A tale about the Mongols

Hi folks,

I am currently playing as Poland -- you have to like those Polish nobles!

Now, I have been reading on these forums, so I was kind of looking forward to AND dreading the arrival of the Mongol hordes. I had made up my mind from the start not to overexpand in the east, so I conquered the footholds to the Asian steppes and fortified along the line Vilnius, Kiev, Caffa. I wanted a buffer against things to come, so I left the remaining regions to the Russians and the Turks. To establish my power as the great kingdom of the east, I annexed the lands of Hungary, parts of Greece and northern Europe (of course, they all asked for it, those pesky backstabbing fools).

Sure enough, after a while tidings came that the Mongol horde had been sighted near Sarkel. I signed a ceasefire with Denmark, Venice and the remnants of Hungary. I tried to convice the warmongering Turks and Russians to get off my back... but they refused. I thought, what the heck, the walls of Caffa and Kiev are stong enough, protected by ballista towers and two complete armies. To be sure, I dispatched my faction leader (a nine star general) to the east -- with a fully fledged army of Polish nobles -- while my spies started scouting the vast plains of Asia.

I spotted them just north of Yerevan, coming through the mountain passes and heading north towards a Turkish city... which they ignored. They headed into Russian territory. Fine, I grinned, let THEM pay for all their unprovoked sins against me. My spies followed the horde to the fortress of Sarkel... not all that well defended, as far as i could tell... which they ignored. They now were headed for Poland :oops: .

When they saw what I had in store for them, their five armies lingered a bit around my borders. Back and forth, back and forth. My city garrisons were armed to the teeth, while my faction leader was waiting in the nearby woods, with more than twelve hundred Polish nobles. I thought they would reconsider and instead attack the less defended lands of the Russians and Turks.

They attacked. The great city of Kiev, besieged by five armies.

:furious3: So much for expecting reasoning from the horde -- or the AI for all that matter. It is indeed utterly insane. Why else would it attack me instead of the much weaker Russians/Turks? Utterly insane AND utterly cynical, because immediately afterwards Venice, Hungary, Denmark and Milan all declared war on me.

Just wanted to share this. I love this game, but there are moments when I frustrates me beyond belief.

the battles against a full stack ( often more than one ) of mongols are hard ones ... their lancers charge often rout all your army and you cant reorganize cos the attacks of the light cavalry ... only good strategy for me is to weak them with green armies of crossbows/halbeards ( muck better than pikemen !for me ) ... they kill you with arrows and the lancers charge but you should be able to inflict enormous damages with crossbows and catapults ... the softened stacks can be assaulted then with elite armies ( good crossbows + very good cavalry )

The best way to deal with the Mongols in the field is to use a lot of hybrid infantry. As Scotland I used armies of Highland Archers and Highland Noble Archers....if you have horse archers too that's even better but otherwise hybrid infantry with a few heavy infantry should do the job.

It's best to avoid battles on an open field, though. If you can get a bridge between you and them that's the best idea.

Unfortunately, Kiev is a Horde target, along with Smolensk, Jerusalem, and Baghdad i think, therefore they will come screaming for those four regions.

Has anyone tried giving the Mongols a territory? I wonder if "domesticating" them might make them easier. Once they have a homeland they might stop getting endless stacks of free troops at least! If you gut a city (demolish all the troop buildings) and then sell it to them then you might be able to deal with the Mongol threat neatly!

I planned to try this as the Turks, but they declared war on me before my diplomat got into range. :embarassed:
I have been thinking about demolishing most of Baghdad and selling that to them (and saving my garrison as well...) so that they can keep bashing their heads against the citadel of Mosul. :2thumbsup:

I'll give this a try tomorrow, and let people know how it goes.

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Originally Posted by JeffBag

Unfortunately, Kiev is a Horde target, along with Smolensk, Jerusalem, and Baghdad i think, therefore they will come screaming for those four regions.

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Actually from various reports from TWC, the mongols direction is based on where they appear.
I think they got 3 location that they will randomly appear from in each game.
Can't remember which locations this was but if they appear from the nothern location then they will go for the russian provinces and eastern Europe and if they appear in the southern ones then they will go for the middle-east.

