The Year is 1230

[Kraellin]

the year is 1230. it's not a particularly notable year throughout europe. farmers farm. warriors war. kings do whatever it is that kings do and all is fairly normal in the known world.

in the muslim world great men rise and fall and their kingdoms and aspirations with them. the egyptians fight the turks, the turks fight the byzantine and the byzantine fight the egyptians. all is normal in the world.

near the straits of gibraltar, the spanish and the almohads contest lands that have been contested for hundreds of years and all with little change. peasants groan and wives weep over fallen husbands, and all is normal in the world.

in the north, the danes rest after after a lengthy and weary attempt at furthering their lands. the novgorods sweep south only to be repulsed time and again and all is normal in the world.

but now, as the year progresses towards another winter, rumors begin to circulate among the lands. wild rumors. rumors of something stirring in the east. farmers are deserting their farms and moving west with great speed ...and fear.

rumblings from governors in the east about bandit raids and men on horses pounding through their provinces reach all the way to the west. something is stirring. something is making the cattle restless and the steppe animals flee. something...

scouts are sent east. they do not return. ships are sent to eastern ports. they do not return. a low, dull rumbling begins to rise on the eastern border and dust clouds form like towering thunderclouds over the steppes.

and as the year turns new, the rumbling rises. the dust grows nearer. the rumbling turns to thunder and the dust to a wall of rushing confusion. the thunder becomes discernable like the pounding of hooves on solid rock, growing and pounding and heard for miles. the wall of dust rises to meet the sky and as the deafening roar comes ever closer and just when you think the hurricane of dust will overtake you, forms begin to show themselves. closer they come. and closer yet, till one can make out horses, thousands upon thousands of horses and as they rush westward one sees riders on the horses, but not just on a few here and there, but on every horse

the plains are wide. one can see for miles in all directions, yet to the east, one can see nothing but this giant wall of dust, made from the hooves of thousands upon thousands of war horses and riders in strange garb. the wall is now more than dust; it is horses and warriors in endless numbers, riding with an easy grace and flowing like a river gone wild across the plains. everything in their path is trampled. nothing stops this..., this..., horde

the mongols have arrived.

a rider is quickly dispatched to the west, and more to every other corner of the known world. word spreads like a summer brush fire through dry grass. some scoff. some cringe. others pause their own wars, knowing that something is wrong in the world that once was 'normal'.

scouts finally begin to get a count on these new arrivals. a full 33 armies or horse archers, steppe cavalry and heavy cav are spread out across a thousand mile stretch, covering 4 full eastern provinces. the numbers are staggering. an estimate is finally made of 21,500 seasoned, battle-hardened men and horse. a 'horde' is too small a word.

the egyptians, turks, russians and novgorod are immediately hurled from their once proud land holdings like so much chaff in the wind.

no king, no emperor, no sultan has anything with which to defend themselves from such grandiose numbers that come not just in numbers, but in quality as well.

4 nations immediately stagger back under this massive onslaught, throwing pitiful handfulls up against this massive wall in a vain attempt to slow it. the mongols chuckle and hold their ground.

castles, that once defended great nations, fall like pebbles in a pond, the ripples of which send terror across all of europe and the holy lands. none are prepared. all are shocked.

the year turns. the horde stands ready, waiting, as if for a signal, while nations scramble their emissaries to see if these 'barbarians' can be negotiated with...or bribed. no one is foolish enough to send what was once called 'armies' against this mass of man-flesh and horse-flesh.

all wait. where once there was the crashing, pounding, thundering of hooves, now all is deadly quiet, the quiet one hears just before he dies.

***********************************************************

that is a recent scene from my campaign. indeed, 33 FULL stacks of mongols showed up in my game in 1231. 33. the count was roughly 21,500 men on horse. there wasnt a single infantryman among them. they did take 4 provinces immediately and now are sitting, doing nothing that i can tell. just sitting. it's really quite impressive :)

K.

