AoE2 Mongols Guide: Mangudai, Build Orders & Strategy

Q: What is the best Mongols build order?

On Arabia, Scouts into Mangudai. Hunt deer first, since Mongol hunters work 40% faster, then click Feudal around 21 population and raid with three or four Scouts. The early bonuses expire by the Castle Age, so the lead has to be converted into pressure. With a good deer cluster, a Fast Castle straight into Mangudai arrives around 16:00.

Q: Are the Mongols good for beginners?

They are the most-played civilization but not the most forgiving. The bonuses reward early scouting, deer hunting and constant hit-and-run micro with fragile units, and the tech tree lacks Ring Archer Armor and Plate Barding Armor, so standing and fighting is punished.

Q: Why do Mangudai die so fast?

A Mangudai has 60 hit points and 0 to 1 pierce armour, and the Mongols have no Ring Archer Armor to improve it. Elite Skirmishers, Camel Riders and Spearmen all punish them. The Elite upgrade removes the projectile delay so they can attack, retreat and re-engage without losing shots.

Q: Are the Mongols good on Arena?

No. Behind walls the Mongols cannot raid or hunt deer and the scout line's extra line of sight is worthless. The best plan is a Castle Age Mangudai and Mangonel push followed by Drill in the Imperial Age to move siege across the middle intact.

Q: How do you beat the Mongols?

Mass Elite Skirmishers, which the Mongols cannot answer without Ring Archer Armor, and add Camel Riders plus Spearmen near villagers. Then exploit their Monastery, the worst in the game, since Monks convert Mangudai permanently and the Mongols have no Redemption or Block Printing. Closed maps and long Imperial games favour the opponent.

Q: Mangudai or Cavalry Archers?

Usually both. Mangudai are the anti-siege specialist and the better raider because the Elite upgrade fires instantly, but cost 65 gold each. Heavy Cavalry Archers are cheaper, share the 25% fire rate bonus and have the full upgrade line including Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics.

What you actually get

Civilization bonusesMongγol

Three bonuses and a team bonus, all of them about speed — gathering faster, firing faster, seeing further. Read the numbers carefully, because every one of them has been nerfed from what older guides still print.

Hunters work 40% faster

The fastest Dark Age in the game when the map has deer. It was 50% once and was cut to 40%, so builds written before that nerf push a few seconds too hard.

Cavalry Archers fire 25% faster

Applies to Cavalry Archers, Heavy Cavalry Archers and the Mangudai. This went up from 20%, which is the one change in your favour — and it is why a Mangudai ball out-damages its own stat sheet.

Scout line and Steppe Lancers +20/30% HP

In the Castle and Imperial Ages respectively. The Castle Age figure was cut from 30% to 20%, so your Castle Age Scouts and Steppe Lancers are noticeably less tanky than older guides claim.

Team bonus: Scout line +2 line of sight

Often called the best early team bonus in the game. You and every ally find sheep sooner, locate boar faster, and scout the enemy base earlier. It costs the opponent tempo before a single soldier exists.

Unique unit

Mangudai → Elite

A cavalry archer with a large bonus against siege weapons. The Elite upgrade removes its projectile delay entirely, which is what makes it the best hit-and-run unit in the game — it fires the instant you click, so it never loses a shot to movement.

55 wood · 65 gold · trains at the Castle

Castle Age unique tech

Nomads

Destroyed Houses keep their population space. Honest assessment: this is widely considered one of the weakest unique technologies in the game. It matters when you are being raided hard and almost never otherwise.

Situational at best

Imperial Age unique tech

Drill

Siege Workshop units move 50% faster. This is the one. Rams and Onagers that travel at something close to cavalry pace turn a siege push into a raid, and it is the single most distinctive thing the civilization does.

A first or second Imperial click on any siege plan

The holy trinity

Mangudai, Hussar, Siege Onager

Nearly every Mongol Imperial game converges on these three, with Drill researched. Mangudai kill siege, Hussars soak and chase, Onagers break clumps — and all three move fast enough to arrive together.

