Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Byzantines, Early, Normal V1.00. 1230 and beyond...
The Golden Horde have been and gone. Khazar was bringing me upwards of 2000 a year in trade and crops but the advance notice you get of their arrival gave me the opportunity to apply 'scorched earth' and get half my money back on all the stuff I didn't want them to have for free and I evacuated all except a token retreat-to-castle force, so as to defend Crimea and Georgia, the latter receiving a separate set of GH stacks but lacking a fort for me to get trapped in.
Years previously, I had been annoyed by the HRE who had parked a Khazar-bound crusade in a neighbouring province of theirs for three or four years, without ever attacking and, the very year I attacked the rebels and won there, I come back to the strat map only to get a message about 'our crusade is to coming this territory, kindly hand it over to us', with unstated implications of dire consequences for not doing so.
I wasn't sure what to do about this, not being a Catholic faction but reluctantly gave it to them anyway. Like the Danes in this campaign, they then neglected to build up a fleet - just one port, TP and a ship would trade to three of my provinces straight away and soon pay for themselves. With just its farm income, it didn't look like that much of a loss to me at first. I retook the province in later years when their forces had been bled dry by the Almos monstering most of Western Europe. Still, I came to thank the HRE for the keep they'd built there when the GH turned up.
Instead of simply starving me out, those impatient idiots went and assaulted straight away. I had about 30 horse archers, Urban Militia for the general and some spearmen, which the interface helpfully split into two sections for me, allowing three units around the keep and spears at the outer gate. I stare out from there at an empty field, to await the worst. The banging and crashing starts up from behind me. Never mind the main gate and the front yard, a Mangonel and some Ballistas are attacking the rear side of the castel, where there's only one wall (now why didn't I think of that at my last sige attempt?) Horse archers were handy, moving quickly around the block to where they were needed. Took a few goes for them to get the range right. Simply clicking on the target made them begin to head off in the wrong direction, as if to march out of the castle and into the open. Click and drag got the desired result and the Treb/Mangonel crew and a pair of ballistas fell silent. Meanwhile a catapult facing one of the other sides had broken through. HA were out of ammo so I moved them and the UM to the outer compound and plugged the breach with the other half of the spear unit. They held out impressively against Mongol Heavy Cav and were down to about 7 men before finally routing. I then had to defend two gates at once.
Things started looking up when the attackers on the keep's side of the inner gate vanished whilst I was looking in the other direction. I brought all three units to the other gate but the horse archers could do little other than shuffle about so I snuck them out through the other gate and the branch and hid them in the woods, in hope of a time-limit win. They were found later but routed to safety.
Meanwhile, the fight at the main gate raged on and the troops weren't quailed by the death of our UM general, just the occasional bit of wavering. I was surprised to see that, by this stage, the Horde was already bringin in its reinforcements. Waves of archers and infantry. These obligingly parked themselves just yards away from the gate, well within reach of several of the arrow towers and were cut down at the rate of two or three a second, all the while firing at a target they couldn't possibly hit with walls in the way - not to mention their own men in the gateway.
By the time they abandoned the assault and withdrew, I had just 11 spearmen left and maybe 10 HA's lurking somewhere at the edge of the map. Scattered about the walls were piles of dead Mongol Heavy Cav, Infantry and archers. All that mindless circling and overcrowding around the gate cost them dearly.
They beat me on the field in a second province but their combined losses were so great that one counter attack caused them to retreat without a fight and the second led to the capture of the Khan. They refused to pay the ransom and they were off the map completely by 1234.
Now, if it had sent stacks into Novgorod territory and fought its battles using autocalc, it might have been a different story entirely. Then again, in my campaign as the English, I barely had the chance to get an agent to survey their troops before they were wiped out in a similarly short period of time.
So, who IS afraid of the big, bad Horde?
If anyone has any tales of a longer lasting Horde presence in the game, I'd love to hear of it. Bringing a stack entirely made up of siege equipment didn't seem to have helped them a great deal. Somewhat out of character too - I thought they were famed for 'travelling light'?
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Hi there.
