How to Defeat the Mongols as the Scots

[DukeKent]

Ingredients - 1 Mortar, 3 cannon(culverin), 4 pike(noble), 2 sword (Highland
Noble), 6 archers(Noble Highland Archers), 3 cavalry(Borderhorse), 1 General.
Preferably a good command and morale general. Although the units in parenthesis are preferences, not a necessity. I rarely have all of my favorite toys together at once!

Location - Defending a River Crossings; Real estate is all about the location.
Take away the mongols mobility and make them play a game of scottish pokeman. More on the pokeman later.

Placement of units - Place your cannons on bluffs overlooking the river
crossing if possible. If not then place 2 cannons on the side of the river
crossing with the best field of fire and the other cannon on the other side
of the river crossing. Place 4 archers on the side of the river crossing that
would be facing the unshielded side of the attacking enemy. Place the other 2
archers on the other side of the crossing. Use the terrain to allow for direct
tiered fire on the river crossing when ever possible. Use the cavalry to
support the infantry. Place the infantry facing the river crossing as so -

sss sss
sss sss
sss sss
sss sss
pppp pppp pppp pppp
pppp pppp pppp pppp

Legend: p for pikeman, s for swordsmen

Battle strategy - As soon as the mongols are in range (probably immediately)
then open up on mongol rockets or trebuchets if any with the cannon. If those targets are not available then open up on the heaviest concentrations of troops for the paths of your cannonballs (enfilade), or fire on the heavy archer cavalry. From their you let the mongols come to you. They are the attacker, they will come to you. heh heh heh

Pikemen should be in shieldwall formation with guardmode on. I like 4 rows deep, you can use a deeper formation if you want to shorten the area in front of your infantry. In fact the first time I used this formation against the mongols, I only had a 2 pike unit frontage due to lack of pike available in that army. Counter attack the enemy directly in front of the pikemen once the pikemen have been engaged by single clicking on the enemy unit. Happy pokeman. Best done with the pike fix imho.

Use the cavalry to chase down the mongol stragglers after you have broken them on your pike wall. Border horse are fast, thats why I like them better for this job than knights

What are your winning strategies?

[DukeKent]

Oops the diagram did not display correctly since the whitespace was removed. This should be a better example -

sss.........................sss
.sss.......................sss
..sss.....................sss
...sss...................sss
......pppp pppp pppp pppp
......pppp pppp pppp pppp

[TevashSzat]

Well....just have a cav dominant army of about 10 units. Split them into 2 seperate groups and start hunting down ha. Run them down till the end of the map and slowly destroy the mongol mobility. Their cav may be better but you will usually outnumber them due to your cav is all togeather. Once mongol mobility is out, you won the battle.

[The Teacher]

post above: How does destroying their cav mean you win? How do you deal with their long range archers?

Post above 2: is the s units at the front of the formation? if so what do you do about the archers and being flancked by their cav if you are defending and they are attacking?

[Carl]

Post above 2: is the s units at the front of the formation? if so what do you do about the archers and being flancked by their cav if you are defending and they are attacking?

You jus do your best to take it, but normally they will run right across the bridge and they CAN'T flank you in this situation, the exit from the pridge is between thje 2 S arms with the Pikes facing it head on, to get behind you the have to go through the Pikes and Swords.

[The Teacher]

ok got you. i have attempted something similar to this with other factions.

Did ok have 3 or 4 fights at the bridge slowly wearing them down, then they moved back and crossed the river (on the stategic map) higher up how do you get them back down to the bridge area?

[Carl]

You have to keep a stack at every bridge I geuss, (I've never played a campaign long enough to get the Mongal TBH).

[Philippe]

I wasn't aware that the Mongols invaded Scotland.

[The Teacher]

No they dont in my games. The most common scenario I have seen is in the Long Play campaign. Where the faction needs to hold a part of the Holy Land, as part of the victory conditions. Its then the Mongs get in on the act and it becomes very very interesting.

The problem I have had is holding them at bridge crossings on the strategic map. Im not sure that the solution is to have multiple stacks on bridge crossings (as i think its a bit of a waste of flurins) i seem to remember that you can tempt them back to the bridge area with bait units? Is this viable?

[DukeKent]

In my current campaign as the Scots. I have set up a defensive line at the fords and bridges south of Vilnius in Russia to hold off the Mongols. I use forts on the far side of the river to slow up the mongols if needed. With a stack on the river crossing behind the fort. The Mongols seem to prefer to attack the stacks at the river crossings instead of the lightly defended forts. Not sure why? I am glad to oblige them with a defensive battle at the river crossings though. They charge across the river into our pikes, the mongols route, and we chase down the stragglers. Basically I am playing a defensive game of attrition I know the Scots will win. The Scots have an empire if 30 provinces, the mongols have 1 province, and only 8 full stacks left (I have already decimated 4 stacks). The Scots campaign strategy is kind of like the Union army of the Potomac under Grant in the American Civil war. Big differnce her is that I am inflicting 3 or 4 times the casualties on the Mongols. It would be much higher , but many of the mongol mounted troops are faster than most of my army. The Scots Border horse are my only comparable units in speed of movement. So many routers escape I have managed this strategy with 3 full sized stacks so far. Although the the Scots are almost ready to field a fourth stack to face the mongols. The key to an attrition strategy against the mongols is having a good enough economy to afford 4 - 6 full stacks just to face the mongols 12 full stacks. In thi campaign I am also carrying on campaign in france, Spain, and N. Africa with full stacks. As I have said in other posts. It is all about the money. Economic might is easily converted into military might.