The seige of Acre

[Bilgediver]

Vladimir, I usually only do that for Cities, especially if they're birnging missile siege engines

[sharpshooter]

Hmm ... I've only faced the Mongol (and Timurid) invasions directly once, as Turkey (vhd/vhad). Both went for Antioch, which I'd upgraded to cannon towers. The first turn they sieged I'd attack them from the city. Instead of sallying I'd sit there, and they would obligingly come within range of the cannons. At 70% losses (around 45% for the Timurids) they would withdraw.

I screened the front of Antioch with single units of nobodies, which they didn't attack as long as the back door (the bridge to the north of Antioch) was open, i.e. not blocked with a unit. With the Mongols I could run a single unit from Adana onto the bridge after they started the siege to cut off their retreat. 10 stacks of Mongols were completely destroyed this way, and I took 3 in the field. The Timurids were smarter and would put another unit on the bridge to prevent escape being blocked. They took ages to whittle away.

I'd like to try other ways of dealing with them, but I was so scared the first time round I wanted to cower behind the city walls. The bridge at Aleppo is appealing for the future.

Their behaviour is curious - like crusade armies. Both let me keep armies in Aleppo, where I was retraining Ottoman Infantry, and running them back and forth. If Antioch was completely screened they would head south towards Jerusalem, and then I'd open the bridge again.

The disadvantage of this is that it took me about 50 turns each to get rid of them. I'd like something quicker another time - and sitting there watching for 10 minutes with the speed on 3 didn't end up a satisfying battle experience. (With the Timurids I had a couple of cannon which I brought to the gates. These would fire on the elephants, who would run amok after a while).

Anyways, I'm so late to this game that everyone probably knows all this already, but thanks for listening :D

[Myth]

My first bit of advice is to always play on VH/VH, the orignal unmodded game is too easy as it is. By the time you can comfortably secure provinces in the Holy Lands you are already well past the early game (which is the only moderately hard thing even on VH/VH).

Now as far as the Mongols are concerned your problem is logistical rather than tactical. Lack of decent infrastructure in the cities you are holding means no retraining, which means no reinforcements and thus no reasonable way to fight outside of your city walls.

I'd suggest loading as many ships as you can muster, full of stacks upon stacks of Hospitaliers, Armoured Swordsmen, Dism. English Knights and Retinue Longbowmen. You should be swimming in florins - use them! Get every general you can as well. Then fight and try to keep them alive. Start a crusade as soon as you can, target a far away eastern town. Use it to bring more reinforcing stacks from Western Europe and to get nice Chivalry and Command upgrades for your generals. The main advantage of a well developed Western country in M2:TW is the endless supply of high-quality troops.

[RomeLegionary]

Yes its a benefit that you must take advantage of when short on reinforcements. I know this is for medieval 2, but back in the day when i played barbarian invasion total war i played on hard settings and had a similar situation where the huns cam in hordes toward constantinople which i was defending with only 2500 troops. When they attacked they had 9900 troops total with 6500 infantry type units and 2400 cavalry units. I made sure their rams were all burnt down and just held them up on the walls for a little over an hour until every one of the infantry units was dead. Then i moved out of the walls with my cavalry and chased down the rest of them killing 7900 mongols in total while only suffering roughly 550 dead. It was one of the best fights i had on there.