Weak Golden Horde

[Jihad2Death]

I`ve been playing MTW for some time now and one of the most enjoyable experiences was the 1st time the Golden Horde showed up. After my 4th or 5th bout with the horde defeating them became easy. I bought VI with the the hope that the Horde would be stronger and actually be able to spread over Europe. The only thing I`ve notice differently since getting VI is that the Horde is more aggressive but not really that much stronger. My main problems with the current Horde is that they don`t come with enough, or strong enough units, and once they do come they can`t replenish what they have. Most of the time the Horde comes with less than 25 stacks, comes in only two provinces and can only spread so far. Another problem is that the Horde lacks good generals, the highest I`ve seen is 4 stars. I`ve tried just about everything I can think of to get a actual HORDE of me. I`ve stacked Khazar with stacks of my own army, I`ve built up Khazar so that the Horde comes with gold armor, I`ve tried building buildings that increase valor, the Horde is still really weak and could be beaten any time I want. I`ve though of Modding but I`ve never done a mod and have no idea what I`m doing and don`t want to end up messing my whole PC up. Is there a ready made mod that will give me a super Horde? I don`t want to change the whole game with a mod, just increase the Horde.

[PittBull260]

lol they always come with like 30,000 men when I play...

[Pericles]

Here is some easy modding you can do yourself in 5 minutes that will dramatically increase the challenge of playing against the Horde.

In the example below play the HIGH era campaign. The same can be done using the LATE era campaign.

Try this:

1

Go to your HIGH.txt game file here:

C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos


2

BACKUP your HIGH.txt file.

Then open it up and scroll down until you see the following entries:

3

In the entry below give the Golden Horde 1000000 million florins under the difficulty setting you want to select. In this example, I chose the HARD setting:



//========================================
//Starting Treasury
//Sets the amount of cash available to
//each faction at the start of the game.
//you can specify 4 values for the four
//difficulty levels in the order EASY,
//NORMAL, HARD and EXPERT. Specify only one
//value to start all difficulty levels with
//the same size treasury.
//If you don't set this, the default
//is 2000 florins for all difficulty levels.
//========================================
SetTreasury:: FN_ALMOHAD 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_BYZANTINE 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_DANISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_EGYPTIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_ENGLISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_FRENCH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_GERMAN_HRE 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_ITALIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_POLISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_RUSSIAN 10000 8000 6000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_SPANISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_TURKISH 10000 8000 150000 4000

SetTreasury:: FN_ARAGONESE 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_BURGUNDIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_GOLDEN_HORDE 10000 8000 1000000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_HUNGARIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_PAPIST 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_SICILIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_NOVGOROD 10000 8000 150000 4000


4

Next, change the Golden Horde's culture so that it will invade AND buildup its infrastructure. In this example, I gave it the ORTHODOX culture:

//========================================
//Faction Cultures
//The culture system that each faction
//adheres to
//========================================
SetCulture:: FN_ALMOHAD MUSLIM_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_BYZANTINE ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_DANISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_EGYPTIAN MUSLIM_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_ENGLISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_FRENCH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_GERMAN_HRE CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_ITALIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_POLISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_RUSSIAN ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_SPANISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_TURKISH MUSLIM_CULTURE

SetCulture:: FN_ARAGONESE CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_BURGUNDIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_GOLDEN_HORDE ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_HUNGARIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_NOVGOROD ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_PAPIST CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_SICILIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_SWISS CATHOLIC_CULTURE


5

Next, change the Golden Horde's behaviour.

In this example I gave the Horde the ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST behaviour:

//========================================
//Faction Behaviour
//This is the default behaviour of each
//faction, various in game factor will
//alter it. Rebel are always set to REBEL
//these are the available options
//also note that these are related to the
//product spreadsheet
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST
//CATHOLIC_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
//ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
//ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
//ORTHODOX_DEFENSIVE
//MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
//MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
//MUSLIM_DEVOUT
//POVERTY_STRICKEN
//DESPERATE_DEFENCE
//CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT
//POPE
//BARBARIAN_RAIDER
//REBELS
//========================================
SetBehaviour:: FN_ALMOHAD MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
SetBehaviour:: FN_BYZANTINE ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
SetBehaviour:: FN_DANISH CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_EGYPTIAN MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_ENGLISH CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_FRENCH CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_GERMAN_HRE CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_ITALIAN CATHOLIC_TRADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_POLISH CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_RUSSIAN ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_SPANISH CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_TURKISH MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_ARAGONESE CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_BURGUNDIAN CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_GOLDEN_HORDE ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_HUNGARIAN CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_NOVGOROD ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_PAPIST POPE
SetBehaviour:: FN_SICILIAN CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_SWISS CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST


Hope this helps.

