Overview
This is a small guide about my nomad playstyle following my game in Ironman, playing Monarch’s Journey with Liao Hongji.I started the game normally and quickly turned into a tyrant to easily rule my nomad empire.
Introduction
This guide explains how I played my first and only (for now) nomad game on Monarch’s Journey with Clan Liao, in Ironman.
I began with a typical game orientation, doing the monarch’s journey objectives. When I had completed my objectives (or nearly), I changed my approach and went towards exploiting nomads fully.
On this playthrough, I did not concentrate much on gaining strong characters with several bloodlines (which I usually do), because I am not used to nomad succession and was less efficient at controlling it than usual.
This is not a full nomad guide. For this, I started reading the following guide :
– Population and Manpower Guide for Newly Nomadic Players [+Bonus Section]
This explained all the basics of playing as a nomad.
Early gameplay
At the beginning, I played normally :
– I kept my vassal clans happy by giving them land when they asked
– I conquered steppe land to the west and vassalized Tibetan kingdoms
I wanted to focus on the objectives first, which are :
– 12 bouddhist controlled temples
– 200 counties controlled
– 4 clans like you (rating above 60)
At the beginning, as I didn’t know better at the time, I did not revoke titles from my conquered vassals and wanted everyone to be happy.
I quickly reached the 4 clans liking me objective (first, I made sure there were only 4 clans left. Then I married children into the 4 other clans for a bonus, gave them all equal land, formed a blood pact with one and them, and won wars to make neighbors into tributaries.
Once this was reached, there was no further need for those 4 clans (see next section).
For the temples, my vassalized tibetan lords made enough to reach the objective.
For the 200 counties, see next section.
Late-game playstyle
Then, I experimented a bit with vassal number to optimize my empire :
I started by absorbing all the other clans (quite easy as they usually have only 1 capturable town). I then thought I could keep everything to myself but this was a mistake : when clans are unhappy, until you have 9 vassal clans, you will have huge revolts. I tried fighting them but I lost (they just keep coming with event troops).
What you should do next is let those 9 revolts win immediately by surrendering to them if it happens. The objective here is to always have 9 vassal clans with 1 county each, if possible one with only a few holding slots inside it.
Once you have your 9 clans with one county each, they will hate you but won’t have the strength to do anything about it, and you will not have any more revolt for new clans.
The second thing you have to manage is your land, with this button :
[link]
You must have nothing to pillage when you click on it. If you have something, destroy it with the given action. This will give you a lot of gold and is the source of your tech points.
I systematically destroyed everything and kept nothing, at the end it can be quite tiring.
This is very important because, when you are at war, all these holdings can be captured and used against you. When everything is destroyed, your only holding is your capital, which you can stuff with armies for its protection.
Note that during the holding’s destruction, minor revolts will occur in the area, so always keep an army nearby to deal with them.
The last thing is vassals : upon your death, several vassals will go away : usually one or two clans and some duchies.
The clans are inevitable, I just go back and capture them back (check that their event troops are gone first), and quickly form 2 new clans.
The vassals are easy to avoid : revoke all their titles one by one. You won’t be liked but don’t mind them. Once the title is revoked, destroy all the holdings.
At the end, you get a huge empire which is really easy to control : all cleaned provinces follow your religion and have your culture. They are empty and pose no problems.
Newly conquered provinces are gradually revoked and cleaned, with armies watching for the frequent rebellions.
To conquer new territories, just use the invasion CB. As your territory is huge and feeds your tribe, you can use it nearly non-stop at the end.
After this, the game gets a bit annoying (killing revolts and cleaning holdings takes time), so I went for my achievements and stopped the game.
Economy
For your economy, go for the silk road trading posts, they will get you most of your income.
Also, destroying holdings will get you a huge amount of gold when applied to entire kingdoms.
Here is an example in year 1223 (current year of my game) :
[link]
As you can see, I’m getting more than half of my income from trading posts. The income from cleaning holdings is not shown here, but to give you an idea I currently have 352.000 gold coins. I am spending a lot (one of each wonder in construction). I got the gold from cleaning the holdings from my recently acquired Byzantine Empire and Persian kingdom.
The nomad taxes are used to pay for my army (around 250.000 soldiers in my horde).
I go for several 10.000 soldier stacks which are composed of the most expensive horde/escort units : – archer cavalry 5000
– heavy cavalry 5000
The army heals really fast thanks to my 1.5 million population (as I have nearly all the holdings in my Empire), so it can continuously wage war. Basically, your time is the limit for your conquests here.
Achievements unlocked on this run
Here are the achievements I unlocked on this run (most are specific to horse lords, I already had about 45% of the game’s achievements before) :
One Arrow Alone can be Easily Broken but Many Arrows are Indestructible
As a steppe horde, have a population of 150 000.
Love is a Battlefield
Find love after a duel.
Steppe by Steppe
As a steppe horde, conquer the whole steppe region.
Go West Young Mongol
As a steppe horde, have an independent tributary King or Emperor in the British Isles. Once I started my invasion, they surrendered immediately (huge troop difference I guess + 30.000 soldiers in England starting the war).
Note that, as you have a special horde in this monarch’s journey, some achievements like Wolf blood are not accessible easily. You are not supposed to be able to change culture as a horde. But if you look around on the web you should be able to find a guide for it on forums, which I have not tested and seemed complicated.