Byzantine, Early, hardest difficulty, max unit size.

My goal in this campaign is to face the horde and defeat them in tactical battle. I want to see how big their army is, and just how long and difficult it will be to defeat the GH at its mightiest.

Prior to this, my only experience with the GH is their historical campaign. Because of this, I over-estimated their melee capability while under-estimated their missile capability. I created an army with thousands of spear infanry but just 10% missile units and maybe another 10% cav. It was not an optimal mix against the GH.

In Volga-Bulgaria, 8,500 GH attacked my army of 7,000 led by a 3-star general (Byz Inf). I was trying to get rid of a large number of rebels units I've bribed, so I only had a small cadre of elite units centering around 6 units of VG. I had a lot of crap units like Slav javelinmen which I intend to bring in as reinforcement late in the battle and just grind them away. I had a handful of cavalry units, a mix of Steppe Cav, Steppe HC, and PA. I did not bring in any heavies like the Kataphraktoi. For spears, I had the vanilla type with a few in the reinforcement queue to replace losses.

I lucked out on the battlefield. I had a good piece of hill at the very edge of my side of the map. It has a fairly dominant slope (for this part of the world anyways), and treeless to boot. My archers had an excellent range advantage and a clear shot while my spears would get a good charge bonus. It's right at the edge so it takes little to no time to retire units and bring in new ones. I set up my army on the crest of the hill, and waited.

The Mongols showed up, used up 1/4 of their unit slots with mortars. They marched within range of my archers (4 units) and I punished them severely. Most of the GH archers were decimated before they could fire a shot. The HC charged my line and my spears counter-charged down the hill. Once they've fixed the cav, the VG hit them in the flank. The Mongol general was killed, all the cav were routed or killed/captured. My cav then charged the GH archers and routed them as well. GH first wave, ineffective.

I pulled my pursuit about 1/3 from the GH side of the map, and reformed uphill. I took some casualties from their mortar fire during the pursuit, and a few during the hand-to-hand fighting before that. But overall things look good. GH reinforcement showed up, with lots and lots and lots and lots (yes, lots) of HA. A decent number of GH foot archers were present too, and the computer managed to always keep at least 1 Steppe Cav or Mongol HC around to keep my own cav bottled in behind the line of inf.

We traded missile fires, with me having the upperhand due to height and unit advantage (foot archer vs horse archer). Occasionally the Horde would charge my line, and get mauled by my VG. I continued to take losses but nothing serious. I managed to defeat maybe 1/3 of the army this way. Then I ran out of arrows.

Now things favored GH. With no archer cover, the computer used my army for target practice. At one point I had to endure a hail of arrows from l0 - 12 HA. There is no point in pursuing them. My Steppe Cav is only as fast as his HA and by this point fatigue has long set in so all units are very tired by default. I had to save their energy on targets that I can catch and destroy, like the GH archers. So all I could do is weather the storm.

Fortunately, the AI likes to target high value units, in this case, my VG. I'd given them lvl 2 armor upgrades so they were quite resilient to arrows. I continued to take casualties but I wasn't being decimated like he was under my archer fire. Still, it's quite demoralizing (to me, nevermind my units) to just sit there and wait for the HA to run out of arrows and then either withdraw or charge my line.

The constant attrition from arrows and the occasional charge (led by HC or HA) began to take its toll and my spears were wearing thin. After one final charge down the hill to clear some breathing space, I orderd the most damaged units to withdraw so I could bring in fresh ones, plus a few crap units for fodder duty.

Before my units can complete the swap, the GH brought in his latest reinforcements -- 6 - 8 Mongol HC plus Steppe Cav, HA and foot archers. They galloped to the hill and up the slope and hit my spears before I had time to form a solid line again (exhausted units move slow). Now things became frantic as a few worn out spears just broke and ran, and that casued the rest of my spears to start wavering.

I ordered in my fodder units (Slav Javelinmen plus other similar crap) to buy time, and they gave me about 30 seconds before they ran. Hey, at least they closed to melee range and actually traded blows before turning their backs and being rode down. The 30 seconds was what I needed to bring down the surviving VGs and the general's unit of Byz Inf. A hallowing and see-saw fight ensued, with the computer always findind more cav to throw into the fight from his reinforcement queue. I was unable to extract myself and regain my hill advantage. Eventually, the quality of VG prevailed. They managed to kill off all the Mongol heavies despite taking a beating themselves. Meanwhile, my own cav has recovered their enegry so I could commit them to the fight again to chase off the archers, which in turn bought me time for the infantry to take a breather on the hill again.

It was the high water mark for the Horde army. That was the closest they came to defeating me. My spears took a severe mauling such that, even with the fresh units, I could only afford a small frontage afterwards. The VG took 60 - 80% losses but they were the rock in my army. The Mongols would keep coming for a bit longer but they never put together such dangerous concentrations of HC or forced me to melee in a bad position again. The HAs took their tolls on me but they couldn't dislodge me from being King of the Hill. Eventually the Mongols ran out of units and brought in just foot archers and Naptha Throwers. My cavalry charged and the battle was over.

In Khazar, my army of 11,300 faced off 26,300 Mongals. My unit mix was more or less the same, but since I had a larger army that means I had more of each unit type. I also enjoyed better unit quality as I saved my best merc/bribed spears for the main fight (Italian and Saracen Inf, Chivalric Sgt, etc). I also had a higher concentration of VG plus my own heavy horses. Finally, the commander is a 9-star Kataphraktoi.

The battlefield itself favored the Horde. It's ironboard flat with nary a bump to speak of. I also didn't get much of a cover within my deployment zone. So I drew up my army parallel to a road, right at the edge of my map, and waited.

The battle went more or less the same as the one in Volga-Bulgaria, but far less dramatic. I whooped his initial force and killed the Khan. We traded missile fires and I decimated his units until I ran out of arrows. Then I suck down all of his and dealt with the occasional charge. My VG took losses but shrugged off most of the arrows due to high valor and armor. I never had a crisis in this battle mostly because I knew what to expect now and how to counter the Horde better. Eventually Mongolian morale became so low, they just put every unit in the designated reinforcement rally point and just park there. I had to march across the battlefield and take the fight to him. It was fun surrounding them and massacaring them though, as they broke as soon as melee ensued. This happend multiple times, I estimate the last 3,000 Monguls perished this way.

Overall, my fights against the Horde were long and ardous, but not as overwhelming as I thought it would be. I had expected being cornered against the wall by them, but it turned out more like a constant harassment. They were no match against my VG when it comes down to melee, and their arrow fire were annoying but not debilitating.

Later, I decided to re-fight these two battles again, only this time, I vastly improved the ratio of archer and cavalry units in my army. I upped my missile units to about 25 - 30% of my forces, and my cavalry to roughly 20%. I also put a 9-star general in both fights this time. It wasn't even a fair contest at that point. I simply slaughtered the Horde.

I took some screenshots from the aftermaths of the battle at Khazar -- there were so many dead horses, I couldn't tell where the Mongols were during the battle if not for their unit banners! You can see the pics and watch some of my battle replays here:

http://world.std.com/~chadwick/TotalWar/


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Ahjenta