The mongols, how does one beat them?

[Basileus]

Ive found it the easier to defend inside Fortress or Citadels against teh Mongols, in my current campaign i never had time to prepare and they popped up outside bagdad while Mosul only had a general inside. I quickly trained 3 Ottoman Inf and 3 Turkish Archers and never had time to send my JHI so the General was left with hes 3 archer units. I Was expecting a loss so i was building Edessa up to hold the Mongols but my small army in Mosul has so far defended bravely against 4 sieges so far killing all the Mongol inf and lucky enough to be able to retrain between sieges. I´ll play some more tonight and lets see how those brave men in Mosul do in the next siege.

The hard part with the Mongols is the stacks that move together, if you try to attack them you need some stacks your self and in the open its usually tough to beat them.

[chunkynut]

In my first campaign (english) I had taken antioch in a crusade from the eygptians and then adana. The eygptians sued for peace due to their wars with the turks.

Then the Mongols came south and took many eygptian cities, so I prepared an field army of some mercs and other rag tag individuals and got absolutely creamed - so I'm ashamed to admit I reloaded and tried again. Got creamed for a second time but I took many more with me so I felt that was ok. After that I held up in my city and castle and waited while building up some troops. There were some amazing city assualts after that but I eventually lost both the city and the castle due to only having one castle in the area producing troops.

During the 50 turns of fighting european neighbours before another successful crusade to antioch I had many priests/cardinals and about 6 spies and 2 assassins in the area from my previous foray. I caused jerusulam to revolt then moved onto damascus and they revolted, so the mongols had to spend a lot of time and troops suppressing these and thats the only thing that stopped the eygptians and the turks (and maybe the byzantians) from being destroyed.

This meant that when my next crusade arrived in antioch it was nearly undefended and the mongol troops overall capabilities was much reduced and found that they had developed a lot of trebuchets in their armies that threatened my cities but not my armies in the field. I took adana again then adecco (sp? to the right of antioch) another castle and upgraded my middle east regions with ballista and then cannon towers.

After they had obviousy spent themselves on the turks/eygptians/byzantians and then the rebels i formented they were much more easier to handle. I took the city to the south of antioch then jerusulam and that was 45 regions in total :D

[urbancohort]

Have just started fighting the mongols in my Byz campaign. I had reduced the Turks to 1 province and thought i was doing ok, but then 4 stacks of Mongols appeared and attacked my cities in and around Antioch. I fought 4 battles whilst holed up in my cities all lasted over 1 hr, the only city i lost was Antioch the largest one they attacked !! and then i had to stop playing for a while to spend a bit of quality time with my wife

Started playing again, thought i'd seen the last of em then 1 full stack appeared East of Antioch 8 star general, heading for Constantinople on a Jihad. I had to let them take the city as they beat up 3 of my best armies on the way in open country fighting with minimal losses to their own army I re attacked Constantinople with 3 full stacks of (almost) my best troops and took the city back.

Enough i thought, no more Mongols on the map that i could see anywhere

Wrong again !! the "people in flight" message appeared and out of nowhere 8 full stacks appeared again to the East of Antioch. I left it at that and have yet to return, will have another go later on in the week, but it looks like its going to be a long fight.

[JFC]

I attacked a three stack Mongol Spearmen army outside Antioch with a 16 stack army.... The full stack Mongol Army inside Antioch wanted some...
I had:
1 English King
3 Kwazithingymebob Cav Mercs
4 Longbowmen
2 Horse Archers Mercs
2 English Feudal Knights
2 Spearmen
2 Dismounted English Knights

Now the thing was to get rid of the Mongol Spearmen sharpish, which a total cav charge accomplished (Left, right and behind)
As this was going on The Huge horde was starting to walk on the Map. EEEK! From the behind left! "MOVE!" The King bellowed and pegged his army to the other side of the map, BUT left the Kwazi horses in the forest to his right...
With the army running for england to the other side of the field, they started to reform. "CTRL+6!" Came the order. Now the Mongols love those horse archers. As they sent them forward, The King met them with his.
"Let them shoot it out." Came the murmer from the King to the Knight next to him.
The spearmen were placed into their respective shiltrons port and starboard side of the dis eng knights and anxiously waited.
Mongols love Archers. They moved them infront of their infrantry. Cue Kwazi Cav from their now behind...
Archers start to peg it... where?? Towards the longbowmen. "Lovely."
Next they go for broke and now seeing that their archers are getting pummelled they send their cav into the melee.
George Smith (from Putney) Second row in the Spearmen screams "hold... Hold... HOLD!" WHAM! Cav now stopped... "Go dis Eng Knights with your 24 Attack!" BAM! SMASH! ARRGH!

Now the King, during this time has been circling their left flank with the 2 mounted Feudal Knights goes full pelt into what remains of their archers and through to the now fighting spearmen and dis eng knights... Smoke, Dust and Blood is every where....
The Kwazi guys now pick off the rest of the horse archers on the right. Now... "ARCHERS ATTACK!" Pressing the ALT key, they smash into what now remains of the Mongol Cav who now are stood still and being introduce to English Steel and Vengeful Anger. Like a rabid bunch of England Football Supporters the archers go at it with their hammers, hitting anything that doesn't have red or yellow cloth in the total chaos that is man and beast.

White flags are now appearing from the Mongols... "Had Enough??!!" Battle horns for the charge are sounding louder as the Mongol General is taken prisoner and their whole army now screams "To the hills!"

The Second Lt, now dripping in blood and sweat trots up to the now exhausted King who is looking at the carnage of broken flags, lances and men, "A day to remember, Sire."
"Yes it is.... yes it is."

The rest as you can imagine.... is history.

[Kraxis]

You actually got English Dismounted Knights to use their weapons against cavalry?