******************************************************************************* Genghis Khan II - Clan of the Gray Wolf - PC; SEGA Genesis, SuperNintendo Walkthrough ver 1.1 by Orion79/Mattia Loy e-mail address: orpheananger@hotmail.com Index: AS - General Notes, notes about Genghis Khan IV 1 - General advices that complete game manual: 1) Values: real effects for rulers and generals. 2) Improving a nation 3) Merchants - differences among the 4 kinds. 4) Policy - what generals do and effects of entrusting them. 5) Generals - how to hire, how to use them. 6) Military units: descriptions and general hints. 7) Creating a good army. 8) Training and weapons. 9) Conquering a Land 10) Fighting: managing fights among units and leading legion on the battlefield. 11) Generating sons and daughters. 2 - Scenarios: starting hints and description of all rulers. 1) Mongol Conquest 2) Genghis Khan 3) Yuan Dynasty 4) World Conquest 3 - Cheats *** General notes *** AS: English is not my mother tongue so I apologize in advance if something is not written in the best way. Still, I'm sure that the info in this guide may be a great help to better play and understand such a lovely game. Genghis Khan II is one of the few very good strategy games ever made for SEGA MegaDrive/Genesis or Super NES/Nintendo/FamiCom, often underestimated with no reason. It is a very old game, but I recommend this game to everybody that loves strategy games, because it has some very original concepts that has never been developed again in modern games, and it is still very funny to play, regardless of its old age :) Sega MD/Genesis version has a pretty different graphic interface, but the contents and game mechanics are exactly like the Nintendo version, that is equal to the PC (x86/Dos) version. Since it is one of my most favorite games ever, together with Civilization, I wrote this guide since the original manual is not exhaustive and I want to help players to better understand some mechanics of this historical game, that is based on few, easy concepts that may still lead to deep strategy choices. Since this game is pretty old, it is possible to find this game as abandonware. I found a copy of this game at GamingDepot.com but it seems it has been removed. Don't ask me to send you a copy of this game but, if you really can't get the old PC version, or your Operating System does not support the game anymore, check emulation sites or P2P managers (emule, bearshare, kazaa ...) for a Super Nintendo/NES/FamiCom emulator and "Genghis Khan II" ROM to play with, since, as I already wrote, it is equal to the PC version, except for the fact that it allows only two players per time. and play with it instead. Even if I've always been a SEGA fan, I must admit that fights among UNITS (not legions) in SEGA version are tedious and terribly slow so that, if you just want to enjoy the game, SuperNES version is better under this point of view. I've also hear that there is a SEGA CD version of this game, with a highly better sound and the same Genesis graphic, but I've never been able to find it even as SEGA CD ROM. *** Note about Genghis Khan IV *** If you are wondering, after Genghis Khan II, Koei even made Genghis Khan III and IV, but they have never been translated in english and are available somewhere in the web only in original asiatic language (I guess chinese, korean or japanese) and are just impossible to play due to language limits. I've hear that it is possible to improve the game experience using Chinese Star or similar software, but I never understood how to do so. If you can provide useful information, please mail me at the mail above, thanks. **********************************General advices****************************** 1) Values real effects under a Ruler or general's point of view. # Political Ability (Polit.): it is how many body points (BP) you need to execute orders. The higher, the less you spend for each action. For generals, it represent how smart they are in taking their own political decisions and how well they execute your commands. Usually a "C" is enough, but even a strong general with a low political ability supported by a good advisor can work well as a governor. # War: it is how quickly you can train troops and how much damage you do when you lead a military unit in battle. I suggest you to lead units whenever you fight with your own legion, if you have a C or more. if you do so, that unit will win all the fights with units of the same kind, and even against the ones that are a bit stronger than yours. About generals, it lightly reduces the chance that they die in battle as well randomness while delegating the leadership of a legion. In battle it is almost useless, since generals almost never lead unit themselves, except if they lead a legion with no more than 1 unit left or if you lead all battles by yourself. # Leadership: this is a bonus related to the number of the commands you can give to other legions during battle and how quickly your units will recover from an ambush. Characters with a D or E will always have one order for each turn, but they'll take a penalty when they'll try to cumulate unspent points from previous turns. So, an A means +2, a B means +1, D -1 and E -2. This is a very important attribute, since it represent how well generals lead units and helps to reduce the damages from ambuscades. # Charisma: this is related