To those struggling with the "One City" achievement

[PeanutR]

I just read through the thread about strats for difficult achievements and after scanning through the first couple of pages I noticed a vital tip missing.

You are allowed to capture cities.

The achievement itself is called "Power never takes a step back" which I believe refers to the population hit a city takes from building settlers or somesuch.

I got my "Power never takes a step back" achievement the first time I played as the Mongols despite capturing several barbarian huts (which turns them into 1 pop cities for those that don't know). I then proceeded to go for culture and flipped a few enemy cities too, but with the +50% trade from captured cities the Mongols would probably be even better at economic victory.

So, if you don't feel like cheaping out and getting your achievement from Alpha Centauri this is what I did:

-Picked the Mongols
-Switched to full hammers for the first couple of warriors (this delays your tech sure, but those captured cities are only 1 pop and need as many turns to grow as possible, you could keep it on balanced to have a better chance of staying in the tech race tho)
-Research: Pottery -> Masonry -> Irrigation
-Carry on as you like.

Doing this I had my capital(walled) and 3 one population cities by the time I hit Irrigation for the +1 pop per city bonus, which was pretty neat.

Hope this helps and hasn't been posted too many times before

PS: I don't know if you are allowed to settle a new city with your free settlers, I used mine to boost the best placed city I had captured from the barbarians, which must've been allowed.

[KrashKrunal]

It's far easier to simply play the game on the Beta Centauri scenario. You can't lose it even on deity difficulty.

[PeanutR]

It's far easier to simply play the game on the Beta Centauri scenario. You can't lose it even on deity difficulty.

Yeah, I've seen people post as much, which is why I mentioned it in my post. The point of this post was to point out that:

a) You can capture cities and still get the achievement.
b) The Mongol "barbarian villages join us" can be useful.
c) Provide an example starting strategy for achieving a & b.

It's actually a half decent start for any kind of victory with the Mongols, even if it is pretty obvious