Khagan Temujin Borjigin of Khangai, 1 January 1196.
Yes, this is the man who would later go on to become the greatest conqueror in the history of mankind. No man ever formed an empire as large as his in one lifetime, and all by himself. This is the man who the
In 1196 he begins the game as only a 34 years old nomadic Khan at the corner of the map, holding a small and poor territory. There is no Mongol Empire. In fact there is not even Mongolia itself. The land is divided and there are competitors all over the place.
To the south at the edge of the map, you have the Naimans of Kumul. They are Mongols like you, but a big point to note is
that they are Nestorian. To the west, there is the Buryat clan of Otuken (the name has umlauts, but bear with me). They are your chief enemy if you want to expand west. Even westwards there are the Manichean Kirghiz nomads who own parts of Mongolia, and they are not weak.
To southwest, west of the Naimans of Kumul, you have the Buddhist Uighurs of Qocho. They are settled, and even have lots of castles and cities. And to the west of the Uighurs are even more dangerous Kara-Khitai, who are also settled and only partially nomadic, and can basically steamroll anyone in the region including Uighurs. Going any further without beating them is almost impossible. And in eastern Russia there is Cumans, who are very powerful but can be faced with some dedication.
Besides, even if you somehow defeat the Kara-Khitai and Cumans, the world is full of gigantic blobs. In Persia there are the giant Khwarezmians ruling almost entirety of it, alongside southern steppes. In India there is the recently established, genocidal and murderous,
HUGE Delhi Sultanate (under Ghurid Dynasty as Empire of Rajasthan) that is on the way to blob even harder. They are more powerful than Khwarezmians, far richer as well, and are almost impossible to beat. Best to wait and let them collapse by themselves, or at least slowly eat away at their borders while they are busy killing Indians. They'll not go too far, because there are powerful Indian kingdoms like Parmara, Sena and Seuna Yadava waiting to intercept them.
Further westwards from Persia, there is the rump, dying Abbasid Caliphate that now controls little more than southern Mesopotamia. They won't be harder to deal if you already beat Khwarezmains, but right next to it is the enormously powerful Ayyubid blob, ruled by Saladin's son. A very tough nut to crack if you attack it directly.
If you go northwards, you'll encounter the decaying Roman Empire and their mortal enemies, the Seljuks of Rum. You can defeat the latter, but defeating the ERE is extremely difficult and almost same as fighting the Delhi Sultanate since they tend to expand and take back their old lands. There is a powerful Georgia that can be defeated with some effort. There are also some petty minors like Armenians of Cilicia, the Assassin Order, the Duchy/Principality of Antioch.
Finally, if you go the Russian route, alongside Cumans you'll also have to defeat Perm and the Bolghars. Both are powerful and can be hard to defeat. You have to arrive in Russia proper and pick off the small minors, or else they'll be annexed by powerful states near them. Here your toughest competition will be the very powerful Novgorod. And if you can beat them, you'll probably encounter small powers until you reach Poland's borders, after which any expansion means fighting Hungarians and especially the
GIGANTIC blob that is HRE. Beating them is impossible, again, but if you catch them in a civil war you can at least bite some land off them. Further ahead is giant England, a weakened but still powerful France, decently powerful Iberian kingdoms and the Danes, who also have a large enough army. But that is only if you can beat that giant HRE, which is nigh impossible except under certain circumstances as I said.
My personal strategy would be to settle down and find a good, safe place for a capital which is rich and has lots of baronies (or at least potential for them). Convert to another religion only if you have to. And keep your generals loyal.
So, can you take this man to become the Great Khan of Mongolia, and make him become the greatest conqueror to walk the earth? Can you make him the man who was called the Genghis Khan, whose very name made the world tremble and cower in fear? Or will you let him rule as a forgotten, minor nomadic chief in an eternally divided Mongolia?
*I hope this was helpful*