to various things. Higher the charisma, less rebellions you'll suffer in your nation, if you have poor and not loyal people, and less generals will proclaim independence from your empire. More, it will help in battle when talking to other rules for a truce or similar actions. Remember that the computer is a dump, and you'll have to ask a question several times before obtaining the results that you want. A general with high charisma will lightly increase soldier's morale, will be more effective as messenger, will be more resistant against threats and will be more reluctant to betray you, but even generals with high charisma may declare independence if you appoint them as governor of a nation with a very big army. 2) Improving a nation. Land resources - Almost all the politics in the game are crappy. A nation can't survive on its own with less than 30% in buildings. It represent not only the power of your defenses, but mainly the power of your economy. I usually set it to 40%, 50% for some very important nations like my starting nation. The rest is up to you. Farming gives you more food than herding, but farming is related to the change of seasons, while herding is not. You should balance those resources relating to the kind of region and its climate, as you can easily image. Remember that all the nations will have higher values if they have a large population. Nations like Dzungaria are weak because they have a very low population (2000). You may highly increase a nation's power discarding low-cost mercenaries in it, to increase the population number, and keeping the loyalty of your people at 100%. If it is lower than 100%, the gold from taxes and the food from farming that the nation will give you will be reduced as well. Specialties - All nations produces specialties. Some are crappy, some other may make you rich. Regardless of this, keep at least 5% of the people making the specialty. Furs, for example, have the same value of Food, but they are stored together with other specialties and you can sell them regardless of where you are. More, when you have more than one kind of merchant in your land, you can buy one kind of specialty from the cheapest one and immediately sell it to another other one, if the second kind of merchant will buy it at an higher price. A sample is buying silk or spices from Chinese and selling it to Venetians: you can double your gold in a turn, but be sure to have enough body points left for trading. My usual combination is the following: F30% H15% S15% B40%; or F10% H40% S10% B40% for arid, dry zones but those combinations may not be universally good. 3) Merchants They come from four different areas: Europe, North Africa, Central Asia and China. Each of them has a different trading price for each specialty, so that each of them will buy/sell a specific specialty to a unique rate. This trading "rate" influences only specialties and weapons, but not units nor food. Chinese are usually the cheapest, followed by Islamic. Uighurs and Venetians, instead, are usually the most expensive. Each type of them will sell mercenaries from their own region and will carry mercenaries from your starting nation. Regardless of their homeland, each merchant will always allow you to hire mercenaries from your own homeland: samurai if you play with Japan, Mongols if you play with Mongolia... sadly, no elephants if you play with Dheli sultanate. The advantage of hiring mercenaries is that they are more trained than the units that you may hire from your local population and that, doing so, you don't reduce the total population of your nation. Drafting, in fact, decreases population, makes population more angry and decreases agricultural and economical values. 4) Policy You need to have an advisor in each nation to rule it as you want. For this purpose, an advisor must have at least a C in Politic. When you declare a new policy for a region, set it as you want, but remember that the governor will take an entire turn to change the allocation of laborers and will do only what you told him, nothing more. Even more, governors with a policy will do only what you tell them to do. So, if you order one of your generals to enhance the quality of his military units, that ruler will train them, maybe will buy weapons but won't hire any new unit (and it is better if you do it by yourself). As well, it is possible to set a foreign policy as "threatening" and, in this case, your general will keep threatening adjacent foreign regions for moneys and, sometimes, even having them to surrender to you! But, in this way, that general will never use his army to invade another nation, if you don't order him to do so. This is the most secure way to rule lands, since you can't trust your own generals. If you entrust them, delegating policy and allowing them to do what they want, they may invade other nations, without leaving enough units for defense, they may loose a battle wasting precious units, or even die in it. Not a good deal! You may delegate commands only to your relatives (sons, brothers or married generals), or to generals that rule over nations in the inner parts of your empires, far away to enemy borders, but there is always the chance that, if they hire too many units, they will turn against you, declaring independence from your empire even if they have a high Charisma. 