Add Heavy Cavalry Archers against archer civs

The unique unit, in numbers

Mangudaimangγudai

A cavalry archer built to delete siege weapons, with an Elite upgrade that removes its firing delay altogether. Fragile, expensive, and the reason people pick this civilization.

Castle Age · trains at the Castle

Mangudai

60 HP · 6 attack · 0/0 armour

55 wood, 65 gold.

Imperial Age · Elite upgrade

Elite Mangudai

60 HP · 8 attack · 1/0 armour

No projectile delay — fires instantly.

Mangudai, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Stat	Mangudai	Elite
Hit points	60	60
Attack	6	8 +2
Armour	0 / 0	1 / 0 +1
Bonus vs siege	Large	Larger
Projectile delay	Yes	None — instant
Cost	55W 65G	55W 65G
Fire rate bonus	+25% (civ)	+25% (civ)
Ring Archer Armor	Unavailable	Unavailable

The Elite upgrade is not a damage upgrade, it is a micro upgrade. Removing the projectile delay means an Elite Mangudai fires the moment you order it, so you lose nothing when you attack-move, back off, and attack again. Against a player who cannot micro back, that is worth far more than the +2 attack. Two things to keep in front of you: the Mongols have no Ring Archer Armor, so your Mangudai stay at 0–1 pierce armour all game and melt to Skirmishers faster than any other civilization's cavalry archers; and they are 60 HP for 65 gold, which makes every careless engagement expensive. They are a raiding and anti-siege tool, not a line unit.

Strong against

Every siege weapon in the game — this is the best anti-siege unit there is. Also strong against infantry, Monks and anything slow enough that hit-and-run works.

Weak against

Skirmishers above all, plus Camel Riders, Spearman-line and Genitours. Massed Arbalests out-trade them, and with no Ring Archer Armor you have no way to close that gap.

Honest assessment

Strengths and weaknessessöng ba dutaγu

A genuinely top-tier civilization with one of the worst tech trees in the game. Both of those statements are true at once, and playing the Mongols well means knowing which half you are living in.

Strengths

The fastest Dark Age in the game Hunters working 40% faster turns every deer on the map into a tempo lead, and the scout line's +2 line of sight means you find that food before anyone else does.
The best anti-siege unit in AoE2 The Mangudai exists to delete Mangonels, Rams and Bombard Cannons. No other unit does that job as efficiently, and the Elite upgrade's instant fire makes it nearly untouchable to slow units.
Siege that moves like cavalry Drill gives Siege Workshop units +50% movement speed. A Mongol Ram or Onager arrives with the raiders instead of trailing two minutes behind — no other civilization can do this.
Excellent trash wars Hussars with +30% hit points in Imperial are among the best in the game, which matters enormously against civilizations that lack Halberdier upgrades of their own.
A team bonus everyone wants +2 line of sight on the scout line for the whole team, from minute zero. Widely rated the strongest early team bonus in AoE2.
Full Cavalry Archer tree Heavy Cavalry Archer, Thumb Ring, Parthian Tactics — all available, all firing 25% faster than anyone else's.

Weaknesses

The worst Monastery in the game Missing five technologies, including Redemption, Sanctity, Block Printing, Illumination and Theocracy. Against Aztecs or Spanish in a Monk war, a converted Mangudai is gone permanently and you have no answer.
No Ring Archer Armor, no Plate Barding Armor Your Mangudai, Cavalry Archers, Hussars and Cavaliers are all more fragile than they look. This is the single biggest reason Mongol armies evaporate when the micro slips.
No Halberdier and no Gambesons Your infantry stops at Pikeman and Champion-without-Gambesons. Against Paladins and elephants you answer with Camels and Mangudai, because the usual answer is not available.
A mediocre mid-game The hunting bonus has expired, the Mangudai is expensive, and nothing else has come online yet. The Castle Age is where Mongol games are lost.
No Bombard Cannon, no Bombard Tower, no Keep Defensively thin and short of late siege options. Siege Onagers carry the department, and Architecture is missing too, so your buildings are weaker than standard.
Closed maps neutralise most of it Behind walls you cannot raid, cannot hunt, and the scouting bonus means nothing. Arena and Black Forest are genuinely bad Mongol maps.

