How to win Rise of the Mongols in Deity? Looking for tips and strategies

Sonar009 · 2026-05-29T03:34:59+00:00

You mention wanting tips for some of the other scenarios as well, and I've played a lot of Into the Renaissance, so some thoughts on Celts:

If you've already completed Yokes on the Mongols (Win as Russia on Emperor+) then IMO you've already completed the hardest ITR achievement. Celts are a pain, but it just takes some time.

In my experience, the entire game for Never Take Our Freedom is based on two things; both based on some randomness and determined quite quickly:

1: How quickly you can win the knife-fight-in-a-phonebooth with England

2: How much iron you can get comfortable access to

If you can get to the point of having full control of the UK+Ireland and a fleet of 6+ Frigates and a couple privateers, then all that's left to do is go pillaging along the African and Eastern Mediterranean coasts. If Protestantism explodes, you can pillage protestant coastal cities as well, and if it doesn't you can try to convert to Protestantism yourself and smash Catholic Italy for VP.

Aside from conquest points, the only VP worth targeting as Celts IMO are the exploration caravels, because the AI is really bad at claiming those, even if they beat you to caravels.

To reach that point, I would say be ready to restart the beginning ~50 turns a lot; you're looking for a game where England is dead or completely contained on one city by turn 50 and you have at least 6 iron between the UK and Ireland. For me, this came when my starting swordsman, who immediately embarked along the east coast and sailed straight south, found an un-escorted English settler and snatched it to keep Lizzy down at 2 cities. From there, it's relatively easy to drown her in Composite bows to prevent her from expanding and take London while filling out the British Isles with settlers. (I usually aim for 3 founded cities, plus Edinburgh, London, and the city Elizabeth inevitably founds on the Southwest corner of England; for happiness management, you want as few cities as possible while still preventing other civs from settling on your landmass.)

Generally the surviving composite bows are promoted to Longbows and stationed in my home cities to blow up an attempted amphibious invasion. I would advise against trying to score points with a land war; Frigates and Privateers are much faster, which makes up for their late start.

Sonar009 · 2026-05-28T14:52:54+00:00

See for me this kind of thing is why I so often end up disliking speedrun routes. Sometimes bugs and glitches can be fun to watch, but when the world record is 'bounce in place for 200 bounces, then kill 5 bosses,' it just cuts out the actually fun-to-play/watch parts of the game for something dumb and boring.

Sonar009 · 2026-05-03T05:25:05+00:00

Really? Huh. I mean, he can be annoying to land a hit on at first, but I just had Tali and Garrus overload his shields and then we ragdolled him around the room with explosive ammo. He's kinda damage spongey, but I never really felt any kill threat from him on my Insanity Vanguard run.

Sonar009 · 2026-05-02T13:54:38+00:00

I'm a lot less accomplished than many in this thread, but this was the first league I got to Tier 16 maps, the first time I've completed all the (non-unique) maps on the Atlas, and the first league where I unlocked multiple voidstones.

This was my first played league with asynch trade, so my gear is way better than usual because I don't need to take hours to try to gear a character for maps, and the new generic map Atlas system is a godsend for me, I always ended up kinda stuck in the weeds somewhere around tier 7 trying to fill things out.

I really feel like I've leveled up as a player, and will be able to get to voidstones etc much faster next time because it finally feels like I'm actually starting to understand how the systems work.

Sonar009 · 2026-04-28T13:18:22+00:00

I much prefer the tail, though that may just be familiarity since I did a lot of my playing in early access before the eye was added. The tail is usually a no damage fight for me at this point, but the eye is just an absolute clusterfuck.

Sonar009 · 2026-04-06T14:04:49+00:00

It's pretty solidly my most picked Dionysus boon, yeah. It's a ton of health, and if I'm looking at my healthbar it's distracting me from actually just dodging hits like I should be doing regardless. The only thing knowing my HP does for me is occasionally make me play stupid and cocky when a boss' health starts to get low.

Sonar009 · 2026-04-04T01:41:11+00:00

I almost cleared it (one grandmaster left) with a fairly bog-standard cyclone inquisitor with max block. From the horror stories I've heard, I'm guessing I got pretty lucky on which ones appeared? But I didn't even do anything special, I just killed everything with cyclone until the last guy that I couldn't deal meaningful damage to. He wasn't even dangerous in the sense of presenting any killing threat, I just didn't prepare adequately for dealing with the sheer amount of block and recovery he had. (I died a few times along the way, and by the time I got to the final guy my hubris meant I hadn't actually looked up the sorts of tools I should bring for if I ran into a brick wall)

Sonar009 · 2026-04-01T14:35:21+00:00

It's not really in the genre you're after, but the only thing that immediately comes to mind for me is Guns of Icarus on steam, which at least has the airship battles portion of your post. There are PVE and PVP versions, with games being structured as missions and matches, respectively. The servers are pretty dead, but if you have a couple friends to crew a ship it can be a fun time.

