Civ 5 Mongolian Civilization
Civ Bonuses, AI Info, Strategies, Unique Units and Buildings
Updated for Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs
Civilization's Leader: Genghis Khan
Civ Bonus: Mongol Terror
+30% Combat Strength when fighting City States or their Units. All mounted Units get +1 Movement.
Unique Unit: Keshik
Requires Chivalry, Replaces Knight
The Keshik gets 5 total moves with Mongol Terror. This is a ranged replacement for the Knight, like Arabia's Camel Archer, only more popular because of how quickly they gain experience and spawn the awesome Khan. They have the Great Generals I Promotion, and get 50% more XP from combat themselves - a truly powerful combination. This unit can fire after moving, meaning Cities (and even enemy Melee units) may not retaliate against your attacks if you can get in a position to move forward, attack, and step back.
Unique Great General: Khan
Replaces Great General
Ahh the Khan, what a lovely unit. This Great General replacement can move 5 tiles unlike the usual 2, so that he can keep up with your Keshik. He comes with the usual +15% CS bonus for Units fighting within two hexes, but also Enhanced Medic. That gives him the ability to add +15 HP to adjacent units' healing.
| Warmonger Hatred | Wonder Compete | Offense Build | Defense Build | City Defense | DoF | Friendly to Civs | Denounce Civs | War w/Civs | Deception Likelihood | CS Comp | CS War | |
| 4 | 4 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 8 | |
| Other Info | Genghis is a straight shooter, not likely to be deceptive and if friendly with you likely to stay that way. One thing you should avoid if he is nearby is offering protection to City-States. He will bully them and that will force you to either take a diplomatic hit with him (VERY likely to lead to war) or lose 20 Influence with the City-State you were protecting. Neither solution is good, so avoid it. Overall, if he's your neighbor and has no one else to pick on, you're very likely to be his target. Send him after someone else - he probably won't need much of a bribe to go to war. Just watch out that he doesn't become a runaway when his powerful Keshik hit the battlefield. If you want to deal with him, do so before he gets them and use plenty of Pikemen to counter them. | |||||||||||
Strategies/Ideas for playing Mongolia:
Mongolia has the highest-rated Unique Unit in the game, according to a thread rating Unit power at CivFanatics, and after playing them for several games, it's easy to understand why. Their Great General replacement is also awesome, and comes in quantity when you are conquering entire continents with the Keshik, so you will have plenty to be in multiple locations and help your units heal, while also having excess to make use of Citadels.
I suggest you focus on building up your Cities first. Focus on your Civ, Tall or Wide depending on what lands are available to you. Get those Luxury techs and Libraries up in your Cities so that you can get a National College, along with any buildings useful based on surrounding conditions. You need Science to get the Keshik out quickly - because the NC is so useful and easier to get with fewer Cities, you may not want more than 3-4, so Tradition is not a bad Opener for Mongolia. Weigh your options, as Liberty may be better in the long-run if you are going to have a massive puppet empire. Once you have Philosophy and any techs you need based on your surroundings, beeline for Chivalry, prioritizing the techs along the way that you need most. Currency is particularly helpful.
You can get Science and Gold both from Trade Routes, so definitely trade with another Civ even if you'll later be warring with them - it will help you get to Keshik faster and let you save up gold to upgrade some units. Get Animal Husbandry early so that you can settle lands with Horses nearby or conquer a City-State that has them. You don't want to rely on trade partners to have these, unless you will be conquering a City with Horses immediately upon entering your first War. Lack of Horses with these Units will incur a Combat Penalty that increases the further in the hole you are: with -4 horses I saw something like -22% combat strength, which is awful.
The Keshik upgrades from the Horseman and Chariot archer. Horsemen are cheaper to upgrade to Keshik (100) vs the Chariot Archer's 135, but the Chariot's Combat experience is directly useful to Keshik - they will be well on their way to having the most desirable upgrades if you simply gain a level or two from fighting Barbarians. Adopting Honor to locate them will help with this, while also giving you more Culture to get more useful Policies. You may war with City-States that have Natural Wonders or excellent lands nearby, but should primarily focus on fighting other Civilizations on your Continent. A war too early will slow down your acquisition of the Keshik, however, and that is the time to really bloom as a Warmonger when playing Genghis. I prefer to build at least a few Chariots and upgrade them to hasten the start of the first war, as Keshik can take 5-8 turns to build each. During that time, your opponents will be growing stronger in defense, and we don't want that!