[m52nickerson]

My last few campaigns the Horde has been week, they came in the one time with four full stacks, but two of them were catapults. Wtf, just spoiled my plans to have them weaken my enemys.

[EatYerGreens]

I remember posting about the GH, soon after I joined the ORG, making the point that they ought to be regarded as having a source of income 'off the edge of the map', or words to that effect.

I think Pericles' suggestion of giving them a million florins to start with is the nearest you can get to simulating this. If the game will allow even more money to be assigned, then give it to them. They have a vast empire's resources to draw on, after all. What we see in the game is just the extreme western tip of it.

They are doubly handicapped in the default version of the game.
1) They arrive with multiple stacks. The maintainance cost of these will rapidly drain their default starting treasury, even if they build nothing and train nothing.
2) They appear in two, sometimes three provinces. Even assuming they rapidly win all the provinces they appear in, they can only train as many fresh units per turn as provinces they hold and that also assumes that training facilities weren't auto-destroyed by the conquest.

Incidentally, if defended by an AI faction, sometimes the defender abandons without a fight. This gives the horde some income but not nearly enough to be at all self-sustaining until they're up to 6-7 provinces. Worse yet if the defender AI decides to head to whatever castle they have. This means that the GH get no income at all, short of a successful castle assault in the following turn. Against the human player, the GH typically lose hundreds of men against a castle's defences. One time I even won a siege battle against huge numbers of them. They just sit there and let the arrow towers etc kill their siege engines and archers since they try to fire back at what's hitting them but the arrow towers are 'unkillable', short of smashing them down with catapults. Of course the GH bring useless ballistas with them.

Does making their culture 'Orthodox' change their religion or something? I don't see any harm in leaving them as Pagan, unless you reckon that damping down religious revolts against them will help their position? Given that Russian and Byz preaching efforts in that part of the world will have made it an Orthodox-dominated area by the time of their arrival, then I can understand how having them fit in, as fellow Orthodox people, will work. Or is it just to make things consistent with ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST status?

I have a slight quibble with this. To the best of my knowledge, the Mongols attacked and killed mostly because they liked killing and they smashed up cities because settled cultures were the antithesis of their nomadic lifestyle and they despised them. Their own Khan's great city was something of an aberration in their culture but I don't recall tales of them being great builders of castles or founders of new cities - one big city was enough. By rights, they should just go about, kill armies on the battlefield, conquer territories, slaughter all captives (no ransoms) and smash up all buildings wherever they go (except horse-generating ones maybe) and simply intensively farm whatever is left, for the good of the empire's income.
The trouble is, this behaviour in the game would largely deny them troop training abilities and other benefits of leaving castles (aka cities) in place. For them to be a lasting element in the campaign, you have to change their traits to be more like that of their western counterparts. Whilst I may quibble with the changed culture and behaviour, I agree that this mod is a sensible one to get them to properly establish themselves in the game.

[Grey_Fox]

I have a slight quibble with this. To the best of my knowledge, the Mongols attacked and killed mostly because they liked killing and they smashed up cities because settled cultures were the antithesis of their nomadic lifestyle and they despised them. Their own Khan's great city was something of an aberration in their culture but I don't recall tales of them being great builders of castles or founders of new cities - one big city was enough. By rights, they should just go about, kill armies on the battlefield, conquer territories, slaughter all captives (no ransoms) and smash up all buildings wherever they go (except horse-generating ones maybe) and simply intensively farm whatever is left, for the good of the empire's income.

Meh. Mongols were not barbaric murderers. They were no more violent than other people of the time. The only time the Mongols was when the city resisted the Mongols. It was done to create an example, and it usually worked, in that the Mongols had few troubles with rebels.

The Mongols ad few troubles with 'settled' cultures, in fact the Mongols adopted many of their ways. For example, when China was conquered, the Mongols took their administrative system and made it their own.

Anyways, back on topic. In VI 2.01, the Horde numbers are proportional to the size of the garissons in the invaded provinces, as with resurgent factions and rebels.

In MTW, the numbers are random. They will wither come with a few, or with a good few. Almost always, it is a lot smaller than what they come with in VI.