[YunDog]

Totally Ausome post Kraellin


I really enjoyed the imagrie
how could you not but be totally engrossed in a game like that

lov it

[youssof_Toda]

Nice story Kraellin I could realy immagine this 'cloud of dust'. Now I'm thinking it would have been cool if some movies would have been included in SP instead of those little messages. Even if you have endvictory there's no movie as a reward

[Terrax]

And I thought I has it bad. I was the Byz and had an 8000 strong horde with cav, cav arch, and inf. I was doing quite well at the time (I thought). I moved every army I had, except 2 that were stranded without a port. I don't know the number of armies, but I had 15,000 of 45% Byz infrantry, 20% spearmen, 20% mounted archer, 10% cav (nearly all royal units) with mixed seige and inf filling the rest. I know, I was dead before I started with so little heavy cav.

I auto calced it all, but have saved the game to play manually. Back to that later.

I attack. I lost the 1st battle, losing 8000 men, the Kahn looses 5000. Had the entire royal family (including King) ransomed back to me for 14000. Now I'm in debt, but back to the war. Great I think, now its 7000 against 3000. Attack again, I lose 5000, the Kahn looses 700 So I have 2000 beaten and bloodied troops deserting to defend their homes, and the Horde have 2300 heavy cav troops ready to plunder my lands. Surely the remaining HRE, Hungarians, Germans, and Sicilians can pull together and stop the remaining Horde. If they can keep from falling over themselves claiming my ripe for the picking lands.



I did load up the game to the year before the Horde arrived. I moved all my armies to Kazahar or what ever, and also start pumping out spear and cav. 10 years and an extra 2500 spearmen and 2000 cav, the Horde never shows. Now I'm over 12000 floren in debt waiting on the horde while my enemies plunder my lands. But I'm not going anywhere until the horde comes. After 10 more years, no horde. Will the horde not show if you have a monster garrison in the territory the invade?

[KukriKhan]

Excellent piece of work, Kraellin my friend. I can hear James Earl Jones reading that post in his sonorous voice...gives me chills.

[Naagi]

Excellent indeed. Im really psyched about the golden horde coming. Its 1203 or so in my second campaign, Im playing the Byzantine. The whole eastern half of the map is mine, and im working on some of the other factions, mainly because they still refuse to a ceasefire. When the horde rears its head, ill send everything not nailed down to fight them. Should be able to mass a good 20-30k troops in no time since I own the seas. Though Im still light on the high command generals, have one 9 star but the rest are 4 star and under. Man the excitement is building.


Naagi

[MizuKokami]

with the campaign i finally completed useing the poles, the mongols attacked 2 provinces. one was down in spanish territories, and the other was khazar. the initial attack was repelled by me in khazar, but the spanish decided not to fight. since the territories the khan had attacked had been spread apart, i ended up ransoming about 20000 men, includeing the khan himself. at any rate, the army i faced in khazar was about 25000, which also had mongol warriors and archers. haveing made the khan flee the battlefield, i branded him for life a good runner, and still he managed to take around 5 or 6 territories from the spanish. when spain finally managed to subdue the khan's forces, he had him penned in arabia and syria, and the khan kingdom was there to the end of the campaign, never able to build anything due to the initial lose of so many florins to me. i got to tell you, i was much satisfied, as i hate the mongols.

[Musashi]

Playing as the Byz I once managed to prepare a 15000 man army, completely composed of VG, Treb Archers, and Byz Cav under the command of a 9 star death in the form of a man. The Horde showed, and there were 27,000 of them, all in Khazar. I put my whole superarmy in Khazar and drove them back in one epic battle

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I owned Tuscany in that particular game, and I had sent all my VG and Treb Archers there for a refit into gold weapons

-Musashi

[Terrax]

A Horde of 25000? Ugh, and I got my ass handed to me by a horde of 8000. I suck.

