Timurids

[pansoiatr]

When do the timurids emerge and where pls?
The mongols have just attacked me and i wonder if i have to wait for another threat from the east( i am playing as the byzantines)

[dismal]

Around 1370 or 1380. Don't know the exact date. You'll get a warning a few turns before.

In my game they came in around Baghdad.

[Bongaroo]

I can't remember exactly as I am playing France and still haven't finished my campaign (i'm a slow player) but I have about 40 turns left and am currently under the 5th siege of Jerusalem. I took it from the Mongels who creamed the Egyptians. I'd say the Timurids showed up between 10 and 20 turns ago. I guess you might be able to figure when from that. Anyone know the exact number of turns?

[eddiethebastard]

Late 14th century, I've played two games - one in which they dived into the mid east and set about the Mongols, in the other my England controls the region with a very strong military presence and they seem content to sit in the middle of the desert without disrupting trade or starting a fight with me. I was going to try to wipe them out this weekend - longbows vs elephants should be interesting.

[sapi]

The answer should be in the faq

[zulukiller]

I was going to try to wipe them out this weekend - longbows vs elephants should be interesting.

I'd make a seperate save if i were you trust me once those boys start to fight you will wish you would of left them alone.

P.S. Make sure you have a very high chivalrouse generale on your side or assinate the Timurid general because the moral impact of elephants plus the 10 dread general equals instant routing. Also incase you didnt know stake walls get trammpled by elephants so dont rely on them either.

[nheero143]

In my present game as Turks, the message said that they came in near Yerevan, but it was Baghdad where I first noticed them (turn 145). I've lost both cities and yet to really put up a fight, but am scaling up. The Rebels are my best friend, distracting them while I get my forces maximized outside of Antioch. The Timurids would be easy by themselves, but I'm at war with the Mongols, Poles, Danes, Venetians, Papal States, and a few others. Eight including the Rebels. It is Total War though. That darn (failed) 30 year Crusade against Constantinople, that's when my relatively peaceful builder game errupted into nonstop TW. I suppose with enough cash I could buy some peace, but maybe showing up on their doorsteps with my armies will be convincing enough.

[rosscoliosis]

Oh Lordy, in what world are the Timurids easy to wipe out? I've had full-stack armies full of cavalry, spearmen, archers, and bombards; reinforced with another full-stack of about the same complement that still get MASSACRED by a couple reinforced Timurid armies altogether comprising about 1/3 of my total army, all because they had a couple units of elephants/elephant artillery and some heavy horse archers. Longbowmen don't seem to do ANYTHING to elephants, and none of my spearmen last more than a couple seconds against them.
I have... resorted to "auto_win defender" more than a couple times vs them. (Kinda broke down and started using that more after initially using it to counter the elephant CTD bug, and siege lag bug...)
That and extensive assassin use are the only thing keeping them under control right now, haha.

[antisocialmunky]

Aren't Cannon/Eocket Elephants mercenary units you can get around there?

[pike master]

on my conquer all the world campaign they came in north of the caucusus * in eastern russia but i bet that they appear in differetn places to throw a person off when they play another campaign.

[nheero143]

Oh Lordy, in what world are the Timurids easy to wipe out? I've had full-stack armies full of cavalry, spearmen, archers, and bombards; reinforced with another full-stack of about the same complement that still get MASSACRED by a couple reinforced Timurid armies altogether comprising about 1/3 of my total army, all because they had a couple units of elephants/elephant artillery and some heavy horse archers. Longbowmen don't seem to do ANYTHING to elephants, and none of my spearmen last more than a couple seconds against them.
I have... resorted to "auto_win defender" more than a couple times vs them. (Kinda broke down and started using that more after initially using it to counter the elephant CTD bug, and siege lag bug...)
That and extensive assassin use are the only thing keeping them under control right now, haha.

Maybe I shouldn't have said easy. I meant that I have troubles on all sides of my empire. If it was just the Timurids, I could focus more. Unfortunately, my best generals, veteran troops and assassins are on the other side of my empire (North West). I only have nine provinces to go to reach 45, so it willl be relatively easy to take the rest of the Tuscan peninsula, Poland, and a few more provinces of Russia overrun by the Mongols, while I try to hold the line against the Timurids. I have a about 10 armies there now with a fair amount of artillery. Hopefully that will help with the elephants. I'm digging in though as they are heading East toward Damascus and Jerusalem. I don't want to give them another city, so whatever it takes to stop them. I think I may need another 10 armies.

