Weak Golden Horde

[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.

[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?