[Kraellin]

hehe, thanks guys ;)

and kukri, yes, i was sorta in a 'james earl jones' mood when i wrote that :)

ok, so here's some follow-up pics of the invasion. it actually came in two waves, with about 15,000 showing up the first year, and the rest in the following year, but all of the second wave came to the same provinces already taken by the first.








and i was wrong about no infantry. there were a few archers.

these are screenshots that i reduced to save space here in the .org, so i circled some of the stacks to point them out better.

i'm currently wondering if the game doesnt calculate the size of the horde based on the money already in the game, or how strong or weak various factions are. this may account for the varying results folks are getting, with some getting 8,000 mongols and others getting 25,000. in my current game, there is quite a bit of money, so maybe this accounts for the large size of my horde.

K.

[Musashi]

I believe it generates the horde based on the size of the military of whichever faction owns Khazar.

-Musashi

PS: Linked images like those don't actually take up any of the space or bandwidth of the linking site

[Nelson]

Kraellin, do you plan to fight the battles yourself or autocalc them? Make sure you have plenty of time to finish them if you take the field 'cuz you are in for a real marathon It should be a hoot and a half.

[Musashi]

Yeah, I spent 5 or 6 hours fighting them off the time there were 27,000 of them.

-Musashi

[desdichado]

My first battle against the horde was pretty disappointing - was looking forward to a long bloody fight me 8000 v 12,000 mongols.

After i beat back the first wave (ambushed heavy cav in trees and killed about 300 for loss of 50) he just sat at the far edge of the map doing nothing. I had bugger all cav myself, mostly spear & sword infantry and there was no way I was going to start chasing cav around with foot troops. I don't play with time limits so had to cancel the battle. Has anyone else seen this?

I put speed up to maximum and he still just sat there for maybe 20 minutes of accelarated time - even when I marched single units at him for the hell of it he didn't do much. I finally attacked him out of boredom - got spread out and circled and my troops got destroyed - big surprise.

p.s great thread - loved the narration. Who says computer games destroys imagination?

[solypsist]

what i find interesting is that you were playing as the Sicilians

[Kraellin]

ah, soly, good eye; you must be a photographer ;)

yes, this is my mod with the 19 factions and no land bridges and yes, i'm playing as the sicilians and so, no nelson, i'm not in a positions to attack them very well myself. what i'm hoping is that they'll get in a huge fight with the egyptians. the egyptians are currently fighting 6 other factions now and are easily the biggest faction in the game. this is primarily because they have a trade route rivaling mine and they're making tons of money, fighting the 6 other factions and actually still expanding.

after my last post i played a few more years and i was quite surprised that the horde hadnt moved. they are still sitting in the original 4 provinces. there's a constant stream of emissaries and princesses coming and going from khazar, where the mongol king is.

if you look at the pictures, you dont really see how big the egyptians are and how many armies they have in italy and spain. and since those pictures were made, they've expanded even further. i'm guessing this is why the mongols havent advanced. it's an interesting situation.

i'm still allied to the egyptians, as before, but am undermining them with spies as fast as i can to keep them in check. i had about 20 spies on corsica to get it to revolt and it did and the italians took the island back, but, the port got knocked out and stranded my spy horde. lol. so i've had to start a 2nd spy horde.

now, this brings me to a little question doc and i have been pondering about ships and trade routes of the ai and i believe i've solved part of this. everyone has had his or her trade route cut by losing that one ship in the route which could cut off half or more of your trade income. the egyptians do this differently. they protect their trade route with multiple ships. the mediterranean is loaded with egyptian ships. and this is my difficulty. i could openly turn on the egyptians by attacking their trade routes, but their redundancy of ships makes this a very risky process at the moment. i prolly have more ships now, but i had to sacrifice land troops to get my shipping back to snuff. this means that if i lose ANY key sea zones in battles to the egyptians they can invade ME and i can ill afford this. it would cut my own trade income, perhaps make me vulnerable to invasion by sea, and cut off my inter-island transport. it's an interesting balance.

so, i'm building spies, more ships, and beefing up my land bases to protect themselves in the event that some get cut off.

if you look at the mini-map, the sicilians are a grey color. it's a bit difficult to see, but i hold all of the british isles, the norse isles, livonia, finland, and the 4 medit isles of rhodes, crete, malta, and sicily. oh, and i also hold provence and toulouse. so, you can see i'm spread out all over and shipping is key. cut my lines to the northern isles and loyalty drops severely, as well as income. my lifeline is shipping.