Arabia first, because that is where they belong

Mongols build order guidebütegülkü

Arabia is 43% of all ranked games and it is the map the Mongols were designed for — open ground, deer to hunt, and villagers to raid. The Arabia build leads. The Arena build is included because you will be handed the map eventually, and it needs a different plan entirely. Villager numbers are cumulative — villager 11 is your eleventh, counting the three you start with.

A Mongol ger, the portable felt tent, in Age of Empires II

Feudal at ~21 pop Scouts out by ~9:30 Difficulty medium Map Arabia and open maps

Before anything
Scout with your +2 line of sight advantage. You see sheep, boar and deer earlier than your opponent does — find the deer especially, because they are worth far more to you than to anyone else.
Villagers 1–6
Two houses, then all six to sheep.
Villagers 7–10
To wood with a Lumber Camp.
Villager 11
Lure the first boar.
Villager 12
House, then a Mill — on deer if there is a cluster within reach, otherwise berries. Deer are the whole point: your hunters work 40% faster than anyone else's.
Villagers 13–16
Onto the deer or berries, and lure the second boar with one of them. Keep the Town Center producing without pause.
Villagers 17–19
Food under the Town Center, then farms. Build the Stable with a wood villager.
Villagers 20–21
To gold with a Mining Camp — you will need it for the Castle sooner than most builds.
Feudal Age
Loom, then click up at ~21 pop. Scouts the moment you land — three or four.
In Feudal
Raid continuously. Your Scouts have the line of sight to find villagers before the defender finds your Scouts. Add a Blacksmith and start walling behind you.
Castle Age
Castle and continuous Mangudai. Add a second Town Center. Your Scouts upgrade to Light Cavalry and keep raiding — they have +20% hit points now.
The transition
Mangudai plus Light Cavalry is the Castle Age army. Never stand and fight: attack, pull back, re-engage. Against Skirmishers, do not engage at all — go around them and kill something else.
Imperial
Elite Mangudai first, then Drill, then Siege Onagers and Hussars. That is the composition that closes almost every Mongol game.

Why this build and not a greedier one: the Mongol hunting bonus is a Dark Age bonus and the scouting bonus is a Dark and Feudal Age bonus. Both have expired by the Castle Age, and the Mangudai is expensive. If you do not convert that early lead into damage, you arrive in the Castle Age with a mediocre economy, a fragile unit and one of the weakest tech trees in the game. Raid with the Scouts even if you kill nothing — forcing walls and idle Town Center time is the payoff.

Playing the civ, age by age

AoE2 Mongols strategiesbaiça

Mongol games are front-loaded and back-loaded with a soft middle. You are ahead in the Dark Age, vulnerable in the Castle Age, and dangerous again in Imperial once Drill lands.

Age I–II

Spend the lead

~9:30 – 16:00

Both your early bonuses are live and both expire. Hunt the deer — 40% faster gathering makes a cluster worth far more to you than to the opponent — and use the +2 line of sight to scout their base before they scout yours.

Then convert it into pressure. Three or four Scouts raiding is the standard conversion. Even when you kill nothing, forcing walls and idle Town Center time is the payoff, and you need it: your Castle Age is the weakest part of the game.

Hunt deerScout early3–4 Scouts raidingWall behind

Age III

The soft middle

~16:00 – 26:00

The honest weak point. Your bonuses have expired, the Mangudai costs 55 wood and 65 gold for 60 hit points, and nothing in the tech tree is helping. Mangudai plus Light Cavalry, raiding constantly, is the plan — and Light Cavalry now carry +20% hit points.

Steppe Lancers are a real alternative here and share the hit point bonus. Whatever you build, never stand and trade: Mongol units are fragile and you have no armour upgrades coming to fix that.