[rosscoliosis]

I haven't seen any mercenary elephants yet, but I buy up the Turkopole horse archers every chance I get. Also, I still only have one general in the middle east, so I haven't really sent him out venturing much, ha.
Does anyone have a good strategy for controlling those elephants when you're being sieged? I'm thinking about the only good option is cannon towers, seeing as how archers don't do anything to them at all, spearmen get thrashed, and your own artillery is mostly useless inside a settlement. Too bad the AI seems to always destroy all of your towers with their own artillery before assaulting. :(
I suppose mortars may work to some extent...
Actually once I had a citadel's defense set up perfectly, with units positioned throughout the different rings, and artillery positioned that it could actually fire upon units coming inside the walls, -and it seemed to be working pretty well, but then the game would CTD every time the elephants got inside the first walls... And that was AFTER the patch, ha.

[dismal]

Javelins works best on ellies. Jav cav is excellent. Hold some units back and make sure their "fire at will" is off.

The other good tactic against the Timmies is to make use of a steep hill, like the one near Jerusalem.

[TevashSzat]

There should be elephant musketeers and artillery up near baghdad once gunpowder is invented, but they take forever to regenerate.

As for the problem on how to fight against timurids, they are basically the same as the mongols excpept with badass elephants. Just always keep at least a quater of you army with the best siege equipment you can field since 1 hit = dead elephants. Without the elephants, they are no harder to kill off than the mongols.

[PureFodder]

When going toe to toe with the Timurids using artillery you get a huge bonus if your playing with smaller unit sizes as a unit of elephands ranges from 6 guns to 15 guns depending on their unit size whereas regular cannons always have 2 guns.

[Forward Observer]

The Timurids are simply Mongols with a bad attitude and scads of fantasy uber panzerphants.

I had all the towns in the Holy Land when the Timurids hit, but they only assaulted Damascus. They hit me from 3 sides of the town with three full stacks, so I was pretty much doomed. That was the only time I faced the panzerphants in a siege situation. The rest of the time it was all field battles, and believe I got sick of those damn pachyderms.


In a field situation, you can take out one of the panzerkampfwagen elephants with a single shot from a ballista or a lucky hit from any piece of artillery for that matter. The problem is they have to be standing still for your ballistae to get a bead. This doesn't matter as much with the rest of the big guns because their shots are just not that accurate in the first place.

The first problem is if one gets a ballista or just about other artillery in range of one of these Ringling Bros. units you are also in the range of their auto-loading rifled 88 millimeter cannons Their instant reload time, extreme range, and accuracy is bit over the top, so they tend to tear up a good part of ones artillery before one can get in very many shots.

Another problem is that if you kill a couple the individuals out of a unit the rest will start running amok. This is good if they do it in the middle of their own troops, but bad if they get near yours. Because they will stay constantly on the move after they go amok, your chance of hitting one with a ballista is nil and pretty iffy with any other big gun.

When running amok they also tend not to rout off the field even though the rest of their army may have vacated the battle area. However they can eventually be brought down with flaming arrow fire.

Like anything else in the game they do have a hit point limit and a single unit of just about any missile troop that can fire flaming missiles can take at least one down. You just have to keep firing. I have only played against them as the English, so I didn't have any crossbow units to speak of at the time.

I finally got a break in a mountain battle where my army was on a bluff that they could not or would not climb.

Fortunately my longbow-men could still hit them, so I really whittled a bunch of them down before the balance of my army was able to descend and fight the rest of their ground troops. From that battle on it was just as the old Indian said in one of my favorite Eastwood western movies: "We endeavored to persevere" and finally had more elephant meat than the deli's in Jerusalem
could handle.

Cheers

[TevashSzat]

They also only have about 6 hitpoints which was nothing compared to the armourerd war elephants of rtw which had 15

[JCoyote]

Like a lot of things, try drawing them in to attack you at a river crossing. That way, you can engage the elephants with your artie without having to worry as much about their infantry overrunning your guns.

I fought off a Timurid stack that had no less than 10 units of elephant artillery that way.


And if they ever get within range, ribaults can just destroy elephant units. I fired one into a full unit of elephants once; one firing slew half the elephants and routed them.

[joe4iz]

They either appear north or south of the Caspian Sea. In the four games I have played , 3 times they show up at Baghad, only once at Burgers?. The once they went north, they wiped out all of Russia and were threatening Europe when the game ended.

[gardibolt]

Good god, I'm getting massacred by the Mongols, and the Timurids are even worse?

[TevashSzat]

mongols aren't that tough if your army is cavalry dominant. What you have to do is quickly, charge all of your cavalry at the horse archers who will be seperated from the main battle group alowing you to wipe them off without enemy infantry getting into the mix. Their melee cavalry will probably try to intercept you, but if you have enough cavalry, you can plow through their cavalry easily since they will be seperated. Once the cavalry is gone, the mongols are a piece of cake, just engage them in the front with your infantry and then charge in their backs with cavalry.