this all developed because, being sicily, i naturally built up the trade stuff. this then offered me opportunities in various places to take advantage of rebel provinces. very easy to take, but scattered all over. i did make a concerted effort to drive the english and novs off the british isles once i'd established a foothold, but most of my holdings come from buying or invading rebels. even some of my holdings on the brit islands started with rebels.

so, being allied with the other great sea power and now being worried that that ally is getting too strong, i'm faced with cutting my own life line in order to cut his. thus my recent trend towards the spies :)

i must say, i find myself chuckling over the various situations that come up in this game, being totally amused by the variety of play. who would have thought that a mongol horde of 21,500 men would be totally stuck in their tracks by an egyptian horde with an overwhelming sea power. the mind boggles :) i cant wait till the mongols start building ships :)

K.

[Satyr]

Excellent stuff Kraellin. I am not sure the horde will ever build ships, although I have never seen them survive for a long time before.

My first encounter with the horde I was very out-gunned and so put my troops in the woods. The horde rode them all down. It was horrible to watch as each of my companies quavered and broke as the mongol heavy cav smashed into them.

My last encounter I was egyptian and was more than ready and single handedly destroyed the horde in less than 15 years.

I also tried playing as turkey in high period. I had a prolonged war to take over byz territory and just when I thought I had it made and had eliminated the byz, the horde comes in and I am eliminated in less than 15 years myself. That is a tough faction to play in that period.

At any rate, thanks for the story, it was very good and you should post more of them here.

[Terrax]

I don't know about the size of the Horde depending on who holds Khazar. I held Khazar, with my army numbering almost 16000, and I got an 8000 man Horde. In Kraellin's game, he holds the "british isles, the norse isles, livonia, finland, and the 4 medit isles of rhodes, crete, malta, and sicily. oh, and i also hold provence and toulouse."

In my game, I hold Spain, France, Africa, The Brit Isles, the Mideast, all the northern finnish and russian territories, and all the Med Islands. Unless I have a small army for all that territory (it's possible, I'm not an advanced player) I don't see how that's the factor. I guess the nautral question is how big is Kraellin's army?

[Swoosh So]

Krae i never knew you had it in you

A nice read

[fodder]

Quote[/b] ]i was quite surprised that the horde hadnt moved. they are still sitting in the original 4 provinces. there's a constant stream of emissaries and princesses coming and going from khazar, where the mongol king is.

I have only played a few campaigns but I have never seen the horde do anything. They always turn up in khazar with maybe 6 stacks and then just sit there, even when neighbouring provinces are virtually undefended.

[Kraxis]

Yes it is strange that Trebizond, Kiev, Pereyaslavl and Chernigov er basically defenseless. Two stacks on each would more than do, and the Mongols have more than enough troops to spare. Too bad for the Russians.

Perhaps the BARBARIAN_RAIDERS are not that aggressive... SAD

[Kraellin]

mary,
thanks :)
they dont seem to be building anything. nothing. just sitting there looking mean. and yes, the turks can be a hard one to play.

terrax,
my faction did have one of the biggest armies when the horde showed up, so maybe the game is calculating the horde based on the human's army size or worth...?

fodder and kraxis,
my horde is just sitting there also. not a single aggressive move since taking the original 4 provinces. quite odd, other than for the egyptians to their south who are quite strong yet. i have looked at the alliance list and it's quite humorous that everyone and his brother has rushed to make an alliance with the golden khanate...except me and the egyptians ;) when the clash finally comes, it's going to be a beut.

swooshers,
thanks. it needs polish but was fun to write. i read it now and go, hmmm, that could be better ;)

well, i've managed to check the egyptians a bit more. i now have two spy hordes undermining them. move 30 spies into one of their homeland provinces where their shipbuilding is, get it rebel, and the rebel fight often takes out the shipyards or ports. thus, they are having to draw inward to protect their homelands and this is giving the italians, the spanish and the almo's a chance to regroup. even the papacy, which had been wiped out, has now re-emerged.

