Byzantium

[PrestigeX]

I found the most useful unit while playing as Byzantium to be,
Byzantine Cavalary and Trebizond Archers.

The reason is that they are not that expensive for what you get. Byzantine cavalry is capable for taking out archer units, and for riding around and en-circling the enemy's melee units. For my infanty-line i use a mix of Spearmen and Byzantine Infantry.
Trebizond archers are also very useful because they are inexpensive, and can be utilized as 'melee' units when the situation is getting a bit desperate.

Usually my byzantine army would be as follows.


H/A H/A H/A H/A H/A H/A

A A A A
S S S S S S

General (and two units of Byzantine infantry/ or Cav)

[Nikitaras]

I am new to MTW2 but since I got the game I have played 4-5 campaign games as the Byzantines up to ~1250-1300AD.
I followed several suggestions from this forum with very good results up until the Mongols arrive.
In every campaign game I have played the Mongols have proven to be unbeatable and they have crushed all the armies I have sent against them.
I should mention that I mostly auto resolve battles (takes too long on my computer and I am still horrible at it).
I have tried various diplomatic and military strategies to avoid becoming their target but they have all failed. (I have given border regions to the Pope and HRE hoping the Mongols would go for them and leave me alone, have built castles with archers and missile cavalry and spearmen, etc.) I suspect they are programmed to attack the strongest faction or the faction with the most regions and that usually happens to be Byzantium in my games.

I was looking for any suggestions from the veterans how do best deal with the Mongols in auto resolve mode?

I have used one of the cheats to add money and was able to beat them back but I had to stack 3-4 armies with good generals against one of theirs in every battle.

(I have not gotten as far as the Timurids but I hate to even think about that).

[rvg]

Autoresolving battles with Mongols can prove to be very costly, but if you DO choose to do so, do it with overwhelming numbers of cheap trash troops (think acrher/spear/Cavlry militia) at a ratio of at least 4:1. Expect to lose all that trash but make a sizable dent in mongol stacks. Use your top quality troops at sieges, bridges and (even better) unbridged river crossings. All that Mongol heavy cavalry amounts to little more than horsemeat if caught by Varangians in the middle of the river.

[Quillan]

Never ever use autoresolve against the Mongols if the army contains their original troops. The autoresolve function is basically a number crunch. It's apparently heavily weighted in favor of numbers and experience. The first is usually a disadvantage for cavalry, as mounted units are smaller in size, but all the original Mongol invasion troops have something like 6 xp! The result is that you will almost always be crushed if you use the computer to resolve it.

Now, if you cannot fight the battles out yourself for whatever reason, then I have to agree with RVG. Build your armies as full stacks of big infantry units like spear militia or Byzantine Spearmen, keep multiple stacks together, and then resolve it. You'll take horrific losses, but those troops are pretty cheap to replace, and you at least have a decent chance of winning.

If you can fight out the battles, then the Byzantines can give the Mongols a serious challenge on the field. I've beaten them in an open field battle with an army of 2 generals, 2 kataphractoi, and 16 assorted horse archers, but there's no way to fight that battle without losing a lot of troops. It works out better if defending a bridge or a ford.

[rmshines]

Has anyone ever tried simply being a vassal to the Papal States (for a very hefty fee)? That way, the Pope is charged with "protecting" you and any attack on you would be an attack on him. This should lead to immunity from attacks from the Catholic factions, unless they want to be excommunicated.

Then make every crusading Catholic faction (except maybe Venice) who passes through Byzantine territory on their way to the Middle East your ally. Then you can use all of their armies to recover all the lost territory of the original Eastern Roman Empire.

Any thoughts?

[Robespierre]

this my first campaign for a while, i have decided to consolidate the Balkans by eliminating factions which attack me, in the 60s and Venice is dead, the Vampires are soon to follow, them i shall halt on the rivers which are a natural frontier. at that point it is time to consolidate religion, mop up rebels, build some forts. sack-cash from Budapest Venice Iconium 'n Vienna is keeping the old empire ticking over nicely. religious unrest is a problem as the latins are conquered. the frontier is locked into a permanent state of religious strife. things will be better when Venice attains 40% 'Doxy.

vards are so good, they are so agile, and even a basic infantry force of spear and trebizond bow will win with these hot horsemen nippin' round the flanks and carving up the enemys' arse from that oblique angle old boy. Have at 'em lads!

however horsemen do sufer with auto resolve, the basileus lacks lancersin the early game.

naval dominance is vital. seal off the aegean, the black sea and the adriatic. if a hostile fleet gets in then you can play ping-pong with the piratical scumbags and bounce them from one fleet to the next until they are truly scuppered!

[Nikitaras]

Never ever use autoresolve against the Mongols if the army contains their original troops. The autoresolve function is basically a number crunch. It's apparently heavily weighted in favor of numbers and experience. The first is usually a disadvantage for cavalry, as mounted units are smaller in size, but all the original Mongol invasion troops have something like 6 xp! The result is that you will almost always be crushed if you use the computer to resolve it.

Now, if you cannot fight the battles out yourself for whatever reason, then I have to agree with RVG. Build your armies as full stacks of big infantry units like spear militia or Byzantine Spearmen, keep multiple stacks together, and then resolve it. You'll take horrific losses, but those troops are pretty cheap to replace, and you at least have a decent chance of winning.

If you can fight out the battles, then the Byzantines can give the Mongols a serious challenge on the field. I've beaten them in an open field battle with an army of 2 generals, 2 kataphractoi, and 16 assorted horse archers, but there's no way to fight that battle without losing a lot of troops. It works out better if defending a bridge or a ford.

thanks for the advice. I am now able to fight the Mongols and sometimes win. I've played several campaigns as the Byzantines and the HRE. I've tried different strategies of fending off the Mongols and Timurids (giving border regions to the Pope and other factions right before they arrive, or leaving the Turks around so they have to fight them first) but it seems that that no matter what i do they are simply programmed to go after the stronger/richest(?) faction at the time. As the Byzantines they came to Antioch and into Asia Minor. As the HRE they went to Kiev and came into central Europe. Of course, they never accept a ceasefire. Has anyone found a clever trick of keeping them at arms length without having their treasury drained by the endless wars?
I love this game but I am getting a bit disenchanted because it always comes to "how badly will the Mongols/Timurids beat you up?".

[Quillan]

River crossings. My first campaign, as the Byzantines, I held the Mongols off on the bridges. I owned Iasi, which I had as a city. The army standing on the bridge consisted of 6 units of Byzantine Infantry, 4 units of Byzantine Guard Archers, 1 trebuchet, 1 general, and 8 assorted horse archers. I lined up 3 units of infantry across the edge of the bridge, with 3 more directly behind them, and all 6 in guard mode. When the battle started, they'd advance directly to the edge of the bridge from the deployment line. The foot archers would line up on a hill where they could fire down onto the bridge. The horse archers would do the same. The treb was set to fire rotting cows, and I'd wait until the Mongols started crossing to begin firing.

I'd always manage to eventually land a dead cow in the middle of the bridge, which meant every Mongol unit would be affected by it. I used the horse archers to chase down any routers that came through my side of the bridge, and didn't pursue any routers across the bridge until the battle was won. In some cases the Mongols would have 2-3 stacks, so there's be a pause after I'd broken the first army but the next hadn't yet arrived, and then I'd switch off the lead infantry.

After the battle was over, I'd use the nearby city and fortress to replenish losses.

[oz_wwjd]

Yeah when I played them I won 60% of me battles using vards to harass the enemy all the way up the field,then finishing it off with a rain of arrows from the Guard archers,plus a calv charge from behind,with my vardf if needed.