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Originally Posted by TB666

Actually from various reports from TWC, the mongols direction is based on where they appear.
I think they got 3 location that they will randomly appear from in each game.
Can't remember which locations this was but if they appear from the nothern location then they will go for the russian provinces and eastern Europe and if they appear in the southern ones then they will go for the middle-east.

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Hmm. If I recall correctly I got a warning that they had been sighted "near Sarkel".

But when I sent my spies over there they found nothing. I actually had to scout further down, to the edge of Yerevan, to locate the Mongol horde. So if they appeared that far south, according to your explanation they should have started harassing the Turk and the holy lands.

Alas. They came after me.

Guess I should feel honoured by their attention.

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Originally Posted by Jestocost

Hmm. If I recall correctly I got a warning that they had been sighted "near Sarkel".

But when I sent my spies over there they found nothing. I actually had to scout further down, to the edge of Yerevan, to locate the Mongol horde. So if they appeared that far south, according to your explanation they should have started harassing the Turk and the holy lands.

Alas. They came after me.

Guess I should feel honoured by their attention.

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hhmm I think it is Baghdad that triggers their middle-east conquest.
But if not then it is nice that the AI is random :2thumbsup:

Five regions where they can appear: Bulgar, Sarkel, Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Baghdad. They don't get endless stacks of troops, either. They get 11, 3 followed later by 4 followed later by 4 more, then the "invasion" is over. Those come regardless of whether they've settled down, and the mongol horsemen seem to require no maintenance even after they've settled. Settling them down would be good for one thing, though: scattering them. While they are a horde, all their stacks in a wave stick together. If two waves meet, they all tend to stick together, and if you think meeting one stack is hard, try meeting 6-7. Once they have settled, they separate and start looking for neighboring territory to conquer. In my Byzantine campaign, they came in near Sarkel - actually it was in the Sarkel region but very close to Bulgar, that little bit of land just north of the Caspian Sea - sacked all the settlements before Kiev, and then settled in Kiev. They lost Kiev to a revolt, went back into horde, moved north, and resettled in Smolensk. In my current Spanish campaign, they appeared in the Yerevan region, and so far have only sacked Tbilisi. I have no spies up there so I'm not certain of their current progress, but they haven't appeared in the middle east yet.

That's a bonus that they'll assault a full stack city, especially if it's a fortress/ citadel. The trick is to fort them out the first wave is tough to outmaneuver as they don't have siege equipment, but after that you can out manuever them due to them being slow. Some territories are too expensive/vast to block by forts. If you make a successful fortification, the mongols will be forced to take the long route and will harass someone elses territory. Also I made many cannon forts, and if I could single out a stack I'd attack with a full stack with the cannons being under AI control so they could be bombarded before I attacked. The hordes like to stick togeth wich makes them slow but much easier to manipulate. They do refuse to pay ransom while they arte strong but once you weaken them they can become a cash cow. Caught a king an heir and a general and made 30'000 florins off of them

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Originally Posted by Oaty

but after that you can out manuever them due to them being slow.

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Something wrong there then. With seige equipment, Batu covered 60 miles per day. The only Mongol armies recorded as slow were those of Hulegu and that was only slow by Mongol standards

.....Orda

Okay, a quick update on the battle of Kiev.

After a one year siege, two Mongolian armies closed in for the attack, one from the north, another from the south, totalling somewhere near 2200 men. My garrison, 940 strong, braced for impact.

It soon became clear that some dirty rotten spy had opened our gates, despite our two polish spies on the premises. My men were dispersed all over the city...

I quickly commanded some Lithuanian archers and crossbowmen to the north walls, where the first wave came. Together with the ballista towers they managed to inflict a lot of damage, but not enough to stop the bulk of their army from reaching my gates: heavy lancers, heavy archers, a generals bodyguard... all great horsemen. They quickly destroyed a unit of dismounted nobles near the gates, until they were surrounded and destroyed by my general and a unit of hospitaller knights. They managed to stop their advance, but I'm sad to say all my mounted men -- including the promising general Wenceclaw the scarred -- died in that blaze of glory. God have mercy on their souls.

The charge, however, had killed their Khan too and thus broken the force of the first wave. My men on the walls and the towers quickly mopped up the remaining barbarians. However, at that very moment my southern walls, poorly defended because of the despicable sabotage, were already being overrun by the second wave, led by another Khan.

I sent all my remaining men to reinforce the archers there and to try to activate the ballista towers. The mongols withdrew out of ballista range and waited. Waited. Waited some more.

