Let me start with I HATE the horde. That said, fighting the horde usually marks the climax of my campaign. Everything after that is almost lacklustre. In my most recent campaign those mongol bastages appeared after I thought I had the lock on dealing with them. I removed all but 100 garrisoned troops from khazar expecting a small GH army, but I had almost 1000 troops in Kiev defending my border and 5000 troops in Greece waiting to be sealifted to Khazar to screw the horde. 12800 ish GH troops appear in Khazar. Cursing and swearing, I send in 2700 of my boys including 2 units of Merc missle troops (pac arbs, longbowmen).

The pav arbs devastate the horde heavy cav and the longbowmen lay waste to waves of heavy cav and mongol foot soldiers, but I have to withdraw them first and start replacing them with my turcoman foot soldiers (all valour 2, plus 3 valour for my 6 star Steepe Heavy Cav general and gold armoured).

The fight was insane. Insanely long. Because I had organised my stacks by unit type, my fight went through stages as my reinforcements came in. First, all I got were archers. Then heavy cav. I never made it to my stack of turcoman horse as about 3/4 of the way through the fight, they stopped attacking. I was so freaking tired I sped up the clock and let it run out. 3 units of sacaren infantry hold off the horse heavy horde and soak up waves of missle attacks from the horde foot well. Also effective was starting with 4 units of missile troops and 6 catapault crews (most already high valoured from previous fights). For some reason the GH Khan likes to parade at point blank range in front of my spears and archers while the rest of his forces seem to waver out of missile range. I let my catapaults and archers mow his unit down. Once he's dead, the Horde becomes a fight of atrophy which you easily win if you're patient.

For me the challenge was killing the horde as fast as possible, as I had to work the next day. My best tip, use Huscarles, or if available, Varangian Guard. When put in a wooded area they easily hold a flank. For some reason, GH AI always sends in their heavy cav into the woods and a single unit of Huscarles can rout a unit of GH HC in seconds in the woods. Heavy axe infantry resists arrows well and with the AP bonus you can almost hear the electronic blender noise as they mulch through enemy troops. No other unit mulches the horde like Huscarles. Better still, I can keep a unit of huscarles in the fight from the start, to the eventual end of the fight. To give you an idea of how heavily I use them, they start with 3 valour and end with 6, or even 8 valour huscarles. Missles troops are good on the horde, but once you run out of ammo, you swap them out for the next guys which takes time and creates potential vulnerabilities.

Another tip, for all the stupidity of the Horde's AI, it will exploit weaknesses in your line. What I do is feign a weakness by making a sizable gap in my line, especially near a wooded flank. When the GH cav races in to exploit the percieved hole, I filled it with screaming huscarles, usually with a late arriving unit arriving on the charging horde's flank (2 huscarle units charge, one intercepts the charge, the other flanks). Flanking with Ghazi works well as long as the ghazi do not recieve the charge. Ghazi are great in the woods, but in the open they get mowed down by mongol cav and missle troops.

After running out of missle infantry on my reinforcements I pulled back my infantry deeper into the woods and started getting heavy cav reinforcements. The Horde AI went after my battered, but vetran infantry in the treeline and pursued them deeper as I pulled them back. Once they were in I'd block their retreat outside the woods with heavy cav. Getting my general the butcher vice has never been easier.

Another tip, keep a solid unit of heavy infantry somewhere in a large stretch of woods. I used huscarles here as well. Although isolated, away from your general, they valour up massively by intercepting single units or any and all retreating/withdrawing units of GH entering their woods. Eventually, the AI will try to single them out, so make sure they are tough. My huscarles took on 3 units of mongol heavy infantry, 2 units of mongol foot, and 2 units of mongol horse archer all at the same time (they suffered horrible losses, but held) by the time my heavy cav arrived to relieve them they were down to 12 guys and routed ... all of 10 feet before they saw thier cav relieve them and they stopped and I sent them back in. I couldn't believe that although badly outnumbered 1 unit of huscarles held off 7 units of the enemy, inflicted horrible losses and gave my main force time to rest. The single unit is fantastic for messing with the AI's battle plan, causing chaos, and disrupting supply and retreat.

Needless to say, the horde disappeared before it ever really existed.