5) Generals. You can find good ones if you seek for them in your own nation. Italy has Marco Polo, England has Robin Hood and so on... Except than in the mongol conquest scenario, where there are more than one good general per region, you will eventually obtain the best available general whenever you conquer a new nation, while you have to spend time to find the best one in your starting nation, since there is a high randomness in the general that you may find with the option "hire a new general". The same happens if a nation surrenders to you. If you are in short of generals, a good way to obtain new ones is to create fake attacks, splitting your army in 5 legions, each with one single unit. Attack one of the adjacent reigns, do not carry food or gold and then retreat immediately: you'll be forced to assign your generals to the very first units but new, random generals will be automatically assigned to legions when you can't assign a general to them. Often, those random generals have pretty good values, at least a "B" in "War" or "leadership". Another way is to assign a crappy general that you have to a defenseless nation, wait until the AI attacks it, then invade it again. You may be lucky and find a very good new general in that same land, created randomly by the game. You can't trust any general. They can always betray you, especially the ones with an higher "lead" ability. If someone does, simply load a previous game. You have to know that, regardless of a general's charisma, if that general has been a king before, he will always betray you again as soon as he can. You can place them as advisors instead, for nations ruled by one of your relatives, otherwise they will still "suggest" the actual governor to declare independency. Having good generals is very important in the game: dump people will waste your time, often forcing you to repeat invasions, because one of them may declare independency in the same turn in which you conquered another region. 6) Military units There is not a lot to say. Mongols are the strongest of all, followed by Samurai and Arabian Mounted Archers. Mamelukes are very good too. Knights are expensive and not so strong as they should be. Yes, they have a very powerful charge and are quite well armored against arrows, but their "C" in attack (melee fighting skill) makes them very vulnerable against units with a B-class attack rate. Even pikemen or heavy infantry may be a threat for knights! Elephants are simply great, if you don't use them. They are so slow that you could end a fight without reaching the enemy, especially in the Genesis version of the game. Give them instead to other generals and opt for faster units like nomads, if you can't afford better ones. Do not underestimate heavy infantry and shortbow archers. For the records, crossbowmen are better than longbow men and heavy infantry is better than pikemen, since they are faster, more resistant to arrows and charges. Still pikemen may be effective while charging against units with a low defense score. Cannons and catapults simply suck, but they have some interesting ability. Cannons may create confusions in opponent's ranges just shooting balls, stunning units and making them very vulnerable to charges. So, they can be devastating if flanked by knights, while catapults ignore the defensive bonus from fortifications. Some general hints. Archers have a big limit: when they end ammos, they become useless but they can give a precious advantage to melee units. If you are not using Mongols, samurai or similar units, it is always a good idea to create units yourself, using two ranged units and two melee units (heavy infantry and longbow men, mamelukes and mounted archers and so on). This is especially true if you will lead the fights by yourself, otherwise, if you already plan to delegate the fights to your general, caring only about moving legions on the battlefield, it is better to create legions using only melee units. You'll suffer less losses. Generally, fast units with arrows are stronger than units without them, because they can weaken opponents, gaining a great advantage outnumbering them. In fact, a unit's power is related to the quantity of men inside it and a legion that already suffered losses will be unable to win against another unit of the same kind or sometimes even lightly weaker, that has plenty of soldiers. Unfortunately, it is not the same for slow units, like longbows and crossbows: since they are slower, they can shoot less arrows in a round and always need pikemen or heavy infantry to defend themselves, otherwise they will be slaughtered very easily. I wonder why AI always places ranged units in first line, having them to move IN FRONT OF melee units, instead than the opposite. Defense value by fact reduces all damages by every source and helps units from being stunned by other charging units. Still, it is a secondary value that is not effective as the attack score. By fact, crossbowmen are stronger than longbow men and always kill them in a 1 vs. 1 match, even if they are supposed to be balanced (Attack D + Defense E vs. Attack E + Defense D). 