Byzantines vs. Mongols

[SCRIBE]

I remember in MTW, you would have to use the Varangian Guard against the heavy cavs of the Mongols.
But since MTW2 is a whole new ball game, how would the aging Roman armour put up against the swiftness of the Golden Horde? That is, after mopping out the Turks and the Hungarians and what not.

If anyone is playing a Byzantine campaign, I'd like to know how their finding the game. Hopefully its as fun as in MTW.
And how fare thee the Cataphracts? Nice armour by the way.

[pansoiatr]

I started playing the byzantines yesterday at VH/VH
they are a great faction to play because you have so many options to expand.
I have opted to go both ways east-west.So far it is going great although i think that my neighbourhs are about to attack me(turks-hungary-venetia).
If you play the byzantines try to expand from cyprus to syria.there are many rebels there.

[Quillan]

I'm playing Byzantium also, but haven't gotten to the mongols yet. I'm currently fighting off the remnants of the Hungarians, fending off Venice, and dealing with a jihad while taking back territory lost to the Turks following Manzikert. The Seljuks stripped their land of defense in order to send two armies at Constantinople, so I'm taking advantage of that fact.

[SCRIBE]

I'm playing Byzantium also, but haven't gotten to the mongols yet. I'm currently fighting off the remnants of the Hungarians, fending off Venice, and dealing with a jihad while taking back territory lost to the Turks following Manzikert. The Seljuks stripped their land of defense in order to send two armies at Constantinople, so I'm taking advantage of that fact.

Yea finish those devious Seljuks once and for all. (And maybe leave them with one measley province to act as a shield against the Golden Hordes)
But really, your fighting three separate kingdoms?
1 muslim and 2 catholic kingdoms eh ?!?
Besides the Jihad, are their any crusades coming your way?
You must have some army to be able to do that.

By the way, does anyone have pictures of their Byzantine campaign to share?

[Quillan]

5 separate kingdoms. Venice, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt and the Moors. When the jihad was called, they all declared war on me. Cost me a lot of money, as I had a lot of sea trade links with Egypt, the bastids. I'm up to 1199 AD now, playing one year a turn. Hungary is gone (conquered), Venice is gone (assassinated too many faction members, the Doge died somehow, and the faction turned rebel), the Moors have made peace with me, and I'm still at war with Egypt and the Turks. I stopped my eastern conquests at Caesarea and Adana. It's getting close to Mongol time, so I want them to take the brunt of the initial assault.

As to armies, the eastern armies are all mounted. General, 3-4 Vardariotai, 4-6 Byzantine cavalry, 1-2 Skythikons in each. One of my two western armies is the same. The Byzantine horse archers are eating everything that is thrown at me for lunch. I have to work at it, but they are doing it. All but the Skythikons are quite capable in melee as well as missile fire.

[SCRIBE]

Ah, but no Kataphracts eh? And no Byzantine Infantry? Im sure those two would do well in the Western Campaigns.
Skythikons are medium armoured cavalry archers right?
It'd be interesting to see the match up between Eastern Romans with the Mongols and then the Timurids.

Your campaign, from the looks of it, seems to be doing well, considering you owned the Venetians and Hungarians and made peace with the Moors (they would be my 2nd favourite faction). I'd like to see how the Turks put up against the Golden Horde when it comes behind them.

Good luck.

[Quillan]

At the time, I hadn't even got to the point where I could build kataphractoi. I'm up to 1299 now, and very close to winning. Since you don't have the game yet, Skythikons are basically Cuman steppe horse archers: no armor, small sword, primary weapon is a composite recurve bow. Byzantine cavalry are medium cavalry, mail or brigandine armor, larger sword, and the same bow. They are better armored but not as fast. Vardariotai are Magyar horsemen, elite horse archers. They wear light mail armor, have a scimitar and recurve bow, good morale, good stamina, and fast moving. I've come to prefer horse archers in field battles. I have trounced everything thrown at me with them, including chivalric knights - they can't catch me, and as soon as I either get archers around their shields or they turn back to return to their own lines, they start dying heavily from the arrow fire.

[Aenlic]

Keep these posts coming, Quillan! I want to hear how you do against the Horde when it shows. I'm about to finish a campaign as the Moors and I think I'll start up the next one as Byzantines.

[Quillan]

I've faced the horde, and held them off. I expanded north as far as Iasi, and parked armies on each of the two bridges near the city. The Mongols happened to arrive in Russia, and I held the bridges against them. Towards the tail end of that campaign (which I just won before I logged on here and wound up posting this), they'd started trying to come around by way of Krakow, which they'd taken from the Russians earlier. Mongols are tough. The initial batch, all with 6 xp each, are very hard to face in the open field. Once those have whittled down, and they're using troops they recruited themselves in cities they've taken, it's not as bad, but it's still hard. I THOUGHT the Vardariotai could handle anything the Mongols had; I was wrong. The Khan's Guard heavy cavalry is incredibly potent. I sent a full Vardar unit into the rear of a Khan's Guard (while it was retreating off the battlefield no less), and lost 20 men in a matter of seconds...

[ravinnder]

I agree with the experiences Quillan has had. Unfortunately, in M/VH Byzantine campaign I wasn't doing as well financially or on the campaign map.

After I almost destroyed Hungary, the Mongols reached my doorstep and I slowly lost province after province to the Mongols due to their superior numbers. At the end Hungary and I allied against the Mongols but it was too late.

Since I played a full short campaign, I tried a variety of army types against the Mongols on the battle map. An all infantry army was ok, but had poor mobility on the campaign map and tended to be long battles waiting for archers to run out of ammo on both sides without a decisive victory. Only time I achieved a strong victory with an infantry army was via an ambush battle.

A combination army didn't fair as well since I couldn't use my cavalry to full extent and still had to rely on archers to counter the horse archers.

My best victories came from an all cavalry army of about 6 Vardariotai and 5 Kataphracts + General. Only army I could afford with my poor finances. I was able to defeat a stack Mongol army with spearman, horse archers, and heavy cav.

Standard battle sequence:
The beginning of the battle involved routing most of the horse archers via skirmishing using Vardariotai or whatever horse archers you employ and thinning out the spearman. With my heavy cav. waiting far back on the battle map. Final phase involved retreating all my exhausted horse archers back and charging all Kataphracts against the Khan's Guard. Eventually I had to use the Vardariotai to win since the Kataphracts alone couldn't take on the remaining forces. Overall it was a good victory, but I still lost a lot of troops in the last stage of the battle. However, I think if I had more cav. units, I could repeat that tactic for 2-3 battles in a row. Main problem with the strategy is that Vardariotai are usually tired at the end of the battle.

So the conclusion is, since the Byzantines get good cav. right away, may as go for a similar setup for an offensive army (not siege). I used a similar setup in RTW as the Scythians, with 2/3 horse archer, 1/3 heavy cav. army. One advantage now for the Byzantines is that the Vardariotai are good enough to fulfill light cav. roles as long as they're not tired from skirmishing.