Waiting for the Mongols ? in style ?

[Shahed]

Yesterday I rushed through an Egyptian campaign and I have to say the Mongols were a total non event.

Utterly smashed them, the economy was so strong they had no chance in heaven or earth. They were faster so they kept running away and they successfully took Antioch with like 4 stacks vs my one stack.

Nevertheless as soon as I thought all of them had arrived, I attacked them. That is, I declared on them. 4 turns later it was all over, I lost the Antioch stack (which was a garrison of 8 units) and one full stack of 20 units including General, annihilated.

It was fun though and I have to say the best battles were with the Mongols. It's BEAUTIFUL to watch the way those guys move around with all that cavalry, I LOVE it.

I was just browsing for some screenshots and I saw this. Thought it was worth posting. Looks a bit like my Egyptian campaign.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Happy HUNTING !

[FactionHeir]

I think the screen roughly shows a similar scene to what happened to the Mongols in my Moorish and Danish campaign.
Maybe you should make the Mongols appear a bit earlier? :)

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

Ehmm... you do know that it's only the first wave? I thought i was finished then i got 3 waves of 5 stacks each about 15 turns apart ... each time the "faction destroyed" message lulling me back to sleep...

[Shahed]

Yeah but I only attacked them when the 3rd wave showed up. Until then I placed single stacks in strategic locations so they could not leave the valleys between Yerevan and Mosul. I placed 3 stacks at the pass south east of Yerevan, one to the east south east of Tbilisi, one on the bridge north of Mosul, and another one, I can't remember where I placed that one. I had about 8 stacks in total across Asia Minor, plus one all cavalry stack deployed west of Constantinople, to deal with any threat from there.

The 3rd wave arrived south of Baghdad in open desert and that was WAR ! I moved everything on them. I lost the 1st battle badly. Had no terrain advantage, all my troops were green, and I attacked a stack with all Mongols at +6 experience. 2nd battle was a heroic victory, one of mine vs 2 of theirs, but I had terrain advantage. It was in the valley just north of the Mosul Bridge. They could only attack from one direction through the pass and I got them there, absolute slaughter.

It's a good idea to have them show up earlier I think.

I've seen a lot of people say they are too tough so I wanted to post a thread saying, not really, at least in my experience.

With the Turks it was even easier to defeat them. I was hoping to meet them at Jerusalem in my current England campaign but now I'm working on a project so I don't know when I'll get back to that.

My Egyptian stacks looked like this:

1 Bodyguard
3 Desert cavalry or Mamluk Archers
4 Catapults
4 Desert Archers
4 Saracen Militia
4 Tabardariyya

As you can see this is total mincemeat for any human player who is playing the Mongols.

The problem I saw was they always used their ammo before charging, they were not usually aggressive enough. But when they were, wow, now THAT is what I call an ATTACK !

I LOVE the Mongol & Timurid invasions. They really make a great impact on the game.

[Gaius Terentius Varro]

I ve had a few real close victories against them as turks with like 20 or so JHI leftstanding from a whole stack, bless their 11 in morale.

[FactionHeir]

You can make the subsequent waves appear much earlier too, if you change the campaign_script file. Just need to edit the date values to a lower amount (I changed em to 2 so the reinforcements arrive 1 turn after the main stack). That way you have a proper mongol invasion.

[Shahed]

Good thinking. I'm going to change that. Thanks for the tip !

[FactionHeir]

Before getting too happy about it though, campaign_script changes only take effect in a new campaign. ;)

[Czar Alexsandr]

Any nation that get's horse archers is cool if you ask me. But I've noticed that all the main horse archer countries that aren't me, Russia, look like they have it a lot easier! Maybe it's just my missmanagement of resourses but it seems to me that Russia bears the brunt of the Hordes the worst. I haven't beat them yet but I have fought them. Fortunately the game was "accidently" deleted so I could have a hounurable withdrawl.

Well anyways, If you don't have a good economy you could very well have a bit of a problem dealing with the Mongols. The situation is vastly different in my Egyptian game....

[Brutal DLX]

Any nation that get's horse archers is cool if you ask me. But I've noticed that all the main horse archer countries that aren't me, Russia, look like they have it a lot easier! Maybe it's just my missmanagement of resourses but it seems to me that Russia bears the brunt of the Hordes the worst. I haven't beat them yet but I have fought them. Fortunately the game was "accidently" deleted so I could have a hounurable withdrawl.

Well anyways, If you don't have a good economy you could very well have a bit of a problem dealing with the Mongols. The situation is vastly different in my Egyptian game....

Well, I never have had problems with the Mongols playing as Russia. If you secure all the steppe provinces and try to keep peace with Poland, Denmark and possibly the Turks, you will be able to concentrate on the Mongols alone. I usually field just one all cav army and use the open steppe terrain to attack Mongol stacks when they are not completely together, like at bridges or on the edge of forests. Since they have foot archers etc. too, it means you will always be able to move a greater distance than them, so it's easy to withdraw and retrain your army, whilst they can't replace lost troops. Usually they head for Kiev, so if you keep a full stack in that city too, you can wipe out 4+ stacks easily if you let them attack the city while moving in your cav army at the same time to seal off their retreat.
As for the Egyptians, actually that was harder for me since it was the first time I had to deal with the Mongols in M2TW. When they showed up, I was busy fighting the Turks and 3 crusader stacks were moving on Jerusalem. I lost a couple of cities but was able to hold Aleppo with just 6 units against several siege attempts. These futile efforts gave me time to assemble the Sultan's elite all cav army which lead the counter-attack and allowed me to recapture the cities lost and eliminate the Mongols for good.
However, I have to say the Timurids pose much more of a problem due to their elephants, if you don't come up with ways to take down those, you will have a hard time winning any field battle. In my experience, it's often best to let them siege a well defended city with gun towers, or to spice up your armies with mercenary elephants.