IAttacking the Golden Horde with assassins

[Durruti]

The use of assassins to derail the Golden Horde-just as it first appears-seems to be one of those unforseen game anomalies. I wonder if the developers intended or forsaw the use of assassins to destroy the Horde before it can get going???

Would the developers who designed the earthshaking appearence of the large number of Mongol Warriors to symbolize their historical shock-impact on East Europe-be happy with the use of a trick that can undermine that whole historic era portrayal???

In AOE the a1 would not put up walls because of pathfinding problems (therefore if you walled you had an easy victory). In Europa one can manipulate the money-stability slide to easily enrich. In Civ War Generals one can easily flank (a1 cannot) & by sitting & resting your troops the a1 will always attack, deplete their troops & lose. I'm sure there are numerous other examples of these game anomalies-player cheats in other pc games.

These game tricks set up a paradox for the player; (Benny Hill insisted a paradox was 2 doctors). We can also translate this paradox into a moral question. Do we use this trick (the equilalent of the Italian fascists using poison gas in Ethiopia), or do we resist the Mongol Hordes the Old Fasioned Way and like Poland and Hungary get creamed and have our national development set back for centuries???

Ernest Hemingway implied that 'in life -it's not whether you win or lose that counts, but how you lose.' So lets get out there on the steppes & take off our bullet proof vests & face those Hordes like men It's them or us-all 10,000 of them versus 500 (or so) of us. Whose afraid? Honest politicians, a democracy that is democratic, tell the boss-er wife what you really think?

Yes alright no more coffee I'm turning off the computor I'm coming honey



http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-juggle.gif

[katar]

Quote[/b] ]So lets get out there on the steppes & take off our bullet proof vests & face those Hordes like men

you can do it that way if you want, i`ll just stick with leaving a small thermonuclear device in their vicinity and legging it, pronto http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[katank]

I would say it is somewhat disappointing but if you bought all his armies, then it's not so bad.

image buying the horde to trash europe yourself

still, I would often decide to cancel mass assasination attempts at last minute and look forward to epic carnage in defending khazar, defending khazar fortress, and then defense of kiev if necessary.

Once, I was able to hold the mongols off from the fortress due to mucho fortress shooting.

too bad my veteran garrison got almost starved to death before I could break them out.

[Poison Arrow]

I am a new player, I'm curious, does the horde use units that other factions have available to them or are they unique? The reason I ask is I am curious if you can use the same units in custom battles? Basically play the horde in a custom battle.

As for assassins, I think it all depends on what kind of player you are. If you find a tactic and think it viable and use it no matter what. Or, if you think some tactics are using oversights of the makers of the game. Also, it depends on what you want from the campaign you are playing. Do you want to deal with the horde, or do you not feel like it.

Also, who is to say that tactic would not have worked in real life? If some country had foreknowledge of the coming of the Horde and sent 20 assassins against its head, what would have happened? That is an important factor in deciding whether or not to use that tactic I think. By doing so, you are using your knowledge derived from outside the game to use against the horde. Realistically, you would have had to had spies that traveled far NW to learn of the coming danger.

[son of spam]

I *think* you can play the horde in a custom battle. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. If you can't, then you could still use the -ian hack to play as the horde in sp and use all their cool units, like mongol horse archers.

Personally, I think the assassin rush is mad cheap, and seriously not at all effective. The same result could be achieved just by defending Kiev. The genius Khan http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-idea3.gif rushes across the bridge only to get slaughtered by halbs and arbalests http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tomato.gif . Next turn *poof* all of the mongols turn rebel, you've had an epic battle, and you didn't use a cheapo strategy.

Besides that, it's really hard to build up enough assassins as russians in high to assassinate the khan.

[Yushal]

You can play as the Horde in MedMod. So yeah you can play as the Horde if you enable it however thats done.

I never heard this assassin use before. I thought assassins just kill off the general? So you need 60 assassin to kill a full unit or whatever?