7) Creating a good army. In all regions, there are a lot of different units. Try to use all of them for a balanced army. It is possible to win the war with very few loss even if your army is based upon chap units, but your legions are well balanced. Longbows and heavy infantry inside city walls may win the first round against mamelukes or knights, giving time to your other legions to aid you. Try to hire the right number of units that the computer will automatically mix in the best way. For example, the computer "thinks" that longbows are stronger than heavy infantry, so it will automatically create a 4 longbows legion, if you have 4 or more of them. Instead, if you have 6 knights, 4 longbows and 2 pikemen, you'll automatically get the archers mixed both with knights and pikemen, in the best combination. This really saves a lot of time. 8) Training and weapons. Both are important, but the thing that gives more advantage in battle are the weapons. They are not only the number of arrows that units can shoot, but they boost the damage that your units deal even in melee fight. Training influences the damage as well, and untrained units will mainly get confused easier. 9) Conquering a Land That's easy: make an army, invade a land and smash all units.. or no? NO! There is a better way. If you are sure you are much more stronger than another nation, you can send your best general and demand that that nation will surrender. It is useless if you threat a royal-family member or a king with more than one land. Even on the battlefield, it may happen that you defeat all enemy's legion but the first one, then it is worthy of to send one of your undamaged legions to weaken enemy's legion 1, then demand submission until your opponent surrenders. It may take several rounds and will never happen as long as enemy has at least one more legion left. Instead, if you are on the battlefield, your main objective is to smash enemy's main legion: the one with the king. If you do so, you may capture the other ones and add them to your army for free!! This may happen when the Legion 1 flees the battlefield before than the other ones too, or when you capture all enemy cities. 10) Fighting: managing fights among units and leading legion on the battlefield Especially at the very beginning of the game, you may be forced to lead units yourself and care about the fights. While doing so, if your king or general has an attack value equal to C or better, it gives you really a great advantage if he takes the command of the strongest of available units. It will increase its endurance and damage dealt. Another hint is to place your units so that two or more of them can attack the same enemy unit at the same time, weakening it faster and highly reducing the losses among your men, that will prove to be very useful especially if you can't defeat enemy's legion in one single turn. Always try to protect your archers and always move your units so that the most damaged ones may retreat behind the most healthy ones. NEVER put your units into a single line, closing all possible ways to retreat. it is better not to end a fight in a turn than to loose expensive units. Another side of the game is manage legions in the world map. When invading another nation, you may even want to assign to yourself a legion composed only by one single, crappy unit like a longbow, and assign all other units to your generals, if your army is big enough. This may lead to very good results later in the game, saving time and allowing you to enjoy the most strategic side of the game. Still, there are some things that it is better to know, that I'm going to explain with an example. What follows represent a battlefield. *** ** C: city *****C**** *:forest ****AL1***** L: legion ****C**** A: enemy legion hided for ambush ^*X This is very close to the french battlefield, with the main legion, L1, fortified at Paris (I guess ^_^) and with Legion 2 in the nearby forest, ready for an ambuscade. AI (Artificial Intelligence) will usually place its units, so that all its units are in a fortified city or, except legion 1 that is the one leaded by the king, hidden into forests. If enemy legions are NOT hidden, they will attack any other legion that gets too close to AI's Legion 1, otherwise they stay quite and hidden, ready for the ambuscade. The consequences of fall into an ambuscade are terrible, since weak legions will be slaughtered with no mercy, and almost without harming the "sneaky" enemy legion, while strong legions will be severely weakened, and maybe destroyed, wasting the moneys that you spend to build and train them. The reason is that, if a legion moves into one of the squares that adjacent to the legion that is ready for the ambush, that legion will be caught by surprise and the units in it will start the fight already stunned, randomly placed in the screen and unable to defend themselves. There are three ways to defeat this strategy. 1 - You can send a legion leaded by a general with a high leadership score, even better if you lead that army by yourself. Even bad weather may help, since it reduces the length of a fight (the available rounds). 