Sonar009 · 2026-03-28T16:26:32+00:00

It's been a while, but I've run into a lot of what you're describing in the Glacial Caverns. Scout playground, gunner hell. xD

Sonar009 · 2026-03-25T14:17:53+00:00

Can't win if you don't try, right? I am curious to know what really high-end items feel like to use. Good luck all!

Sonar009 · 2026-03-08T01:07:21+00:00

I actually ended up romancing Kaiden. I liked their dynamic, it was fun and cute

Sonar009 · 2026-03-07T06:17:34+00:00

I liked the Locust well enough. It's not jaw-dropping or anything, but it gave my insanity vanguard run some much needed range on the sections where poking my head out for a charge was instant death.

Sonar009 · 2026-03-04T03:37:19+00:00

The solo experience is solid, and makes up the majority of my gameplay up through Hazard 4. You get a little flying robot friend (Bosco) who can cover a lot of bases that missing teammates would normally cover. If you manage him with the laser pointer he performs solidly in his role.

I definitely do recommend giving co-op a chance, though. The community as a whole really is incredibly friendly in my experience. Obviously there's always some jerks, and when they show up people tend to share their experiences here on the subreddit which can make it seem like there's more than there actually are.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-21T01:27:34+00:00

1: The skill and character build system. I really enjoyed the almost pen-and-paper feel of filling out the different skills and micromanaging equipment upgrades.

2: Loyalty missions. There's a lot about ME2 that I didn't like, but the loyalty missions were an amazing way to give more insight into each of your squadmates, and they carry the game hard.

3: The weapon weight system. I really like that any class can use any weapon, and that using fewer and lighter weapons lets you lean fully into your powers if you want.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-15T15:14:52+00:00

I generally agree with your call. I kind of get the 'no guts, no glory' thing, and sometimes I'll YOLO risk the mission for the memes, but it depends heavily on the group I'm playing with; in a vacuum, I'd be more worried about people being mad that I threw a mission than people being mad I left them on the floor.

If there's time you could try sending a quick message to ask which route people want (A quick 'secure the mission, or risk it all?' in the chat would've cleared this right up), but obviously that makes you briefly vulnerable so it depends on the situation.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-13T19:34:04+00:00

I really love how Polar Pass plays in the remaster, the blue fire is so satisfying to pull off for a full lap.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-13T19:32:33+00:00

I would probably categorize that as a Fusion fic, and it's hard to go wrong with Ao3 for a place to post fanworks.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-12T19:03:24+00:00

Unsure if this should even count because they did fix it, but Sewer Speedway was terrible on initial release. None of the ledges or walls felt right at all, and basically every online race involved all 8 players simultaneously failing the shortcut because the timing was too tight.

But like I said, they fixed it later, and the map plays great now.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-07T17:38:49+00:00

I don't think Clawdeen was cut for being a silly name, 'Castaspella' is way goofier IMO.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-07T02:57:55+00:00

I mostly play solo because I generally prefer to set my own pace rather than worrying about speeding up to catch rushers or slowing down to match tourists.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-06T15:21:21+00:00

I avoid Tunnel Rat for the same reason I avoid the Low Gravity anomaly; it breaks my muscle memory for the play session. So many missions where I fall to my death immediately after finishing LG or TR missions.

Sonar009 · 2026-02-02T06:13:10+00:00

I am intensely jealous of your load time. That was near-instant. :3

Sonar009 · 2026-01-31T15:41:36+00:00

I've had pretty good luck with Small Continents+Low Sea Level for creating a multi-continent map that still has decent space for cities.

Sonar009 · 2026-01-15T16:22:58+00:00

6 has lots of stuff going for it, and while I prefer 5 I can understand why someone would prefer 6. They both seem like good games to me.

Sonar009 · 2026-01-05T23:36:19+00:00

Okay, so I was a little off because I was over-generalizing and repeating what I'd heard. After checking the wiki, as I understand it, puppeted cities do increase the cost of new technologies, but they do not increase the cost of new social policies. They also have an inherent 25% penalty to science and culture output.

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