The campaign was hard, early and I was playing the Byz. I bribed and built up Khazar early in anticipation of facing the mongol horde. I built a fortress and garrisoned it with 8 damaged and valoured units (2 naptha, 2 catapault, 1 full VG unit upgraded in sweden, 1 full unit of steppe cav with a valour bonus and bronze armour, and a 3 man unit of kataphracts with a 3 star general with valor and moral V&Vs). My stratagy was to force the horde to assault and take losses, then re-invade with an 8 star general with 1.5 stacks waiting in Constantinople (I had more than that, but figured I'd hold them in reserve) and hopefully force a bridge battle from Georgia via a sea route (I specialise in bridge fights, my secret ... a recipe of catapaults, archers, fast archer cav and heavy cav/infantry).
I'd left Khazar under defended for 20 years and felt safe that no one wanted to mess with my massive military might, or well defended and under developed (economically) province. I was wrong. For 20 or so years the HRE and I lived in relative harmony, but not only do they send a crusade against me in Bulgaria, but they send just over 2 stacks against me (mostly damaged units from a previous crusade capturing lands in the steppe) in Khazar the year before the GH appeared. So, when the GH appears, I have been under siege for a year, the HRE withdraws and doesn't end up going to war with the GH, and the GH appears with well over 25,000 troops invading 3 of my provinces. I had 3 stacks of mostly kataphracts, Byz infantry, PA, HA, Huscarles, and treb archers in Constantinople.
I retook Georgia first cutting off their forces in Armenia, then lifted the siege in Armenia and won an insane ransom for the 5000 or so troops I had captured, still winning a butcher and merciless V&V for my 8 star general. Each fight lasted over 2 hours and in really tested my endurance. It's so hard to trap fast mobile cav with exausted kataphracti (my PA's did most of the fighting and gained as much as 3 valour in one or two units, but suffered horribly). I had to use map edges, byz infantry spread into single ranks, and exausted katanks to trap highly mobile mongol cav that had escaped my net of forces at their rally point. Eventually, my forces would simply sit at the edge of the map (unable to move due to having no more endurance) and the mongols would rout as soon as they appeared.
After 2 years of sieging my garrison in khazar, they assaulted. They had 2 mortors, both of which I had taken out with high valour catapaults in the outer ring (I had valoured them up much earlier against the Hungarians and Polish who tried to take Bulgaria in bridge battles and then agreed to cease fires after I slaughtered their invasion forces). The fight was short. They destroyed me. After I had destroyed their siege weapons, they sent in heavy cav and assaulted my gates. Missle troops behind my gates seemed unable to impact the enemy at all, so I withdrew some to the last ring. It was a losing fight. Only my VGs made a really good accounting of themselves. and I only ended up killing 2.5 of them for every man I lost. I had been counting on a 10 to 1 kill ratio and was really disapointed. I tried all sorts of tactics, but nothing really helped.
The next year they assaulted my rear guard in Georgia just as I was amasing an assault there against Khazar. It was a glorious slaughter. The map gave me high ground, but it was difficult to hold. Wave after wave of mongols came. Thousands attacked. I held one flank with 4 units of VG and Huscarles in a patch of woods. Anything entering the woods, especially their heavy cav got badly mauled by my axemen and my troops laughed at their ineffective missle attacks. I used byz infantry and kataphracti instead of spear to hold the line against the GH and keep my archers and catapaults safe. I used the catapaults sparingly and successfully snipered their general. I replaced wave after wave of treb archer and even my newly created arb units, but they all ran out of ammo. Finally, 5.5 hours later (I paused twice for breaks, so not sure how long the fight really took, but it was easily over 4.5 hours of actual fighting) I got the message that the enemy was fleeing the field. I didn't even bother trying to pursue them, none of my units had enough endurance to run. I had no reserves left, I was spent. I executed almost 3000 mongols and had killed another 2600+ and still when I assaulted Khazar I faced over 5K mongols.
I autocalced my final fight with the GH, I just couldn't bear another 4-5 hour fight. I savoured my deconstruction of the HRE for putting me in such a crappy situation. I demoralised their leader and kept knocking him down to no influence, I'd capture him where I could just to give him the V&V. My assault on Khazar really damaged the province, but it signaled an end to the GH. Good riddance.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
The Horde can be a pretty formidable force when you face them in the open field, and they bring a capable army.
