Golden Hoard

[Agent Miles]

I was playing MTW/VI as the Turks Early/Expert. I had expanded using KaTank’s blitz method and my borders were Egypt, Serbia, Bulgaria and Khazar. I later took Sicily, Naples, Flanders and Ireland, as well as North Africa over to Tunisia. I had specialized four provinces to build units. I produced valour 1 Steppe Heavy Cav (SHC) in Khazar, Futuwwa in Rum, v1 Saracen in Edessa and v2 Armenian Heavy Cav (AHC) in (of course) Armenia. I then built a navy large enough to make me rich. At half past noon (1230), the Mongols showed up.
Volga-Bulgaria joined the Mongols and the following force showed up in Khazar:
Mongols-Mongol Heavy Cav 84 units/Mongol Horse Archers 90/Mongol Warriors 56/Steppe Cav (v1) 53/Naptha Throwers 22/SHC (v1) 3/Alan Merc 5/Mortars 4
Khan Ogadai I-2*
With command of the sea, I was able to send the following force to defend Khazar:
Turks-SHC (v1) 90/AHC (v2) 97/Saracen (v1) 96/Futuwwa 67/Ghulam Bodyguards 18/Turcoman Horse Archers 19
Amir al Mansur-8*/Brave Beyond Belief

I had an armourer’s workshop in Khazar, so all of the Mongols got bronze shield armour. The Master Horse Breeder in Khazar gave the Mongol SHC and Steppe Cav valour 1.

Basically, my force was much better, much larger (23k vs. 13k) and much better led. When the Mongols chose to have 4 mortars in their setup (which would be out of range), I knew that all I had to do was beat 12 units with 16 for the rest of the battle. I just decided to auto-calc. I received a sum of 88,655 florins ransom!
https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q36/AgentMiles/Golden%20Hoard/

[caravel]

A Khan's ransom. What luck, you rarely see that in an autocalced battle.

:bow:

[Maloncanth]

They really ought to scale to horde by a formula calculating player power, player proximity and overall power of Europe rather than whatever random nonsensical, limited-to-13k format they use. :p

https://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s98/Maloncanth/00000002.jpg
Ogadai: "Listen to me sing!"

Although one time I managed to buy up about a third of the horde after assassinating the khan. That was cool. :3

[Agent Miles]

I tried an experiment. I had three stacks in Khazar when this force showed up to arrive the next turn. I reloaded and doubled the size of my garrison to six stacks. Only a few extra stacks of Mongols appeared and they spilled over into Georgia. This may have been entirely random, though. The big difference was that the actual Mongol units have no per unit valour increases and by comparison, the Khan's leader abilities really sucked.
I had deliberately tried not to prepare for the Horde. My army was spread out evenly among the border provinces. I simply built units to match my income. I even upgraded Khazar with structures that actually aided the Mongols. If the Byz or someone else had blocked the Black Sea, it would have been a very different outcome.

[Martok]

Wow. That's gotta be the biggest ransom I've ever seen! ~:eek:

@ Maloncanth: The size of the Horde is somewhat dependent on the size of the garrison stationed there, as well as the difficulty level. You're right, though, that it would be nice if they could be scaled in other ways as well.

[Agent Miles]

Danilonius posted over at the TW site that he had an 80k ransom once, but I've got him beat. I wonder what is the biggest ransom ever received?

[Martok]

Well yours is definitely the largest I've ever heard of thus far (my personal record was only around 66,000 or so). If anyone's got yours topped, I'd be pretty surprised.

(Of course, I didn't think it was possible to get a ransom as large as yours to begin with -- usually only the human-controlled faction ever has enough cash to pay that kind of money.... :book:)

[caravel]

(Of course, I didn't think it was possible to get a ransom as large as yours to begin with -- usually only the human-controlled faction ever has enough cash to pay that kind of money.... :book:)
Any faction can ransom it's troops of course as you are allowed to can go into the red (borrow) to do so, but I've yet to see the AI actually pay more than about 50,000 - 60,000 florins. I can remember capturing about 2000 -3000 men including a king and nobles in a single battle on several occasions, the ransom would been huge but the AI didn't pay. Now the AI can pay, because it can borrow the money, but for some reason it doesn't. I wonder how the AI actually 'decides' on this?

:bow:

[The Unknown Guy]

I think that having heirs or not is a big factor, althrough they will in general try to spare the king (which is nonsensical, strategically speaking.. I´ve seen them not pay ransoms of princes and then die of old age heirless. I´d rather risk a new, younger king than get stuck with the old one and risk him croaking before breeding again). Being the GH, and likely w/o heirs, it makes sense that the AI will go full red in order to avoid getting wiped off by lack of leader.

Come to think about it: The GH would work much better as a "Terror from the Steppes" faction if they could be given an elective heir system, like the HRE. That way they wouldn´t collapse spectacullarily by risking their Khan in combat.
They´d collapse anyway by bloat effect, to which they´re particularily vulnerable, but it´d happen much later (In a Byzantium game I saw the GH actually thrive for a while, but after the poles and the Rus started resisting their assaults at Kiev (sucesive takings and retakings), their influence dropped, they lost a lot of vital units, and eventually the Rus managed to push them to... well, to MY lands, but too weak to attempt anything. In fact, after they collapsed into a civil war I had to save them from a Turkish resurgence...

[Agent Miles]

BTW, I reloaded that turn and fought out the battle myself to see what might change (or at least tried to). After two hours of shooting fish in a barrel, I had enough. First came an uncoordinated attack by the GH Warriors, who were slaughtered by the AHC. However, the GH Heavy Cav are no match for my Saracens. One second after they charge, it’s “losing very badly” time. The GH horse archers simply get shredded by the Futuwwa. As predicted, the four mortars just sat there out of range as the AI’s twelve units battled my sixteen. I had captured the Khan, but I was killing more and capturing less than the auto-calc, so I probably would have got a smaller ransom.