Your best defending army vs. the horde

I usually go with arbalests and decent pole-arm troops, usually halbardiers, sometimes supplemented with some good all round troops such as CMAA.

Anyone offer some better alternatives??

Of course a bridge always helps....

Playing as the Castille-Leonese, I like to employ a few thousand Jinnettes to see the Mongols off -- they have the speed to match the Horde's HA's, and their javelins are pretty effective at turning the MHC into pincushions. (I still use them in concert with arbs and halbs, though.) :2thumbsup:

Playing as the Byzantines I use a few thousand treb archers for their horse archers,Varg guard/latin Aux for the heavy calvary and a few light calvary for if I run out of archers,to chase down the HA's.I also find med calvary to help dealing with the foot archers horde they they like to employ.

Though my funnest fights with the horde has been stacking massive troops in their invading provinces to swell the horde numbers, the best kill-death ratio I achieved against the GH was as England in a migration game.

I set up on the Russian steppe using crusades and built myself a pretty good powerbase and just waited. The provinces on the steppe have a fair amount of bridges on them, and nothing says "death trap" for horde cavalry like a bridge and some billman. :2thumbsup:

I have only ever faced the horde with Catholic factions....and I have found that the most effective line up in such situations is heaps of arbalests with a screen of CFK's in front (Halb's or billmen also work)....and some cavalry to chase off the survivors....

For me, the most effective is some Shield-carried crossbow/arbalests, back up with archer and some spear. The shield-carried archer absorb most of the arrows, especially when they do fire once and a while at various enemy units, leaving my spears totally intact. The archer does most of the work and can rotate at will without worry about being shot from behind.

I've tested this strategy twice in one Turks campaign and one Crusader.

My latest encounter with the Horde has been playing as the Kievans in XL, and I was glad to capture Bulgaria pretty intact with a Master Bowyer, so went straight into silver-plated Pav Arbs from 1205. My "steppe defence" armies consisted mostly of Pav Arbs, a few catapults, halberdiers, a few Varangian swordsmen, Druzhina infantry, Rus spearmen, chernye klobuki (high charge medium cav), Wallachian mercenary cav, a few Boyars, Avar nobles etc. The "bulking out" reserves were mostly woodsmen and vanilla spears, and I had one unit of mercenary mamluk handgunners (they scare horses ~D).

I didn't have a single bridge battle against the Horde this time, I met them in Lesser Khazar. Having said that, my guys rarely stepped out from between the trees ~D Varangian swords and Druzhina infantry really make mincemeat of MHC if they catch them in the woods :2thumbsup:

A rather dull but effective strategy is to use:

- 7 units of CS;
- 2 units of MS;
- 6 arbs;
- 1 RK (general)

Plenty of arbs and some CS and MS in reserve.

step 1: make a wall of spear.
step 2: stay tight and shoot at anyone approaching;

Add some salt by attacking isolated troops of foot archers with the MS.

Replace exhausted MS, arbs with no bolt left and CS with less than 50 men. The only challenge is pretty much to get your reinforcement right so as to keep some balance between units (usually something like 6 arbs, 2 CS, 2 MS, 6arbs, 2 CS, 2MS does it but it depends if you kill the Khan or if he just runs away).

Replacing some CS with halbardiers is ok but they do not cope as well when they are on the receiving end of a frontal charge.

If you have a stretch of Forest to camp in, you're pretty well set. Halb's + Forest = Dead cavalry with few losses. Also means good protection from arrows as the trees provide cover.

Add a few catapults or cannons as they can fire from within the trees just fine, and help to thin out the enemy archers that stand in ranks shooting fruitlessley into the trees. Chiv Footknights if you've got them are simply perfect for cutting through heavy cavalry in the trees. Add a couple of untis of cavalry (Mounted Sergeant, Steppe Cav or Hobilars are fine) to scatter the archers once the Horde cavalry have been slaughtered in the trees and you're golden.