Surprised by the horde, can you believe it?

[Sir Price]

In my current game (Poland/hard/early/GA), after taking over the steppes pretty fast, I was just sitting back developing my provinces, owning everything north and east of a line from Pomerania to Moldavia, and at peace with almost everyone, and certainly all of my neighbours.
So i had Khazar, with a reasonably large army, if the Byzantines should try something unhealthy. As mentioned, I was just building up provinces, and not paying attention to the current year, and suddenly there's a horde in my backyard! The Golden Horde totally snuck up on me, with more than 10.000 men. Aargh, help me, help me, good God!
As I had a fortress almost build, i decided to try and defend myself with my little more than 2.000 men, mostly Feudal Sergeants and Men-at-arms, 2 Arbalests, 3 Archers, 2 Polish Retainers and 2 Feudal Knights, a 7 star Royal Knight, and the saviours, 3-4 of each Steppe Cavalry and Steppe Heavy Cavalry. I never tried these guys before, and they were great. Of course the mongol King only had 3 stars, otherwise this might well be a tale of defeat, but I was still outnumbered by overwhelming numbers.
I set up between two forests on the edge, that almost came together, with cavalry on both flanks. The first wave was their king (Mongol Heavy cavalry of course), a few bombards and other siege units, the rest was Mongol Warriors. So i circled them with my cavalry, took out the siege equipment and any stray warriors, and kept dancing around with my cavalry, picking off warriors, until finally it turned into an all-out slugfest at the border of one forest, with some of my infantry joining in, and finally I get the message I longed for... "the enemy general has been killed..." Phew.
Of course I still had to fight of wave after wave of Mongol Heavy Cavalry, Horse Archers and Warriors, as well as the occasional Naptha Throwers.
Long story short, finally the last 3 units of mongols, 1 heavy cavalry, 1 horse archer and 1 warriors, decided to pack it in and call it a day, after a charge from the rest of my Royal Knights and Polish Retainers. And my general (who developed some nice virtues, especially after slaughtering well over 2.500 mongol prisoners ) could send out messages to the armies gathering in expectation of a crushing defeat, that "he's got it covered..."
I really hadn't ecpected to win this one, and everytime a new wave of those shiny-grey Mongol Heavy Cavalry showed up, my heart sank a little more. 10.000 men turn into quite a lot of waves, so towards the end my heart was pretty low down, luckily my general wasn't as easily intimidated.

Long post, but I just wanted to share another great experience with this game. At the end the 315 minute time limit (5 hours 15 minutes) had almost run out, I was exhausted, it was 3 in the morning, and I had to get up early. All that was left on the field was 6-7 assorted units of totally exhausted and mostly demolished troops, the rest had run off. In the end the horse archers actually proved a great pain, as my cavalry was way to tired to even try and run them down, and only the forests saved me from arrows and heavy cavalry charge. Great battle, great fun, but I can't figure out how I let 10.000 guys sneak up on me like that...