Golden Hoard

**Agent Miles** · 05-01-2007, 16:54

I was playing MTW/VI as the Turks Early/Expert. I had expanded using KaTank’s blitz method and my borders were Egypt, Serbia, Bulgaria and Khazar. I later took Sicily, Naples, Flanders and Ireland, as well as North Africa over to Tunisia. I had specialized four provinces to build units. I produced valour 1 Steppe Heavy Cav (SHC) in Khazar, Futuwwa in Rum, v1 Saracen in Edessa and v2 Armenian Heavy Cav (AHC) in (of course) Armenia. I then built a navy large enough to make me rich. At half past noon (1230), the Mongols showed up.
Volga-Bulgaria joined the Mongols and the following force showed up in Khazar:
Mongols-Mongol Heavy Cav 84 units/Mongol Horse Archers 90/Mongol Warriors 56/Steppe Cav (v1) 53/Naptha Throwers 22/SHC (v1) 3/Alan Merc 5/Mortars 4
Khan Ogadai I-2*
With command of the sea, I was able to send the following force to defend Khazar:
Turks-SHC (v1) 90/AHC (v2) 97/Saracen (v1) 96/Futuwwa 67/Ghulam Bodyguards 18/Turcoman Horse Archers 19
Amir al Mansur-8*/Brave Beyond Belief

I had an armourer’s workshop in Khazar, so all of the Mongols got bronze shield armour. The Master Horse Breeder in Khazar gave the Mongol SHC and Steppe Cav valour 1.

Basically, my force was much better, much larger (23k vs. 13k) and much better led. When the Mongols chose to have 4 mortars in their setup (which would be out of range), I knew that all I had to do was beat 12 units with 16 for the rest of the battle. I just decided to auto-calc. I received a sum of 88,655 florins ransom!
https://s132.photobucket.com/albums/...olden%20Hoard/

**caravel** · 05-01-2007, 17:07

A Khan's ransom. What luck, you rarely see that in an autocalced battle.

**Maloncanth** · 05-01-2007, 17:16

They really ought to scale to horde by a formula calculating player power, player proximity and overall power of Europe rather than whatever random nonsensical, limited-to-13k format they use. :p

Ogadai: "Listen to me sing!"

Although one time I managed to buy up about a third of the horde after assassinating the khan. That was cool. :3

**Agent Miles** · 05-01-2007, 18:21

I tried an experiment. I had three stacks in Khazar when this force showed up to arrive the next turn. I reloaded and doubled the size of my garrison to six stacks. Only a few extra stacks of Mongols appeared and they spilled over into Georgia. This may have been entirely random, though. The big difference was that the actual Mongol units have no per unit valour increases and by comparison, the Khan's leader abilities really sucked.
I had deliberately tried not to prepare for the Horde. My army was spread out evenly among the border provinces. I simply built units to match my income. I even upgraded Khazar with structures that actually aided the Mongols. If the Byz or someone else had blocked the Black Sea, it would have been a very different outcome.

**Martok** · 05-01-2007, 20:32

Wow. That's gotta be the biggest ransom I've ever seen!

@ Maloncanth: The size of the Horde is somewhat dependent on the size of the garrison stationed there, as well as the difficulty level. You're right, though, that it would be nice if they could be scaled in other ways as well.