(It seemed I had encountered the passive AI bug for the first time. That would have been no problem, if I had not deactivated the battle time limit...)

I had no choice but to trick the barbarians into action. Since I had lost all my horsemen, I commanded some archers -- all had long since spent their arrows -- to lure them closer. I repeated that manoeuver several times, my towers killing off mongolian horsemen every time... at the cost of several of my men too. The mongolians never seemed to run out of ammo.

Suddenly, their entire army charged. My men took a last stand... and died
bravely. Kiev fell. Poland had suffered its first significant defeat. Yes, the five Mongolian armies were reduced to three and a quarter, but the proudest city of the steppes was sacked and destroyed.

Now only my faction leader and his 1200 battle hardened Polish Nobles stood between the Mongolian horde and my heartlands, while my western border was beset by the plague and no less than five catholic factions.

We will, of course, never yield.

What a game it is. :yes:

Hmm, think I need some advice here.

The Mongols have crossed a river brigde and are preparing to lay siege to the fortress of Iasi, in present day Romania. They are within striking distance of my army of Polish nobles, but attacking them seems suicide: their stacks always stick together (like you predicted), so if I attack one, I have to deal with at least two or three. Moreover, most of you have spoken against attacking the Mongols in the open, since there those pesky horse archers really shine. Iasi is not all that well defended. About four hundred men: two generals, two units of archers and two or three units of dismounted Polish knights.

Do I let them take the settlement? Hope they settle down somewhere, so their armies get seperated and I can single out stacks? Hit and run tactics? I'm starting to understand the Romans when they refused to give Hannibal a real battle after their defeat at Cannae. In any case, the prospect of having a Mongolian settlement in the middle of my kingdom doesn't sound very appealing.

My funds are dwindling fast. In the west, the Danes are besieging Magdeburg, the Hungarians send army after army to try and retake Budapest. In the east, a Russian army is nearing Vilnius, while I just spotted a large Turkish force on its way to capture the now rebellious Kiev. Thorn and Budapest are ravaged by the plague.

I am still new to this game, so I'm trying to learn and adapt. I probably won't win this campaign, but I would like to go down in style if I have to :sweatdrop: . Any comments or more tips would be welcome.

(I probably shouldn't ask here, but can somebody explain once more how you take screenshots?). Thanks all.

Referring to Jestocost's great explanation and advise about how to encounter the Mongols in battlefield:

The best factions for encountering the Mongols are the Byzantines:

Why?

Because of the Vardariotae, great archers, great armour, great melee skills.

The best of the best against Mongols.

So if you are playing as the Byzantines have no fear of sealing an alliance with the Magyars (marriage or diplomacy) and conquer the feeble Polish :whip: (they have good units but a bad position). You will have significantly less problems than the other factions when encountering the mongols thanks to strong economy and vardariotae.

Congrats for the info and the title Jestocost. :2thumbsup:

I must confess I have not yet played with the Polish. :oops:

Pity though. I would like to be able to understand exactly why CA decided that Byzantium should have the strongest HA in the game

........Orda

I remember once beating the Mongols in the open...
Don't remember how, but I remember it involved alot of cavalry :|

I would imagine beating mongols should be fairly easy if you got battletime limit enabled and a lot of spears + cav + archers defending a bridge. Just defend every bridge leading into your lands - they have to pick one or go massacre some other nation before they face you. Either way they'd lose.

I found the AI acts fairly silly with bridge attacks, massing all its units onto the bridge and trying to push through.

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Originally Posted by Lord Magus

I remember once beating the Mongols in the open...
Don't remember how, but I remember it involved alot of cavalry :|

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I've beaten the Mongols with an almost-fullstack of Turkish cavalry (1 sipahi lance : 2 sipahis). I found that if I can successfully pull off a night attack and catch a stack or two by themselves then I can normally beat them - although my stack takes a real beating. I have not yet identified the "magic number" though, because sometimes I will misjudge the angle of attack, or fail to cut off the main target from its reinforcements and have to flee when 3+ Mongolian fullstacks come after me.