2 - Otherwise, you can do what follows. You know that AI's legions will attack your legions if they get too close to AI's Legion 1. If all of the AI's legions are hided instead, they will attack the closest legion of yours, that "touches" AI's legion 1, just standing in a square adjacent to it. So, you can send one of your legions, better a thought one, into a square that is NOT adjacent to trees or mountains, so that AI's legions will run out from their hiding place to attack your legion but, since there are no trees, they will not be hidden anymore and will be unable to complete the ambuscade. Even more, let's say that, in the map above, X is your legion: if you send it in one of the cities (C), there will be a weird counter-effect: AI's legions will still gain a free "first strike" against your legion, that will still be inside a fortified city, obtaining all the benefits from it, including the main one that prevents units inside a city from being ambushed. As result, your legion will be more resistant and AI's attempt to ambush your unit will fail. If you have other legions, you may move the first unit, the one originally designed to spot the hidden AI's legion, into the city in the south, while the other two units must be placed in the north, near but not adjacent to enemy's Legion 1 so that, when AI's legions move to attack your first legion in the city in the south, as above,, you may order your legions to attack enemy Legion 1, probably moving inside the northern city and destroying Legion 1, so conquering the nation and maybe even capturing the remaining enemy units. Note that, even if your legion is in a city, the hidden AI's legion will probably attack 3 times in the same round, since it is part of the ambuscade's advantages. Another great way to defeat the AI is to prepare a counter-ambuscade: considering where the AI's hidden legion will move to intercept your legions, you may have another legion of yours to hide in a nearby square, so that it will intercept the "intercepting" AI's legion, when your kamikaze legion will move adjacent to AI's legion 1. Ambuscades are a great way for easy victories in GK II. 11) Generating sons and daughters. Spend really a lot of time with your wife, especially if you don't like your sons. Making a lot sex - yeah, it is! - will give you a good successor and many blood brothers that will watch over the borders of your empire. Don't spend time with your family if your sons are ready to became generals or your daughters are ready for marriage, since you have better chances to become father again if you "meet" with your wife (she just has to show up on the screen). Also, spending time with your children won't increase their stats. Arrange marriages with strong generals with low charisma to obtain great and trustworthy rulers. A small hint: if you are playing Temujin or Genghis Khan, you may name your sons as Ugudei, Jagatai, Tului or Kublai (Joti is already born in scenario 1) and they will have the same portrait owned in Genghis Khan scenario instead than a "random" one. ****************************************Scenarios Hints************************ This part describes the four scenarios, giving general starting hints and describing available rulers. You may skip this part, if you play GK II for the first time and don't want to spoil the fun of exploration. 1) Mongol Conquest You have 3 main choices: Mongols, Jardans and Naimans. Tartars are strong, but Thogorul Khan is old and doesn't have a good successor. -Mongols are in a suitable position, have great generals and, of course, the best leader, but few units and especially only 30% of weapons. Merchants are very rare here!!! So if Jardans will invade you and you file with the ambush strategy, you may loose the game. -Jardans have a great leader: Jamuga (all B, 14 body points), good army, good weapons but few generals. -Naimans have 2 lands (great things), many units but the people hate Taya Khan, who's a crappy leader. His son is much better. The Taichiuds (5) and the Merkits (8) are easy to conquer. In few turns, they'll end gold, or a rebellion will break out, wasting of all their weapons (yes, they'll drop to zero, or very close to it). From Onon river (1), you may try to conquer those land with only one legion. Be sure to reach 100& in weapons before invading those lands, or you may loose and, especially, captured units gain the same training and weapons % of your starting army. Back to conquering, when invading 5, try to move your legion in any place after the river and the opponent main legion, while moving the other legion you have, with a shortbow and a light inf., on the other side. Doing so, the AI's legion 2 will try to hit you, but you'll cross the river before that it can hit you and you'll have one whole turn to smash the AI's L1, capturing L2. The same happens when you invade 8, but you must be alone, ambush in the forest and slowly move near L1. Enemy L2 shouldn't see you, and you should attack and destroy L1 capturing again L2. It is a bit risky, because you'll have to leave Onon River with no legions in it... but it rarely happens that other nations will invade you. Naimans are strong, but they are far away and they are the only other empire, except Jardans and tartars, that can represent a threat for you. One strange thing is that in this scenario there is more than one great general in each region. Especially, 5, 6 and 8 has Jebe, Muquali and Subutai. Boroqul is in 9, while Qubilai is in 2. If you don't want to miss them, you'll have to spend a bit of time looking for them. Save and reload a game may be a good strategy, since time is important. Don't promote any of your sons as generals! It will steal free space for the selection of the generals for the next scenario. As historical hint, Jamuga (or Jamuqua) was a Temujin's blood brother, but he betrayed Temujin and, even if they eventually came to pace again and Temujin wished to rejoin with his brother, Jamuga asked for the most honorable, bloodless death (breaking of the bone spine) instead than living as a man without honor. That's why he is your foe and you can't trust him as governor for your lands. 