Combat with the Keshik is stupid-easy, and just a few can bring a City down, particularly once you've got a Khan. The only thing that really sucks for them are Jungle/Forested Hills and Marshes. These will take 3 moves, while crossing a River will remove all movement. After killing off units, you should be able to position your Keshik around enemy Cities in such a way that you are able to step forward, fire, and step back without taking any retaliatory fire. Once the City's defenses are down to 0, move in with a Melee unit and make it a Puppet, then move on to the next City. You should likely build as many Keshik as you have Horses (unless you have like 20 Horses). The more you have, the more Cities you can fight at once and completely overwhelm the enemy. I have been so aggressive that all Civs on my continent declared war, which just put them in a position of entering my lands and getting chewed up by Keshik until I was able to march on their Capitals.
As mentioned above, the Khan has as many moves as the Keshik and works just like a GG but with the Enhanced Medic promotion. Unfortunately, Units will still have to take a break to benefit from Medic and it does not work on the unit beneath the Khan. However, their mobility means you can move the Khan around to where he's needed for healing. With March, this requirement goes away and units will heal with medic every turn. Given the Keshik's survivability thanks to their ability to move after firing, you will likely do better to get Barrage/Accuracy III to unlock the extra attack promotion. I prioritize them in this order - +1 Attack, +1 Range, March, then go for Cover I-II just to make them resilient against ranged and provide Promotions that will help them later on when upgraded to Cavalry/Landhips/Tanks and even Giant Death Robot!
Keshik obsolete and upgrade to Cavalry with Military Science, resulting in any Terrain Combat Bonuses and the +1 Range Promotion to be useless, but don't let that fool you. The other Promotions (extra attack, march, cover) will make them beastly and you should be able to use them all the way up to Tanks and find them useful in warfare along with Artillery. With that in mind, after getting Universities, you will want to rush for Artillery to continue your Warmongering. Keshik function against Cities with up to 30-40 Defense but do weaken in power after that, and you need an alternative when Cities begin to get really high in population and wall up given the state of panic you will induce in them.
I didn't talk much at all about Mongol Terror, because I didn't use the benefit of Combat Strength against City-States. With everyone on the Continent destroyed by an army of Keshik, you need trade partners. You can use a few internal Trade Routes to send Food to the City with the National College, but having a few Cargo Ships or Caravans trading with City-States will help you support your Military. You also need Culture/Faith etc. from Alliances just like any other Civ. Overall, I really do not like that bonus but found it useful when a CS had Lake Victoria in its borders. Attacking too many City-States leads to them growing wary of you, and may make it impossible to befriend them. So, given all I've said here, the Keshik/Khan are the main benefits of playing Genghis.
Some thoughts on Policies: You may want to avoid finishing Tradition/Liberty early, just getting the free settler/Worker from Liberty and save the Golden Age for later. From Tradition, get the first 3 great policies and skip Oligarchy/Aristocracy until later. Do this to grab the left side of Honor, giving you a free Khan and further increasing their spawn rate. You can also benefit greatly when you're wide and have many Puppets, garrisoning units and getting the +1 Happiness/+2 Culture from the right side of this Policy tree. At that point, you may as well finish the tree to get cheaper unit Upgrades/faster Military building construction and Gold from kills. Commerce is also helpful for Mongolia, because you can benefit more from the Luxuries you have. I might even avoid Rationalism and just go with those two trees aside from choosing an Ideology, which would definitely be Autocracy or Order. The first gives Lightning Warfare and Total War, which grant incredible bonuses for Tanks (those Keshik you upgraded) and all other Units in your Military, while the second can be great for your Science output by giving you a boost from Factories.
I LOVE Mongolia and tried to share my own strategies with them here. I didn't really talk about Religion - in my last game I did fine without one and adopting another Civ's religion while trading with them helped deter War for a time while I focused on my first targets. Share your tips below, I'd love to hear them and you'll benefit others' gameplay by sharing any extra info or corrections you may have.
| Sid Meier's Civ 5 is a deep strategy game. I created these individual Civilization Guides to highlight the strengths of their specials and unique units. If you have an opener or tip for playing this Civ that you would like to share with other readers, please use the comments form below. Some Guides are in need of update and will be improved to a new standard of quality or altered to reflect gameplay changes in G&K and Brave New World. | ||||||
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I think it is helpful because when that CS is afraid, they will spend most of their production on making military units, which is harder to request tribute from them