Allied with the Mongols

[Shahed]

Fantastic. Take some screenshots, only if it's feasible. I'm still waiting for the Mongols. I think I will amend the files to make them appear a bit earlier. Only 1165 now.

[Doug-Thompson]

The second wave did come and is trying to cut Baghdad off. When I set up stacks to guard each river crossing anywhere near Baghdad or Mosul, they went deep across Jedda province and crossed the river far, far to the west and south of Baghdad. Then they looped back in a crude but effective envelopment. They got to that last crossing one turn before another stack of mine arrived, for a grand total of five stacks for me and 10 for them.

So there I was, with five stacks of Timurids between Mosul and Baghdad and another five east of Mosul. Baghdad is fully garrisoned, has cannon towers and a massive archer and Saracen Militia garrison. They will take out several stacks before going down. The right course of action was obvious. Let the Timurids whittle themselves down at Baghdad and hit them after they are weakened.

S*rew that. I attacked them and started the war.

Maybe I'm stubborn. Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe I'm both those and crazy too. But the devil seize my soul before I'll let anybody have one of my cities without a fight.

So far, I've lost two stacks and have developed a pathological hatred of elephants. They've lost two stacks too, however, including about five formations of elephants completely wiped out. Desert Cav and their javelins would be the perfect elephant hunters if they could just take a little more damage, allowing them to fight through screening units and get at the elephants faster. I'll have to pay more attention to armor upgrades in the future. I've had to turn skirmish off to get the Desert Cavalry close enough several times. I also gladly accept fights in sandstorms. Weather doesn't effect javelins as much as arrows, which is fine with me and my double-duty melee-capable Mameluks and not so fine with the archer-heavy Timurids.

Meanwhile, I've replaced all my losses by drawing on reinforcements as far away as Gaza. Cannon from as far as Corinth are coming in by sea, too. The gorge north of Mosul is a fortress of cannon, spear infantry, javelin foot, archers and heavy cavalry. Tanks couldn't get through there. Mosul is as fully garrisoned as Baghdad, possibly better. Edessa and Damascus are ready too.

Two down. Eight more to go. I haven't had this much fun since last Christmas.

[Shahed]

Good to hear from you ! Was peeping in to look for updates.

Sounds awesome.. and you're right about attacking them.
Aggression and fighting spirit MEANS SOMETHING in combat !

How are the SM holding out ? Are they any use at all or just cannon fodder ?

I've had to revert to an earlier save, because I accidently loaded an older save and then quicksaved over the newest one by mistake. So I'm about 4-5 hours further away from the Mongols yet. Ugh.

[Doug-Thompson]

How are the SM holding out ? Are they any use at all or just cannon fodder ?

I'll get back to you on that one after the Siege of Baghdad, which appears certain to happen. The Saracen Militia haven't hit a lick yet. They would have been wonderful for the bashing battles I had with the Mongols, but so far it's been all hit-and-run. There's only one good road in the whole region. Infantry would be trapped in the off-road desert.

[CaptainSolo]

Thanks for updating the thread Doug-Thompson,it's been a really entertaining read.

Are the tactics you employed so successfully against the Mongols still valid for large engagements against the Timurids or are you having to change anything? Also,what are the main differences/similarities between those two factions?

Really looking forward to see the results of some large scale siege battles,keep up the good work!

[katank]

Dunno about Doug but OMG Elephants is my personal experience. The Timurids are quite similar to Mongols in fielding much of the same units. The difference is that they have some Halberd militia and then the musket ele and arty ele.

For a HA army, the Halb militia are easy prey (better than fighting Mongol Inf for sure). The eles are a huge threat. They can bombard you from range and also scare the living daylights out of your units (with both ele and gunpowder morale penalties). I've had 9 valour Siphais rout from contact with eles before.

HAs are woefully ill-equipped to deal with eles. The arrows have a very difficult time getting through all that armour+HP. Foot archers with flame arrows do a bit better.

What you really need are naffatun/ballistas. Naffatuns are hard to use against eles mostly because they'd likely be killed by the Timurid cav. Ballistas, however, are great. 3 units with flame bolts can decimate an ele unit in no time and often send them amok in enemy ranks. Rocket launchers do well too. One caveat is that ballistas can't fire down hill and thus you may have to give up your height advantage if you wan to protect your ballistas.