2) Genghis Khan Here we have the old Genghis Khan, the Kamakura Shogunate, Ghuri, the Khorezms, Philip II and the famous John 1st!!! -Genghis K. here is a bit old. I'm not sure you want to play with him here. -Ghuri is the only Indian ruler in the game and has good values, even if 13 BP with only a C in Polit. will make ruling pretty slow. -The Kamakura Shogunate here has a weak Minamoto. Not a great deal. -The Khorezem Empire has good units, a decent son and a crappy ruler. I don't understand why he is a playable ruler. Maybe for a greater challenge... -The same can be told about John! He simply sucks but he is the perfect king for evil players that want to see their people suffering! ^_^ -Philip II is simply amazing. He is the only ruler with an A in Polit. and B in all the other fields. He is placed in a strategic nation too and, more, once one of my sons got A in all stats and 15 BP!!! Hints: Mongols: Dzungaria (2) will certainly surrender to you, if you are playing Mongols. It is a crappy nation, as well as Kao-Chang (7) with Uighur merchants. In 7, there is Tatatonga, a good advisor or ruler for your lands. Even if you have 2 and 7 to surrender to you, and even if you make your best generals as rulers and create a great policy, they still be crappy lands that will certainly be conquered by their neighbors. I suggest you to get all the units from those places and drive them in Mongolia: train them, buy weapons, create a new policy and choose only one of those nations. Then, place Temuge as ruler, with a good quantity of gold and 8 of your best non-mongol units, allowing enemies to conquer the worst of the three regions. Those lands can barely support 8 units and, if you send more, they'll begin to draw moneys from population, eventually causing a civil war or a rebellion. You'll conquer later the dismissed reign. Now, it is time for real invasions! Prepare for war and invade 4: Liaodong. A pretty easy fight, but the units will flee in 5: Hopey. Be sure to keep a free place for Ve-lu Chukai among your generals: he is a great advisor, perfect for Joti. Then attack immediately 5 with only ONE legion with four Mongols. I'm crazy? No: the legions in 5 will be displaced near the border, exactly where you are coming from. Attack AI's legion 1, that you can destroy in 1 turn with no problems, capturing all the others units in the land. Now you have enough units to defend your borders and to attack other nations with a real army. If you conquered Korea, you are in a good place to invade Japan in the same way you conquered 5. You can have a lot of samurai for free! But they are very strong: be careful! Dheli Sultanate: the only advice I can tell you is that, if you send all units in a land, you can force Barrula of the Indian empire to surrender to you, obtaining a lot of free elephants. Otherwise, it will be a bloody battle. You can even move your units passing from a nation to the other, destroying Barrula's legion II to better demand submission the round after. Philip II: France is in a great point of Europe. You can invade England with all your soldiers and try to destroy legion 1 immediately, and so capturing the remaining ones. If they are placed on the left of the map and you came from south, you have to attack with L1 & 2 together to have any chance of victory. When invading Great Britain, enemy's L1 is often fortified in London. If so, you can attack as usual, like when invading Japan or China. After conquering England, you can invade Iberia first, then split your army in 2 parts to conquer Italy and Germany, that will work as a "wall" against enemy invasions, while you conquer Africa and the arabian lands. Or you can invade Spain, leaving France as a stronghold nation. Japan: it is always a strong starting nation, regardless of the ruler. Samurai are the second best available unit in the game (A in attack, no real penalties, pretty fast movement and arrows), Japan may achieve a very high rank in agriculture and in economy, produces silk and sea offers a good natural barrier against invasion, giving you few borders to defend. The only back draw is that, here, you play the young Minamoto, that is not such a great ruler and typhoons may strike Japan quite often. 3) Yuan Dynasty Here you have Youan Dynasty, Kamakura Shogunate with Hojo, Michael the 8th from the Byzantine Empire, Il-Khan Empire with Abaga, The Mameluke Sultanate with Baybars and the Sicilian Kingdom with Charles I of Borbone. Not an easy Scneario: Youan Dinasty with Kublai Khan is the strongest nation, with great generals, troops and so on. They win almost all the times, if you leave the game and ant to see what will go on. It is very funny that there will always be some rebellion inside Youan borders, preventing even the strong Youan Dinasty to conquer the whole world. -Youan Dynasty: Great leader, troops, generals and a strategic situation. Tibet and Mongolia don't have enough units to defend themselves and Nomghan in 7 is too slow and may get economically broken quite easily and often. There is a lot to do to fix your empire before conquering, but Kublai is already old. -Kamakura Shogunate: Hojo has a D