Timurids

[pike master]

i did some test and found out that halberdiers as long as they dont get shot to pieces and hold their morale will do a better job of beating elephants then pikemen can and many infantry units would probably do a lot better if they spread out so the tusk shove or foot stomp doesnt wipe out half your unit.that is pretty neat to kill in rome they had to pretty much toss you in the air but now they just have to stomp on you.lol

i dont know about the hit points but timurid elephants are much harder to destroy, rout or go amok then roman elephants and sometimes when they go amok they seem even harder to kill. i think that where some units in the game are obvious rtw makeovers i am convinced that mtw2 elephants really are made unique from the roman ones. you know built up from scratch their are just too many differences in their mechanics.

sometimes ive used musket fire and it didnt seem to have the effect i though it would have but artillery definetly takes the fight out of em.

and overall the siege ai is very smart actually i think the patch toned them down a little because before the patch the ai would send out endless sallies to try to take out my siege equipment and artillery. now they sit back more with only sallying every so often if the ai sees you being careless.

[gardibolt]

What faction are you playing? Also, there's a big difference between fighting one stack at a time or four at once.

Playing the English on M/M. I have a set of Gaza, Alexandria and Cairo in the Middle East, and the Mongols just keep beating on Gaza, stack after stack. I think I will lose Gaza soon thanks to mishandling a sally against the Mongols (I didn't realize I still had reinforcements off the map, and so I lost the battle when I ended the sally!), and being reduced down to a couple hundred troops. I'm trying to get a relief army over to Gaza but I think I may end up being a turn too late....so slow moving through the sands!

[nheero143]

Playing the English on M/M. I have a set of Gaza, Alexandria and Cairo in the Middle East, and the Mongols just keep beating on Gaza, stack after stack. I think I will lose Gaza soon thanks to mishandling a sally against the Mongols (I didn't realize I still had reinforcements off the map, and so I lost the battle when I ended the sally!), and being reduced down to a couple hundred troops. I'm trying to get a relief army over to Gaza but I think I may end up being a turn too late....so slow moving through the sands!

I think the English may find it harder against the Mongol horse archers, than say the Turks, who I'm playing now, since they have such a fine horse archer themselves (Sepahis). Perhaps use your longbows against them and protect them from cavalry rushes with your good pikemen. The Turks also have this Ottoman Infantry, which combines archer and infantry capabilities, making them a bit more resistant to cavalry or infantry attacks in the field.

I've been making headway against the Timurids. They're down to 4.5 stacks now and haven't gone after Jerusalem, Damascus or Gaza yet (lucky me). They threaten to, then back off, apparently being distracted by my rear attacks. Meanwhile, my first big wave of Javelins are coming in from Caesara to help out with the elephant problem. I've been fighting them in the desert. Seeing that it's almost impossible to get a one on one battle in the open field, I try to get several armies to join the battles. Sometimes that helps, but sometimes they don't arrive in time or in one case were stymied by an impassible mountain. But win or lose, each battle wears them down. Just don't use autoresolve. It appears to be useless against Timurids, even when the odds are in favor of you. Not sure what it is, but the high ranking dread generals and elephant fear must have a lot to do with it.

The Timurids/Mongols really are the most fun and challenging aspect of the game, but I won't rest until the Timurids have been eliminated. The Mongols have been stretched thin and are not really a problem anymore. But they were for the Russians.

[VAE VICTUS]

is there a way to make the merc elephants appear fasteR?

[Skott]

is there a way to make the merc elephants appear fasteR?

I think you can change their turn appearance in the files. Not sure if thats hard coded or not though. If it can be changed you would change it to a lower number. For example; if it says a value of 150 you could change that to 100 to make them appear 50 turns sooner or whatever number you prefer.

[HoreTore]

Naffatun does wonders against the elephants. When besieged, have about 3 units around the gate, the elephants should be close enough that you can shoot at them when the ram hits your gate.

On the field, keep them in your front line, in tiny gaps between your heavy infantry.

The naptha both kills and scares elephants effectively.

[Abokasee]

so what were saying, is timurids are iraqi insurgents on steroids in medieval times with elephants... sounds nasty, worse than the vikings and they did alot bad **** not just the pillaging and the raping but also lies! (Greenland is the lieing bit)

Anyway Infantry stand there ground with pikes and missle units with some cavalry to flank the enemy usually wins just about anything

[zstajerski]

Abandonig the assassin plan to wipe the fam. members out, the only units which have destroyed 2 stacks of Timurids with elephants were Dvor cavalry for me at least...
I was redrawing and constabtly firing at the first stack, so when i depleted my missiles, the first stack was almost broken...
then I charged the remaining (less than) half of them ( first stack) and they routed, so i abandoned the defensive stand and disabled it and hunted them down, whils com,ing in the range of their other stack, and they heavly bombarded me with missiles, but once in close they decided to engage my Dvors and that was their downfall!!!!