the egyptians are still strong and have even attacked such remote place as brittany and freisland, but are doing so less and less now.

the burgundians just re-emerged again for about the 3rd time. lol.

the danes have recovered from their whipping and are now making incursions into old german lands.

the french and english have have re-newed their old hatreds and the french have even started building a few ships.

the novs and russians are like, 'what the hell do we do now. there's a rock to the left and a rock to the right. um, let's find a nice cave and hole up.'

the poles lost their king and had no heirs. they're gone for a while.

the swiss are one of the most interesting. they've been plodding along quite slowly, but quite methodically. they hold most of central europe and even have a province now on the english channel. they are very conservative, but steady expansionists. wait 10 years, take a province. wait another 10 years, take another province. quite interesting.

i also managed to take sardinia. this was actually not intentional at first. i sent my spy horde in to force a rebellion while the egyptians held it and when the rebellion came, the port was destroyed. the italians did take it back, but my spies were still there with no way out, so, pretty soon up comes another rebellion, only this time it's rebels. the italians lose and the island goes rebel. since there was no port i had to invade and took it. needless to say my first build is a port :)

so, i've a ton of money in my war chest. i recently got the 'you have the mightiest army' message, beating out even the mongols and egyptians. my sea power is stronger than ever and the egyptian empire is starting to crumble. when i've weakened the egyptians a bit more and if the khanate hasnt moved much, i'll be in a most interesting position to take everything south of constantinople, including africa and spain. by controlling the seas, holding georgia and constantinople in the east and navarre and aragon in the west, the major choke points, i shld be in a good position to advance northward, even against the khan.

shld be fun :)

K.

[+DOC+]

K,

The reason the Mongols aren't buying anything is because with armies that size and a few sieges along the way they are probably massively in the RED

One of the things i've been working on recently is the support costs and composition of the Mongol forces...

Basically i've halved or thirded the support costs of all Mongol troop types, i.e. the MHC, MLC, MFoot and SteppeCav. Ye see, with 26K troops arriving there's simply no way in hell that the Great Khan can support the numbers with only a few of the Eastern provinces under control. The only solution i can see is to essentially nullify Mongol support costs. Maybe what i've done isn't a drastic enough decrease, only time and playtesting will tell.

I've also tinkered, using Target's rather helpful crusaders files, the compostion of the Mongol raiding forces. I've lowered the likelihood of MLC (can't stand fighting tons of pesky horse archer armies ye see ) and increased the likelihood of teh MHC and MFoot soldiers appearing.

As yet i'm unsure as whether this will work or not, but it's worth a try. Like you say the arrival is a scary sight, but you'll find the Mongols disappear as quickly as they arrive, simply becasue they go bankrupt very quickly as can't replace the casualties from battle.

By trying to balance the troop types that arrive, i'm hoping to prolong their survivability. At the moment, if you're one of the factions likely to be assaulted by the Mongols then all you have to do is build tons of spear troops, like Saracens for example. By increasing the likelihood of the rather useful Mfoot and MHC i hope to re-address this failing. Be-gone, useless and irritating MLC (Mongol Horse Archers)

[Naagi]

Just a thought, maybe they expect you to rush in (stupidly) and deplete the horde some. In this way giving him more room to build, and weakening your forces as well. Not sure about this as I've not fought them yet, and if my crazy 200% provinces dont stop rebeling on me, I may curse the game.


Naagi

[Kraellin]

doc,

hmmm, since there are no other factions using those units, i can see where that would work, but what happens if they are successful; what then?

can you alter the mongol starting money, maybe giving them hordes of cash to get started with?

K.

[fodder]

Are there any penalties for a faction being in debt? Do they lose troops or buildings? If the horde has no money they should be expanding to increase their income. One of the factions (russia or poland?) has a GA goal to repel the horde but I have never seen the get near them.

