Mongols stomp me (and my pc) like bug!

[winterymix]

Hi folks, relatively new to the game, but I'm playing a campaign as the Turks and thought I was doing well until the Mongols made their appearance. After loitering in the lands north of Bahgdad for quite a while, they made a mass move toward my capital which they surrounded with no less than 6 or 7 stacks.

When the battle screen loaded for me to defend my capital, I was mortified...surrounded on all sides with what seemed like hundreds of thousands of maurading invaders. I had a citidel chock-full of archers and spears and decided that trying to defend the outer walls was futile and deployed my entire force in and upon the inner keep. Indeed, this proved nearly as abortive as if I had ordered my entire army to simply fall on their daggers because the horde strolled in and took my castle from me as if my host were only a minor inconvenience.

Also, my computer, which normally handles any battle I've played thus far quite well, choked down to a few frames a second trying to keep up with the thousands and thousands of Mongol troops in this battle, which made it difficult for me to maneuver my troops (which wouldn't have really made a difference).

Is there some specific strategy on how to deal with this, or is it basically to try and keep the horde from surrounding a city with so many stacks? This is the first time I've fought them and I'm a little intimidated. Although I'm not intimately versed in optimal troop matchups.. I do know the basics.. spears strong vs calvery, support spears with calvery or infantry, protect missile units in the back, etc, etc.

Any help for this MTW newbie would be a great help.
Thanks!
-Winterymix

[Ramses II CP]

Sally forth young son! The siege AI is pathetic, if you sally out of a castle or city that has ballista towers you can draw them in range of the walls with sacrificial units and chew them up. If you have cannon towers, half the time the AI doesn't even pull back out of their range. Don't worry about those rams, towers, and ladders they've been building, they drop them the instant you sally and they'll only come as close to the walls as you can lure them.

Sally may be a misnomer here, since you don't actually have to abandon the walls, just poke out a unit every so often to keep them interested and getting shot to bits. If you run out of arrows let the timer run out or end the battle and sally again the next turn.

Of course that's cheesy and cheap as heck, but it works if you let yourself get surrounded. If you want to do it the less-AI abusive way, first, yes, don't let yourself get surrounded. Second, when they do come against your city 95% of the time only one unit will have built siege equipment, so stand your defenses against that group and ignore the rest while they pound their fists bloody on your walls. Third, burn those bloody rams! If necessary send a unit or two out to break the men pushing the rams before they reach the gates and then grab the ram and move in inside the walls. Then burn the siege towers, which the Mongols rarely seem to use until their rams are spent. If they're ladder/tower heavy, fall back to the second keep after you deal with the rams, I've *never* seen the AI bring ladders inside the walls.

There is no reason to lose a defensive siege battle under virtually any circumstances. If you can even minimally disrupt the AI's set pattern it will throw the whole deal out of whack and, after sufficient casualties, the AI will retreat.

Good luck. Wait'll you get some Timurids, they usually come with cannons.

[Tusk]

If necessary send a unit or two out to break the men pushing the rams before they reach the gates and then grab the ram and move in inside the walls. Then burn the siege towers, which the Mongols rarely seem to use until their rams are spent. If they're ladder/tower heavy, fall back to the second keep after you deal with the rams, I've *never* seen the AI bring ladders inside the walls.

There is no reason to lose a defensive siege battle under virtually any circumstances. If you can even minimally disrupt the AI's set pattern it will throw the whole deal out of whack and, after sufficient casualties, the AI will retreat.

I find this tactic works very well for me - the kind of disruption Ramses II is talking about.

I once had a full stack of Milanese attack, well, Milan, while I was holding it as the HRE. I had not built ballista towers yet. I had only about 3 units of archers and 4-5 town militia/spearmen (and a general). It was tough, but I ran my general outside, along with a sacrificial town militia or two, thinking I could buy time for my archers to do the nasty on their rams/siege tower (ie burn them with fire arrows). I would charge a unit pushing a ram, then they'd drop it to fight. Then I'd pull back, try to avoid their cavalry, and do it again as soon as they advanced. Eventually (after a long time, and heavy losses from my archers/towers) they broke through my gate - but then a good tactic is to set up a "pocket" for them when they get through, eg. by placing units on all three sides of them as soon as they enter, then charging them all at once. This traps them under the gate, and if you can get 2 or 3 of their units to rout, it can (possibly) cause a mass rout.

Try sending a few units out to disrupt their siege equipment pushers, and set up a collapsing pocket for them as soon as they get through the gate. This worked well against the Milanese, not sure how it would work against the Mongol horde though.

[Matt_Lane]

Also, my computer, which normally handles any battle I've played thus far quite well, choked down to a few frames a second trying to keep up with the thousands and thousands of Mongol troops in this battle, which made it difficult for me to maneuver my troops (which wouldn't have really made a difference).

I have the same problem. I keep my graphics settings low for anything but small skirmishes. For bigger battles I try to leave the camera view set, pausing the game if I need to have a look around. However if I had several stacks involved I think I might just hit auto resolve.

The only other option I know of is to upgrade your hardware.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Even with a very good computer you will get lag when fighting a siege with more than one stack. Most of the lag is caused by the CPU because it is calculating what a couple of thousand guys are doing. I have a very fast rig but when the Mongols breached the gate in Antioch an got stuck between my stakes (love those Janissary archers) and my infantry the game looked like a slide show.

If your computer can handle four stacks in a siege without any lag (all highest settings) you are probably working for the CIA

[Betito]

You can use your handy naffatun to burn the rams faster, and Get Janissary archers so you can use stakes, which will neutralize the cavalry shock.