[DensterNY]

I have a good idea for assisting the Horde in making them more realistic and equivalent to the challenge that they presented to the world. Could you mod it so that they have Level One buildings that produced quality troop units and make their maintenance cost very low as well.

I know it seems unfair but that was basically what the Mongols had. These were people raised as horsemen trained in hunting tactics that later became butt kicking fighting tactics. They didn't learn these skills in a large fancy hall with expensive facilities they were skills essential to their everyday survival. Also, Mongols were known to ride hard and light and even at times drank some blood let from their ponies to carry them for a day or two without food. Also, as nomads they carried most of what they needed and needed very little overall therefore the low maintanence cost.

[antisocialmunky]

I'd just change their tech tree so they could recruit all their units in the steppe area from a fort or something.

[Procrustes]

I just got the horde to emerge in my current game. I had Khazar for a long time; I built a citadel and a +2 armorer, and put four full stacks of prize troops there. The horde appeared there with 30 stacks, all gold armor, all good troops. Should be fun!

[mfberg]

For their money woes you can send in your own troops and ransom them (if you have the excess money), modify the game (give them more starting cash) or modify their troops (cut the support from 3 to 1 for Golden Horde Warriors for example). I like to build up the economies in Early and give them areas with 80% farming to start with. If I am starting in High or Late I will give them more money.

mfberg

[dgfred]

I just got the horde to emerge in my current game. I had Khazar for a long time; I built a citadel and a +2 armorer, and put four full stacks of prize troops there. The horde appeared there with 30 stacks, all gold armor, all good troops. Should be fun!

Wow, that is bravery in the extreme . Please let us know how it
turns out .

[antisocialmunky]

Heh... those Halberdiers are going to have some great fun on those gold shields.

[Roark]

I found the 40-50K shrieking pagans in my campaign to be more than enough...

I think they're using Lithuania as a pinchushion at the moment.

[Jihad2Death]

Here is some easy modding you can do yourself in 5 minutes that will dramatically increase the challenge of playing against the Horde.

In the example below play the HIGH era campaign. The same can be done using the LATE era campaign.

Try this:

1

Go to your HIGH.txt game file here:

C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos


2

BACKUP your HIGH.txt file.

Then open it up and scroll down until you see the following entries:

3

In the entry below give the Golden Horde 1000000 million florins under the difficulty setting you want to select. In this example, I chose the HARD setting:



//========================================
//Starting Treasury
//Sets the amount of cash available to
//each faction at the start of the game.
//you can specify 4 values for the four
//difficulty levels in the order EASY,
//NORMAL, HARD and EXPERT. Specify only one
//value to start all difficulty levels with
//the same size treasury.
//If you don't set this, the default
//is 2000 florins for all difficulty levels.
//========================================
SetTreasury:: FN_ALMOHAD 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_BYZANTINE 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_DANISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_EGYPTIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_ENGLISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_FRENCH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_GERMAN_HRE 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_ITALIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_POLISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_RUSSIAN 10000 8000 6000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_SPANISH 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_TURKISH 10000 8000 150000 4000

SetTreasury:: FN_ARAGONESE 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_BURGUNDIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_GOLDEN_HORDE 10000 8000 1000000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_HUNGARIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_PAPIST 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_SICILIAN 10000 8000 150000 4000
SetTreasury:: FN_NOVGOROD 10000 8000 150000 4000


4

Next, change the Golden Horde's culture so that it will invade AND buildup its infrastructure. In this example, I gave it the ORTHODOX culture:

//========================================
//Faction Cultures
//The culture system that each faction
//adheres to
//========================================
SetCulture:: FN_ALMOHAD MUSLIM_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_BYZANTINE ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_DANISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_EGYPTIAN MUSLIM_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_ENGLISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_FRENCH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_GERMAN_HRE CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_ITALIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_POLISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_RUSSIAN ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_SPANISH CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_TURKISH MUSLIM_CULTURE

SetCulture:: FN_ARAGONESE CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_BURGUNDIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_GOLDEN_HORDE ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_HUNGARIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_NOVGOROD ORTHODOX_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_PAPIST CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_SICILIAN CATHOLIC_CULTURE
SetCulture:: FN_SWISS CATHOLIC_CULTURE


5

Next, change the Golden Horde's behaviour.

