A quick bit of advice when fighting mongols.

[BSM_Skkzarg]

Regardless of what difficulty level your at, the key to winning against the horde is numbers. The problem is that they land and WILL take the first few provinces by force of sheer numbers. In addition, you don't have the balanced forces you need to defend adequately at the start of the game. To win you need to max out the number of troops you bring to bear, while minimizing the # of reinforcements the mongols get. Since you can not stop them from getting a few provinces - use a simple and time honored strategy - scorched earth!
By this I mean, if you know you are going to lose a province with a few buildings in it - sell them ALL! This gives you a bit of koku, and keeps the horde from getting it! the difference could be only 1000 koku - but thats the difference between seeing an extra MHC and MLC with the enemy, or having a few extra yari samurai watching your back. If your going to lose it- recoup what you can and deny it to your enemy.

It may not be nice - but sometimes its the difference between victory and defeat. No matter how good you are tactically, you have to have strategy as well. Think on BOTH levels!

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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."

[Khan7]

Actually, what has always worked for me is as soon as they land pump as many guys as you can into Chikugo, the local river province. Also send anyone you can into the nearby port, so that when that province is attacked the next turn you can just retreat to Chikugo and bolster the armies there. The horde will invariably go for Chikugo the turn after landing if you build up there.. if you do it right they'll never take it.

It was at this point that I basically built up vastly superior numbers and broke down and started automatically resolving attacks so that the superior numbers would work.. anyway, I beat it pretty quick. Mongols didn't make it past their second wave of reinforcements (on Normal, I only ever play campaigns on Normal).

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Khan7

[hecose]

Khan7, Try playing on Hard. It's a good challenge. I understand you might feel that giving extra hidden honour to the AI troops is not a good way of implementing difficulty level, but it's just very very hard to make the AI as smart as a human being. The AI in this game will never be as smart as an experienced human player, so why not take the challenge? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[Algesan]

Hecose, you are correct, but I did get a few ideas out of the Expert AI for tactical manuevers. They will work in MP if we ever get differential koku since hill camping will become common for defenders with less koku.

[BSM_Skkzarg]

Kahn7,

Try the harder levels of difficulty. On normal, the AI and your units are about even overall. However, on Hard and especially Expert, the AI units get more numerous and have higher honor values. This makes the game MUCH more difficult and also makes usage of the autoresolve very dangerous - as high honor mongol troops will decimate your guys in autoresolve.

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BSM_Skkzarg
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."