How to repel the Mongol invasion

[Askthepizzaguy]

Can someone say when exactly the Mongols start there invasion?

I am fairly sure they arrive by turn 70.

[phonicsmonkey]

there was a great thread on this by someone who had done the job with Milan...

and here it is:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79195

All hail GuyofJerusalem

[Gray Beard]

I normally play the Byzantines

I can see how it might help to be a Catholic country because you get the ability to launch a Crusade and get the various associated units but since the Byzantines ( In their opinion) maintained the true faith rather than falling prey to the Papist heresy I don't have that option so; I beat them at their own game. I use archers, lots of archers.


The object.

To keep the Mongols from being able to obtain any revenue or troop generating ability for as long as possible. I want to bankrupt them quickly so that they cannot replace their looses and so that their generals become easier to bribe. Your fighting a war of attrition. You must have the ability to replace your men faster than they can replace theirs.

First things first.
1. Above posters are correct, you cannot turtle as the Byzantine player. To beat these guys you probably need about 20 provinces (See my walk through for Byzantium to find out how to do this) because you need to have space to retreat if necessary.

2. You need to make sure that the Cities that will be the first to be attacked are always cities and that if possible cannot build any unit higher than a Archer Militia. (Third upgrade - urban militia, spear militia, archer militia) This keeps the invaders from using your captured cities to resupply and rebuild their armies.

3. You MUST have eliminated the Venetians and the Turks. There are people who will try to use the Turks as a foil to absorb the initial invasion but I've never found that to be very useful. It just means that the Mongols get possession of better quality cities to fight you with and that you have less money to fight them with. If the Venetians are still around they WILL start a war at the other end of your empire regardless of how good you're relations are with them and I swear the AI lets the Venetians cheat they will launch 4 full stacks at me and they only own Venice, Zagreb and Milan. There is no way they can pay for those armies

4. You should be willing and ready and able to to use asymmetric warfare against them. In game terms that means assassinate a general. Marry a general to a princess (making him your general), plant spies in their stack and so forth.

5. You have to use the terrain. Make them fight your battle. If you try and meet them man for man on a level grassland they will hand you your head. You've got to use bridges, mountain passes and rivers to your advantage. There are some players who seem to think that it isn't honorable or is border line cheating to use the terrain to your favor; I don't understand this but that probably why I play the Byzantines. Their low level infantry troops are so bad that you have to be sneaky

6. Realize you am going to loose a lot of men. This is OK as long as after each battle they loose more than you do especially since it is just a game.


Specific things.
1. Defend every city the Mongols siege to the last man. You want Baghdad and Yeveran and Tbilisi to have Batista towers. Each city will be filled with 10 Militia archers and 10 militia Spearmen with the maximum 2 armor upgrades. If you have a 1 or 2 star family member especially a guy who is old and going to die anyway drop him in there as well

2. You should try to have two or three roving armies. I like something like: 1 X General, 4 Vardartoi, 5 heavy Infantry, 5 Militia Spearmen & 5 Trebizond archers. (This is another reason why you need a large empire. These are expensive armies to field.) These should have the best armor and weapons you can provide but numbers are important as well.

When the Mongols besiege a city use these armies to come up and relieve the siege. Use your city like an anvil and your army like a hammer. If the Moguls attack your mobile army then sally the garrison and let your cheap spearmen stab a few guys in the back. The cheap archers can kill mountains of expensive troops if they get within range, especially if they are shooting them in the back!. Make it a point to completely wipe out a unit if possible. You want the Mongols to have to replace not rebuild units.

Even doing all this you may very well still loose the city. But, the silver lining is that you will have killed piles of the seasoned, experienced troops the Mongols start the game with and they can not replace experience.