[Shahed]

I believe mercenary rocket launchers are available for hire in the steppes. I don't know if that helps. Saw that in the merc file.

[katank]

Merc rocket launchers are beautiful. During a sally, one unit of my merc rockets sat in the gateway and started unloading on the Timurid eles. First, a stray rocket hits their general on the head. Next, 2 units of eles amok. After some more shooting, 2 more eles went amok. To add icing to the cake, the amok eles ran over roughly 80% of their cav force including their second general.

End result: a single unit led to the death of 2 8* generals as well as neutralizing the majority of cav in 2 stacks and 4 eles. They later withdrew and I marched some missile units out to execute the amok eles.

Note: this was during 1.0. With passive AI fix, YMMV.

[CaptainSolo]

Thanks for the info Katank,very interesting.I have no experience with either of these factions or regions...yet,so it's nice to get an overview.

Really looking forward to starting my Egyptian campaign,when i get a good stretch of free time that is

[Doug-Thompson]

Katank's right. The big difference between Timurids and Mongols are the elephants. Desert Cavalry javelins are the best unit I've found out in the open. Once their elephants are dead, the Timurids aren't so tough.

Bear in mind that they have naptha units too, which can provide nasty surprizes.

[Shahed]

How are your own elephants doing ? I believe you hired some right ?

[Doug-Thompson]

How are your own elephants doing ? I believe you hired some right ?

They're outnumbered. The regular elephant unit managed to do quite a bit of damage, though, in a fight with an opposing elephant unit. They died fighting when another elephant unit showed up. The Elephant artillery unit I have as a merc hasn't gotten into action yet.

[katank]

Your merc elephants simply don't have the experience to match. This means they are outclassed and will often rout unlike the Timurid juggernauts.

Have any of you noticed a unit in the files called "Elephant Rocketeer"? You can use the create_unit cheat to get some in the game. Very fun to muck around with. These will probably pwn the Timurids. Tis a cheat though.

[Quillan]

Is that anything like the Yubtseb Elephants from RTW?

[Doug-Thompson]

I greatly enjoyed my first clear-cut, smashing victory against the Timurids last night. I wiped out a whole stack, including their faction leader, with one stack of my own and with more than half my troops surviving.

It was an unexpected triumph for Desert Cavalry, and an unintended one too.

The victory was set up by two disasters. First, I had a very bloody loss in a battle where I accomplished my goal -- killing a very good Timurid general. I paid too high a price, however. I started with one full stack and one small, partial stack as reinforcements. They fought a partial stack but with a full one and another partial coming as reinforcements. My troops retreated toward Baghdad, where they were now in danger of being cut off with two generals.

At the beginning of the next turn, a general with a whole stack went rebel. Oddly, it was a stack composed entirely of Saracen Infantry, except for the general's bodyguard. They were on their way to replace the dismounted Arab Cavalry and Militia Spears in the Mosul Garrison and in the army watching the gorge. The general performing this simple ferry mission had good loyalty, so this was a complete surprize. I can only assume my earlier, clear defeat had caused this.

Unfortunately for him, there was a three-quarters stack of Mameluk Archers and some melee Mameluks right next to him, with plenty of reinforcements of more Mameluks Archers and some Desert Cavalry on hand to fill that stack up.

The results were predictable. The general was captured after a brave but desperate early charge, and presumably executed in a very public and painful fashion. The rest of his army was killed outright or routed.

Meanwhile, the Timurids has moved in a way that seemed designed to cut my two generals off near Baghdad. Their faction leader had even moved south of a bridge to cut off any attempt to go that way. Therefore, his stack was not on the river and was out of reinforcement range.

Note here that every full Timurid stack has some infantry in it: foot archers or halberdiers, or both. This gives my all-calvary stacks — including the depleted stacks fleeing their earlier defeat — a real and important maneuver advantage. I've yet to be forced into a battle with a Timurid stack that I didn't want. Infantry is guarding the gorge and all my cities, but the rest of the army is free to move about.

