When should Mongols show up?

[b00gjuice]

Hello,

I'm new to TW, and just started playing M2TW a few weeks ago. I've restarted a grand campain a few times as I was getting the hang of the game play. Now I'm on my third grand campaign on easy/medium and I don't think the Mongols are showing up. I'm at turn 62 or year 1202. The Black Death has hit, and I've nearly conquered all the holy land waiting for some epic battles with the Mongols.

So what year should they show up? And if they don't show up, is there a way I can make them show up by editing a file?

Thanks

[Monk]

They are about 20-30 years in your future.*














*where we're going we don't need roads.

[Quintus.JC]

You should get a warning sign about the arrrival of the Mongols very soon (in less than 10 turns). The actual arrival of the Mongols will probably be more 20 turns later.

The Mongols comes in three waves with around 10 full-stack armies. They arrive either north of the Caspian Sea (en route to Kiev), or near Yerevan (en route to Antioch), near Baghdad (en route to Jersulame).

Have a nice time fighting them.

[Old Geezer]

The Mongols may well "show up" and just wander back and forth for 25 or more turns before deciding which way to head or take a city. Often they will sack a city like Sarkel and wander on toward Kiev eventually to make it their home. They can be herded in the Holy Land by placing strong armies in cities leading to Antioch and on bridges and fords and by placing forts full of men; they will swing south toward Jerusalem and then if you redeploy to block that route they will swing back north. You can gain enough time to sail reinforcements from France before they attack sometimes. Once I had their army surrrounded by stacks of armies just east of Damascus and they finally attacked a fort. Once they are in a fort you can use artillery - esp. mortars or flaming catapults to trash the elephants (if Timurids) or kill their elite cavalry. It can be tedious but amazingly effective. Much easier than trying to chase down an entire stack of Jinetes in an open battle where the AI has infinite supply of javelins.

[b00gjuice]

[QUOTE=Monk;2130494]They are about 20-30 years in your future.*

QUOTE]

Thanks, the Mongol movie showed up about year 1208 so I was just being impatient. It took about 10more turns for them to get to me and then they began attacking Antioch two armies at a time. Lots of fun :)

[Marauder]

Don't forget about the multiple waves. In my Egyptian campaign, I thought I had them finished (it displayed "Faction Destroyed") after the 2nd wave. Then, maybe 6 turns later, another 4 stacks show up. The worst part is I just used a Jihad to move all my armies to central europe!! Luckily I left a few castles in the holy land and can raise an army. Hopefully those archer miltias and sarcaren miltia can hold off the hoard until the calvary arrives.

[oz_wwjd]

I wouldn't count on it. Playing as the Byzantines I had antioch literally packed with Guard Archers and the best inf I can lay my hands on and 4 stacks of mongols managed to crush me,but on the other hand it cost them most of there troops and 4 generals to do so..

[Quintus.JC]

The Byzantine don't have any unit that could remotely call themselves true spearmen. Pick a faction with the ability to train better spearmen than basic spear militia and the Mongols shouldn't be much of a problem, providing the venue isn't an open field.

The Muslim factions has good spearmen, pack them in narrow city streets and watch the horses die.

Some European factions can train Pikemen and Pike militia, these guys would absolutely slaughter Mongol cavalry.

Habidler and Swordstaff militia also fare well against cavalry, and also infantry.

And don't forget some quality archers, and you can also have a catapult ready to do some area damage, in the narrow city streets any unit hit with a flaming catapult ammo will have a hard time trying to continue the fight, ballistae comes as a nice alternative.