Most people do a fast raid with mongols (sci-mil1-classical-mil2-two stables) which is absolutely devastating if you don't prepare for it. But good players prepare for this kind of rush by dropping a tower or two if they scout a mongol enemy.

So instead, I usually don't bother with the fast raid (unless I scout that my enemy won't be prepared for it). Instead, I usually go for two cities with sci2/com2/mil1 and head to classical, and start raiding a bit later with +150 econ cap. This strat is a lot less fragile tha the fast raid. It also kills your opponent if he tries to go for three cities early (he can't afford civ2 AND get to classical in time to counter your HAs with light horses), and takes advantage of the Mongol food bonus (you can easily get to +150 food with just two cities, but your opponent needs 3 cities or good rares to do the same). Usually this raid can mess up your opponent well enough to put you ahead economically, esp. if your opponent put up early towers. If your raid is half successful, it'll also slow down any classical or medieval attack just enough so you can get into gunpowder before launching a full-fledged attack.

From there, I usually drop mines, rax, unis, etc. and prepare for a strong gunpowder attack. I queue up as many HCs as possible and HIs while trying to shoot for +200 in the 8:00-9:00 mark. This is rather easy to do as long as you don't build too many scholars because of the food bonus. With 3 cities and a rare or two, you can easily hit +200 without any granaries. Just make sure to take a vill off to build a lumber camp while you get sci3, so you can get to +200 wood right after getting com3.

By the time I hit gunpowder (around 14:00? 15:00? Somewhere around there, I think--I don't keep track), I usually have a decent sized army ready to attack (perhaps 12-20 infantry, 8 or 9 HCs, 3 or 4 siege and a supply wagon, plus 12-15+ free nomads, depending on). The free nomads you get from building 4 or 5 stables really seal the deal. First of all, it costs almost nothing to get them--just build the stables with mil3 researched. But it's even better because it only takes 100 wood 100 wealth to upgrade them to the gunpowder-armed Horde unit. It's _really_ hard to deal with this many horde so early, because they eat almost everything except archers (kills all infantry, decent against HCs, no one builds enough LCs to counter that many horde, etc.) And archers are slow as hell and suck in general anyway--just run around them and hit them with your HCs, watch all their wealth die.

The best part is once you think you've won the battle, you can run all your free horde (and perhaps an HC or two) into town and shoot up all the civilians. It's really too easy to do this because they shoot while moving and have enough hit points to take a few tc and tower arrows by then. Afterwards, you're free to run them straight into his ally's town or return them back to the front.

So I guess that wasn't all that clear--I'm on break and am too lazy to organize my thoughts. Let my try to sum up my points:

- Mongols have flexibility early on because of the threat of early raiding. If your opponent drops towers or prepares some other raid defense, you can delay your raid and press your resulting economic advantage. Otherwise, if he doesn't get to classical at around the same time as you, his econ is dead.

- If you do a delayed raid, a +100 raid/rush is the next possible strong attack. It's on O4B's site somewhere. Basically, raid with HAs, follow up with HIs to take towns. The fact that you don't need many farms to reach +100 helps a _lot_ for this attack.

- +150 is possible, but I think Mongols are stronger in gp. If you wait until +200 and gp, you can build a lot more HCs from the cheap horse bonus.

- If you want to wait more, Mongols can do an extremely strong +200 attack because of the cheap and free horde. 15-20 horde are fast and useful both on the front and for raiding. On the front, horde own infantry and their speed allows you to kill other units using flanking (while your HCs and LI/HI are killing things). While raiding, it's almost impossible to counter a large amount of free horde running through your town. They also can shut down your opponent's ally--just do a pass through the opponent's ally's town.

Last note: Don't build too many scholars. I see a lot of experts building a gazillion scholars early on. I don't get this. Scholars suck early on. They earn +5 knowledge each and cost like 40-60+ wealth. This is a terrible deal (for comparison, most civilians early on cost 25-50 food and produce +10 resources each, and food is much easier to gather than wealth early on). A knowledge rare, or even a university (instant +25 knowledge, produces +10 knowledge intrinsically) is a much better deal. I try not to build too many scholars for a +200 (i.e. 14-16, literacy and printing press as soon as feasible) and use the rest of the wealth for more HCs.

[This message has been edited by RomanGladius (edited 03-26-2004 @ 06:18 PM).]