In one campaign as the Byzantines, I had successfully fought off their horse archer attacks with my own bowmen in several skirmishes. Finally, they brought a large army, including lots of heavy cavalry, to bear against by forces. I confidently set up by infantry (Byzantine infantry and spearmen) in a semi-circle at the top of a hill, with huge numbers of archers behind them. I thought I could hold them off long enough for my archers to make short work of them.
The Mongols advanced in a wide line, and spread out at the bottom of the hill. They attacked my center and both flanks simultaneously. My infantry, spear-armed or not, was no match for them and quickly fled. The entire line soon crumbled and the archers joined the rout. Most of my army was lost, with only a few losses for the Mongols. It was my most ignominious defeat.
Thereafter, I learned to respect the Mongol heavy horse, and kept most of my men safely in the forests. This allowed me to blunt the Mongol offensive and destroy it.
To be honest, I've never seen the Horde become a strong empire, however. Their strategy is too weak. They often move all their forces out of recently captured provinces (before the castle has fallen), and the previous owner regains control. The Mongols then have to retake it, only to lose it again by making the same mistake. They aren't very good at deploying their forces; they often use small numbers of troops to launch attacks while their main body sits uselessly to the rear. They aren't very aggressive either; after making a few conquests they often sit there waiting to be attacked. As others have noted, they suck at castle assaults (just like all AI-controlled armies).
The strategical weakness of the Mongols is far greater than their tactical weakness. The could become quite strong if the AI used them a little better.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kommodus
The strategical weakness of the Mongols is far greater than their tactical weakness. The could become quite strong if the AI used them a little better.
I agree with that!
I used to fear battles against the horde, but now I just have a lot of respect for them and enjoy the battles a lot more. On the field, the horde is often capable of putting up a really interesting fight. They come with some awesome infantry and cav, and often their units have very high valor. While many of the other factions seem to line up and either wait for you to charge them or them to charge you, the horde seems to enjoy trying to pull you out of position with cav feints or with the "appear weak" strategy. They are more apt to hit a flank, or hit from two sides at once. And they tend to recover from the first route or two - I've learned not to pursue them too early.
When I fight the horde now I bring little cav, lots of sturdy spears, and something very armored and armor piercing so that it won't get too shot up and so it will be able to take out those armored cav and warriors. (Upgraded halbs mixed with Vikings works well if you can get them - a few militia sgts in the mix works, too. Just be sure you don't have all non-elite or you won't be able to stop a general route. Swords aren't very good as they aren't AP). I also bring some armor-piercing missiles (arbs, xbows, longbows) and I really like javelins - I try to bring a couple of those, too. (Very armor piercing and they are fleet footed.) I make sure my flank is protected and I try to stay near some woods - out in the open is a bad place to be against the horde. I expect to loose as many men as the horde in most of my battles against them - my melee infantry always pays a heavy price. (Partly because I'm clumsy with my missiles - I need to get better at avoiding blue-on-blue.) I've also noticed that the once they get shot at the horde cav have a habit of charging missile troops - I've starting bringing pavise arbs when I can as they can last long enough for me to hit the cav with some spears after they engage the arbs. (That or keep your missiles on the edge of a tree line. Hard finding any elevation in most of the places you meet the Horde.)
But strategically the horde is dumb. Aggressive, but dumb. They are often at war with everyone at once and they make some simply stupid strategic moves. They are really fearsome when they first appear, but give them a few years of constant fighting and a lot of the edge is gone - it gets easier and easier to take them out. Another thing, too - the horde Kahn tends to be a drunk - just like the real one!
