5 hour battle

Ugh. I play my games with the time limit turned off, and normallythat works out great.
However, the other day (or couple of days rather) I was repelling Mongol invasion of Khazar...

Let it be known that Mongols (13000 in this case) + no time limit + Expert +4 morale bonus (so that they are VERY difficult to rout) makes for looooooooong battles. The death of their Khan went completely unnoticed.

One evening (3 hours) + another evening (2 hours) and I withdrew into the fortress. Killed 11000 of them, lost 900 men (mostly varangs :san_cry: ), but I simply couldn't stare at that battlefield any longer.

gotta say that without a bridge, Mongols are HIGHLY annoying in battle. Sitting out in the forest while being pelted by arrows from every friggin angle gets old in a hurry.

Of course, if I autocalced, they'd hand me my ass on a silver platter.

That's a looong battle. How much men did you and the horde have left before you retreated?

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Originally Posted by miho

That's a looong battle. How much men did you and the horde have left before you retreated?

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They had about 2000 left. I had 700. I *could* finish the battle, but in the end boredom won.

Watching the wave of Mongol Heavy Cavalry charging into a forest full of Varangs is satisfying. Seeing it over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again ad infinitum gets boring.

I see what you mean. Perhaps you should have waited a while and start continue later. Well atleast your loss wasn't big.

good grief, that's a lot more patience than i've got...i get bored after the first wave's been chased off. Sun Tzu would laugh at my lack of resolve.

Indeed, if the first wave is broken the battle is as good as over, the AI will throw it´s reinforcements into the fray as soon as they come onto the field instead of wait and rally them into an effective force. But then again, so do I most of the time when I have to replace units, especially if I´m in a position that feels good.

bringing in fresh archers or knights for example...my archers have no business scrapping hand-to-hand, i always withdraw them when they run out.

And then there are those of us who fight a battle for a few hours, pause it, go to bed, get up the next morning, play a couple more hours, eat lunch; and then finally wrap it up that afternoon. Not that *I've* ever done anything like that myself.... [whistles innocently] :san_rolleyes:

I hear you rvg, because of this unnecessary time consumption I have been looking for a way to get rid off the Mongol invasion, so that the Mongols never appear. I had made a post about it and someone suggested deleting all the references to the Golden Horde in the startpos file, unfortunately that didn't help
:/

Any other solutions?

Give it all the things a faction needs in order to start normally; SetStartLeader, PlaceLeader, provinces, etc. It's kinda like The Horde in late era. You see what I mean? You probably just need to remove "//" at the beginning or at the end of lines mostly but you gotta give em florins and something else. There can't be two Golden Hordes. Prove me wrong.

I never tried it as I love the Horde but you made me think of options. Also modding is about testing and crashing to desktop. I can't stand that and that's why I say I suck at modding. :san_tongue:

Good Luck.


Anyway, I have to fight the Horde sometime. I probably am the only one here who hasn't fought the Horde.

Has anyone tried playing as teh horde?? I have and it was fun.

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Originally Posted by Weebeast

Give it all the things a faction needs in order to start normally; SetStartLeader, PlaceLeader, provinces, etc. It's kinda like The Horde in late era. You see what I mean? You probably just need to remove "//" at the beginning or at the end of lines mostly but you gotta give em florins and something else. There can't be two Golden Hordes. Prove me wrong.

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Yeah I see what you mean but unfortunately there's no fast forward option, after I set these up, even if I do it in HIGH, I still have to play a crap load of turns to wait for the Horde to show up (or not). Maybe one of these days...:san_tongue:

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Sun Tzu would laugh at my lack of resolve.

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I don't know why, but I laughed at that. :san_laugh:

I love the horde battles! 4 hours minimum is what I seem to get. The AI seems to home in on the player, I've played the Turks and had Georgia buttoned up nicely, citadel, 5000 man teched up army, the plains can be clear or better, occupied by a weakened Byz empire, yet the Mongols will insist upon dashing themselves against my Saracen Spear walls!

Then I just changed the AI descriptor to mongol_expansionist (I think) and they settle down a little, they don't just plug all their men into one province and steamroll across the continent, though they're still hard to winkle out of hte plains.

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Originally Posted by lugh

I don't know why, but I laughed at that. :san_laugh:

I love the horde battles! 4 hours minimum is what I seem to get. The AI seems to home in on the player, I've played the Turks and had Georgia buttoned up nicely, citadel, 5000 man teched up army, the plains can be clear or better, occupied by a weakened Byz empire, yet the Mongols will insist upon dashing themselves against my Saracen Spear walls!

Then I just changed the AI descriptor to mongol_expansionist (I think) and they settle down a little, they don't just plug all their men into one province and steamroll across the continent, though they're still hard to winkle out of hte plains.

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I love 'em too. My favorite and most spectacular battle was as the Polish when I moved a couple of stacks into Khazar on the turn they invaded...just to cull their numbers. It lasted six hours and I LOST...but it was awesome. The field between these two forests was just white and brown, littered with dead horses. You could've walked all the way across and never had to step on the ground!

64 units of longbows getting rotated in and out along with a few billmen, CSes, and CHs took care of them nicely.

