aaaah! mongolians!

[rasoforos]

ok , i m playing the spanish , i have georgia and the mongolians are on the other side of the border. I stationed a lot of troops there before they appeared and decided to let em attack , kill 3-4.000 of em and then retaliate. Things go as planned and they attack , i break their first wave , they retreat and i wait for the second one ( and many more to come since they are 6-7.000 of em i think) ...but...they just withraw after the first wave is broken Moreover they do not withdraw completely and 3-4 of their units stay and move around in the edge of the map ( the place where you still see em but you cannot attack em) so i have to wait for the time limit to expire (which even in fast forward takes ages with more than 10.000 troups around).
I say , ok , that was weird. The next year the same happens , they attack , i break the first wave , they withdraw This keeps happening every year ,and about half of the times they get 'stuck' like the first time and i have to wait for ages. Because of that their Chan got the vice of coward and they have -9(&#33 morale. Unfortunatelly i am in war with the english , french ,polish and Byz as well so i cannot really send enough troops for an offensive yet ( i will be able in 10 years or so i believe), and i have to endure this thing for 10 years now....


has anyone seen anything like this before? i sometimes believe my MTW is haunted or something.

[Alrowan]

lol... thats gotta be painful... my battle lasted 5 hours, and they didnt bother me after that... on the other hand you could auto calc

[rasoforos]

i do not like to autocalculate battles , it destroys the reality of the game. But i guess the reality is allready destroyed. If it goes on i might try it , although it might have the same result or something. Its fun to see the great Chan to be a coward though Gonna go play again and see what i can do ...

[Cazbol]

I'm not sure, but can't you target troops outside the border with archers? I have some vague memory of such a thing but I may be mistaken.

[rasoforos]

i tried that (with pavise crossbowmen) but it didnt work , and even if it did it would just add 50-100 more casualties

[cugel]

What's happening is that you broke their morale (did you kill their general)? When new reinforcements arrive, they come within range of your victorious troops and immediately withdraw again or they wander around the periphery without being able to enter. Try withdrawing to the middle of the map to give them room to enter. This will also give you a chance to maneuver cavalry around their flanks, then, when you hit them from the front and they break again, you can also sweep in from the sides to block their retreat and anihiliate their second wave, thus inflicting an even more crushing defeat

As Conan the Barbarian said: "Drive your enemies before you. Hear the lamentations of their women. That is best."

[MiniKiller]

Grom my experiances if u kill the general its like they relize u did and then just leave... *shrug*

[rasoforos]

yep i guess the problem is with their moralle , their leader was giving em a -9 penalty. When he died and a heir took over they actually stayed a bit longer in the battlefield which weakened them substantially. Gonna attack em now and put em out of their missery.Mongols shouldnt be this way

[hoom]

From my current byzantine campaign, I think its better to let them expand a bit ( =less troops per province) before taking them on. I had the advantage I guess of being mostly on the border of where they appeared, so I only had to take on ~3000 in one of my provinces while the rest were to the north.

They expanded leaving a biggish stack of peasant rebels on my border so I took the province leaving the horde divided

The main attack of about 6000 from multiple provinces was munched by about 8 missile units on my side of the river...

Then they tried attacking from two different provinces and this time I got a steppe map, so I hid in the forrest.

The Horde approached quite carefully and checking for ambush units.
Some of my units were hidden, but they were all in the one defensive formation deep in the trees.
I had my archers not firing so the Horde made some tentative probes with Mongol Heavy Cavs and got bashed a bit by my Byz inf.
Then with ~120 lost, the entire 3000+ army retreated in an orderly fashion
I let them go fearing a dummy (which I have seen ocasionally).

It was certainly the sensible thing to do, as his cav would have been eaten if he had tried a full on assault and I was going to stay as deep in the woods as I could manage.