So, you want to become Khan of Khans. A noble ambition: to finish the job started by Ghengis Khan of subjecting all the world to Mongol rule. Cover the map in the sky blue of the Mongol Empire. Crush the petty empires of the Muslims and Christians beneath your horde's feet. Commit genocide on a continental scale...we'll get there.

This achievement is not all that difficult to get, but due to the unique mechanics of the nomads it can be a little tricky to anyone used to feudal or tribal government. In this guide I will give some general tips for mastering the Mongols as well as specific instructions for completing one of the rarest achievements in the game.

Your attempt to become Khan of Khans can be lost before you even start. If you don't use the right DLC or you don't change certain crucial game rules, completing this achievement will become a lot harder. Taking a little time before you start to set yourself up in a good position will be greatly beneficial down the road.

DLC

Make sure you have the Horse Lords DLC enabled before you start. This achievement does pre-date Horse Lords, so it is theoretically possible to get it without the DLC on. However, without the access to the powerful nomad bonuses, I don't think it's actually possible, at least not without loading up some old version of the game and playing there. This guide will assume you're using Horse Lords; if you aren't, the rest of this will be basically useless to you.

As to other DLC, I used everything except for Conclave, Reaper's Due, and Holy Fury, none of which I currently own. There may be other mechanics in those DLC that can make this easier or harder; I'm simply not sure.

Game Rules

Ironman Mode: Enabled (obviously)

Sunset Invasion: Aztec Invasion: Off
-You really don't want the Aztecs to show up in the middle of your conquest. Sure, you could probably beat them, but you might lose precious time that you need to conquer all of Europe.

Jade Dragon: Chinese Invasions: No Major Invasions
-Like with the Aztecs, it is very inconvenient to have to take the time to fight off the Chinese Emperor. You can't turn Chinese Invasions all the way off without disabling achievements, but this way the only invasions they'll launch are tributary invasions. If you don't feel inclined to fight it off, you can just become a tributary and it won't affect your run.

Monks and Mystics: Devil Worshippers & Secret Religious Cults
-I strongly suggest turning both of these off. I did not, and had a giant Old Tengri uprising about halfway through, with several pesky rebellions to go with. Turn these off and save yourself some trouble.

Siege Events: Off
-Don't lose all your precious event troops to siege events. Just don't.

Defensive Pacts: Off
-I always turn this one off. Defensive pacts are the worst addition to the game, bar none.

Horse Lords: Nomad Stability: Stable
-ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. If you don't have this set to "Stable", some of your vassal clans will split off every time your ruler changes. You'll spend waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time re-subjugating vassals. Set this to "Stable".

Provincial Revolts: Rare
Fewer provincial revolts is always better.

Other games rules are personal preference, but I do think you want at least these settings as I had them.

To get the achievement, you have to start in the bookmark "Age of the Mongols", on February 1, 1220. Your ruler is Genghis Khan, the man, the myth, the legend. However, this is sunset Genghis Khan. Most of his conquering is behind him. He's in his late 50s, still powerful, but won't be around for too long.

You start at war with the Khwarezmid Sultanate, aka Persia. You have a doomstack of 50,000 event troops sitting right on their border. These are very powerful troops, and it's more than enough to defeat the Persians. I'll talk about conquest later; for now, Persia is your first target, and you want to completely wipe them. I finished war on October 20, 1226, with ~42000 of doomstack intact, as well as starting 2000 horde/retinue troops. If you don't turn siege events off, you will have FAR less troops left over.

So, you're at war with the Persians. You should just do your normal thing, conquer a few provinces until the Sultan decides to throw in the towel, let him surrender, and take the provinces, right?

WRONG

What makes the Mongols so powerful is the Nomad Invasion casus belli. This casus belli allows you to go to war for entire Kingdoms at a time, instead of the normal pagan county conquest or holy war casus bellorum (although you have access to those too if you need them). Cool, right?

That's not even the half of it.

