I finally went on a Crusade in my VM French game in about 1412, and headed towards Acre. Imagine my surprise when I saw standing on the shore THIRTY FULL STACKS of MONGOLS and who knows how many more lying in the weeds. This is going to be....difficult. Never saw this in the regular game. But this is certainly a dreadful Mongol Horde....

They were a little passive at first. I was able to take Adana on an unprotected side, and the supporting Mongol army just sat outside (out of arrow range) after it destroyed my trebuchet. Near Acre, two stacks attacked one of my landing parties, but when I got a nice setup with high ground they just sat there and refused to come near me so I won by the timer (I wasn't about to try going after them when they were on their own high ground--they're tough enough as it is).

That didn't last long, though, since when my 2nd landing party got near my first one by Acre, all hell broke loose and they were decimated (including my beloved 10-star general! I should have retreated, I guess), and then the leftovers all deserted. So that's two stacks down the tubes, with only a half-stack of the Mongols gone. At this rate I'll need to send sixty stacks to the Holy Land and I doubt I can do that before time runs out.

I got a little lucky with Adana, but I don't know whether I'm going to be able to take Antioch and Acre, which I need to win. The HRE is sending a shipful, and maybe they can wear them down a little bit, and I'm thinking my next stack should head toward (largely unprotected) Gaza and then I'll have two bases of operations to work on the territories in between. So far the Mongols don't seem at all interested in retaking Adana, which is mysterious (since they probably could---I lost a lot of men taking it).

The Timurids apparently disregarded the Mongols, and are headed instead for Hungary. That may yet be interesting.