Mongols Require Minor Adjustment to Their Siege
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I believe the Mongols should not be able to obtain Siege Rams, Siege Onager, and Heavy Scorpions all at once.
It would be difficult to balance, so it would be best for them to lose the final upgrade to one or two of the siege units.
Heavy Scorpions would be acceptable to keep, or alternatively, Drill could be made 25 percent faster in regards to siege movement.
I have experienced the power of Drill and Siege Onager in the late game, and it was remarkable how fast the Siege Onager could keep up with the Hussar.
The opponent was so frustrated that they cursed my family for four generations.
Additionally, I am curious why the Chinese do not have access to Siege Engineers, despite the fact that the Mongols historically stole many from them.
Maybe make it so that whenever their fully garrisoned siege rams start moving the Benny Hill theme plays?
It’d make them less intimidating and everyone knows the Mongols conquered more through intimidation than violence.
Idk man.
I think mongol opponents has HUUGE window from castle age to early imperial when most civs can beat mongols fairly easily, so being busted in late game makes sense
The balance rule for insanely strong military options demands that there be some significant drawback, cost, or delay to using that option.
Mongols as they currently exist conform to this balance rule.
Although drill siege is indeed insanely strong (at least in conjunction with other military units, since unguarded siege is almost always weak), it is also a) only a late game option b) outrageously expensive to tech into.
The drill tech is locked behind imperial age, as well as behind a castle.
Siege engineers is similarly locked behind imperial age, as are the siege workshop upgrades that make siege units useful in imperial age.
Mongol siege doesn’t exist in the dark or feudal ages, and in castle age it’s generic.
It’s usually only in mid to late imp with a fully boomed and efficient economy that you can even think about drill siege as a serious factor in your army comp, especially with the time required to build production buildings and mass them.
There’s a lot of game to be played before that, and castle age is especially dry for mongols since they have no eco bonus at that point and all their military options (with the arguable exception of steppies) don’t scale ideally into the late game.
So, mongol drill siege is partially balanced by the delay in getting to it–a delay in which your opponent has lots of rope to try and hang you with.
Drill siege is also balanced by the ludicrous cost of the tech switch.
To begin with, you’ll virtually never be going pure drill siege.
By that point, ideally, you’ll have teched into hussar (as you did) as well as elite mangudai.
Either of these lines already requires a solid eco, and we haven’t even gotten to the actual siege yet.
Upgrading your siege to make it usable will require thousands upon thousands of resources through drill, siege engineers, and siege workshop upgrades.
So, mongol drill siege is also balanced by the enormous cost of getting to it–resources that have to be diverted away from defending or attacking.
Strong options aren’t unbalanced.
Strong options without weaknesses or drawbacks are unbalanced.
And going full mongol drill siege has plenty of weaknesses and drawbacks.
As to the question of Chinese getting siege engineers, it’s a game balance question not a historical accuracy question.
We’ve given Aztecs steel armor and weapons, siege onagers, and trebuchets.
Taking siege engineers from Chinese is the least of our crimes.
*Laughs in Mongolian*
Mongols are fine.
If anything is an issue with the civ, is their hunt food bonus being too strong in certain maps.
Mongols are B tier on Arabia according to Hera.
Also not excellent on closed maps.
The only maps they excel at are things like valley, steppe, and anything else with lots of easy to access hunt.
I one tricked mongols for awhile.
They are a fairly awkward civ in the mid game.
From late feudal to late castle age, mongols have a huge checklist of things to do with their economy and must rely on gold-heavy units to survive to late game.
If you want to destroy a mongols player, try a meso civ, all three of which are an absolute menace in castle age.
Their hardest counter is Berbers, who can match their pacing and who get very good counters to mongol units like camels and camel archers.
The best way for the mongols to survive their awkward castle age is to rush you in some way (in low ELO this will almost always be a scout rush but better mongols players will try other things depending on the situation) to get an early lead, then they will usually run either camels or steppe lancers, maybe cav archers but that is less common.
So just scout them early and make preparations accordingly.
Scouts or drush, do tight resource walls.
Archers, get some skirms and some safer house walls.
If you can match their pressure in feudal you will come out with a massive advantage in castle age.
As Hera mentioned multiple times in his mongols guide, their biggest drawback is that they lack a castle age economic bonus, so most other civs that do have one will have an advantage at this time.
So you absolutely do not want to try to race to imperial, go all-in in castle age and try to draw it out so the mongols have to match you instead.
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