Turkey Vs the Mongels [Archive]

DukeKent

02-17-2007, 23:16

How to Defeat the Mongols as the Turks:

1. Economics: Economic Might translates easily into military might. Acquire
Antioch right off the bat. This is an economic gem. On turn 93 Antioch is
earning 9324 florins per turn. As part of your overall growth strategy make
sure you also acquire Constantinople, Jerusalem, & Alexandria. These are all
economic gems making 5k plus. Convert castles to cities, except 1 castle per
region. It is also be a good idea to keep castles on the borders. Always
convert coastal castles to cities as soon as militarily viable. Coastal cities
generate lots of florins. It really is about the Money :-)

2. Preparation: The Mongols show up on turn 65 in vanilla. Be prepared, your
easternmost cities and castles need to be on a war footing when the mongols
arrive. But no point wasting extra units and florins stationing more troops
in the east until you need to. Just keep 2 regional armies in Mosul and
Yerevan until about turn 61. I kept about 7 or 8 units in these regional
stacks. These units were usually stationed in cities to take advantage of
free upkeep. Train new units in those cities when your regional stack is
needed to pacify the local rebel spawn. Again, be prepared. Sometimes it feels
like a game of "Rebel Total War". Take advantage of the rebel spawn to
train up your two eastern regional armies. These armies will be the core of
two of the stacks you will need to fight the Mongols. Recruit as many Sipahis
as you can. Expensive to buy, but very reasonable on upkeep. These are
recruitable in cities with a Merchants guild. I currently have 12 of 27
cities with Merchants' guilds in them. I am getting free upkeep on the Sipahis
in my current game. I believe that is due to a "Free Upkeep" mod? Recruit HA's as much as possible. Keep 2 hvy cav like Generals Bodyguards and Sipahi lancers in each of the regional stacks also as soon as you can afford to. Don't forget rule one when building up your armies. Always focus on building up your
economy first. In fact do the buildings scroll first! You will need the cash
from your economy to afford huge standing armies when the Mongols show up with 4 - 12 full stacks on your eastern border. Bring back one of yur victorius
conquest armies by trun 65 also. I brought back an army from the Egypt
campaign. The armies in the balkans were just to busy, and to far away.

3. Mobility: Build all cavalry Mongol hunter armies. Out Mongol the mongrels.
All of the mongol stacks seen so far have infantry and cavalry in them. Some
even have rocket launchers which make them move even slower. This gives all cavalry stacks a mobility advantage. Plenty of infantry and foot archers
should be available in nearby cities anyway. More on that later.

4. Herd the mongol horde with forts. This is your hard earned turf. The
mongols are crashing your party. Use forts to keep the home field advantage
by limiting mongol mobility and allowing your armies a mobility advantage. Your
armies are not blocked or slowed down in movement by forts you control. This
helps you steer away or slow down the mongols from your cities. Whenever
possible build the forts in a defense in depth network within one turns march.
Use extra forts wherever needed. Example illustration.

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5. Patience: Let the mongols have any fort they want. Thats right, give it to
em, heh heh heh!-). Now you have the mongols exactly where you want them. The
mongols greatest strength is mobility. M2TW forts allow no mobility. The
mongols can not mount an effective defense of a fort against an effective
attacker. Wait until the rest of the mongol horde moves on and pick off the
straggler stack in the fort. You should have multiple armies in reach of the
straggler mongel stack if you implement an effective defense in depth. If the
mongols want to graze in the desert, then let em. Leave the multiple stack
horde alone. The mongols quite often turtle for long periods of time. Always
know where every stack is, always. You don't want one of the mongol stacks
loose in the soft underbelly of your empire! See below for more good reasons.

6. Make the mongols pay dearly for any city. You will win the war of
attrition if necessary. Build balista towers when economically feasible. Don't
ever forget rule one for a ballista tower. Defend the cities with best units
you can afford. Always take advantage of free upkeep slots in cities. So far
the mongols have not taken a cityt. That is probably due to the use of forts.
A 500 florin fort is a lot cheaper than a 5k+ per turn florin generating
city. Did I mention it is all about the money!

7. Initiate: Attack targets of opportunity. Pick off the straggler stack when
you can. You can use assassins to attack the mongol generals. In my opinion
this is not a real effective stategy by itself to eliminate the mongols,
unless you are willing to restore from backups or use cheats. It is your game,
so thats your call. To me the greatest benefit of the assassin strategy is
causing madness in the Mongol generals. Hard to tell just how great a
-2 Morale is on an eight command general in battle? Insanity in a general in
real life would probably be castrophic.

8. Example scenario: The mongols have aleady been wittled down to 4 effective stacks. The mongol Khan takes the fort about one days march from both Damascus and Antioch. The next turn the other 3 mongol stacks move over to Damascus. Presumably for better grazing? lol The turks concentrate 2 full stacks on the
mongol Khan in the fort. The first army was made up of 3 generals, a Sipahi
lancer, an arab camel ha, 2 sipahi ha, 3 dismounted sipahi lancers, 3 turkish
archers, 4 saracen militia, and 3 bombards. The second turkish army was a full stack all cavalry army of veteran sipahi ha's except 2 turkomen ha's. Use the cannon to blast the mongels to H3!! Not my optimal mix in the first stack,
but these were the best units available for a fort battle. The key are the
cannons. Blow holes in the gate and walls of the fort. Then use the holes as
windows to the soft mongols inside. Quite a turkey shoot. More archers and
infantry in the first army would have been optimal. Reinforcements from the
second army will arive quickly since they are all cavalry. Be willing to
engage in a battle of attrition after your cannons are out of ammo, or more
likely shot to pieces from the mongol archers. To guarrantee victory use the
reinforcement ha to surround and eliminate any survivor mongols in the middle
of the fort. In this strategy you get to manage all of your units on the
battle map. The downside is that you are limited to 20 units in the battle
at once. Be willing to allow these units to be eliminated so you can bring in
fresh reinforcements. Forts like sieges mean none of the defenders survive.
So do whatever it takes to eliminate this stack. This example scenario cost
about 500 turkish casualities to take out a 950 man mongol stack. It would
have been well worth it to trade 2/1 instead of 1/2 if necessary.