Gather Ghengis Khan and Generals to attack Ta-tu and get the Great Wall wonder. Be careful about the two Chin generals.
After Ta-Tu, go for Changan (Xi'an) for the Bach's wonder. With the wonder, if you have the techs of Monarchy, Peasantry, and intensive irrigation, a size 5 city can hire 2 taxmen and support one settler without any food deficits (3 workers on farmland). Such a city only needs one defender for martial law and never needs any management.
Build a size one city next to Karakurum, re-home food caravans to it then send to Karakurum to grow the city to size 16. Work the squares of Karakurum so that the city can support its population. Disband the size one city after Karakurum reaches size 16 to get rid of the food trade route. Build superhighways and have Karakurum celebrate 'we love' to maximize trade bonus. Re-home caravans to Karakurum before sending them to foreign cities. The best trade city is the northmost barb city in Japan (1000+ for non-matching caravans).
After Xi'an, go for Hangzhou for its lighthouse wonder. Research 'Naval Warfare' from trade bonus, and build vet war ships to blow the Sung and Christian cities up. Warships only lose to kings.
Do not attack India first since its defense are tough. Go for the red civ and Islam since some of their cities do not have siege defense. After you reach Jelusalem, you can start to build war ships. With a Khan riding on a warship, you can blow essentially any coastal city away -- except two (one in Japan and on is constantinpole). Also, the southern Sung Chinese cities do not have siege defense so you can attack them first.
After Hangzhou, go straight to Jelusalem and Mecca. After you get those two cities you can let two Khans die (the Bach wonder will expire but you now have the Hanging gardern and cure for cancer) and bribe two Usurpers. They are expensive so you need to accumulate a lot of caravans (I mean a lot!) to get the money. Two of your cities need to have a lot of cheap defense units inside to hold the cities for one turn before bribring the usurpers. Usurpers are better than Khans (one is Karakurum, another is somewhere about 20 squares west of it).

[Xin Yu]

Some more hints:

It is essential to get to every empire's center and build strongholds there. From those strongholds you can rush build spies and steal techs from surrounding cities. For the Chin civ the center city is Ta-tu, for Sung Chinese it's Tanzhou, for Khwarizmian it's Merz. You have about 55 techs to steal from other civs.

Mongol home cities will generate Mongol cavalry units randomly (if you are lucky you can even get a mongol general). Move them to Turfan. When you have more than 3 Mongol cavalries, attack Kucha, Kashigar and Khotan. There are two roads towards west next to Kashigar. Go along the southern route. Move your Mongol cavalries and a spy to the west, and bribe the defending unit on the mountain fortress square. From there you can attack the center of the Khwarizmian empire -- Merz. Timing this so that you can hold the city with the help of the Great Wall wonder. The Khwarizmian and Chin will be engaged in war near the Westmost Chin city (Tashkent) so the counter attack will be weak.

You'll be able to steal a lot of techs from Chin, Sung, and Khwarizmi. The most helpful techs to the Mongols are: Monarchy, Intensive Agriculture, safe roadways, construction, sewing system, Postal system.

Monarchy and Intensive Agriculture will help you manage your small cities: under Monarchy, if you build 'intensive irrigation' in a size 5 city and double-irrigate 3 grass squares, the city will be able to produce 15-16 food with 3 workers, enough to support 5 citizens. You hire two taxmen and put one defense unit inside the city. With the Bach wonder, you'll not have happiness problem. You may even be able to support a settler from the city if your city square is on grass.
Postal system will let you manage big cities.
Safe roadways, construction and sewing system will help you grow your capital city to boost trade bonus.

The best war techs are Cannon and Naval warfare. The two techs have not been researched at the beginning but Sung Chinese are getting close. If you do not want to destroy Sung at the beginning, you can occupy all its coastal cities to prevent it from using war ships to attack you.

If you have used up all enemy cities but still have some important techs to steal, you can build new ones using two settlers and let the other civs occupy it. You'll be able to steal from it.

[Cal]

I just downloaded this for the first time, will try your strategy tonight.

[Masis]

What about strategy for the Chinese southern Song dynasty?
Just that I am a peace lover and hate destroying nations-whats the point when you can make tons of gold from them in trade whereas you will have to spens sums of gold trying to rebuild them if you are lucky enough to capture them.
Beside from a historical perspective I think the central Asiatic invaders were a bane to the potential development of their own culture, not to mention the Iranian plateu whose peoples were constantly on their gaurd.
I am playing the southern song and am kicking out the Chin dynasty from the north in alliance with the Mongols, may make Tibet and Xingiang part of the new empire soon...

------------------
MRP

[Cal]

This strategy works very well! I was able to conquer a lot of territory before losing any units that can't be built.

However, as mentioned on one of the other posts, it is a Harlan Thompson scenario, and thus, impossible to win.

[Xin Yu]

The key is trade between Karakurum and the Japan barb city to get cash and a couple of techs. After you get the tech of cannon, build a lot of them along with some sappers. Move close to cities then use Sapper's 2/3 move to attack, followed by cannons. You can blow everything away. For tough cities, bribe some assasins and use one of them to attack first.

[Shadowstrike]

Originally posted by Cal
This strategy works very well! I was able to conquer a lot of territory before losing any units that can't be built.

However, as mentioned on one of the other posts, it is a Harlan Thompson scenario, and thus, impossible to win.

Truer words were never said... I couldn't get past the Song so I gave up playing this scenario.... might want to give it a spin sometime soon...

[Wangshibo]

Playing as the Southern Song dynasty, a fun (but maybe not good - I'm hardly Xin Yu) strategy is to maximise money for spies, get those good cannon as quickly as possible, then smash the Jin. For historical accuracy, I kept it at that, and of course play on the hightest difficulty level. It's harder than you'd think, because the Jin can produce really a lot of units, and they're almost all better than your best defences. Warships, too, can devastate their coast, and are invaluable when you force the Japanese and Koreans to pay tribute

[Xin Yu]

I haven't played Song yet but I think it is really easy. First, you sell a lot of improvements to get money, rush build ships and caravans to get to Japan. With the trade bonus you bribe some Ching greatwall units on the Song-Ching boarder. Now you' are safe. Keep on sending caravans to Japan to get the two techs you want -- cannon and warship. Now who can stop you? (you can bribe barb warriors (south west boarder) for defense. They are pretty good for the price).

[Cal]

*bump*

Anyway... I find this order to be good when conquering as the mongols...

1. The Chin, don't counquer Kaifeng, the Great Wall wonder expires when you do, go ahead and conquer every other city,but not this one.

2. I conquer the string of cities along central asia which connect your two cities in that area with the Chin area, there's a string of barbarian cities there, all relatively easy to destroy, do so after getting the great wall.

I ignore korea and japan, Korea has a king unit in one of the cities, and not really worth the trouble. Japan is just not worth it.

3. The Sung, a little more difficult then the Chin.

4. About this time, you should've conquered the Chin cities which are between you and the khwarizmians, so begin conquering them.

...and that's it, still gotta play farther into this scenario...

[Case]

Well, personally, I conquer the nothern Chinese first, then work my way clockwise into central Asia, leaving a the southenmost northern Chinese cities as a barrier to the tough southern Chinese.
I next take down the Khwarizmians and Moslems, both of whom put up little fight. By this time I've generally accumulated enough generals to either try a go at Europe, or blitz India.
After doing this, I send my sizable army back to China, and slaughter the southern Chinese.

It's awkward, but it works