Allied with the Mongols

[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).