The Insteresting AI Mentality

This is my reply to someone asking me why I abandoned my provinces bordering the Horde when they first appeared on the map:

When I gave up my provinces bordering the horde, I actually was having another idea in mind. The idea probably also comes from my experience playing the board game, Risk. Whenever I was preparing to fight a HUGE battle with a faction, destroying his weakest terriorites might not be a very good idea, although you may gain immediate gratification. Yes, the problem with it is that you will get your troops divided, making yourself more vulnerable to enemies' counterattacks. Instead, what you should do is if you have enough forces at hand (with reinforcement then it's even better), you should attack their provinces that have the greatest amount of armies, even if you might lose...well, I win most of the time though . The basic philosophy behind this is to weaken the enemy before they come to you.

I know some of you might argue that attacking weak provinces first might earn you some $. But hey, wasn't I talking about HUGE wars? In small battles and raids, I don't think that it matters that much. But in huge wars, nothing is certain. The weak province you just take might be taken in the next rounds, due to your divided armies.

So somehow I also found this kind of mentality in the AI. If the enemy faction has large troops and they can attack either a weak province or a strong province, it is quite likely that they choose the latter. This is why I gave up my provinces bordering the Horde--to make myself look less significant and hostile to them while making the Egyptians look bad.

Very sensible if a short campaign is planned - as you will have to fight their main forces at some point, so do it at your full strength, win, then mop up.

If a lengthier strategy is in order, then crippling the production capabilities of the AI might be more useful (winning as many major battles as possible of course)

Although against the AI, it is fairly easy (even on expert) to have multiple low cost armies that are very effective at fending off all but the most determined attack - but large scale attacks you should notice coming in time for reinforcement of weakened border provinces.

I might try that strategy.

Normally, from about 1200 onwards I try to build lot's of units for fighting the Horde upon entry. Win or lose, it is a big battle and you can then weaken them significantly to mop them up later in the game.

It seems to me that leaving someone else to fight the Mongols is a good idea. That way the horde comes limping along to you and they are that much easier to take down. I do this with other factions sometimes playing away from the strong faction (in my current campaign it is the Byzantines) and continuing to trade with them until they decide to attack (in this current game, they attacked my navy as we have no provinces bordering each other).

I still like to cripple money making and troop building capability of the AI in its provinces with mercs who roam. You disband the mercs when they are pretty much depleted or have finished their job (of course, be careful about disbanding high valor merc units that are still fairly full, they may come back to haunt you on the other side of the battle field).

If I'm playing as an eastern faction, I always prepare to defeat the horde almost as soon as they arrive (although I've never enjoyed fighting them in Khazar). Playing as a western faction, however, I prefer to leave them well alone and let them weaken my neighbours by attacking them from the east.

By the time the horde have filled the steppes, their forces are so scattered that they're rarely a threat any longer, meaning that when the time comes you can pick off their provinces relatively easily.

I once used a strategy that is sort of a twist on this one. I withdrew from all the provinces that bordered the eastern edge of the map, just before the GH was set to appear, destroying the border forts at the same time, but building churches and leaving bishops or priests and spies.

The strategy was to cause these provinces to rebel as soon as the Mongols moved westward out of them. Then the GH armies would be trapped between my armies and huge rebel armies behind them.

The strategy worked well, the GH were practically annihilated within a few years, and I bribed or reconquered the rebel and GH provinces. With new rebel and GH units incorporated into my army, and generals whose ratings rose after defeating the GH and rebels, I was better off than before I started.