If you don't have cavalry dominant armies, then just sit in your castles and hope you don't have to sally once the mongols besigege you

[supadodo]

Haha the best way to combat elephants is to get your own bunch. Just send a general to baghdad and hire elephants every 20 turns or so. Useless however if you're playing 2 turn time scale but excellent with 0.5. Btw I wonder why you call them panzerphants. You make them sound like they are a HRE unit.

German Stormtruppen: Haha, ve arr going to unleash ourve new veapon!! against ze enemies of ze Reich!!!
Ze Panzerphantkampwagen and ze Panzerbombaphantkampwagen!!!

[Tiberius maximus]

they came in around baghdad (spelling ) and i countered two stacks with heavy cavalry, french lancers and gendarms with some templars as first wave fodder

[nheero143]

Good god, I'm getting massacred by the Mongols, and the Timurids are even worse?

What faction are you playing? Also, there's a big difference between fighting one stack at a time or four at once. In my first game, I was overrun by the Mongols at Antioch. So I reloaded at turn 50 and have been playing that game well. In the reloaded game, the Mongols went to the North to Russia (Kiev), so by the time they made it into my empire, they were weakened, usually one good stack, one and a half at most. Now, they are mostly half stacks or less.

The Timurids are something else. They've come for me with 10 stacks. So I had to give up Baghdad and Mosul to them and their 8.5 stacks proceed to Jerusalem region after letting the Rebels have those two cities. So in my first battle with them, I was able to attack a rear army lagging behind the main horde with two of my armies (~1.5 stacks). Luckily, there were no elephants in that army, so I've had enough experience fighting the Mongols that I won this one handily. Autoresolve seems useless against the Timurids, so I think there will be many interactive battles to be fought before I can defeat them. Needless to say, I have 3-4 cannons in each of 10 armies, while the Timurids are down to 7.5 armies, but very highly ranked dread lords.

Luckily, after my first victory, they turned away from Acre, heading towards that bridge at Jerusalem, which I am heavily guarding. This is my best chance I think. If they go to Damasus, it'll be much harder. I hope they take the bridge.

If it is true that javelins are effective against elephants, I will be building them in numbers in Caesara, but it may not be in time. Hopefully my artillery will be effective enough. I only have 5 cities to go for victory, but it can be stolen easily by the Timurids. Besides, I don't want just to win 45 territories, I want to win big!

[JCoyote]

If javelins work on elephants, the Spanish Jinetes might just be their achilles heel. Need to try that...

[hoetje]

Aren't Cannon/Eocket Elephants mercenary units you can get around there?

Indeed,those mercenary elephants can be extremely helpful when fighting hordes and stuff

[Lord Fluffy]

Last time I fought the Timurids I was also playing England. By that time I had almost the entire map. I couldn't fight their elephant arties cause the game kept on crashing on me soon as those things opened fire. So I had to auto calc all the battles where there are elephants. But quantity > quality. I swamped them with infantry heavy armies, they beat back my armies but soon ran out of steam as I keep on pumping large stacks at them.

[joe4iz]

Last time I fought the Timurids I was also playing England. By that time I had almost the entire map. I couldn't fight their elephant arties cause the game kept on crashing on me soon as those things opened fire. So I had to auto calc all the battles where there are elephants. But quantity > quality. I swamped them with infantry heavy armies, they beat back my armies but soon ran out of steam as I keep on pumping large stacks at them.

I did the same thing (prepatch). Since then, I have been able to engage them. I call the strategy you use- the Soviet Union strategy. It sucked as I lost several good armies to them but in the end they were swamped.

[Lord Fluffy]

haha, yea I can just imagine the Timurid soldiers tired after having fought one army and seeing 3 other armies coming over the hill. After crashing 4 or 5 times, I didn't know what was causing it back then, I was sick of it and just made fresh armies for that purpose.

I need to download that patch then =]

[dismal]

If javelins work on elephants, the Spanish Jinetes might just be their achilles heel. Need to try that...

My only time fighting them was a Spanish campaign I played past victory to see the new world. The Jinettes worked great. I put a stack of Jinettes, pavisse crossbows and a few mounted knights on the mountain side near Jerusalem and destroyed stack after stack of Timurids. I probably used some Amulghvars and DFKs in there if they were around as well.

But the real keys are to have some javelins for the ellies when they get close, and to have enough missiles flying to keep the horse archers from chewing you up. Pavisse on a steep hill are great against horse archers.

I made the Timurids my vassal, which was quite satisfying.