in Polit. and is very slow, but strong in battle. -Michael 8th: a real looser. Horrible financial status in his land, no special advantages. A challenging ruler for a hard-level game. -Abaga of the Il-Khan: decent leader, many family members and mongol units can be hired from merchants. His geographical position is very good too, since you can conquer Africa easily. -Baybars from the Mamelukes: good generals, good leader, many units but strong neighbors. -Charles I of the Sicilian kingdom: Italy is the best nation of the game! It has venetian merchants all the time and with F 40% and B50%, it can reach 200% both in farming and economy at the early stages of the game. Charles is not a bad king, even if his successor, Charles II, is nothing special. There is a lot of work to do, but it is worthy of and a challenging game! Hints: -Youan Dinasty: Mangrala in Tibet (9) has 9 extra units that can be sent to the nations that need them. If you attack immediately Hunan (12), you have Tibet with Hgpags-Pa that is no longer at risk of invasions, so you can send units where there is a greater need. You may wait that the foreign nations will declare war each other, then attack from Mongolia and LiaoDong (4) to get new lands, without splitting your army to defend your lands. Japan can be conquered in the way described above. -Kamakura Shogunate. If you are strong enough, you can split your army in 2 parts and conquer both South Korea and the nearest part of China, having a solid base for further expansions. -Abaga: Quarlawn from Mamelukes will attack you as soon as he can, so get ready. If you kill the legion 1, there is a high chance that the other units will be captured. This is a good beginning for further expansions. Still, you need to work a lot on working allocation first and remember that, in such dry lands, you can't invest too much in agriculture. -Baybars: Quarlawn is not a loyal general. If you build a strong army, you can conquer Magreb (17) without loosing too many men. -Sicilian kingdom: make your population happy to quickly increase the economical and agricultural scores of your nation. Then accept as many alliances as you can since, starting from Italy, you'll be in need to conquer many other lands before being able to "close" the edges of your empire, like it happens when conquering England from France or Africa by Spain. Perhaps, it is better to conquer Germany first, then France for further expansion toward Spain and Africa. In Italy, you may hire Marco Polo, that is a good advisor and diplomat. 4) World Conquest Here we have: young Genghis Khan, Minamoto of the Kamakura Shogunate, Isaacius II of the Byzantines, Sal-Al-Dil of the Ayyubis, Frederick I of the Holy Roman Empire and the mighty Richard I, the Lion hart. Hints: -Genghis Khan here is still very young, so that you have more time to develop your strategies before than passing your empire to a successor. Since the geographical situation is almost unchanged, you may follow the same advices described before, for Genghis Khan scenario (n°2). -Minamoto of the Kamakura Shogunate. He is a great leader and Japan is Japan: hard to conquer and with very strong units. The only trouble is that you have only Samurai and, even if they are strong, they are expensive too. Use silk to quickly earn moneys, then conquer China and Korea as described above. -Sal-Al-Dil of the Ayyubis: great leader, even if a bit old. The advices are the same for the Youan Dynasty scenario. -Isacuus II and Frederick I: they are good leaders but not GREAT leaders, they live in lands that are characterized by bad ruling, with terrible stats, and their army is nothing special. There is no much I can tell, except that you just have to create a strong army and keep a lot of units to defend your starting nation. -Richard I: He is a great leader, except for the "small" problem of an "E" in Polit, that I don't understand. He is a strong historical character, famous especially for crusades, but I can't remember any such negative political choice of him to justify such a bad score. Anyway, you can conquer France easily and make Philip I your advisor, getting land advantage almost immediately. I suggest you to let your advisor working for you, creating balanced policy and training units on your own. He is one of the most challenging kings to use, but he is very good in battle. You should even be able to hire Robin Hood as general. A pretty good fighter, but a mediocre leader. ********************************cheats***************************************** Sorry, I never got any cheat for this game. The only, obvious cheat is to play with 4 kingdoms at once in the Dos/Windows version and 2 in the SEGA/NINTENDO version. It is up to you to have your secondary ruler to surrender to your favored one or to use both of them at once, to conquer the whole world, dividing it in two or four balanced parts. Enjoy! Mattia Loy, known as Orion79 Mail me at orpheananger@hotmail.com if you have questions related to the game. Other guides & products: - guide to Genghis Khan II, clan of the gray wolf (SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, PC, Super NES/Nintendo/FAMICOM) - Unofficial patch for Temple of Elemental Evil (ATARI) - MOD for Neverwinter Nights - Revised Animal Compendium & New base rules for D&D 3.5 (Pen & paper game), available at http://www.savefile.com/client/files.php?pid=1084472