I think I have set a record using the least amount of troops to beat a whole horde of mongols. I let them have a city, Jerusalem, and with a couple of spearmen, attacked the town before they left it. After bursting through 2 holes on the walls, they attacked one group. Then i used the second group to charge from behind, killing most.
After taking the walls, i carefully enticed them to attack me around corners where the arrows couldn't reach me, and most met their doom. they had to slow down and turn to go around the corner, and were at about a 45 degree angle when thrust into my spikes. After they had little numbers in each unit and had gone back to the center of the city, I rushed it from 3 sides, wiping out the rest. Yeah! Only 10 stacks left. I used only 4 units of spearmen and some siege weapons.

I for once.. will exterminate every city I conquer in this game just becuz out of frustation of those PESKY mongols.. they are UNDEAFEATABLE..

even when cheatring with addmoney you CANT defeat them! dsakljdflkdkfslasdklfafsldksfdskfl

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Originally posted by Burakius
even when cheatring with addmoney you CANT defeat them

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Oh yes you can. With about 3 really good assassins (+8 or better) you take out all their generals then eventually the heir and faction leader. At this point they turn into rebels. This also works with the Timurids. It may be cheating a bit, but it does make the game a little more playable. Besides, after the amount of punishment they both gave me, it was the only way to save my eastern forces from annihilation.

Oh, it's possible to beat them, but it's not easy. The assassin bit is good, but it only works before they settle down. Once they own a province, the normal rules apply, and if you kill off too many generals they'll start adopting captains to fill out the ranks. As Byzantium, the only open field battles I fought against them I won, and both times those were all cavalry armies. I only had 3 units of shock cavalry, and 17 units of horse archers. I won, but I took a tremendous beating. I'm not counting the followup battle where the Mongols took a fort of mine, and then I counterattacked them while they were still in the fort. I had bombards and trebuchets raining death on them from beyond their shooting range. In the true open field battles, I took 40-50% casualties while winning the fight, and that was against nothing better than a 2 star general. That is where the assassins shine. They have a bundle of 7-8 star monsters leading their invasion stacks. Kill them, as quickly as you can.

Holding bridges against them is the best strategy, and defending fortifications is the second best. They can still beat you, but you take as many out as you can. Until they settle, the invasion troops are all they get. They can't restore losses, though they probably can hire mercenaries. I don't know if they do that even if they can.

Two advices:

1. NIGHT ATTAck - before they settle, they run around in herd, so, you have to fight at least 2 stacks normally(which I managed to beat only once, and barely, on vh - bridge fights and sieges not counted:p). Night attack however... it's you against his army - 1vs1 - how hard can it be?;)

2. heavy cavalry + heavy horse archers(if you have). Their infantry won't last too long to your heavy cav.(will last way longer then you'd expect, but still...). Plus you'll also get an advantage in supporting whoever is charged by their cav.; and since they have a ton of cav. - they use the ha's in melee too, when it's needed - it helps.

I had always much better ratios with full cav. armies, since they really use their mobility properly, and if you lack... outplaying them won't be easy at all.

Only wussies fight the Mongols from behind their cowardly walls. :no:

Real men fight the Mongols honorably in the open fields of valour! :skull:

No hesitation, put on a jock strap and take the battle to the barbarians. :skull:

We've all heard of the bridge to the east of Aleppo being particularly good to defend. There's a better river crossing. North of Edessa, almost in the mountains (in fact, in the region of Yerevan) there are two river crossings almost next to each other. The west-most one isalmost unfair; cliffs right up to the ford, with a tiny access point between the actual crossing and friendly territory, which can be plugged with a mere two or three spear units. The other one's not bad either, similar to the Aleppo crossing, just not quite as steep. Two armies there can and will contain pretty much any Mongol threat to the middle east.

A habit I have is to have an army of horse archers sitting in a fort behind the bridge - they can come on as AI led reinforcements, and because they're quick, they get to the battle in time for a truly horrendous amount of arrowfire to be levied on the assaulting troops.

If you have to fight them in the open, my advice is to red line camp. It's lame yes, but its the only way you can really beat 3 loaded armies, they arent like the pissy other factions that bring sergeant spearman and crap like that to make their armies bigger, they have really good units in their really big armies. What I did when I was egypt, I had 2 full armies, one had 6-7 desert archers in, which i put in the corner againt the red line, I stretched them long enough to make a triangle with the red line making up the point and sides and the archers making up the bottom. I then put all my army inside this, I had 2 catapults, 6 royal mamluks, 4 dismounted arab cav and 2 tarbardariyya. As well as more reinforcements. Since the horse archers couldnt flank, they just stood there and got shot by my archers and catapults until the main force attacked and my royal mamluks where able to repel it. I continued this strat until all they had left where mongol foot archers which i attacked and destroyed.