MangudaiLight CavalrySteppe LancerMangonelRaid, never brawl

Age IV

Drill and the holy trinity

26:00 +

Elite Mangudai, then Drill. The Elite upgrade removes the projectile delay, making hit-and-run nearly lossless, and Drill makes your siege travel at something close to cavalry speed. Add Siege Onagers and Hussars and that is the army.

Take Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics — both available. Accept what is missing: no Bombard Cannon, no Ring Archer Armor, no Halberdier, no Plate Barding Armor. Your Hussars are excellent in a trash war despite that, thanks to +30% hit points.

Elite MangudaiDrillSiege OnagerHussarHeavy Cav Archer

Any age

Playing against them

Scouting notes

Skirmishers, and lots of them. The Mongols have no Ring Archer Armor, so Elite Skirmishers tear through Mangudai and Cavalry Archers in a way they cannot answer. Add Camel Riders and keep Spearmen near your villagers.

Then punish the tech tree. Their Monastery is the worst in the game — Monks convert their Mangudai permanently, and they have no Redemption or Block Printing to fight back with. Close maps favour you heavily, and so does any game that reaches a long Imperial Age where Plate Barding Armor and Halberdiers matter.

Elite SkirmisherCamel RiderMonks convert freelyWall and turtlePunish the Castle Age

What you can and cannot build

Mongols tech treeuran

Strikethrough entries are what the Mongols do not get, and the list is long. Outside cavalry archers, light cavalry and siege, this is one of the thinnest tech trees in the game.

Archery Range 1 gap

Arbalester
Heavy Cav Archer
Elite Skirmisher
Thumb Ring
Parthian Tactics
Hand Cannoneer

A full cavalry archer line firing 25% faster. Arbalesters are available and are your only solid foot unit alongside Champions.

Blacksmith 2 gaps

Blast Furnace
Plate Mail Armor
Bracer
Padded Archer Armor
Leather Archer Armor
Ring Archer Armor
Plate Barding Armor

The two gaps that define the civilization. Every Mongol mounted unit and every archer is softer than its counterpart elsewhere, all game.

Stable 1 gap

Hussar
Cavalier
Heavy Camel Rider
Elite Steppe Lancer
Bloodlines
Husbandry
Paladin

Hussars with +30% hit points are excellent. Cavaliers and Heavy Camels are mediocre without Plate Barding Armor and without a cavalry bonus.

Barracks 2 gaps

Champion
Pikeman
Squires
Arson
Supplies
Halberdier
Gambesons

Champions without Gambesons and Pikemen that never upgrade. Against heavy cavalry you answer with Camels and Mangudai instead.

Siege Workshop 1 gap

Siege Onager
Siege Ram
Heavy Scorpion
Siege Engineers
Drill
Bombard Cannon

Strong, and with Drill it is the fastest siege in the game. No Bombard Cannon is the notable hole, so Siege Onagers do the heavy lifting.

Monastery Worst in game

Faith
Fervor
Herbal Medicine
Redemption
Sanctity
Block Printing
Illumination
Theocracy

Five technologies missing — the weakest Monastery of any civilization. Against Aztec or Spanish Monks, a converted Mangudai is gone for good.

Defence Poor

Guard Tower
Fortified Wall
Masonry
Keep
Bombard Tower
Architecture
Arrowslits
Heated Shot

Do not plan on turtling. Missing Architecture also means Mongol buildings take more damage than everyone else's.

Economy & Dock 3 gaps

Hunters +40%
Wheelbarrow
Hand Cart
Horse Collar
Heavy Plow
Crop Rotation
Two-Man Saw
Guilds
Dry Dock

Explosive early, flat late. Missing Crop Rotation, Two-Man Saw and Guilds is a large part of why Mongol trash wars are harder than the Hussars suggest.

Where the Mongols appear

The Genghis Khan campaignÇinggis Qaγan

Six scenarios covering 1206 to 1241, played in orange, and narrated by the anonymous author of The Secret History of the Mongols — the principal Mongolian source on Genghis Khan's life. It is one of the original Age of Kings campaigns and still one of the most inventive.