In this example I gave the Horde the ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST behaviour:

//========================================
//Faction Behaviour
//This is the default behaviour of each
//faction, various in game factor will
//alter it. Rebel are always set to REBEL
//these are the available options
//also note that these are related to the
//product spreadsheet
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST
//CATHOLIC_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
//ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
//ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
//ORTHODOX_DEFENSIVE
//MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
//MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
//MUSLIM_DEVOUT
//POVERTY_STRICKEN
//DESPERATE_DEFENCE
//CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT
//POPE
//BARBARIAN_RAIDER
//REBELS
//========================================
SetBehaviour:: FN_ALMOHAD MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
SetBehaviour:: FN_BYZANTINE ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
SetBehaviour:: FN_DANISH CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_EGYPTIAN MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_ENGLISH CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_FRENCH CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_GERMAN_HRE CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_ITALIAN CATHOLIC_TRADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_POLISH CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_RUSSIAN ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_SPANISH CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
SetBehaviour:: FN_TURKISH MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_ARAGONESE CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_BURGUNDIAN CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_GOLDEN_HORDE ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_HUNGARIAN CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
SetBehaviour:: FN_NOVGOROD ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_PAPIST POPE
SetBehaviour:: FN_SICILIAN CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
SetBehaviour:: FN_SWISS CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST


Hope this helps.

Thanks, is there a way to mod the ratings of the Horde generals?

[Procrustes]

Wow, that is bravery in the extreme . Please let us know how it
turns out .

Bravery or foolishness - hard to tell. And I should note that I mis-spoke - there are twenty stacks for the horde, not thirty. (Twenty-one if you include the Khan's short stack.) Unfortunately the Kahn has only three stars!

I'm trying to decide how to play it. I'm not up to an all-night battle, I'll probably take two stacks and fight as long as I can, then retreat to the citadel. I'm really hoping I can get them to assault my fortifications - I managed to hire two merc organ guns a while ago and I've been saving them for this moment!

[dgfred]

TWO Organ guns , that is going to leave a mark .




Where/How did you hire them by the way?

[Procrustes]

TWO Organ guns , that is going to leave a mark .

Ha! I hope they do. I've never actually had the opportunity to use them before - I hope it doesn't rain that day!

Where/How did you hire them by the way?

Around 1200 all hell broke loose and everyone started attacking me. I ended up swallowing Turkey after a tough campaign, and found an inn in Trebazond. I watched it for a while, and they popped up over the next few years - not at the same time. Maintenance was low so I just stuck them in a castle and left them there, waiting for the Horde.

Inns are fun - I build one here and there, along contested borders especially. I look for unique units I can't build myself - I've gotten several longbows and firearms this game. Disciplined cavalry is a good buy if you are playing a christian faction.

Best,

[dgfred]

I'm not much for inns, but I didn't really think about the unique units . I'll have to get me a couple .

[Procrustes]

The AI seems to build them, although I'm not sure it ever uses them. I find them in captured provinces fairly regularly.

If you build them, you'll get more troops if you have less infrastructure in the province (keep the castles, watchtowers and town guards to a minimum) and if you build them close to someplace where folks are fighting (you won't find many mercs in your backwater provinces.) You can't really depend on them, though - it's something to try if you are curious or desperate.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The problem with Inns is that mercs are usually one shot units. After one or two battles all you have is a remnant. Especially with Cav.

Still, such is life. Currently my empire is hemoraging around 6,000 florins a year. First thing I did was ditch the merc cav.

[EatYerGreens]

The problem with Inns is that mercs are usually one shot units. After one or two battles all you have is a remnant. Especially with Cav.

Don't ever underestimate the worth of Cavalry cadres.

I've had units of 8 men which scored more kills and captures in their second and subsequent battles than they ever did when they were a full unit of 40.

Valour seems to count for a heck of a lot in this game and a 40 man unit reduced to less than 20 typically has gone up to V1 or V2 (due to the averaging of internal values for individual men) and, when down to less than 10 men, it's gone up V4 or more. Add a general's bonus to take them up to V8, for example and they're surprisingly effective.

High valour units seem to have the ability to intimidate low valour AI units, on occasion - triggering rout or withdrawal before even making contact. Once in a scrap, they kill more and rout them sooner. Chasing routers, they pick up numbers of prisoners totally out of proportion with their unit size.

In some cases, the AI behaves as if a very small unit is no threat to it at all. Given the choice, it will engage or archer into a unit wich is further away and of lower worth, apparently because it has more men in it. Good time to pounce!

Fair point though - a badly broken merc Cav unit which contrived to still be at V0, I would disband myself, on the basis of high maintainance versus low combat effectiveness. Apologies if this is what you actually meant.