I fought a battle against the horde last night. I was playing as the Danes and had an army similar to the one I described above - chiv sgts, Vikings, halbs, 2 pav arbs, 2 javs, 1 RK, 2 mercenary mounted xbows, and the odd merc, axe or sword unit. We each had about 700 men, including reinforcements. They had about half heavy cav and horse archers and about half Mongol warriors with a unit of peasants and one of militia sgts. I set up in a half-square around some woods. The GH sent most of their cav to my right flank and tried repeated feint charges with their mounted missiles. When that didn't draw me out they started pelting me until I pulled back towards the woods. In the meantime their infantry was advancing on my front. I got my arbs in position and started killing some HA's that had moved towards my front, which provoked a charge on my arbs and a general charge on my flank. I was holding well in front as the charge met my line at different points so I was able to get around and flank a couple of the units after they hit my line. My RK general came out to join the fray in front. My right flank was in deep kimchee - chiv sgts, CMAA and javs were facing two heavy cav and three HA's - but I was able to move some mounted xbows and a depleted unit of merc billmen from my left over to help them out. I swung the remaining units from my left flank around from the side to hit the horde units at my front. The battle see-sawed for some time - both of us had units break and flee. I was able to stop most of my units from pursuing them too far, and I rallied a few of my own routers. Finally the GH general - a unit of Mongol warriors - charged the melee at my front and I was able to scissor him between two tired chiv sgts and a halb. When he finally tried to flee I cut him down with what was left of my knights, and soon was able to force a general route. Bloody battle for both sides, but I won and felt pretty good about it. I executed all the prisoners I’d taken. (The same turn the GH fought big battles against the Russian and the Hungarians, too – three years later they had been obliterated and the three of us divided their former holdings between us. I got Finland, Norvgorad, Moscovy and Smolensk.)
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
To be honest, whenever I fight the Horde (thus far I've done it with the Russians, the Hungarians, the Turks and the Egyptians), and for that matter any other gigantic-army-comes-and-wont'-give-up-in-under-two-hours battles, I tend to wuss out and turn off both fatifue and limited ammo. The latter is actually rationalizable (smart commander keeps supplies at hand), the former just to smooth things out.
Given that they tend to use tactics that make even regular AI armies look smart fatigue and running out of missiles are about the only things they could beat me with. And this of the hardest difficulty.
With Russians I normally have a crack army waiting for them right in Khazar when they turn up, usually made up mostly of Boyars, Steppe Heavies, Halberdiers and pavise-toting crossbowmen and arbalesters. Boyars and Steppe Heavy can fight the Horde heavies on equal terms (though the Steppes tend to have it tough) and beat the HA in a firefight, halberdiers are just scary against anyone who wanders in too close, and arbalesters and x-bows... well, with limitless ammo, no fatigue, pavises and the AI's general ineptitude at flanking it's pretty obvious I'm not losing the firefight.
What's really pitiful is the AI's habit of taking about its fulle compliment of siege weapons into the battle which uses up almost half of its unit slots - and as I do not obligingly bother to loiter within their range these duly sit on their asses and only help me by taking up slots from the combat troops. If I don't ride up and kill them off the AI doesn't normally withdraw them, either.
Oh yeah, and the Khan tends to be a little suicidal. Usually he gets shot up by arbalesters, but sometimes he comes and wanders back and forth right before my battle line by his lonesome and gets run over by any attack unit I happen to have handy.
With the Hungarians I cheerfully allowed the Novgorodians to keep the steppes past Kiev and slaughtered the parts of the Horde who got that far on the river bridges. The biggest issue was actually to place all my missile troops so that most of them could reach the Horde HA who had an annoying habit of parking right onto the waterfront of the opposite bank and shooting at anyone they could reach.
I don't thin kthey ever tried to cross the other bridge, though. I actually ended up moving most of the guys guarding it to reinforce the other one, since they didn't have anything to do.
With the Muslims I usually take them on in Georgia. The ridiculous terrain advantage the mountains give combined with diligently upgraded Saracen Inf for the lineholding duty, lots of archers (most of whom can by that point fight decently too, like Nizaris, Futuwwas and Mamluk HAs) and crossbows and a good general has thus far always resulted in a very thoroughly decimated Horde.
One time the Khan first trudged up the almost vertical hill in serious missile fire and then started wandering back and forth before my units. After I stopped staring in disbelief I fed him to Ghazis...
One thing I really don't want to see is the Horde's yearly income screen. With so many troops and so little territory it must be stellarly on the negative...
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
I played as Russia once, and they sent everything at kiev. On one bridge battle, there were so many horse corpses that my men were literally fighting waste high in the dead! ~:eek:
The were wearing me down, and I asked for peace. The n00bs refused and attacked again. I killed their king and the faction dissolved, creating a rebel army of 20,000 on one province, Crimea I think.
That's not the funny part, however. The funny thing is that the horde kept on resurfacing and getting killed the very same turn by the ex-horde rebels. ~D This happened 4 times.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Playing at the Italians the Horde came and them parked itself in Eastern Europe, then decided to build up a massive trading empire while i was busy using most of my fleets to destroy the French in Europe. So in the Late era hi had to go and fight a war of attrition against what seemed like neverending amounts of ships.