Dvors kick ass

[JCoyote]

Timurids were an empire out of northern India, lead by Timur.

They existed historically, they did use elephants, and even put cannon on a few.

My only issue with the way they are presented is how fast and accurate the elephant artillery fires. Actually they aren't that accurate thankfully, but they fire enough shots at once to cause problems. But they should take longer to reload... it's 2 guys on an elephant trying to use a muzzle loading cannon, they shouldn't be able to outspeed non mounted crews on loading. I know they are serpentines, but even so... it would be awkward.

[Frankmuddy]

Abandonig the assassin plan to wipe the fam. members out, the only units which have destroyed 2 stacks of Timurids with elephants were Dvor cavalry for me at least...
I was redrawing and constabtly firing at the first stack, so when i depleted my missiles, the first stack was almost broken...
then I charged the remaining (less than) half of them ( first stack) and they routed, so i abandoned the defensive stand and disabled it and hunted them down, whils com,ing in the range of their other stack, and they heavly bombarded me with missiles, but once in close they decided to engage my Dvors and that was their downfall!!!!

Dvors kick ass

Truly. Long range, good armor, and they can hold there own in hand to hand.

[zstajerski]

Truly. Long range, good armor, and they can hold there own in hand to hand.

Yeah they really kick ass
Also Dismounted they make formidable bowmen ( their armor stats are impressive), only Peavise croosbowmen and british longbowmen can stand up to them

[Budwise]

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.

Actually, I have been playing against my friend and he had nothing BUT cannon elephants and the easiest thing I can see which causes the elephants to rout non stop is lots and lots of archers in your castle set to flaming arrows and even a trebuchet throwing anything fire as you can. ELEPHANTS HATE FIRE.

[Whacker]

ELEPHANTS HATE FIRE.

Well... I wouldn't either. Would YOU enjoy being set on fire?

I'm still of the opinion that JavCav are the best, cheapest, most cost-effective way of dealing with elephants. Depending on difficulty and morale 2-3 showers will sometimes do it, sometimes more, rarely less. Gunpowder units may end up killing them faster in the v1.2 patch, but those are late game, costly units, plus in v1.1 and lower there's the reforming bug where once a infantry gunpowder unit comes under fire, they won't reform and shoot again. /shrug

[Budwise]

ALthough I have never seen a Timurid in the campaign mode yet. I can say I did play against a lot of them on Multiplayer against my stepson and what I came up with is using a lot of fire against them. IF you have archers, turn flame on, Artillery, SAME. Flame makes Elephants go crazy. I once gave the cpu enough money to buy nothing but artillery elephants and I routed that army with nothing but flame archers and artillery in a castle. It was a pretty easy battle too. I would just keep horse away from them. OH, I had something inside, OH PIKEMEN, They can't handle well against pikemen either.

[Whacker]

ALthough I have never seen a Timurid in the campaign mode yet. I can say I did play against a lot of them on Multiplayer against my stepson and what I came up with is using a lot of fire against them. IF you have archers, turn flame on, Artillery, SAME. Flame makes Elephants go crazy. I once gave the cpu enough money to buy nothing but artillery elephants and I routed that army with nothing but flame archers and artillery in a castle. It was a pretty easy battle too. I would just keep horse away from them. OH, I had something inside, OH PIKEMEN, They can't handle well against pikemen either.

That's all well and good, but try that on the open field. And seriously give some Jinettes a go against them, you should enjoy the results.

[gingergenius]

Uses spies and find out which stacks contain elephants and which do not. Also make sure you have a night fighter general.

Then isolate their elephantless stacks and attack. If necessary, attack at night to get rid of any reinforcements.

From then on, its a question of raising enough troops to attrition the rest of their armies down. Simple.

I found it relatively easy to destroy them, but they invaded again, by which time most of my stacks in the area had rebelled. The 2nd lot were a bit harder to repel.

[Yesugey]

Are there anyone attacked the elephants with Greek Firethrower?

Im at work now, but i will try to do that on quick battle mode.

I am playing the game for years, but i still didnt see the Timurids yet. Too bad game ends so easily..