Another good way I found of beating them, is as you did before with castle sieges, but also bridge battles as someone mentioned before. I put 2 armies at a bridge and waited to see if theyd attack. When they did one of my armies wasnt involved, i guess i left him too far back but anyways, my catapults where able to deal out massive damage at close range as they got caught up in the bottleneck, one had like 150 kills. and I managed to defeat two of their armies with one of mine.

During my first campaign as the English I fought one battle in the open against them. I hid in the mountains until they attacked. It was at night but they still had two full stacks...how that happened I dont know. Anyways I figured that I would use my bombards from high in the mountains to rain fire on them. But, alas, that was not to happen. Instead they were on the wrong side of the mountain and that successfully nullified my bombards. I had about four units of archers also and they kept coming with thier cavalry and I defeated one full stack before thier second stack arrived at the scene. By then my forces were sadly depleted. I decided it would be better to wait them out. The second force did not get there in time and I won the battle. That was the only time I fought them in the semi-open. I think I lost that campaign due to the constraints of time. But anyways that is my encounter with the Mongols.

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Originally Posted by Trithemius

Has anyone tried giving the Mongols a territory?

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I did this to the Timurids. They showed up outside of Baghdad (which I had taken), and, for some reason (probably a mixture of my full garrison and Lusted's LTC mod) they didn't attack me right away. I gave them Mosul in exchange for an alliance, and they were very pacifistic afterwards. Their French allies (me) hemmed them in on three sides, and on the fourth lay an impenetrable mountain range. They eventually took Constantinople in a jihad, but otherwise didn't attack anyone: Constantinople had me on one side, and their Mongol allies on the other. They were downright peaceable until I made them be my vassals, then got nervous about their full stacks (still at full power from the initial invasions) and got caught assassinating a general.

Definitely the Mongols are a pain... It is with nostalgia that I remember M:TW where the armies did not cost as much and I could muster 50,000 men to meet and crush the Mongols when they appeared in Khazaar... :sweatdrop:
Now, it is a different story in M2:TW...

I have good experience with Pavese Crossbowmen (playing Hungary), who can really devastate those Horse Archers. Problem is, Hungary doesn't really have any troops that can stop those damn Mongol Heavy Lancers and Mongol Halberd Militia (much better than my own Halberd Militia). Another big problem is the high dread lowering my men's morale. I desperately need to up the chivalry of my generals to counter this, but I don't really want to let those Mongol prisoners go free...
The Timurids don't seem to want to settle down anywhere. They took Acre first, then Jerusalem, plundering and leaving both for rebels. WTF? Don't they want to stay? Well, whatever, those sieges have wittled them down some. I was lucky enough the Mongols settled down before I entered the east, so I only had to face single stacks. These I could beat in the field using lots of elite heavy cav and PavXBows.
But the Tims have just had their second wave appear near Baghdad, and their stacks stick together as if glued together. I have wittled them down some in the two sieges mentioned, and then I managed to have a field battle in which I only had to face one-and-a-half stacks. This I managed to win because of the mountainous terrain: The AI is really bad at managing missile troops effectively in steep hills, those guys just kept running back and forth. It turned into a huge slaughter by PavXBows and Basilisks, with only about 15% casualties on my side. But the idea of meeting them at river crossings simply didn't work. They simply wouldn't attack unless I moved my troops away from the fords, finding other ways towards my cities instead.

In 1.2 I'm finding the Mongols and Timurids appear and then just mill around on the same spot hardly moving. Very strange!!! They don't attack anything.....!

Any ideas why this is happening?

Nope.

Why don't you attack them ?

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I've been reading a lot of posts about tactics for dealing with the Mongols and here is my two cents worth on dealing with them on open ground.

I've tried the tactic of waiting for them in cities or at river crossings, but so far all that has achieved is burned towns and the Mongols outmaneuvering me and ending up on flat ground. I've played against them as the Venetians (and being mostly infantry based) it is best to wait them out in your cities. But in my current campaign as the Turks, I've decided to take a more aggressive approach. So here is the scenario.