But i survived and won the game ~:)
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
One thing I really don't want to see is the Horde's yearly income screen. With so many troops and so little territory it must be stellarly on the negative...
To give some hope of historical accuracy, they ought to be regarded as owning another set of provinces, off the edge of the map, which are worth 'x' amount. Not so much that it completely unbalances the game by making them utterly unstoppable but enough for them to sustain attacks in Europe for at least as long as they lasted in reality.
Failing that, all the GH needs to do is move their army en masse and hop from one place to the next, obtaining money by pillage and post-attack building demolition, which I think is what the real Mongols did a lot of. You may beat them in the end but you will be getting back lands reduced to the development level where they were at the start of the Early period and will have to cough up the florins to get them back to how you want them, all the time at risk of a re-emergence...
Anyway, seems I got off lightly with only about 6 stacks appearing on the map (one entirely made up of artillery and siege equipment, a lot of which never actually appeared on the battle maps, as far as I got to see) and attacks only on my territory. They may have fared better if they'd got into AI Novgorod territory as well and most likely won by autocalcing the battle results.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kommodus
The Mongols advanced in a wide line, and spread out at the bottom of the hill. They attacked my center and both flanks simultaneously. My infantry, spear-armed or not, was no match for them and quickly fled. The entire line soon crumbled and the archers joined the rout. Most of my army was lost, with only a few losses for the Mongols. It was my most ignominious defeat.
Thereafter, I learned to respect the Mongol heavy horse, and kept most of my men safely in the forests. This allowed me to blunt the Mongol offensive and destroy it.
I was similarly humiliated in one defeat. I didn't even have a full stack to fight with as Georgia was not on my front line at the time. I had 2 Treb archers, maybe one HA, 3 spears, one or two Byz Inf, a remnant of merc billmen and some UM.
I was foolish enough to make the most of the highest hill available, to maximise archer range and try and give the spears a boost from downhill attack. There was a perfectly good patch of woods, lower down and to the right hand side but only the UMs and some Inf were lodged in there, neither of which fared well. The GH didn't attempt to climb the hill - of course - just stood off and archered away. Their Heavy Cav stayed well away, to my left on a low rise in the terrain. Even more foolishly I got bored and charged the nearby Mongol inf units which my archers had shot into low the teens in number. This only brought the heavy cav charging down onto my flank, triggering a mauling, followed by a mass rout. Of course this hill had been right at the back end of the map, leaving little room for rallying.
An attempt to exploit the time limit and parking a remnant of HA, out of ammo, in a patch of trees in a corner of the map didn't pay off. They were the last unrouted unit I had left but held out for only a minute or two after all my other units had left. With no enemy units nearby, the wavering flag started flashing. I wondered why and hovering the cursor gave the message "dismayed at destruction of army". They then spontaneously routed as some mongol units, a good hundred yards or more away started in their direction.
IIUIC, concealment in trees does not work for the general's unit. Perhaps the last unit on the field is regarded as being a general type unit, so, even if successfully hidden to begin with, the tree symbol vanishes and every AI unit can see them.
In STW, I'd occasionally include unit remnants of less than 5 men in a province when overwhelming numbers were across the border, so they could be hidden in trees a long way away from my main force and play for time at the end of what, by rights, ought to be a heavy defeat. The AI had to scour the map, looking for them and often failed to do so, allowing me one more season to redeploy and meet the follow-up attack.
If anything, the fact that you can't use this exploit any more is an actual improvement to the game. There's now more of an incentive to build castles in frontline provinces and retreat to them, when outnumbered, which is the proper way to buy the time required to redeploy troops to where they are needed.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
One thing I really don't want to see is the Horde's yearly income screen. With so many troops and so little territory it must be stellarly on the negative...
GH units have a remarkably low upkeep. That is why they are well worth bribing: they have excellent units that are dirt cheap as well. Historically this is correct, as Mongol soldiers didn't recieve regular payment. Their only gain was the loot.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
@Watchman- Get a mod and you will see. The profits are around 0 each year, nothing so special. And I mean that with highest taxes in every province with enough loyalty.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Quote:
Originally Posted by EatYerGreens
In STW, I'd occasionally include unit remnants of less than 5 men in a province when overwhelming numbers were across the border, so they could be hidden in trees a long way away from my main force and play for time at the end of what, by rights, ought to be a heavy defeat. The AI had to scour the map, looking for them and often failed to do so, allowing me one more season to redeploy and meet the follow-up attack.