[Kraellin]

fodder,

there are penalties to being in debt. i forget them all, but you cant do things like buy mercenaries, new buildings, new units, new ships and so forth, or maybe you can buy a few things, if they are money making...not sure on that last one. but you can just keep going in debt and wont lose your armies or buildings or ships. someone, about a month ago, reported that he won the game while being about 150,000 florins in debt. cute, eh? ;)

well, the year is about 1274. the mongols havent moved and my spies are only barely keeping the wealthy egyptians in check, so i've taken to assassinating their heirs. gotten two already. lol. i've got about 6 provinces cranking out spies and another 2 or 3 cranking out assassins. i'm currently working on driving the egyptians out of denmark. yup, denmark. they are one tough cookie to hold back. every time i get a rebellion in a province, the egyptians come back and bribe the new rebels.

the almo's got wiped, the english are under attack, the spanish are under attack, the hungarians, the swiss, the italians, and the papacy. i did manage to get the byzantines to re-emerge by rebellions and i've managed to undermine some of the egyptian home ports causing ports and shipyards to get wiped out, and i've now got several hordes of spies running around, province to province. with 30 newbie assassins i've managed to kill off two heirs and one other is currently under attack. if i can build up the assassins to decent levels by wiping the heirs, i can then take on the king and no more egyptians, but in the meantime, it's all i can do to keep the egyptians from overruning everyone. the really funny part is that we're still allies ;)

K.

[Terrax]

I fought the 15000 vs 8000 Horde. 1st battle I've fought on this scale. Had to restart several times due to some odd stiuations. None of my siege weapons would fire. They would just sit there. The arrow would be green when targeting the unit, but I loaded up the game with 10 catapults in my 1st army, and none would fire.

Loaded the game, stripped all seige weapons out of my army, the fought again. 2 sets of units, byz inf, and arch, were useless to me from the outset. If I clicked on them, I got the message "that unit doesn't appear to be alive" and I couldn't give them orders. I had to lure the enemy to march in to them before the 2 units would fight. Later in the game, when the Horde had driven me back to where reinforcements enter the screen, I had 20 cavalry archer units march to the rally point, and the same thing happened. "This unit does not appear to be alive." Luckily, the Horde heavy cav was crashing through at the rally point, and all the units were killed eventually. Has anyone had this error happen to them.

Last issue. At the beginning of the game I had 6 units of Byz Inf, and 3 units of Varangian Guard. I stuck them in the forest, and they did very well I would say those 9 units did 40-50% of the killing in the whole battle. After the 2nd hour, even though none of the units were below half strength, they were exausted, and I told them to rout, so the units would survive, and I would be able to see their kill stats at the end of the game. Plus they would be replaced with fresh troops. Dammit if I got nothing but cav arches and steppe cav for the nex 80 reinforcements.

Anyway, when the game ended, only the units on the screen had their stats displayed. Is there no way to see the stats of the original units from the beginning of the battle?

[Alrowan]

ouch.. big horde, big problems

im actually playing your same campagin, so i will take a look at the horde when they arrive as well.. at the moment my empire as aragon is almost in ruins, owning bits and pieces here and there... but i am fortunatate enough to have rome... i need an upgraded prvoience after my main holdings got smashed by the danes who WERE the biggest... now it seems novgorod want everything from the baltic to the med

[Naagi]

Well didnt get much further into my Byz game, though i got a lot done. Still only around 1219, but I now hhave around 4 or 5 varangian guard producers and 2 pronanai cavalry producers. Pumping out some nice units to go along with my other army to be ready for the horde. Spain is crushed to one province, France and England crushed to two provinces, Aragonese only have one, the Almos still tied up with my spies in Cordoba and Granada. Hungary, Poland, and Hre have a small chunk in Asia, and Italy and the Pope still around. Though no one will ceasefire or ally, I believe I have them under control. Got about 500k florins in bank, and put my king back in Constantinople to quell those silly rebellions. Just hope I get a good map to fight on, those Mongols wont have a chance then.

Kraellin what level assassins did you get the heirs with, Ive tried the make two assassins and have one kill the other trick to build one up. But when he gets to 3 stars or so the other one always gets lucky and ruins it. Though i do have a 4 star one in Naples, been killing all the popes assassins.

Naagi