Temujin's declaration of war had just given me a green light to go after his civ, one which I intended to take advantage of. Remember, I can't ever declare war myself in this variant, but if someone declares war on me, they have "Chosen Unwisely" and I can remain at war for as long as I like. And I intend to make him pay dearly for his attack. First things first though - here's a shot of the situation on the first turn of the war in 930AD:
One nice thing about this game is that if an AI civs declares on you in the interturn, they can't move any units into your territory until the following interturn (apparently their turn follows the player's turn). That means I have one grace turn until the Mongols show up, and I used that to move some of the units in Paris forward towards Orleans, which I expected to be the target of the initial Mongol aggression. As far as what my cities are building, I need to wait for Paris to finish building the Hanging Gardens before I can have it swap to military, and Orleans is almost done a sword that was intended to head off to the barb front - but which I'll end up keeping the city to be safe. Fortunately, I already had a fair amount of units on hand to deal with the first wave of invaders - several archers, 2 axes, 2 spears, and a sword. Here on Epic, you CANNOT produce units quickly, so you MUST plan ahead of time for combat. No cheap upgrades either. That makes Epic speed the most strategic one of all, where planning dictates success rather than quick thinking. It's a shame that, due to time constraints, almost no Multiplayer games will ever be played on the slower game speeds - that would be a truer test of skill!
The other nice thing about being Creative is that you can see here how my cities' culture completely dominantes the battlefield. I can walk right up to Turfan and Samarqand while Temujin will have to slog his way through jungles to reach my cities. Unfortunately, his keshiks can ignore the terrain, which is a big boost for him. Gonna need more spears, that's for sure. I had no fear of losing either Paris or Orleans, but a naval landing in my backlines could prove problematic, so that was in the back of my mind as I advanced to the next turn.
Click forward to 940AD, and here they come! Several Mongol units charge into my land. A keshik and 3 axes head towards Orleans; looks like I need some more axes too! One of the axes stops to pillage, the other two move forward and attack:
And they all die without doing any damage. Whew. It was very nice that the city the Mongols were attacking happened to be a Holy City with +60% defensive bonus! Orleans is packed with units, as you can see, not much chance of it falling. I have thus survived the first wave, but as you can see, more axes are already on their way.
On the same turn, still in 970AD, my forces in the west remove the barb presence from my subcontinent:
Excellent! No more two-front war to deal with (it's a good thing the Mongols didn't attack earlier, to be honest). Without walls in the city, it was pretty easy for my sword to kill the defenders inside Bantu. And I have a City Raider III sword now too! 
You can bet that he'll be seeing action against Temujin before too much longer.
Still on the same turn in 970AD (a lot going on here) Temujin sends forward his second attack wave - a sneaky naval invasion headed for my back lines! 
The Civ4 AI frequently manages to impress me, as it did again here. There's no way that the Civ3 AI ever could have done something this clever; having seen all the defenders in Orleans, the AI has loaded up four units on galleys and sent them after Rheims, which only has 1 archer inside it. Nasty stuff. Now the ONLY thing that saved me here was the fact that I could see inside the city of Samarqand, and thus I had a good idea that Temujin was preparing for a naval assault. I've arrowed my spears, which are en route to the south, and hopefully will be able to arrive in time. Rheims should also be able to finish a second archer before the Mongols arrive, but 2 archers still will probably lose to those keshiks. I need to get those spears there!
Advance to 980AD, and this is NOT good. The keshiks have already landed and will be able to attack next turn!
What I did here was kill one of the keshiks with the only spearman that could attack; the other one was too slow to reach the horse stack this turn. Now the one good thing is that due to the way the production cycle works, that archer will be completed in Rheims before the Mongols can attack, but I still need at least one of those archer to survive, which is by no means guaranteed. I gritted my teeth at this point and prepared to retake the city with my spears should it fall.
Next turn...
Ha! Instead of attacking, they stopped to pillage for a turn!
He who hestitates is lost.
That was Temujin's best chance to take a city of mine and he blew it. Now it was my turn to strike back. One of my spears killed the keshik to the southeast, another one killed the chariot on the forest, and the final one suicided itself against the archer in Rheims. I used my worker in the area to quickly repair the pillage damage. The threat was now over, and I began gearing up for my own offensive.
Before getting into that, however, let me display the large map from 1000AD:
You can't see it here, but I just finished the Hanging Gardens this turn in Paris, giving my cities a nice boost in population (your cities grow SO slowly on Epic speed that it was a big deal indeed). With Paris done with the wonder, I can now shift it onto military units, and Lyons and Tours will also go onto military as well once I have them finish up their current infrastructure projects. Marseilles, Bantu, and Kushans are all long-term projects at the moment, requiring extensive worker development, but they should be strong commercial cities down the road. By this point, I've killed all of Temujin's offensive forces. Now my own war machine is cranking up and I'm about to take the offensive.
Also of note is that in 1000AD Monty declares war on Temujin! Go at it, boys! The two paranoid maniacs can't stand each other any more than they can stand me. This is like watching Hitler and Stalin go at it in 1941. 
I get another Great Prophet on the next turn in Paris, my third Great Person and third Prophet. It's not a hard decision to decide what to do with this one:
I need courthouses in the worst way, and this Prophet knocked out Code of Laws for free. Deal! Now I could have my outlying cities switch in courthouse builds between some military ones and stop bleeding out so much cash in maintenance costs. Looks like all these wonders plus that "accidental" Parthenon were doing me some good after all.