If you win a Nomad Invasion casus belli, you get all the titles the ruler had in the target kingdom and vassalize all his subjects there. However, you personally usurp any counties and barony level holdings in counties where you have occupied the top level county holding anywhere in the target ruler's realm. That's right, if you just besiege and occupy the top level holding in every county in the target ruler's realm, voila, you personally get all of those county, barony, temple, and city titles to do with as you please (more on that in the next section).

To take the Holy Roman Empire as an example, if you declare a nomad invasion for Germany, and then do a regular war strategy and let him surrender, you'll only gain whatever HRE owns in the de jure Kingdom of Germany, and his vassals will become your vassals. However, if you wait it out and take the top level holding of every county in the HRE, you'll not only end up with a large chunk of Bavaria, Bohemia, Lotharingia, Italy, Frisia, Arles, and Sicily, but all of those holdings will be in your personal demesne, displacing all of the HRE's vassals.

This casus belli is super powerful, as it allows you to quickly subjugate huge empires, without having to move duchy by duchy and wait for truces to expire etc. You can add huge swaths of the map to your empire without having to worry about upset vassals below you. ALWAYS make sure you've taken the top level holding (or the first holding you besiege) in every territory in the target realm before ending the war.

The Mongols have access to exceptionally powerful troops, the Horse Archers. These are what primarily make up your initial doomstack of event troops, and can also be raised as part of your horde troops. With a stack of horse archers and heavy cavalry, you can take on armies 1.5x your size at the beginning of the game, and 2-3x your size after you've upgrade your capital buildings and gotten your military advances in the technology menu. By the end of the game, not only will you be fielding armies of 100k +, but you will also be able to take armies of 300k, if there were such an enemy around. This is why you can fight back against the Chinese Emperor and win if he invades to make you a tributary; your troops are simply much better than his.

Instead of retinues, the Mongols have access to horde troops. These are a lot like retinues, only way, way better. You can raise them using gold, prestige, or piety, whatever you have the most of (and trust me, by the mid-game you will have more of all than you have any clue what to do with). Instead of paying their upkeep with gold, like a normal retinue, you pay for it with a resource called manpower. You can read up on the population and manpower mechanics here.[ck2.paradoxwikis.com] Also, these horde troops arrive at your capital at half of their full strength already, and they reinforce faster than retinues. All around a great troop resource to have access to.

Your army for most of the game will consist entirely of these horde troops. Your most powerful vassals will not give you troops; instead, you can call them to war like tribal vassals. They are inexpensive both to buy and maintain, and money will be no object very quickly into your run anyway. By the end game, I was running 12 stacks of 10k horde troops apiece in different regions around the map.

When you invade a country, you want to take as many counties as quickly as possible. I kept my troops in stacks of 10k and just moved county by county until the whole realm was under my thumb (or at least, the top level holdings in every county). Start in one corner or at one edge and systematically move all the way across. Your stacks of 10k ought to be able to take anything that your enemy may throw at you; if not, two stacks should definitely do it. After you've shattered your opponent's military, you could even split your armies further into stacks of 5k to get more sieges done quickly. Just remember to take every county in the realm; you don't want to end up with vassals, or for your opponent to end up with two or three disconnected counties that you missed in the middle of your beautiful Empire.

So you've annihilated the Persians (or the Cumans, or the Abbasids, or the HRE) and now have hundreds of holdings on your hands. Now what?

Well, the good news is that the Mongols don't have a demesne limit. That's right, they can hold as many counties as they want with no penalty. However, they do get a penalty for sub-county holdings. Also, your vassal clans (more in a minute) will get mad if you hog all the land to yourself and don't share it with them. So you do have to do some land management.

First, all those baronies and temples and cities. The rule here is A.B.P. : Always Be Pillaging. The Mongols can pillage all of these sub-county titles for gold and technology points (which they don't gain automatically) while destroying two buildings in each holding every six months. When a holding runs out of buildings, it is destroyed, leaving an open space in the county instead. To pillage a holding, right-click on its picture (not its shield) and choose the option "pillage holding". Alternatively, if you have unpillaged holdings you'll get a notification, and clicking that will bring up the same menu.

