Hi there.

The campaign was hard, early and I was playing the Byz. I bribed and built up Khazar early in anticipation of facing the mongol horde. I built a fortress and garrisoned it with 8 damaged and valoured units (2 naptha, 2 catapault, 1 full VG unit upgraded in sweden, 1 full unit of steppe cav with a valour bonus and bronze armour, and a 3 man unit of kataphracts with a 3 star general with valor and moral V&Vs). My stratagy was to force the horde to assault and take losses, then re-invade with an 8 star general with 1.5 stacks waiting in Constantinople (I had more than that, but figured I'd hold them in reserve) and hopefully force a bridge battle from Georgia via a sea route (I specialise in bridge fights, my secret ... a recipe of catapaults, archers, fast archer cav and heavy cav/infantry).

I'd left Khazar under defended for 20 years and felt safe that no one wanted to mess with my massive military might, or well defended and under developed (economically) province. I was wrong. For 20 or so years the HRE and I lived in relative harmony, but not only do they send a crusade against me in Bulgaria, but they send just over 2 stacks against me (mostly damaged units from a previous crusade capturing lands in the steppe) in Khazar the year before the GH appeared. So, when the GH appears, I have been under siege for a year, the HRE withdraws and doesn't end up going to war with the GH, and the GH appears with well over 25,000 troops invading 3 of my provinces. I had 3 stacks of mostly kataphracts, Byz infantry, PA, HA, Huscarles, and treb archers in Constantinople.

I retook Georgia first cutting off their forces in Armenia, then lifted the siege in Armenia and won an insane ransom for the 5000 or so troops I had captured, still winning a butcher and merciless V&V for my 8 star general. Each fight lasted over 2 hours and in really tested my endurance. It's so hard to trap fast mobile cav with exausted kataphracti (my PA's did most of the fighting and gained as much as 3 valour in one or two units, but suffered horribly). I had to use map edges, byz infantry spread into single ranks, and exausted katanks to trap highly mobile mongol cav that had escaped my net of forces at their rally point. Eventually, my forces would simply sit at the edge of the map (unable to move due to having no more endurance) and the mongols would rout as soon as they appeared.

After 2 years of sieging my garrison in khazar, they assaulted. They had 2 mortors, both of which I had taken out with high valour catapaults in the outer ring (I had valoured them up much earlier against the Hungarians and Polish who tried to take Bulgaria in bridge battles and then agreed to cease fires after I slaughtered their invasion forces). The fight was short. They destroyed me. After I had destroyed their siege weapons, they sent in heavy cav and assaulted my gates. Missle troops behind my gates seemed unable to impact the enemy at all, so I withdrew some to the last ring. It was a losing fight. Only my VGs made a really good accounting of themselves. and I only ended up killing 2.5 of them for every man I lost. I had been counting on a 10 to 1 kill ratio and was really disapointed. I tried all sorts of tactics, but nothing really helped.

The next year they assaulted my rear guard in Georgia just as I was amasing an assault there against Khazar. It was a glorious slaughter. The map gave me high ground, but it was difficult to hold. Wave after wave of mongols came. Thousands attacked. I held one flank with 4 units of VG and Huscarles in a patch of woods. Anything entering the woods, especially their heavy cav got badly mauled by my axemen and my troops laughed at their ineffective missle attacks. I used byz infantry and kataphracti instead of spear to hold the line against the GH and keep my archers and catapaults safe. I used the catapaults sparingly and successfully snipered their general. I replaced wave after wave of treb archer and even my newly created arb units, but they all ran out of ammo. Finally, 5.5 hours later (I paused twice for breaks, so not sure how long the fight really took, but it was easily over 4.5 hours of actual fighting) I got the message that the enemy was fleeing the field. I didn't even bother trying to pursue them, none of my units had enough endurance to run. I had no reserves left, I was spent. I executed almost 3000 mongols and had killed another 2600+ and still when I assaulted Khazar I faced over 5K mongols.

I autocalced my final fight with the GH, I just couldn't bear another 4-5 hour fight. I savoured my deconstruction of the HRE for putting me in such a crappy situation. I demoralised their leader and kept knocking him down to no influence, I'd capture him where I could just to give him the V&V. My assault on Khazar really damaged the province, but it signaled an end to the GH. Good riddance.