Obviously, the stack to attack was the faction leader's. However, I had planned to mix some stacks into more balanced armies. With one stack depleted and another diverted to kill off traitors, the only stack I had left that could reach the head Timurid was ridiculously full of Desert Cavalry. As I recall, I'd been short of Desert Cavalry and had relieved that shortage by building a bunch in one turn. Now I had a stack with six heavy cavalry (including the general's unit), four Mameluk Archers and the rest wholly filled with Desert Cavalry.

Oh well. You go to war with the army's you've got.

The Timurids accepted battle immediately at 1 to 1 odds. They had a balanced force of heavy horse archers, lancers, missile infantry and halberdiers. I lined my Mameluks up first, followed by a dense pack of Desert Cavalry in two-row formation and in squares and then an even more dense two-row formation of heavy cavalry in two-rank lines.

The battle opened with the Timurids on a small ridge in front of me, with archer cavalry on the wings and their leader in the middle, behind layered lines of lancers, foot archers and halberds. I go right for the throat, sending some Mameluk archers to attack some missile cavalry that's trying to get in the way while the rest of the army rushes right for the khan.

I'm halfway to the Timurid leader before realizing the obvious: I have so many javelins, I could kill pigeons and squirrels with them and still have plenty of ammo to attach the heavy armored units. Yet I still have the Desert Cavalry in my habitual mode, with fire-at-will off and skirmish on, intent on assassinating the general. I have them all in a group. I hit "run," turn skirmish off and, as they approach the middle of the Timurid line, I click "fire at will." More by luck than by design, my heavy cavalry charged home at that moment.

It all looked like a hurricane hitting a hardware store, with nails flying in all directions, only the nails were javelins.

I'm no fan of or advocate for one-unit armies. However, at this particular time in this particular place under those particular conditions, the result of this mass concentration of javelins (and melee cavalry, along with arrows the MamA's which were now focused on the halberdiers) was everything that could be hoped for. The enemy lancers simply evaporated, it seems. The last I saw of their halbrediers was a few of their panicked survivors making an ultimately very unsuccessful flight for their lives. The missile infantry was gone before I had a chance to see what happened to them.

Before that moment, the Timurid leader was confindently protected by a balanced army. About 15 seconds later, he was fighting to the death, hemmed in on three sides by heavy cavalry while some MamA's and Desert Cavalry were moving to cut off his last possible daylight, with javelins hitting every member of his bodyguard. He survived only because he was captured. Meanwhile, his cavalry archers were getting some decent kill rates out of their accurate fire, but it was all irrelevant. Once the khan was captured, it was all a matter of chasing down the few survivors and charging the missile cavalry from all directions until they routed.

I had more than 3,000 florins worth of prisoners in addition to the khan, who was worth another 10,000. The Timurids would probably have refused anyway, as the Mongols did under similar circumstances. They never got the chance. This is war to the knife. After the prisoners were executed, what was left of the enemy army routed. I put the troops remaining after the victory at a river crossing. The next turn, the Timurids did not attack and my depleted stacks near Baghdad got clean away.

[katank]

Glorious victory, Doug. From what I gather, the desert cav were unvalored? (Just built, right?) Were they firing at their longest range? Sounds like I gotta give those puppies a try.

@ Quillan, sadly, no. They are not oversized and the rocket launchers strapped to the backs of the eles only have 6 rockets (scaled down versions of the regular ones). However, 3 units of fully upgraded rocket elephants managed to kill a 700 men balanced Sicilian force with 0 casualties (1:1) power graph BTW.

[CaptainSolo]

Glorious victory, Doug. From what I gather, the desert cav were unvalored? (Just built, right?) Were they firing at their longest range? Sounds like I gotta give those puppies a try.

I'd definitely recommend trying them Katank.The longest campaign i have played was as the Moors and i always had at least four units of them in each stack.For some reason they always seemed to gain valour really quickly at which point they became as invalueable at melee against weaker units as they did at their missile attack.They were instrumental in my defeat of Portugal as well as Spain in my campaign which could field heavier units.


As usual a great read Doug,it's wetting my appetite until i start my Christmas holidays and can get stuck into a prolonged campaign instead of killing time by playing a variety of them when i have a little spare time.

I get the impression that you are adopting a more aggressive style of campaign against the Timurids.Is that a more viable strategy against these due to their army composition? Againist the Mongols it was a more defensive campaign that you fought.Also,how do their infantry stack up against that of the Mongols and in particular against your own troops.