One thing to keep in mind is that pillaging greatly increases your chances of seeing a rebellion in a territory. However, once the territory is completely pillaged to the ground, it becomes Mongol in culture and takes on your religion, thereby ensuring that no more rebellions will ever happen there again. You get maybe ten years of rebellion headache there max, then sweet, sweet peace until the end of the world. Leave a peace-keeping stack or two in a recently conquered and pillaged region to swat down those rebellions, and eventually they'll peter out to nothing.

So what are the benefits of pillaging?

1) Population
- The Mongols need open spaces in their counties instead of holdings to keep their population mechanic[ck2.paradoxwikis.com] up. The more open spaces you have, the more max population you can get, the more manpower you can churn out, and the more horde troops you can keep in the field.

2) Gold and Tech Points
- The Mongols don't naturally generate tech points like other civilizations do; they pillage them. Every six months when you destroy buildings in a holding you gain gold and tech points. The more holdings you destroy, the richer and more technologically advanced you get.

3) Distribute open land to Vassal Clans
- We'll get back to this in just a minute.

Ideally, every single county in your realm will be completely cleared of all subholdings, leaving miles and miles of ruins and open grassland your your nomadic civilization to graze on. Will this actually happen? No. You will have some vassals, and your vassals will have vassals, but everytime you conquer new land, you should immediately pillage all of the available holdings, before distributing it to your vassal clans.

Speaking of which....

In your realm there will be one to eight other clans besides your own dominant clan. These clans will be more or less loyal to you based on your ruler's prestige and the buildings you have built in your capital. However, they do have some demands on you. They don't like it if you amass too much open land to yourself, and will demand that you distribute it. Also, they need open land to expand their own population.

To satisfy these needs, after you've completely pillaged a county, such that all of its subholdings are completely open, you should give these counties away to your vassal clans. Do NOT give the counties away before they are thoroughly pillaged unless your vassals are demanding land and look like they might revolt; they like it better if you give them land that has already been pillaged clean. They can't pillage themselves, so they'll just create vassals and complain that they don't have enough open land. Pillage first, then distribute. Keep enough open land for yourself to sustain your own population, of course; the vassals won't get angry unless your holdings are too disproportionate.

You can also form a blood oath with a Khan of a vassal clan, which I highly recommend. It makes that clan exceptionally loyal and can come in handy if you need to summon your vassals to war. Pick the clan with the highest population to form the blood oath with; that's going to be your most powerful friend (or potential enemy).

Right, so in sum, rampage across the land, declaring invasion wars and conquering the top holding of each county. After you win the war, pillage all of the holdings until they are dust. Then, distribute the newly open land to your vassal Khans to keep them happy and keep their population up. If you do that, you'll be able to rampage across the land in no time (well, in about 200 years) and clean up all the opposition in your path.

Here's some other minor tips to keep in mind about playing as the Mongols:

- Build all the buildings you can. Your capital is mobile, as it is a tent city; therefore, when you move your capital, all your buildings come with you. Always make sure you are upgrading your capital in some way.

- Move your capital to somewhere central. You start in Kara Khorum, which is disgustingly far from anything, and since your horde troops are raised in your capital, you need to have it a little closer. I suggest Crimea; it's central, you can conquer it very quickly, and already has a few technological advances.

- Once you pick where your capital is going to be, move and stay there for good. You can easily max out every single tech in the tech tree after you get some good pillaging going. If you move capitals, all that progress goes to waste.

- Go ahead and reform the Tengri religion. It'll help strengthen your religion and allow you to convert vassal counties quicker. Also, it's nice to have a Great Holy War pop up every once in a while and get the Holy War casus belli for smaller conquests.

Now for a more specific look at your situation in 1220. You ought to be able to take out the Persians fairly quickly. Next, I would suggest conquering Cumania so that you can reform the Tengri Religion. This might be a bit more complicated, because the Cumans are also nomads, meaning that a good few of their territories have no holdings to siege. This isn't a problem for the kingdom you chose to go to war over; you'll get those territories anyway. But it makes it harder to get the whole realm in one go. Any empty counties that you have troops in at the time of the peace treaty become yours; you can choose strategic counties to have your armies in at the end of the war. Realistically, you may have to declare war on Cumania two or three times to pick up the whole kingdom.