I've had a similar battle, as the Byz I wasnt happy with allowing the Horde to wreck everything i'd built, by 1230 i'd built an incredibly advanced empire that included all of the Turkish and Egyptian territory. So I took 3500 of the empires finest troops including 5 princes and the Emperor himself to lead the army and waited in Khazar for the Horde to arrive.

Over 15,000 Mongols arrived and the battle began, I was afraid that the mongol horse archers would wear my men down so I went for a mass cavalry charge my kataphraktoi and PA heavy cavalry smashed the Mongols first wave and totally cleared them from the field killing the Khan along with them. :charge: I considered withdrawing since the mongols without a khan where no longer a faction, but the thought of allowing 15,000 barbarians to live and ravage everything was unattractive so I carried on.

The second wave of Mongols arrived and after some skirmishing between our horse archers I routed them and to impede further reinforcements I positioned my army along the border of the map, so any reinforcements would be attacked immediately.

I did this for 3 1/2 hours constantly repelling wave after wave after wave of Mongols, until eventually my line was just completely buckling so I rallied my remaining troops (about 400 of my original wave) into a circle as I called for my own reinforcements who had the entire map to travel. The Mongols by now were free to join the battle without being attacked so they swarmed around my surviving troops who by now had so much experience despite being exhausted stood their ground. :duel:

After a few more minutes of intense pressure the lesser units of my army started to rout and only the Emperor was left in his kataphraktoi unit and about 100 men from various units were left. With my entire royal line at stake I rushed my tired reinforcements across the map :charge: before my force was crushed, luckily a couple of princes were able to withdraw as my light cavalry charged the Mongols. Unfortunately though the Emperor was unable to escape and was cut down somewhere in the melee.

After that and 3 1/2 hours of sitting on my butt I decided to withdraw entirely, I'd lost 800 men including 2 princes, 7 governors and my Emperor but had killed 11,000 Mongols. Easily my greatest victory, which totally gutted the Mongols, 800 men wasnt alot but many were Varangians and Kataphraktoi which either couldnt be replaced properly or not at all at that time so I did suffer severe casualties to the core of my army.

I've also learned the hard way not to try and pin the Mongols at their edge of the map. They've got too many waves of elite troops for it to work. Better to set up a more conservative line at your edge and let their reinforcements do all the walking. That way you can pull out and replace troops in comparative ease and safety, and they're perfectly content to send each wave one after another for as long as you're willing or able to resist.

Ajax

The reason I pinned them at the edge of the map is that if their horse archers were allowed to enter the field they could run rings around me all day wearing my army down. I had to destroy them at the point of entry, its a double-edged sword the pinning tactic, you can hold the line but its impossible to disengage without being overrun. Your effectively leading 1000+ men to certain destruction.

Exactly. Which is why it can be such a great tactic in many situations, but against the horde in its early years they simply have too many elite troops for those 1000+ men to hold.

Ajax

It goes much quicker when they throw themselves against the walls of your fortress and try to squeeze through the gate into your awaiting spears and axes. The toughest part is stopping your damned impetuous troops from fighting their way out into the open and get flanked.

How can you make sure they don't just sit about and wait for your men to starve quietly? How do you get the Horde to attack your stronghold in Khazar? Do you just place your garrison inside and wait for 1231 to come along?
I can imagine they don't have a choice when they land in Khazar only, but what happens when three provinces "join the revolt"?

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Originally Posted by ShadowMagnet

How can you make sure they don't just sit about and wait for your men to starve quietly? How do you get the Horde to attack your stronghold in Khazar? Do you just place your garrison inside and wait for 1231 to come along?
I can imagine they don't have a choice when they land in Khazar only, but what happens when three provinces "join the revolt"?

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Mongols ALWAYS storm the Khazar fortress. ALWAYS.

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Originally Posted by rvg

Mongols ALWAYS storm the Khazar fortress. ALWAYS.

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Sounds like me having some major five hour fun very soon then!
Cheers bro.:happyg:

When considering that I was going to be playing such large battles I thought it
better to keep time limits in place. They're usually considerably extended given
the size of the forces, which I would think is more than enough - I refuse to sit
for hours repeatedly skirmishing with horse archers. Generally found that if the
game was paused and I came back later [e.g. after sleep] my machine was
unable to cope and would have slowed down significantly, if not crashed.

Now that MTW no longer works on my system I miss those long bloody battles.
[Sadly, many 60 second Rome clashes will never compare.] :sadg:

Okay, if you wanna have fun with the Horde then stay away from Khazar. You may hold Khazar (and even build it) but give the province to them when they arrive. It doesn't matter how many troops they have, Golden Horde invades your province with a reasonable amount of army (not too overpowering your army). That way you don't have to fight five-hour battles.

I just met the Horde weeks ago. My life is complete lol. The following screens are the first battle with the Horde.

https://img372.imageshack.us/img372/227/horde8hl.jpg
https://img372.imageshack.us/img372/5796/horde12ln.jpg

Mongol armors are made of aluminum. My mercenaries couldn't catch the Khan.

https://img398.imageshack.us/img398/3943/horde27zr.jpg

The alliance was defeated and Golden Horde put an end to Volga-Bulgar dynasty.
https://img372.imageshack.us/img372/7757/horde38rh.jpg