This is the most frustrating game ever

[KARTLOS]

in nearlly every campaign i have played, regardless of faction I have ended up being in the eastern edge of the map and face the mongols earlly on in their invasion. This is either the result of successful crusades with a catholic faction or due to geographical proximity (turks,byz russians etc). I have never even seen the mongols ocupy a city - in my campaigns they always sack and move on. It may be easier to fight the early but here area a few tips.

1) prepare for their arrival. you want the cities in their warpath to have full stacks by the time they come at you. balista or cannon towers area real plus as well. I would suggest that you want about 8 units of archers and plenty of spearmen. you cant really use cavalry effectively against them in a seige so gen wil be sufficient. use the best archers you can get, those with reasonable melee stats are useful for holding the walls vs me coming up ladders or in seige engines.
In my experience it is usually a good thing if they successfully use a ram, place all you spearmen at the entrance and the cav heavy mongols will all charge into them resulting in mass slaughter.
if they use seige engines/ rocket launchers to blow holes in the walls then plug the gaps with spearmen = mongol kebab.

2) Try and fight bridge battles against them - this is the most cost effective way to thin out the hordes in my opinion. To do this place a full stack sitting on a bridge in their path and hope they attack you. for army composition - again you want alot of archers, maybe 5 untis of spearmen, 1 or 2 heavy inf, a good general and maybe some missile cav if you can get them. rush your spearmen into the entrance of the bridge. they will again charge headlong into your spears, hold them there whilst raining arrows on them. usualy their general impales himself and after heavy casualties the army routes - chase down the routers with your gen and the missile cav (using alt + rigt click to get them to chop down the routers).
They may repeatedly atack the bridge army with multiple stacks- if you run out of speamen withdraw from battle.

3) use assasins - if you kill the leaders the horde seems to die out.

4) accept that you are going to suffer some heavy casualties - keep a few "spare" garrisons in the region. after you successfully fight off a seige, you want to be able to re- garrison the city (or bridge army) imediately.

5) try and use good quality generals - all the mongol generals are super hard with very high dread, if your general is no good your troops will have a dissapointing tendency towards routing.

p.s if you think the mongols are tough - wait for the timurids! the bridge defence stategy doesnt work in the slightest vs them they just charge your defenders with elephants.

[Musashi]

Heh, I hold Bulgar, Sarkel, and Tbilisi in my current Russian campaign. I've set all three up as Castles and I've been sinking all my surplus money into them, prioritizing their development over the rest of my empire. I intend to have at least three full stack Dvor armies to bleed them in the fields before they even reach my castles.

My intent is to beat them at their own game.

[ScrapTower]

Heh, I hold Bulgar, Sarkel, and Tbilisi in my current Russian campaign. I've set all three up as Castles and I've been sinking all my surplus money into them, prioritizing their development over the rest of my empire. I intend to have at least three full stack Dvor armies to bleed them in the fields before they even reach my castles.

My intent is to beat them at their own game.

Haha 'sashi you sick puppie! Catch me online sometime (M0rph30us), Ill smash that Russian rabble back into the stone age.

[RZST]

haha, you should try the game "crusader kings" by paradox plaza. if you think the m2tw campaign map is hard youll go insane playing crusader kings.

[Test112345]

thanks for the tips guys...i was going to just give up with the mongols. but the attrition advice helped. theyre still a huge presence, but i deal with them now. for some reason the computer is really generous when you auto battle :D

whats the fastest way to get to a crusade in jerusalem?

thanks

[katank]

Building hordes of trash units like cheapo spears/woodsmen etc. with a high star general and autocalcing is an option.

For speed crusading, taking Rhodes early on as a Catholic faction is a good idea. The AI rarely, if ever, invades amphibiously. That base is thus quite sheltered and allows you to beat everyone else to a crusade target easily.

[ScrapTower]

It depends on where the crusade starts, but by water is usually the way to go. Try to join the crusade right before you board the ship to avoid desertion. Keep in mind that you have use almost all of your movement points each turn making progress. Even a slight detour will cause desertion. Sailing around the tip of spain on a crusade to the holy lands for example.