After the Cumans, go where you please! Since you're chasing the achievement, I would stay out of India and the Middle East; your vassals can wipe those areas for you anyway. You could go through Russia and into Western Europe that way, or through the Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia and onto the Nicene and Latin Empires. The choice is yours!

To gain the achievement, you have to have completely conquered all the de jure counties (before de jure shift) of the following empires:

Russia
Tartaria
Wendish Empire
Carpathia
Holy Roman Empire
Italia
Byzantium
France
Spain

"Western Europe" my....

Anyway, that's a lot to conquer. And you have to completely and totally own it. There cannot be one county, one barony, one city that is not under your control. This can be maddening at the end of the game when you're trying to figure out what you're missing to get the achievement to fire. Here's some tips for that:

-Check the holy orders first. Those buggers have castles dotted all across Europe, especially Spain. You'll have to declare war for each individual castle, unless the holy order has somehow attained a county in which case you can use the invasion casus belli and make sure you've sieged every. single. castle. across Europe before you allow them to surrender. DO NOT attempt to use the subjugate casus belli on the holy orders (except for the Lords of the Sky) unless you converted to their religion; they will immediately throw off your rule and you're right back where you started.

- Also, Venice. They like to have city level holdings in the randomest places. When you declare war on Venice, make sure you find every single one and occupy it before ending the war. I had to do this three times because I kept missing holdings.

- Next, go to the ledger, find independent realms, sort by realm size, and check all of the realms with realm size 1. There may be random independent cities or baronies in counties around your glorious empire.

- Finally, if it still hasn't fired, go back to independent realms and, one by one, check if you can declare war on them for "*Name of County* Holdings". Sometimes, they or one of their vassals has inherited a barony somewhere weird that you don't know about.

Once you are *sure* that you have completely conquered all of those empires, the achievement will fire. Some older guides seem to suggest that you have to actually create those empire titles to get it to work. That is not the case; for one thing, you are not able to create the HRE or the Byzantine Empire. I did not have to create the titles for the achievement to fire, and neither should you. If the achievement hasn't fired, you've either missed a barony or city somewhere, or somewhere along the line you left Ironman Mode, in which case tough luck.

Here's a list of the other achievements I got on my playthrough. I started with 44/161 achievements already, so there are other ones that I probably could've gotten but already had.

Keeping it in the Family
Sire a child that has the inbred trait
- Hey, there's only so many nice Tengri girls available in the early game, okay?

Beyond the Indus
As a ruler of non-Indian culture, conquer a King or Emperor title in India
- This will probably fire and you'll not even notice. One of your vassals will have conquered a portion of India for you.

New Ways for Old Gods
Reform one of the Pagan religions
- Reform Tengri. DO IT.

Pax Mongolica
Build 3 fully upgraded silk road trade posts
- These actually have to be in your demesne, not just your realm, so you may have to revoke them from a vassal clan if they ventured into India before you had a chance to. You ought to be able to take land from a single clan if you have 5 or 6 balanced clans that are all loyal to you.

Protector of the Holy Places
Have Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina within your realm
- Pretty easy, although three of the four sites are not in the land you have to take for Khan of Khans. My vassals took Mecca and Medina for me, I just had to get Rome and Jerusalem.

I Do Not Play Chess
Have 100 kills in your kill list
- Be patient. You'll definitely get there.

One Arrow Alone can be Easily Broken by Many Arrows are Indestructible
As a steppe horde, have a population of 150,000
- By the end of the game, you should have over 1 million population, so this one is a given.

Go West Young Mongol
As a steppe horde, have an independent tributary King or Emperor in the British Isles
- Just do a tributary war instead of an invasion on England when you're close enough. By the time you get there, England will be an absolute pushover.

So that's it! I hope this helps someone who's sifting through 5 and 6 year old guides for this achievement like I did. It's honestly not that hard; just takes some perseverance and it'll make you tear your hair out at the end trying to find that last barony. XD

If you have any questions, leave a comment! I am by no means a CKII expert, but I did get the achievement, so I might be able to help a little. Thanks for reading! Now go conquer the world, young Mongol!