Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings/The Crucible

The nomadic tribes of the deserts and steppes north of China, after spending centuries entangled in their own petty turf wars, finally have the hope of unification. Genghis Khan, leader of a tribe that is so small even in the standard of Mongolians, is ready for his conquest of Asia and even the world. Within years, he organized a highly disciplined army pours of horse archers to challenge the dominance of cultured Persia and Eastern Europe, and the technologically advanced empires in China.

Ghenghis Khan 1
This mission is very straightforward, visit the camps and do what they say. There are large amounts of kara khitai in the rightmost corner so avoid them. To find sheep to satisfy the blue civ's request there are enough on the map, but to speed the process the kara khitai keep around 10 sheep walled in along w/ cav archers approximately 8 castle lengths north and 2 castle lengths east of the blue civ's encampment. Between the cyan and purple civs there is a relic guarded by wolves. This is the easiest way to satisfy the request of the gray. Save the kill the taiychuds/naiman mission for last when you have the most troops, then kill the naiman as they lack a watch tower.

Ghenghis Khan 2
This mission is a fun one. Begin by killing the cavalry archers of the taiychuds, you will then gain control of their civilization's buildings and units. There will be an early attack at the wonder so try not to sustain many casualties. Build up your economy through the use of the herd of deer below your town center. Age up ASAP as the attack launched by the kara khitai is difficult w/out walls/troops (assuming difficulty=hardest). Getting to feudal quickly can't be stressed enough. Ditch loom if necessary, there are no boars. Move all your men down to the tent and scout out good areas for wall building. There are many cliffs, use those to your advantage as they are free walls, in a sense. Gather enough stone to build the wall and some towers. At aroud 90% research level for feudal move 3 villagers down so that upon the completion of feudal, you can build the walls. Have the villagers start the wall at different ends for maximum effectiveness. Don't even bother w/ a gate, you won't have sufficient strength to attack the kara khitai for some time. Be sure to maintain stone levels sufficient for making 3 towers. If not, palisade walls will work fine. While the wall is beginning, build an archery range. Upon completion, build 15 archers ASAP. When the wall is finished build 3 towers to back it up and garrison the archers. Note that these steps should all be done simultaneously w/out gaps if possible. W/ this defensive arrangement you should be able to sustain the attack. Once you do, the rest of the mission isn't particularly difficult. Your bread and butter is your light cavalry. It's inexpensive once gold starts to run out, it's fast, it has decent attack for castle age, it has high HP w/ the mongol attribute, it has high LOS. Simply outproduce your opponent by putting 35 villagers on farming and 12 lumberjacks on wood to support the farms. Make 3 stables, set the gather point for 2 at the enemy base while one right next to itself. Once the # of light cavalry at the base is large, surge. Repeat this often and you will soon take out their Town Center. Kushluk will run away now if he hasn't already. Break through the wall, send your light cavalry in and kill indiscriminately. Finding and slaying Kushluk isn't hard after this, but he usually hides out at the end of the map, not garrisoned luckily.

Ghenghis Khan 3
This is one of the more difficult missions in the game as it pits four against one and a wonder victory counts giving you little time, so save frequently. Even if you haven't done anything noteworthy in 10 minutes, save. If an attack comes and destroys you, you won't want to have to start from 35 min. ago, so do it. Start by sending your cavalry west and find a transport ship. Time is of the essence so don't bother sending the ship far away to find the optimal landing site as he'll have to make a return trip to get the other soldiers in place too. Just dump them right across the river. In the north there are a few militia that are easily dispatched. Several archers will come in soon and they are easy prey for your light cavalry. While the fighting is taking place send the transport ship to the southern part of the island, this will trigger the villagers, siege weapons to join your side. Quickly get 5 villagers in the transport ship and have the other start building houses, one at a time. Save here. Send the ship down the river and have it land about 7 castle lengths to the south of the wall. This is hard to explain in text so I recommend saving, using the cheat [enter]marco[enter] [enter]polo[enter] to see the whole map. Find a suitable landing point w/ adequate mines and far enough away from enemies and then load the save so that the land is fogged once again. Personally I don't consider this cheating but if your code of ethics is stronger than mine, by all means try and fail 4 times to find a good site and waste time giving yellow the ability to build a wonder. Life's harsh. Anyways, once you've landed, send your transport ship back to pick up the others, making sure to bring back the villager. Your 5 landed villagers should complete a Town Center near gold or lumber as well as houses in a manner such that as soon as the town center is complete, villagers can be produced because there are sufficient houses. There is little scenario-specific advice I can give past this point other than that there are some bombard cannons in the west and yellow will try to win w/ a wonder. The latter is an important issue as their base is an island and we'll talk about it soon. For now, build up your economy as you would in a random map game. Build walls in between patches of forest, but leave one area open. The AI will try to invade this point (given the rest is completely enclosed) so build a castle and station men there. Now, about that Wonder, luckily Mongolian ships are above average so load up on galleons (to counter the demolition ships) and cannon galleons to take out buildings. Once all the towers/castles have been leveled, invade w/, you guessed it, light cavalry but also pikemen to deal w/ cavalry. It might also help to transport villagers to build stables and barracks on the island to truly deliver a blow to the yellow. If necessary, transport trebuchets to take out any buildings away from the water. Defeating the other civilizations is very easy, just pump out Light Cavalry like nobody's business and the game should be all wrapped up.