If anything, the fact that you can't use this exploit any more is an actual improvement to the game. There's now more of an incentive to build castles in frontline provinces and retreat to them, when outnumbered, which is the proper way to buy the time required to redeploy troops to where they are needed.
You still can use this bug if you have a decent unit with exceptional morale. As the Almos I parked a badly mauled unit of faris at the edge of a map during a sandstorm while vastly numerically superior enemy units paraded past me. When their units got relatively close and my unit's fatigue bar was very low I got the flashing flag too, but it went away when the fatigue bar went up and the enemy unit moved further off. My whole force had been routed but the 2 units I had saved and hid away were skirmishing units I used to screw over enemy reinforments and disrupt their unit migration to my strong point (so their units don't all arrive on my front lines at the same time). These units were far away from my routing units when all hell broke loose and might have missed the demoralising effects.
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
I usually kill the Khan, let them rebel. Then I bribe the remaining armies for my own conquests. ~:D
Re: Who's afraid of the big, bad Horde?
Byzantine, Early, hardest difficulty, max unit size.
My goal in this campaign is to face the horde and defeat them in tactical battle. I want to see how big their army is, and just how long and difficult it will be to defeat the GH at its mightiest.
Prior to this, my only experience with the GH is their historical campaign. Because of this, I over-estimated their melee capability while under-estimated their missile capability. I created an army with thousands of spear infanry but just 10% missile units and maybe another 10% cav. It was not an optimal mix against the GH.
In Volga-Bulgaria, 8,500 GH attacked my army of 7,000 led by a 3-star general (Byz Inf). I was trying to get rid of a large number of rebels units I've bribed, so I only had a small cadre of elite units centering around 6 units of VG. I had a lot of crap units like Slav javelinmen which I intend to bring in as reinforcement late in the battle and just grind them away. I had a handful of cavalry units, a mix of Steppe Cav, Steppe HC, and PA. I did not bring in any heavies like the Kataphraktoi. For spears, I had the vanilla type with a few in the reinforcement queue to replace losses.
I lucked out on the battlefield. I had a good piece of hill at the very edge of my side of the map. It has a fairly dominant slope (for this part of the world anyways), and treeless to boot. My archers had an excellent range advantage and a clear shot while my spears would get a good charge bonus. It's right at the edge so it takes little to no time to retire units and bring in new ones. I set up my army on the crest of the hill, and waited.
The Mongols showed up, used up 1/4 of their unit slots with mortars. They marched within range of my archers (4 units) and I punished them severely. Most of the GH archers were decimated before they could fire a shot. The HC charged my line and my spears counter-charged down the hill. Once they've fixed the cav, the VG hit them in the flank. The Mongol general was killed, all the cav were routed or killed/captured. My cav then charged the GH archers and routed them as well. GH first wave, ineffective.
I pulled my pursuit about 1/3 from the GH side of the map, and reformed uphill. I took some casualties from their mortar fire during the pursuit, and a few during the hand-to-hand fighting before that. But overall things look good. GH reinforcement showed up, with lots and lots and lots and lots (yes, lots) of HA. A decent number of GH foot archers were present too, and the computer managed to always keep at least 1 Steppe Cav or Mongol HC around to keep my own cav bottled in behind the line of inf.
We traded missile fires, with me having the upperhand due to height and unit advantage (foot archer vs horse archer). Occasionally the Horde would charge my line, and get mauled by my VG. I continued to take losses but nothing serious. I managed to defeat maybe 1/3 of the army this way. Then I ran out of arrows.
Now things favored GH. With no archer cover, the computer used my army for target practice. At one point I had to endure a hail of arrows from l0 - 12 HA. There is no point in pursuing them. My Steppe Cav is only as fast as his HA and by this point fatigue has long set in so all units are very tired by default. I had to save their energy on targets that I can catch and destroy, like the GH archers. So all I could do is weather the storm.
