Newbie Golden Horde Question

[Jammies]

Playing my first campaign of MTW, on normal. I am Danes, it is now 1213 and I have swept the Orthodox rabble out of Russia, which is blanketed in comforting Danish white.

Am I about to be Horded? Or is this a VI thing? I read a lot of references on these boards to Golden Hordes but I don't see anything about them in the manual ...

[-Amon-]

Horde is coming at 1230..don't worry

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Welcome to the ORG, Jammies

Quote[/b] ]Am I about to be Horded?

How shall I explain?

Huuuuuuuuummmmm... ...YES

Quote[/b] ]Or is this a VI thing?

Nope.

Quote[/b] ]I read a lot of references on these boards to Golden Hordes but I don't see anything about them in the manual ...

It's CA's idea of a pleasent surprise

[ichi]

You have less than 20 years to prepare for the arrival of the Mongol hordes. If you choose to prepare for their arrival:

don't build too much in the eastern provinces (Khazar, Volgo-Bulg, Georgia, Crimea, others). Around 1220 I stop construction everywhere of all but 1 or 2 of the most critical buildings (inns are good now to allow for quick acquisiiton of mercs)

save up your cash, in order to buy armies, make bribes

make lots of assassins

build units. There have been lots of threads on how to fight Mongols. I use good heavy cav, lots of cav archers, spears and archers.

make friends with other factions.

When the Mongols show up, do not be afraid to give up territory, to fall back. I try to hold along my borders with other factions, and flex against the Mongols if the odds look bad.

Let others fight them. The Turks or Byz are always sitting around, looking for someone to fight.

Fight them at rivers, like Kiev.

Kill the Khan if possible. Once the Mongols turn rebel, they can be bribed more easily and make great additions to a cav-poor Danish army.

ichi

[rasoforos]

the horde is a nice addition to the game. It will give you the chance for some nice battles in the game and it also makes expanding east quite risky. Your best chances are to try to fight them in a bottleneck (although that will be dificult in your case).

Some tips :
a)there are some good anti-horde strategies out there , read em
b)if you cannot be bothered:
-try to take high ground to avoid their horse archers
-make sure you have a wall of pavise arbalesters (3-4 units will do) or crossbowmen covering the whole front of your units. This is your best and only chance of stoping their wave after wave of cavalry archers from decimating your infantry and cavalry.
-have some good spearment with you (3-4 units)
-have some very good heavies (3-4) , be very carefull with thyis one , do not burn them , use them only when they are needed , take advantage of the high ground and try to kill the mongol general and their first wave of heavies
-3-4 units of light cavalry , again be carefull when to use and when not , chase their rooting heavy cavalry with them but do not engage horse archers unlessyou have them in a corner,
-DO NOT pursue after the first or second wave breaks , it might be a false retreat , chances are you ll be forced to engage in battle near their reinforcements point and then wave upon wave of mongols will kill you.

[Loki]

Speaking as one who has so far always played the Danes and always expanded into the orthodox east and had to deal with the GH.....

Don't try to bring coals to New Castle. Translation; don't try to out cav the cav masters. I'm speaking from experience here. It CAN be done (think three full stack armies of royal and chiv knights) but unless the novelty of fighting these battles really floats your boat it will costway too much ( must admit that crushing Mongol cavalry with succeeding waves of christian knights tickled me pink).

Once I got that jones outta my system I found there were ways to beat the Mongols on a shoestring. Forget the cav. The only unit of Cav I have is my general. All the rest of your units should be as follows

3 or 4 units armored spear CS/FS
3 or 4 units Xbow (pav not necessary)
3 or 4 units archers (LBows not necessary)
3 or 4 units High quality sword Axe Melee troops

See the attached pic for Loki’s Mongol Bane setup

My findings are that the Mongols/AI usually will NOT charge your wall of pointy sticks, but will close to missile range. Your foot based missile troops will devastate the horse archers who will in turn route only to be replaced again and again. Your missile troops will quite likely run outta bolts and arrows before they run out of units so you have to micro manage the withdrawal and reinforcement thing carefully.

Use one of your spear units to deny the flank and keep your other flank up tight to the woods that contain your melee troops (concealed is best if u can). The Mongols WILL probe your flank thru the woods, at which point your sword/axe troops will hack them into oblivion. playing as the Danes I like to have a few high valor/armor vikes in the melee units because they get the bonus vs. armored troops and in the woods they kick @$$ on Mongol heavy cav.

[Loki]

W00t W00t

I made Jr. member

(is that a good thing?)

[Rob The Bastard]

Only if you would like a drink in the Tavern

[Jammies]

Pleasant surprise? My goodness, those CA fellas have a strange sense of fun. If I hadn't seen these boards I'd have had a heart attack with all that unguarded territory and the hordes hitting. Probably would have been mad, too.

Sorry, making friends is out as a strategy, I hold too much territory for anybody to be nice to me. (Own most of Germany and have eliminated Poland in addition to Scandanavia and Russia. Plus I just had to take Aragon when those barbarians tried to Crusade me. ) Best I can do now is limit the amount of people who are actually at war with me.