Anyhow, you may as well ask yourself if you can stop yourself from preparing for their arrival, lol. I'll bet you cannot. There will be some subtle way your brain prepares for them without you recognizing it, whether that is garrisoning a normally ungarrisoned province, or making an early peace on another front, or whatever...

But yeah if assassinating them all really is effective, then its quite cheesy. Look, all ye assassins, people are talking about you behind your backs http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-gossip.gif Cheesy..., they say, He needs http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-help.gif

[Gregoshi]

Hello Yushal and welcome. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif Fear not, we didn't have 60 assassins waiting for you as you entered our forums.

I agree - I smell cheese. It may be novel to try it once, but if you do it every game to achieve the roughly the same result, what is the point of playing the game? Mix it up. Try something different each time to keep the game fresh.

[BalkanTourist]

Nobody said it'd work every time. So why not try? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Bhruic]

I guess it comes down to how much of a challenge you want. There are lots of things you can do to reduce or remove the amount of challenge you are faced with as a player. If you are less interested in having a challenging game, and are more interested in other aspects, there's no reason not to use it.

For me, it's not something that I'd ever use. Fighting off the horde is more challenging than simply assassinating their leader.

Bh

[Durruti]

I don't want to come out of this discussion looking too good. I have another trick to avoid the Horde that sometimes works, that is to ally with him.

The fun is picking the Head Horde Honcho stack out of a large group of Horde stacks. Then I beg for an alliance. Once I ally with the Horde (the trick is to make the offer to the Big Cheese BEFORE his troops attack you), The area nations that are suffering from Horde aggression are easy pickings for a Horde ally (such as Byzantium).

The Horde will usually wear down-run out of troops-specially good troops-& I will control the Middle-East & Balkins-often up to Egypt.

Time to celebrate http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

[Tricky Lady]

I often use the Kill the Khan bug, but in my most recent Byzantine campaign this didn't really work as it did in previous campaign (when facing the GH).
I managed to kill the Khan, so when the Mongol Khan murdered screen appeared, I considered the Golden Horde history. But no. He had an heir, who was even a more brilliant general than himself (damn). So now I faced a stronger general leading still the same armies. Doh The Golden Horde started to knock the French (who had established a Russian crusader empire) and Novgorod off the board, so I tried to kill the khan, again. This time he manually killed all my 3*+ assassins http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif (I suppose what happened to his father taught him a lesson). Finally, after 35+ attempts, one of my assassins succeeded. YEAH, bye bye Golden Horde, I thought.
But no. The French still occupied Lithuania, and 5 or six turns after the extinction of the GH, they reappeared as a HUGE rebel army in Lithuania. This time they had even more sophisticated units in their army http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif
So now I'm facing a huge threat on my northern borders again. I'm getting ready for some long battles. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[Kommodus]

To me, the main reason to play the game is for fun, so I would not assassinate the Khan, but if that's fun for you, go for it. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I've played three campaigns so far. In my first one, Spanish in Early, I'd conquered most of the world when the Horde showed up in Khazar only, which I'd abandoned. We then held the line at Kiev. The Khan led the charge across the bridge, and when he was killed, the rest of his army left the field. This left huge numbers of rebel Mongols in Khazar. The Horde never re-emerged, and I was reduced to whittling down their numbers through bribery. It was really not much fun.

My second campaign, as the Turkish in Early, saw the Mongols show up in Khazar, Volga-Bulgaria, and Armenia (not Georgia). I only controlled Armenia, and managed a muster a force of around 2,500 for its defense, against 5,000 Mongols. After we beat back the first wave, we could not match the speed and maneuverability of their horse archer reinforcements, so we simply held out in a forest in the high Armenian mountains. The Horde would not attack, so I hit Ctl-T and let time run out. We captured the entire army, which the Horde payed more than 70,000 florins to ransom After that, we were at peace with the Horde, which was so passive it failed to even conquer Russia. Its huge armies are still wasting away in Muscovy. Once again, not much fun.