Portrait of Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire

Scenario 1

Crucible

Uniting the Mongols

Before any conquest, Temujin has to unite the steppe tribes. The first two scenarios are Mongols fighting other Mongols, which is historically the correct place to start.

Tip: The campaign is rated easy and is a good first campaign after William Wallace. Nearly every scenario has an unusual victory condition, so read the objectives rather than assuming you need to destroy everything.

Scenario 2

A Life of Revenge

The steppe wars

The second half of the unification. Still fighting rival Mongol confederations rather than settled empires.

Tip: Lean on the cavalry archers the campaign gives you. These maps reward mobility far more than massing a single deathball.

Scenario 3

Into China

The first great conquest

The standout scenario of the campaign. The Mongols cannot yet build advanced siege weapons, so the mission turns on kidnapping Chinese engineers to acquire them — a design that directly dramatises how the real Mongols got their siege capability.

Tip: The best-remembered mission here, and the one that most justifies the campaign's reputation among the original designers.

Scenario 4

The Horde Rides West

Into Persia and beyond

The westward campaign that carried the Mongols into Central Asia and the Islamic world.

Tip: From here the enemies get technologically richer than you. Your advantage is speed and anti-siege, not a better tech tree.

Scenario 5

The Promise

1241 · Battle of Legnica

The Mongol invasion of Poland, fought in Silesia. The intro shows an eighty-year-old Genghis Khan dying shortly after ordering the invasion.

Tip: That framing is wrong on both counts — see the history section below. The Dawn of the Dukes update replaced the generic Bohemian and Polish enemies with their proper civilizations.

Scenario 6 & elsewhere

Pax Mongolica

1241 · Battle of Mohi

The finale, fought across the frozen Sajó river during the invasion of Hungary, with Ogedei commanding. You cannot build Docks, so the bridge is the only crossing at the start.

Tip: The Mongols also have the standalone Temujin scenario, appear in the co-op Tamerlane campaign, and turn up in more expansions than almost any other civilization.

Design versus record

The game versus real historytüüke

The bonuses are unusually well chosen and one scenario dramatises a real historical mechanism better than any other mission in the game. The campaign's own framing of Genghis Khan's death, however, is simply wrong.

In the game

You kidnap Chinese engineers to get siege weapons

In Into China, the Mongols cannot build advanced siege until they capture the people who know how.

In history

Exactly how it happened

Steppe nomads had no siege tradition of their own. The Mongols acquired it wholesale by absorbing Chinese and later Persian engineers, who built the trebuchets and catapults that brought down walled cities from Beijing to Baghdad. A game mission built around recruiting specialists rather than researching a technology is a sharper piece of history than most campaigns attempt.

Verdict: the best historical mechanic in any Age of Empires II campaign.

In the game

Genghis Khan dies at eighty, ordering the invasion of Poland

The intro to The Promise, set in 1241.

In history

He died at sixty-five, in 1227, in China

Fourteen years before Legnica, and on the opposite side of the empire, while campaigning against the Western Xia. The invasions of Poland and Hungary were commanded by his successor Ogedei — which the final scenario does acknowledge.

Verdict: a straightforward factual error, dramatically convenient.

In the game

The Mangudai is a cavalry archer built around hit-and-run

Fast-firing, mounted, and devastating if you never let it stand still.

In history

The defining Mongol tactic, modelled correctly

Mongol armies were built on horse archers using the composite bow, and on the feigned retreat — withdrawing while shooting backwards to draw a pursuing enemy into broken formation. A unit that is dominant when kited and fragile when caught is a fair mechanical translation of that.

Verdict: the unit and the history line up closely.

In the game

Hunters work 40% faster

The economic bonus, and the fastest Dark Age in the game on a map with deer.

In history

The great hunt was a military institution

The nerge was a mass hunt in which an army encircled a huge area and drove the game inward — used deliberately as training in coordination, signalling and envelopment, the same manoeuvres used against armies. Hunting really was central to how the Mongols fed and trained themselves.

Verdict: accurate, and better grounded than it first appears.