Thanks for the battle tips, that's pretty much how I fight all my battles now anyway since I have a limited battle repetoire. Was hoping you weren't going to tell me to buy a lot of mounted archers

[Jerry60k]

Those are some realy good strategies. I usually just make my way to Egypt and bid my time until 1230 then after the Horde and What ever factions are left I then sweep eastward.

[Duke of RumpyPumpy]

I am now living in terror of the coming Horde.

I am playing my first campaign. I am playing as the Egyptians and it is 1210 and I've just realized 40,000 Mongols are soon planning a little party in my back yard.

All Catholic nations have been declaring me part of an axis of evil and have been crusading me non-stop. I have been able to fight them off. I have also just prosecuted a successful campaign against the Byzantines, taking Constantinople to Georgia. But of course I now realise that I have just 20 years to prepare for the Golden Horde's Western Riding Tour and Head Collecting Contest.

I will try to hold them at Armenia and hope they migrate west and not south.

[Duerfian]

The horde isn't that bad. They have the capability to hurt you in the short run but if you are pretty decent at playing defensive battles you should be able to beat them back with a much smaller force than you are attacked with. I would consider abandoning Khazar and withdraw to Kiev if I was you. The horde loves to attack Kiev for some reason.

Of course if you are totally unprepared you might lose 5-6 provinces fast which may give you problems with rebellions.

[ThePeach]

I am just a few turns past the Horde's arrival as the Byzantines. I hold about 50% of the the total map. I started in Early, massing my forces while I let Turkey and Egypt duke it out. I then wipped em both out. Anyways, after that Russia, Spain, most of Hungary and some of England were conquered, then the Horde arrived, in my entirely unguarded middle eastern provinces. Luckily I had a veteran garrison army of about 3000 two provinces away. Could have been much worse - I killed and captured the majority of the Horde in one major battle and have since been mopping up those damn Mongols.

Oh yeah, it's on easy (hey, my first medieval game ever), so don't go wondering at how I do it.

[The Tuffen]

The horde arn't that bad as long as you have quite a few units that can keep their horse archers away - i had trouble with them cos everytime i went to attack them they would skirmish then another of their units needed attacking so the horse archers resumed attacking me

[Oberstein]

I like 'em. It's nice to have a sudden challenge, and the time wasn't so long ago when games like this never let you bring in new factions.

[RZST]

y'know, someone should make a mod that lets the mongols arrive at random times. seeing as it is, YOU ALREADY KNOW when the mongols will arrive and thus goes the element of surprise. arrival of the horde needs to vary say from 1220 to 1240. so atleast you dont know if theyre coming early or late...well by that time you probably conquered most of goddamn europe o.o.

[squippy]

I agree, the horde would be much more fun if they arrived at random times. Preparing for a major invasion in exactly 1230 takes some of the sparkle out of the whole thing.

[Gward]

In additional to defense tactic

Halberdiers is our russian best choice for anti-hordes army. Those guys will wood-chopping all heavy mongols to firewood for pyre. :)

Another good idea do not kill Khan. Mongols give a huge ransom for his freedom. Also good runner is an excellent vice for Khan, isn't it? :)

Forest is a good place to fight.

[sledge]

Yeah I knew they were coming so I sent a massive army to Khazar. It was quite fun to picture a rampaging horde charging into Europe expecting to butcher peasants then getting confronted with around 50,000 spearmen.

Khan: RaaaaH destroy, burn ... d00d wtf?

[Thoros of Myr]

I was thinking the same thing Ky Kiske
If there was a way to randomize the hordes arrival a little bit that would make some really great war stories

[Seven.the.Hun]

Randomize their arrival a bit, i aggree that's an excellent idea, as for dealing with them, i havent bothered with an all out war with them, just some well timed battles here and there to pick up the pieces of damage i'd rather see the golden horde do to everyone else in the area...
i must say i do prefer playing as the horde, the whole barbarian_raider thing is the best...



a drink for the pagans

[Bodew]

In my first campaign I had no idea of the upcoming Horde, and it was quite a surprise

it did add a lot of fun to the campaign though and I had a few huge battles that were a lot of fun, even when I didn't win.

[Throb]

The Horde I was not ready for them when they decieded to piur forth from the east, they smashed me to pieces and everyone left started to rebel.

Thanks for the advice above

[HopAlongBunny]

If you are stuck fighting them on the plains, remember that trees are death to cav. As the Danes a spear missle wall between 2 forests works wonders. With vikings hiding in the woods the heavy cav is meat; the Mongols that dance in front of your arbs or LB's will just get what they deserve

If you got cash, buy every unit of Billmen and Longbowmen you can find; since you seem to own the east Steppe and Heavy Steppe Cav will be very useful.

[octavian]

hey, i thought u might not be aware of this, so i'll post this here, make sure, whatever you do, have as many unit's as possible in the territories borderng khazar, and as few inside, the more units you have there, the more they attack with. welcome to the forum