Fortunately, the AI likes to target high value units, in this case, my VG. I'd given them lvl 2 armor upgrades so they were quite resilient to arrows. I continued to take casualties but I wasn't being decimated like he was under my archer fire. Still, it's quite demoralizing (to me, nevermind my units) to just sit there and wait for the HA to run out of arrows and then either withdraw or charge my line.
The constant attrition from arrows and the occasional charge (led by HC or HA) began to take its toll and my spears were wearing thin. After one final charge down the hill to clear some breathing space, I orderd the most damaged units to withdraw so I could bring in fresh ones, plus a few crap units for fodder duty.
Before my units can complete the swap, the GH brought in his latest reinforcements -- 6 - 8 Mongol HC plus Steppe Cav, HA and foot archers. They galloped to the hill and up the slope and hit my spears before I had time to form a solid line again (exhausted units move slow). Now things became frantic as a few worn out spears just broke and ran, and that casued the rest of my spears to start wavering.
I ordered in my fodder units (Slav Javelinmen plus other similar crap) to buy time, and they gave me about 30 seconds before they ran. Hey, at least they closed to melee range and actually traded blows before turning their backs and being rode down. The 30 seconds was what I needed to bring down the surviving VGs and the general's unit of Byz Inf. A hallowing and see-saw fight ensued, with the computer always findind more cav to throw into the fight from his reinforcement queue. I was unable to extract myself and regain my hill advantage. Eventually, the quality of VG prevailed. They managed to kill off all the Mongol heavies despite taking a beating themselves. Meanwhile, my own cav has recovered their enegry so I could commit them to the fight again to chase off the archers, which in turn bought me time for the infantry to take a breather on the hill again.
It was the high water mark for the Horde army. That was the closest they came to defeating me. My spears took a severe mauling such that, even with the fresh units, I could only afford a small frontage afterwards. The VG took 60 - 80% losses but they were the rock in my army. The Mongols would keep coming for a bit longer but they never put together such dangerous concentrations of HC or forced me to melee in a bad position again. The HAs took their tolls on me but they couldn't dislodge me from being King of the Hill. Eventually the Mongols ran out of units and brought in just foot archers and Naptha Throwers. My cavalry charged and the battle was over.
In Khazar, my army of 11,300 faced off 26,300 Mongals. My unit mix was more or less the same, but since I had a larger army that means I had more of each unit type. I also enjoyed better unit quality as I saved my best merc/bribed spears for the main fight (Italian and Saracen Inf, Chivalric Sgt, etc). I also had a higher concentration of VG plus my own heavy horses. Finally, the commander is a 9-star Kataphraktoi.
The battlefield itself favored the Horde. It's ironboard flat with nary a bump to speak of. I also didn't get much of a cover within my deployment zone. So I drew up my army parallel to a road, right at the edge of my map, and waited.
The battle went more or less the same as the one in Volga-Bulgaria, but far less dramatic. I whooped his initial force and killed the Khan. We traded missile fires and I decimated his units until I ran out of arrows. Then I suck down all of his and dealt with the occasional charge. My VG took losses but shrugged off most of the arrows due to high valor and armor. I never had a crisis in this battle mostly because I knew what to expect now and how to counter the Horde better. Eventually Mongolian morale became so low, they just put every unit in the designated reinforcement rally point and just park there. I had to march across the battlefield and take the fight to him. It was fun surrounding them and massacaring them though, as they broke as soon as melee ensued. This happend multiple times, I estimate the last 3,000 Monguls perished this way.
Overall, my fights against the Horde were long and ardous, but not as overwhelming as I thought it would be. I had expected being cornered against the wall by them, but it turned out more like a constant harassment. They were no match against my VG when it comes down to melee, and their arrow fire were annoying but not debilitating.
Later, I decided to re-fight these two battles again, only this time, I vastly improved the ratio of archer and cavalry units in my army. I upped my missile units to about 25 - 30% of my forces, and my cavalry to roughly 20%. I also put a 9-star general in both fights this time. It wasn't even a fair contest at that point. I simply slaughtered the Horde.
I took some screenshots from the aftermaths of the battle at Khazar -- there were so many dead horses, I couldn't tell where the Mongols were during the battle if not for their unit banners! You can see the pics and watch some of my battle replays here:
http://world.std.com/~chadwick/TotalWar/
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Ahjenta