3. Also have two or three very small mobile armies with a general and three or four Skythikons. I use these to spread the enemy out. Here is how: Move one of the stacks up next to a Mongol stack making sure you have LOTS of movement left and attack it. When you see the abysmal odds call off the attack but don't move away. Instead set a rally point in the direction that you want the Mongols to go and don't set it to far away, about 1/2 a move. During its turn the computer will attack you. Fine, if you do the auto resolve then refuse combat and retreat, but it is better to enter combat because the Moguls have just done what you want them to do. In the battle let the Mongol see you and then retreat. Try to stay just out of archery range. (Hint: If he is chasing you then you can loose a volley of arrows at him just as he comes into range and then by quickly running away the return volley fall behind you but he will be running into your arrows.) Your object isn't to win or even to inflict many casualties. It is simply to get the Mongols to chase you with one or more of their of their stacks. You want to get their armies far enough apart that they cannot help each other. This is really useful in relieving sieges and in being able to gain a significant enough advantage in sheer numbers to start defeating them.


Remember that once you start beating them they get easier to beat because their experience level falls. Then because you have greater monetary resources and a faster rate of buildup you can beat them.

3A. The small armies can also, if you are good and if you are lucky. get the Mongols to chase them a long way. I've gotten them as far as Kiev once and then I just ran away and let the Hungarians and Polish deal with them. (Yeah I know it's the cowards way out.)

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I can see how it might help to be a Catholic country by since the Byzantines maintained the true faith rather than falling prey to the Papist heresy I don't have that option

While I am sure this forum is the perfect place to define which is the one true faith, I think it best to focus on anti-Mongol strategy.
(I am a member of the Jedi Order, myself. Klaatu barada nikto, live long and prosper, and may the Force be with you)

That having been said, let's not overlook the ability of the defender to destroy the infrastructure of a settlement and pocket the cash, thus denying the Mongols access to simple resupply and recruitment. I am not sure this has been mentioned yet as an effective addition to any anti-Mongol strategy, but it works.

[phonicsmonkey]

great post graybeard and welcome to the anti-mongol league

I too used that strategy map tactic of getting the stacks to pursue me..but I found that the dodgy pathfinding messed me up a little

in one instance I had a venetian stack of mine retreat forwards, through the mongol horde (all eight stacks of it bunched together) and continue on about 800 km into russian-held tbilisi

this was odd - did you have that issue?

(I ended up using the move_character cheat to put them somewhere more reasonable behind the front line, but it was unsatisfactory to me)

[Gray Beard]

in one instance I had a venetian stack of mine retreat forwards, through the mongol horde (all eight stacks of it bunched together) and continue on about 800 km into russian-held tbilisi

I have had that happen. You have to use the "Rally point feature and tell your army where you want it to retreat to.


Edited post

Sorry wrong game. The wife is out of town the youngest rug rat is at a sports camp and I don't go back to work until next week so I've been living on scotch and beef steak for the last two days and I had a little too large a lunch!

The rally point only works in the naval warfare in this game. I have an old US Civil War game that allows you to set a location for routing troops to flee to. Not this game

What I meant was that that when you engage the the Mongols it shows them how puny you are as well as showing you how big they are. Then you manually back your army away to almost the limit of your movement but just barely where the Mongols can move. You have to guess but that isn't hard to do. If you move too far they stop chasing you. I can't prove this but I think that routing units have movement like a Crusading unit. So if you have a lot left at the end of the turn they can run farther.

This really has only been a problem when I do this auto resolve so far.

[phonicsmonkey]

so that's what rally points are useful for - i've never used them, will do now

[Daveybaby]

Give me some of england's longbows, infantry, and armored cavalry and I will wipe the floor with Russia's best.

Personally i find the russians one of the most interesting factions to play as. You get a really unusual roster that can be very effective if you learn to use it properly.

I love the limitations of their early unit roster. Use cossack cav and boyar sons to thin the enemy ranks, then a devastating charge using hordes of (cheapest unit in the game bar none) woodsmen to break the enemy, and then run down the routers using the cossacks and boyars again. Smashing a full 'superior' enemy stack to pieces using such 'inferior' units is incredibly satisfying.