Thanks in advance.

[Doug-Thompson]

From what I gather, the desert cav were unvalored? (Just built, right?) Were they firing at their longest range?

Rookies to a man. I don't think there was a cheveron of experience in the lot, although there were some base-level armor upgrades. They started out firing at long range but kept closing and firing.

These aren't the javelins we were used to in MTW1. I don't know how the range compares, but it's longer than I remember it. And each unit has eight javelins. It was four in MTW1. The cavalry seems to do well, too. Although it's only a 40-man unit compared to a Kurdish infantry's 60, the cavalry version has a base missile attack of 8 rather than the infantry's 6, and the cavalry fires on the move. Therefore, it gets to actually throw more often.

I get the impression that you are adopting a more aggressive style of campaign against the Timurids.Is that a more viable strategy against these due to their army composition? Againist the Mongols it was a more defensive campaign that you fought. Also,how do their infantry stack up against that of the Mongols and in particular against your own troops.

Strictly a function of geography. The Mongols attacked the Russians first and wandered down into my territory. I had stacks at the gate preventing them from wandering. The Timurids showed up both north and south of Baghdad, preventing me from bottling them up.

Their infantry, frankly, is arguably more of a liability than an asset. All they have are foot archers that aren't impressive in melee, some halberdiers who are easily shot up and some naptha units that are best avoided and killed from a distance. They slow the big Timurid stacks down in the largely roadless terrain.

[katank]

Sounds great. I'd really like to try the Eggy now. Desert cav+Mamluk Archers+Mamluk cav sounds like a killer combo.

Sabadar Militia is about the equals of Mongol Infantry. Halberd militia and naffatun are simply pincushions. Timurid's only challenge to an Eastern army is elephants which you need to counter with foot archers with flame or siege. The halb militia and naffatun combined with elephants is probably designed to make holding the line with heavy infantry no longer a viable solution (hence harder than Mongols to Western armies).

[Doug-Thompson]

On turn 170, in the year 1418 by the Christian calendar, the Timurids were wiped out as a faction.

There were two more attrition battles, but the next one was decisive. It was fought near Aleppo, after they marched past my well-garrisoned sites of Mosul and Baghdad. They left one bit of a statck dangling, which I attacked wtih two stacks and they reinforced with one. It was a clear-cut decisive victory.

The same turn, I consolidated units and attacked the Timurid faction leader with a good-quality, full veteran stack. The Timurids had a short march to a very high hill that dominated the battlefield, but I sent three Desert Cavalry charging hell-for-leather to that hill. They crested it just as the Timurids were coming up the other side — with two full-strength units of elephants and another close at hand.

What a difference a little height makes. The Desert Cavalry massacred both elephants, sending their routed, maddened and amok remnants to flight. The Mameluk archers also made good use of the elevation the DC's won for them, and slaughtered hosts of Timurids before the melee cavalry formed up and charged.

The Timurid Khan got away, however, but only to flee within the range of another stack, which finished the job.

[King Bob VI]

Great stuff, Doug.
I'll have to try Egypt after my current Spanish camp.

I'm enjoying this just as much as I enjoyed reading your AoK guides back in the day at Age of Kings Heaven. I don't think you were still around when I joined AoKH, but I always loved reading your stuff in the archives.

[Doug-Thompson]

Thanks for the kind words, King Bob VI. I had a lot of good fun on that forum, and learned a lot. I'm glad to know people are still getting some good out of what I picked up there.

[Orda Khan]

Well Doug, I finally bought the game. First thing I did was install the patch and Regnum Dei Premium and started a nice Mongol campaign
My armies are micro management heaven and it is just as I suspected it would be without highly upgraded Generals and units, their units are not so tough. Still, I am having a ball slaughtering Poles and Russians while I wait for my Invasion Force to arrive.
I am currently allied with Egypt but I may have to do something about that later on, if only to pay them back for what they did in your campaign

.......Orda

[Doug-Thompson]

I am currently allied with Egypt but I may have to do something about that later on, if only to pay them back for what they did in your campaign

Egypt is the land of endless money. You make a fortune conquering the Near East just to get to Egypt, too. Glad you are enjoying yourself, although I agree with you that the units should be better.