Mongol War Stories: tell them here

Someone probably posted a similar thread in the past but I just want to bring it back again (and also too lazy to search).

Being the Turks I teched up Constantinople to build Janissaries by 1205, the earliest they're available. Then I waited for 1230, put a bunch of full-flag armies in Khazar to tempt more mongolians to pop out.

Then I sent in my best general with 8* with 8 units of Janissary heavies, 4 units of Janissary infantry, and the rest khwarsem cav and AHC, one full 16-unit army. I wanted to see how many I could take out with just one army of my best men.

From the start of the battle, I placed my heavy infantry as close to the mongols as possible so that when the battle started I could rush them and nullify their missile superiority. Well, to make a long story short, my first assault threw the mongols back in confusion, and the Khan was captured.

As their reinforcements poured in, I place my Janissary infantry so that their maximum range would hit the mongols right as they are coming out, with my line of heavy infantry in front of them, and my cav to the flanks.

After about 270+ units of reinforcements later, I lost around 950 men (over half my army) but mongol casualties came to be a whopping 12500 killed and 9500 captured. In fact, one unit of Janissary heavies had over 1100 kills to their regiment's name. Since the Khan had come out only in Khazar, all their royalty were either captured or killed, and the mongols ceased to exist.

That was the best battle I ever had. I'd like to hear about other people's wars against the 22000+ Golden Horde.

I've had limited experience against the horde as I have yet to play a faction that's closer to them when they emerge. My best so far was fighting 5000 screaming mongols with about 3500 English in the high period on hard. I have up till then generally avoided them as their armour and mobility is hard to counter. Going cav heavy wasn't the answer as I thought to match their mobility with my own. Going strength to strength wasn't the answer. Even teched up CKs were getting chewed up pretty quickly, but my 7 valour Knight's Templar were making hamburger out them. I retried the encounter going in heavy with longbowmen, billmen, knights templar, teched up huscarles (one unit which I tried to advance through woods), various spear (CS and Order foot knights, one unit of each) and mounted crossbowmen (bribed from HRE and mercs, one unit), always chosing high valour over upgrades. Although it was tough and required tons of micromanagement, I moved my spear wall and archers with billmen on my flanks towards the horde in formation with heavy cav isolated on the wings (hoping to lure them on assaulting the cav and wheeling my formation on their rear, or if they didn't take the bait to pin them with my formation and trap them with cav). My goal was to put my strengths up against theirs. They ran from my formation, frustrating me somewhat, until they were forced to engage it or face my cav. It was a slaughter. Entire mongol units vanished under longbow fire (switching "fire at will" on and off to conserve ammo and prevent friendly fire as I raced heavy cav into mop up broken enemy units). Most mongols prefered to fire arrows at range and I concentrated missle fire on those, especially their mounted missle units. Those few units that charged were met with 3 units of 7 valour, teched up, billmen and were pinned against a shield wall of spearmen. Most attacks were directed at my cav, and due to my preoccupation with positioning my large unmounted formation, I suffered some unnecesary casualties on my cav and was dangerously low on them at the end. I rotated LOTS of longbowmen in to deal with my limited ammo and I had to rotate my CKs in as one of my knights templar units fought to the last man while I was distracted. My unmounted formation was intact at the end although harried and messy (I didn't know about the pause key at the time and had a really rough time managing a moving formation). My cav was mostly beaten up and most were reduced to totally exausted, but I had managed to maintain something like a 6 to 1 kill ratio.

There was a more entertaining fight against the mongols in a bridge fight in a previous game, one I thought I had lost until one of my routed units turned once they crossed the bridge and fought the pursuing heavy cav. With naptha, an organ cannon, one archer unit and one arb unit all firing on the bridge. It was a total shocker and very welcome as the mogols rushed the bridge like it was the only floating chunk of a sinking ship. It was like they were lining up and taking tickets to be slaughtered (although they ALMOST broke through my battered spear unit of MFS). I brought more and more missle troops to the bridge and even a backup unit of spear and then sent 2 units of cav accross the bridge to sweep the routers that made it back accross the bridge through their own forces pinning them in.

bridge battles and castle defenses against the horde eventually becomes boring.

longbows with proper shielding are likely the ultimate in anti-mongol weaponry.

I can actually see the longbow's range illustrated on the ground by the carpet of bodies.

try fighting em in the open and then you appreciate their power of mobility.

medmod is great for this when you have MHC having fastest cav speed and the mongol warriors also getting buffed up in melee and them getting a heavy spear unit equal to saracens.

Well I may be boring but I prefer to preserve my Empire (also not as good as some people ~:mecry: ). However things got quite interesting only two days ago when I had my first real Horde fight.

As Poland (note my name) on Expert GA, I conquered East until I hit the edge of the map and then West to a Saxony to Venice border (also Denmark and Scandinavia). At this point I was fighting south and had just managed to take Constantinople ten years before the Mongol Invasion.

When the Horde arrived I left two units of Halbrediars in the Fortress of Khazar. The rest of my armies was put in Cheringov and Kiev where they could defend across bridges. I had heard that one should leave an army of only maybe 20 units to lure the Mongols into using a smaller force.

This I did. And with 6 Crossbows, 4 Halbrediars, 2 Steppe Cavalry, 4 CMAA, 1 Slavic Warrior, 2Feudal Seargents, and a Royal Knight General of 6 Command I began the battle. It began with several charges onto the first bridge where my Halbs were worn down. However on the second charge I lept for joy when the foolishly allowed their King and General the Khan to lead a charge and die.

However as the battle wore on I realized that they would eventually overwelm me. Thus I attempted to bring my Steppe Calvalry around to flank them, this ended in the death of them but I did manage to route the artillery (that was to far away to fire on the bridge). This came in handy many charges later on the other bridge where I had only a single unit of Halbs two of CMAA and my Sergeants and Slavs.

Ironically this was when a pop up appeared that caused Total War to minimize. I closed it and popped up Total War only to find that the enemy had routed and I was saved.

On the main screen the British (the only holder of land across Europe other than me and allso the contollers of north Africa) had used my weakness to attack across the Saxony-Friesland border starting a war.

As of today I have reclaimed my land in Europe bought the entire Rebel Horde (for only 80 thousand fl.) and caused many revolts in English Territory. And since this is GA and I am Poland I am guaranteed to win in the end. The only question is wether I shall continue or start another campaign (although one thing to do is -ian to the remanents of the Eggy or Byzantium).

I was playing as the byzantines, and it was the first campaign I played in the east. I controlled all of the turkey/greece/russia area and was a fixin' to invade Egypt when suddenly a horde of about 70,000 mongols appeared~:eek: (I had a very large army on Khazar and didn't know about the mongol invasion yet.) They pushed me back all the way across russia and cut a path all the way to constantinople. I managed to hold them off in the east in that one territory(forgot its name) through very long battles with immense casualties. In the west I slowly began to regroup and pushed them back past the ukraine. Then my heirless king died of old age at 70~ and so did my dynasty. ~:( Great game though.

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Originally Posted by katank

bridge battles and castle defenses against the horde eventually becomes boring.

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Yea, don't face the horde in a bridge battle! (although using naptha should be pretty fun) Fight them on open, flat terrain, like men! That way no one really gains an advantage, though a clump of trees sitting right by the right flank of the mongol reinforcement zone helped me clear away a considerable amount of cav with JHI ~:cheers:

Janissary heavy infantry: you gotta love 'em ~:)