Later on you get some of the best units in the game (i.e. dvor cav are one of the best HA's in the game and they can hold their own in melee, and dismounted dvor are IMO the most effective all round infantry units in the game full stop). Basically i think theyre one of the best factions to take on the mongols, you can use their own tactics against them and beat them at their own game.

Also, re: spain vs mongols, just posted this in another thread:

I've been using schiltroms with great success against the mongols. As spain i've been using cheap and easily replacable stacks of militia spearmen and militia crossbows (3:2 ratio of spears to crossbows), with a couple of units of cav for disruption purposes.

Line the crossbows up in an easily defensible position, ideally somewhere rugged to break up mongol cav charges. Place the spears (already in schiltrom) along in front of the xbows, plus one at each end of the line.

Initially the mongol horse archers will close to duel with you. Your xbows should make mincemeat out of them. At the same time use your cav to disrupt the enemy footsoldiers as much as possible, while keeping themselves out of contact with the mongol heavy cav as much as possible.

Soon the mongol heavy cav will be attacking your spearmen. It will take them a while to wear them down, and they will take heavy losses to do so, both from your spears and from the xbows raining pointy death down on them.

Eventually your spears will rout, and you will lose the battle. This is pretty much inevitable since there will probably be at least 2 full stacks of elite units attacking your one stack of milita. This is perfectly fine, since the point of this battle is not to win, but to reduce the size of the mongol stacks in a battle of attrition. You are losing a lot of men, but they are expendable militia which can be built cheaply and quickly en-masse in pretty much any city. The mongols are losing irreplacable (as long as you havent allowed them to take a lot of cities) elite units.

A good thing to do is to try to withdraw your crossbows before the spears rout, while still leaving them in combat for long enough to inflict severe casualties. If your crossbows escape unscathed, you only have to replace 8 or so units of spears, which 3 cities can easily manage to accomplish every turn. By doing this successfully i find i can take out half a mongol stack, while losing about half a stack of cheap militia.

Once most of the mongol stacks are half depleted, send in full stacks of your own elite troops and you will make quick work of them.

[Mangudai]

I agree that the Russians are awesome!

My primary offensive weapon is Kazaks. When it is time to melee, my Kazaks charge the rear and both flanks and a chain rout ensues. I don't micro enough to keep all my Kazaks safe from enemy HC but I don't care. They are cheap to replace. Once the main body of enemy troops routs, enemy HC are easy to deal with. I pull units away to stop enemies fighting to the death and go into mopup mode.

As a Russian you must embrace the principle of attrition. I expect this is hard for most players to do. Militia are so darn cheap you must toss them like grains upon the millstone. I like to put my crap archers in the front line in loose formation with skirmish off, woodsmen behind them to dash through and help with melee and spears on the flanks. Also a general nearby to blow his horn. This combo is effective enough for a fair attrition rate, but cav are the key to victory. I find it cost effective to sacrifice archers in this way on the field. I do not find it cost effective to maintain large garrisons.

[Slaists]

Excellent observation. The timurids would not be so threatening if most factions have jinettes. I think only the Polish/Hungarian and Spanish/Portugese have javelin throwing cavalry. Someone correct me if I am mistaken.

sons of boyars are javelin throwers for russia too.

[souryab]

I played as the Turks and repelled them in 2 moves!! surprised?? Its a bit simple and needs some luck maybe..but heres the deal..

Let them take a town...then before they take another...get it back...

a message comes "last stronghold in the west is gone for the mongols" and the rest of the forces just vanish!!

They attacked me at turn 75 at antiloch with 4 stacks and over 2500 men. I tried to fight them with about 1000 but lost badly. They then dispersed their forces too much.One went up and laid seige on the northern toen..forgot its name..

One part went south towards acre..and the remnants of my army were at damascus..

When they were gone..they had only 200+ people left to defend the city of antiloch and I set my remaining 400+ troops on them and won the battle(leave no prisoners) and took the city..immediately, the invasion as over!! maybe a flaw in the game?? :-)