I spent the next few turns building up an attack force, adding some more axes and swords mostly along with the occasional spear. I continued to see some more keshiks, but the major attacks seemed to be over. At the same time, from what I could see, Monty was really hitting Temujin hard with horse archers. Keep it up guys! Who would have thought Monty would turn out to be my ally? After I finished Construction in 1025AD, I was able to build some cats as well, and their completion was the sign to really begin the offensive in earnest. That led to this shot in 1035AD:
Note first of all that a marauding keshik killed one of my spears and captured two of my workers from me - I would never get them back either (blah). As far as the main fighting, there are only two defenders in Turfan, and lots and lots of Aztec horse archers incoming. Whether or not I was ready to attack, it was time to take the city! Battle of Turfan proceeds as follows: City Raider III sword kills archer, Combat I axe loses to spear (due to city defenses, of course), Combat I sword cleans up the injured spear. I take Turfan for my first conquest of the game. Nyah nyah Monty, you came away empty-handed. 
Well, evidently Monty was ticked off at his failure to get Turfan, because on the following turn in 1040AD he declared war on me too! Eep!
That's... uh, that's not what I was looking for. Now all those Aztec horse archers you saw in the last picture weren't helping me, they were battering away at the newly captured city of Turfan to take it away from ME! Fortunately, I already had a lot of spears on hand to defend the Mongol keshiks, and they provded to work just as well against those Aztec horse archers. A bunch of them suicided against a Combat II/Formation spear that I had, and that pretty much ended any immediate threat to Turfan. I stationed an axe and two spears along with an archer there and began moving my main stack to the east to head for the Mongol capital.
The thing that really helped me was that Monty was still going after Temujin just as much as he was attacking me. The following picture should give you a good idea of that, as it shows the horse battles taking place around Karakorum:
Mongol keshiks and Aztec horse archers continue to duel on the plains of Karakorum; some of the units on both sides were killing each other almost every turn, and Monty had pillaged Temujin pretty hard too. I had no intention of trying to take any Aztec cities at the moment, so even though I remained at war with Monty until he agreed to talk with me, he continued to help me despite our state of war. Very odd stuff here.
With his country exhausted by war, Temujin now came to me begging for peace in 1055AD. Nope, no dice - you have chosen unwisely, remember? Good move by the AI though, asking for peace when its forces were almost completely depleted. I discover Currency and the extra trade routes really had a noticeable effect on my economy; on to Monarchy and Feudalism next.
Samarqand was the logical next target on the road to Karakorum. I make my attack in 1080AD, and the battle goes as follows: suicide cats charges in and dies. City Raider III sword dies in a bad roll of the dice (I had odds to win, but then again the city was on a hill). City Raider II sword kills axe. Spear kills keshik, spear kills keshik #2. Cat kills the last archer to take the city!
Ordinarily I would probably have razed this city, but by rule I had to keep it, so of course I did. Crammed in between Orleans and Karakorum, it was unlikely Samarqand would amount to much, but at least it could serve as a fishing village. With this city taken, the road was now cleared to make an assault on Karakorum itself.
On the following turn war weariness spiked up, forcing a need to up the luxury rate. Oh wait, I don't have Drama yet - so I trade Code of Laws to Gandhi for Drama, in what was more or less an even trade. That allowed me to turn up luxuries to 10% and deal with the unhappiness. I was also finally able to get peace straight-up with Monty, allowing me to focus exclusively on Temujin. I haven't forgotten this though, Monty - your time will come some other day. For now, I had to focus on eliminating the Mongols completely while I had them on the run.
My forces moved up to attack Karakorum:
On the same turn I had finished Chichen Itza in Lyons, for wonder #6 of the game, not that I was particularly worried about anyone taking my cities now. You can see that Temujin had no more than an axe and a bunch of archers in Karakorum, so my stack prepared to attack. First, a horse archer dies but cripples the top axe defender. Then the City Raider II sword kills an archer (gotta love those swords, they're city-busting specialists!) Horse archer kills archer, axe kills archer. Woodsman II axe kills the crippled axeman, to take the Mongol capital!
Temujin's last axe is back-flipping for joy above. Checking on the negotiations screen, I could see that Temujin had two cities left at this point. I didn't know where they were, but since the Aztecs were to the north, they must be to the east. As soon as my forces finished healing, they headed out of Karakorum and began marching further east in search of the fugitive khan. Meanwhile, Gandhi declared war on Temujin too in 1120AD. AI dogpile in progress!
Here's my forces trekking through the jungles to the east of Karakorum in a long column:
Lots of Aztecs horse archers still running around too, and even an Indian archer now on the scene too as Gandhi tries to jump in at the last minute and reap some of the spoils. Temujin has a lot of archers in Ning-Hsia, but as soon as my cats get there and bring down the city defenses, he's done for.
My Woodsman II axe has gone further ahead to scout out Temujin's last city, and look what he finds there - Temujin's in trouble!
This is the very picture of "biting off more than you can chew"! That city may have a spear and city walls, but there's no way that it's going to be able to hold out against all those horse archers and Gandhi's elephant. I guess nobody likes Temujin - what a shame.
Outside Ning-Hsia, I mount a major attack in 1165AD, but end up one unit short of taking the city. Nuts! I'm left with one archer still alive in the Mongol city but no attacks remaining on my units. That was a mistake on my part, I attacked prematurely and ended up not having enough units to get the job done. 
I hoped that maybe the city would survive for a turn and I could take it then, but no such luck:
The Aztecs razed both of the remaining Mongol cities in 1170AD and that was the end of Temujin. Well, good riddance! Aside from some minor weed on my part at the end of the fight, it had been a highly profitable war. I gained significant territory and saw the elimination of one of my main rivals. Of course now I was losing money at 50% science, so it was time for a thorough round of infrastructure builds to repair the damage and integrate the Mongol lands into my civ. This game's still only just getting started - plenty more turns to play ahead.
