Best way to save my as*?

[godot]

I am playing King w/5 civs on a medium map for world conquest. I have control of one large continent and the Mongols have control of another. The Japanese and Chinese are spread over a few small to medium islands and are not real threats.

The Mongols are VERY aggresive although I have the UN now so they've toned it down a bit. They currently have 30+ citys and a powerful civ most of which they stole from the Japanese and Chinese (both of whom I'm on good terms with). I had gone Fundamental to allow military buildup to counter the Mongols' attacks (mostly just butting against my coastal fortresses with occassional forays into the interior). I have a small foothold on the Mongol homeland; a size 5 city I stole with a Spy.

NOW, I'm a little behind in science (but not badly) with about 6000 in gold and am looking for some guidance in deciding on my next strategy.

(1) Try and take over a nearby medium island which has Japanese, Chinese and 1 Mongol city to give me a stronger power base and to keep it from the Mongols.
(2) Start bribing Mongol cities in their homeland to begin reducing their power base.
(3) Do back to Democracy and sit tight for a little to build up more money, trade and science.

[KrazyHorse]

Why don't you attach a savegame? Without that, and assuming that you have a similar number of cities as the Mongols, I can only say that this should be a cakewalk. If you're willing to wait a little bit, switch to demo, crank your techs (1 every 1-2 turns) up to robotics and adv flight, then walk all over them with your howitzers. If you want to go military on them right now, you don't do it by taking outlying islands; every turn you spend in fundie is letting them get farther ahead of you in the tech department. Therefore, you amass a sufficient force (2-3 transports) of your top offensive units (along with a few good defenders to hold critical points) and strike at the biggest, fattest, trade-producing cities of theirs that you can reach. Take as many as you can reasonably hold, then make peace. Either switch back to demo and get the tech edge on them, or build up another strike force and reduce them to their 10 smallest cities. They won't bother you again.

[Earwicker]

No sweat:

1. Use spies from your foothold Mongol city to acquire the techs you lack.
2. Go back to Demo and build up your trade routes to maximize money and science production.
3. Boost your cities to max size with WLTP days.
4. Keep your tech and income rolling in until you get to Robotics. THEN you switch to Fundy and produce lots of howitzers, mech inf, and armor.
5. Begin the invasion.
6. When the Mongols have been sufficiently weakened, end the war and return to Democracy.
7. Gloat.

Have fun and be careful with that a*s!