Illustration of a Mongol army on the march, with camels and carts crossing a river — A Mongol army on the march, baggage train and all. The riders who drove game inward during the *nerge* used the same manoeuvres to encircle enemy armies.

In the game

Nomads: destroyed Houses keep their population space

The Castle Age unique technology, and widely considered one of the weakest in the game.

In history

A good idea the game cannot express

Mongols lived in gers — portable felt tents carried with the army. A people whose housing travels with them genuinely should not lose capacity when a settlement burns. The concept is sound; it is the game that has no mechanic where it matters.

Verdict: historically thoughtful, mechanically inert.

The Mongol Wonder in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, ringed by gers — The Mongol Wonder in Age of Empires II. Gers, the portable felt tents behind the Nomads technology, surround it.

In the game

The worst Monastery of any civilization

Five technologies missing, including Redemption, Block Printing and Theocracy.

In history

Backwards, if read literally

The Mongol Empire was notably tolerant in religious matters, hosting Buddhist, Nestorian Christian, Muslim and shamanic practice side by side, and exempting clergy from taxation. A weak Monastery reads as a balance decision for a civilization that is strong elsewhere, not as a historical statement.

Verdict: pure balance, and arguably the opposite of the record.

Quick answers

Mongols FAQasuγult

What is the best Mongols build order?

On Arabia, Scouts into Mangudai. Hunt the deer first — your hunters work 40% faster, so a deer cluster is worth more to you than to anyone else — then click Feudal around 21 population and raid with three or four Scouts. Convert that early lead into pressure before it expires, because the Mongol Castle Age is the weakest part of the game. If the map gives you a good deer cluster and you want to skip the raiding, a Fast Castle straight into Mangudai arrives around 16:00.

Are the Mongols good for beginners?

They are the most-played civilization in the game, but they are not the most forgiving. The bonuses reward things beginners find hard — early scouting, deer hunting, and constant hit-and-run micro with fragile units. The tech tree also punishes you for standing and fighting, since there is no Ring Archer Armor or Plate Barding Armor to fall back on. Strong civilization, demanding hands.

Why do Mangudai die so fast?

Because they are 60 hit points with 0 to 1 pierce armour, and the Mongols have no Ring Archer Armor to improve that. Elite Skirmishers tear through them, and so do Camel Riders and Spearmen. Never let Mangudai stand and trade — the Elite upgrade removes their projectile delay specifically so you can attack, retreat and re-engage without losing shots.

Is Drill worth researching?

Yes, and early. Drill gives Siege Workshop units +50% movement speed, which is the single most distinctive thing the Mongols do — Rams and Onagers that arrive with your raiders instead of trailing behind. Treat it as a first or second Imperial Age click on any plan involving siege. Nomads, the Castle Age unique technology, is the opposite: widely considered one of the weakest in the game.

Are the Mongols good on Arena?

No, and it is worth saying plainly. Behind walls you cannot raid, cannot hunt deer, and the scout line's +2 line of sight means nothing. Your best plan is a Castle Age Mangudai and Mangonel push, then Drill in Imperial to get siege across the middle intact — Drill is genuinely the thing that makes closed maps survivable. If civilization choice is open, pick something else for Arena.

How do you beat the Mongols?

Elite Skirmishers, in numbers. With no Ring Archer Armor the Mongols cannot answer them, and Skirmishers counter both Mangudai and Cavalry Archers. Add Camel Riders and keep Spearmen near your villagers against early Scout raids. Then exploit the tech tree: their Monastery is the worst in the game, so Monks convert their Mangudai permanently and they have no Redemption or Block Printing in reply. Closed maps and long Imperial games both favour you.

Mangudai or Cavalry Archers?

Both, usually. Mangudai are the anti-siege specialist and the better raider thanks to the Elite upgrade's instant fire, but they cost 65 gold each. Heavy Cavalry Archers are cheaper per unit, benefit from the same 25% fire rate bonus, and have the full upgrade line including Thumb Ring and Parthian Tactics. A common Imperial composition runs Mangudai for siege and Heavy Cavalry Archers for everything else.