The Mongols are in Horde form, happily romping through my lands. So far only the first wave of 5 stacks have pitched up and I am facing them with 3 full stacks and a couple of reserves. My stacks are spread out, blocking passes and crossings. My armies seem vulnerable, but I always choose my ground in such a way that no more than one Mongol stack can reach me. Then I just wait, because inevitably it happens that one Mongol stack gets separated from the rest.

My armies all consist of the following units:
For every Mongol Lancer I have a spear unit
For every Mongol Archer I deploy an Ottoman Infantry unit
For every Mongol HA I field a Sipahi unit.

On open ground the Mongols have two weaknesses. They are arrogant and they love to spread out. Their attack formation is usually the classic "bull head" one of the head engaging you and the HA sweeping along the sides as horns. To counter I just use a simple hammer and anvil method.

As soon as I attack a stack, their usual response is to engage me rather than wait for me to come to them. This suits me fine, since I can choose some hill or the other, giving my archers more range. Then I put all of my Sipahis on one flank, usually where the hill is flattest (don't want easy cavalry charges from them). The idea now is to concentrate fire. My HA outnumbers theirs two to 1 and if I'm lucky I can concentrate fire from 6 squads on theirs one at a time. Within a couple of volleys, their whole one flank will crumble. By now our archers are trading arrows and here I try to concentrate fire on the flank where my Sipahis are. I also put my general (and maybe an extra Ottoman unit) on the flank opposite the Sipahis. This keeps their HA on that side from getting ideas. Then I just wait for the charge from their cavalry. Which is up a hill and straight onto waiting spearmen.

Having weakened their one flank of HA, I use two or three Sipahi squads to keep the remaining Mongol HA away, and send the rest of my HA against the weakened Mongol Infantry. Now I switch my Ottoman fire onto the opposite flank as to where the Sipahis are attacking. If my spearmen are taking strain, I can easily send a Sipahi unit into the backs of the Mongol Cavalry, otherwise I just use them to spit Mongol infantry.

I've used this strategy in battle after battle and 9 out of 10 it works. The idea is to always concentrate fire or forces, attacking their one with your 2 or 3 and hope that your spearmen are going to hold long enough.

The drawback to this strategy is losses. I usually take a loss of about 20% of my men, simply because the Mongols can take huge losses before routing.

Hmmm i could rly go for a Selucid Phalanx against those mongols maybe a few elephants and catarphracts and those Mongols would be toast. Shame Byzantine spearmen seem to have the constitution of peasants when faced with the most modest mongol cavalry charge.

As Milan, I'm waiting for the Mongols to appear. I've got a plan that I want to try.

4 units of spears, 2 units of cav (Generals), 2 standards and 12 units of crossbows.

My goal is to have all of my spear troops just behind my crossbows. I'll let the crossbows dual with their archers (ha, let they TRY and hurt my shooting turtles!) until they decide to do the cav charge. Then my spears will charge through my crossbows to intercept.

Goal is to allow the crossbows to do what they do best, kill off LOTS of enemy at range.

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Originally Posted by Mithradates

Hmmm i could rly go for a Selucid Phalanx against those mongols maybe a few elephants and catarphracts and those Mongols would be toast. Shame Byzantine spearmen seem to have the constitution of peasants when faced with the most modest mongol cavalry charge.

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Great idea :idea2:

Why not armored hoplites. They laugh at arrows, spit on horses and chew on elephants. :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

The Mongols have spies? Never knew that! But anyways, when I was playing as Milan I had crusaded to Jerusalem early and had taken the coast, controlling Acre, Jerusalem, Gaza, Damascus, and Antioch. Mongols arrive, walk right past the Egyptians and the Turks, and lay siege to Jerusalem.

Now this was 1.0 mind, and the Siege AI wasn't the best. Basically they'd siege with 4 stacks, but only *one* of the stacks would attack the wall. And when they attacked my fortress at Acre, if I placed my units in the inner wall they'd never try to break it down. As such, I never lost a single city for the Mongols.

So they set up camp. For about two hundred years they did nothing but sit outside my walls and occasionally attack. Seriously, the Mongols just sat outside Jerusalem for most the game, I never destroyed them. It also meant I couldn't expand in that part of the world because I knew leaving any of those cities empty would mean a mongol attack would be inevitable.