My third and final campaign, as the Byzantines in High, was much better. We managed to stay at peace with the Horde for many years while they conquered Russia, until they decided to attack us in Asia Minor. In the first few battles, they had mainly horse archers, which we held off with our own foot archers. But then, a huge army of Mongol Heavies struck at Trebizond and handed me my worst defeat ever, destroying almost my entire army there, which was over 900 men that I could ill-afford to lose. Not wasting any time, the Mongols marched straight for Constantinople, and an army rushing south from Bulgaria under the Emperor himself only barely managed to hold them off. Since they had left Trebizond with no garrison at all, our besieged men came out of the fort there and blocked the Mongol escape route. The entire Mongol army was captured and left to die; this effectively ended the Mongol threat.

Needless to say, the final campaign was a lot more fun. The Horde adds the most to the game when it's a real threat.

[VikingHorde]

I never use assassins vs. the Golden Horde. I like the mess the horde makes to other factions. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Tricky Lady]

Quote[/b] (Kommodus @ April 07 2004,19:07)]The Horde never re-emerged, and I was reduced to whittling down their numbers through bribery. It was really not much fun.
[...]
After that, we were at peace with the Horde, which was so passive it failed to even conquer Russia. Its huge armies are still wasting away in Muscovy. Once again, not much fun.

I agree. That's why I liked the re-emergence of the Horde in Lithuania in my most recent game. All the formerly GH stacks in Ryazan, Pereyslavl and those other Northern provinces joined the rebellion/re-emergence, so I faced an army equalling the first Golden Horde wave. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Made me decide not to kill the khan anymore. It gets boring when you see all those huge rebel armies, formerly known as the Great Golden Horde Army... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif

[Yushal]

Hi to you, also :)

Now, I must say that I have discovered why people want to derail the Horde. Even tho I have had the game a long time now and played it, I have always played early and generally quit before I ever faced them. Currently I am playing hard early campaign in medmod and for the first time I have faced the Horde.

400 mongols defeated my 3000 strong crusade Oh my God they are very tough Granted, I thought it would be a pushover and couldnt understand that they would retreat if they couldnt face them, but wow....

[Kommodus]

Yep, you'd better believe they're tough, especially for factions like the Byzantines who have no good anti-cavalry units. At the Battle of Trebizond, their heavy cavalry charged right up a hill under archer fire, cut through my spearmen and Byzantine infantry as if they were nothing, and proceeded to butcher almost my entire army, losing few of their own in the process. Even when I place my infantry in the woods and flank them with cavalry of my own, it turns into a desperate fight for survival. And isn't it grand? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Doug-Thompson]

The last time I dropped a dozen or so four-star Syrian assassins on the khan and his generals after deleting my own border guards to create an open range for assassins, I muttered Welcome to Georgia.

Fun is in the eye of the beholder.

[katank]

Quote[/b] ]Fun is in the eye of the beholder.
Ahhhh, so true.

I must say, I do do this also in my campaigns. I have 4 choices. Assasins+bribery, Massive defense of khazar, massive siege defense of khazar (which I conveniently built up to a fortress with fully upgraded Huscarles packed in), or massive bridge defense of kiev.

these are all very enjoyable IMHO.

BTW, if you only play bridge or castle defense, you truly have not seen mongol power.

MHC can cut through enemy troops so fast and so efficiently. Their HAs are also awesome and the foot soldiers excellent backup.

As for Kommodus, I recommend using katanks as anticav. spread em in a thin line in front of your main battle lines and counter charge the enemy cav.

then engage with byz inf but don't let you byz inf eat a heavy cav charge

[Oleander Ardens]

True katanka, a open fieldbattle against the fresh and full Mongol Might on Expert is perhaps the most challenging battle possible.

Especially if it`s a beautiful day and in the Steppe...
The last time it seemed to rain, so many arrows were flying through the air
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-surprised.gif

Their heavy cavalry is truly impressive, their HA are great but the Golden Horde Warriors a terrible...
They are so difficult to hit due to their big shield and their lack of armor isn`t a great problem as most people use PA against the Mongols..

Wait and enjoy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif