Tips on repelling a Mongol/Timurid invasion:
Remember where and when they arrive, and be prepared
If you know that the Mongols arrive around turn 60-70 and the Timurids around turn 100 (Someone correct me, it’s been a while), and you know that they arrive in the Northeast and the Southeast (it varies) with stack after stack of troops, and you happen to be a faction on the Eastern half of the board, you had better be prepared for the invasion. Catholic factions have the crusade function to assist them, which is helpful, but the Orthodox and Muslim factions have it pretty rough. The Turks in particular cannot afford to dawdle, because they can get the brunt of both invasions, depending on their borders.
It’s a bad idea to wait until the Mongols arrive and then start to panic. Unless you can spawn about 10 stacks of troops at will, you will not be able to just repel the invasion as if it were a half-hearted crusade. This is the real deal. Or it would have been, had the AI been improved, but let’s pretend you get lucky and the computer accidentally poses a threat.
You will have a difficult time repelling the invasion if you like to “turtle” and build your empire slowly and relatively peacefully. Your war will take much longer, require better technology, better troops, and you are more likely to lose battles and the overall war. This has a better chance of succeeding if you are a Western European faction, and a much better chance if you are Catholic. To put this another way, you can’t possibly lose against the Mongols and the Timurids as England or France, even if you “turtle”. You will die a painful death at the hands of your new Mongol overlords if you foolishly attempt to “turtle” as the Turks, the Russians, or the Egyptians. Byzantine also has difficulty repelling the invasion if they “turtle”. So… think about expanding your empire to a comfortable size before the invasion starts, unless you are so far away that they will never reach you to begin with. But no matter WHO you play as, having a massive empire makes this whole process easier. Just make sure you have a great economy and good troop producing facilities.
You will need infantry. That’s a fact. Fielding enough heavy cavalry to match theirs gets ridiculously expensive, and horse archers just won’t cut it, because they are mostly cavalry and the Timurids have elephants that scare horses. Besides, they have a lot of archers too, and you will have to deal with the ranged attacks against your own cavalry as well as the heavy cavalry charging your troops, which cannot be spread out to avoid arrows because they will rout when charged by heavy cavalry.
Side note: Sure, you CAN rely on these units, but you will need more of them. Lots more of them. Because they will die like rats in an oven when faced with a maximum dread Mongol archer/cavalry army, or Timurid elephant/infantry army.
By infantry, I mean lots of infantry; the kind that can take a charge and survive. Good morale, good armor, and nice, long spiked weapons. The bulk of your army should be made up of anti-heavy infantry and anti-heavy cavalry forces, which good heavy infantry functions as. Don’t worry about going too expensive, though. You will need to field a massive force, so go with the best bang for your florins. I’d recommend a lot of good, low-upkeep, medium strength troops with the best armor you can find, and lots of them. If you were playing as an Italian faction, your basic Italian spear militia with maximum armor works just fine. Lots and lots of tough, defensive forces, but not so expensive that you cannot make several stacks worth of them. You will take losses, but the troops combine together after the battle, and you will easily have another completely solid line of infantry after each encounter. This is key to having an effective force while repeatedly engaging the horde.
I’ll get to tactical tips in a second. Right now, just focus on making sure you have a backbone to your mega-army, made up of thousands of capable, mid-level, heavy armored infantry.
Next, you will need some morale-crushing units; the kind that can outmaneuver the enemy or blast them from a distance. If you don’t have gunpowder, you can always go with a good core of long-distance archers with flaming arrows. This can impact the enemy morale while you have them surrounded by infantry, but beware! Having no cavalry in your army will leave you in an inferior morale and maneuvering position. You will need something to defend your archers/artillery units, which means good cavalry interceptors, which means cavalry of your own; the kind that can fight hand to hand and has a decent charge. Here’s where you spend your big bucks; lots of superior heavy cavalry. I’d say 4 or more units of truly gut-wrenching cavalry will do.
But don’t just go after their cavalry with cavalry, because they probably brought more to the fight than you did. You need some spearmen that can take a hit to intercept them and pin them down. Then charge the fools with your cavalry and make them rout. After this happens, you should circle around and pound their infantry, or go straight for their general. Any time you can eliminate their general, you should make it a priority. A general unit is worth half his own forces in terms of morale. You could be losing the battle by twice your own army size, kill their general, and turn the tide of the battle and force a close win with hammer and anvil cavalry charges. (I know, I did this one time against the Pope himself with his truly superior personal bodyguard army against a ragtag group of exhausted Russian troops and mercenaries at half-strength)
In case you don’t know, hammer and anvil is where you pin the enemy with one unit and charge repeatedly against the enemy unit with a unit of cavalry until they run like little girls.
Summary so far: Giant stack of mid-level spearmen, fully armored; decent sized division of bone-crushing cavalry; and your favorite morale buster units, such as flaming longbows, gunpowder units, or trebuchets firing diseased cattle and flaming rocks. Now top it off with your most fearless, chivalrous/dreadful, commanding general with chevrons coming out of his…
Now you have a stack of decent troops. But don’t foolishly think you are done. You need at least 4 more of these to even get started, unless you want to exploit the AI’s suicidal tendencies, which I will get to in a second.
Tactics and terrain
Now that you have assembled your mightiest and most fearsome gathering of troops ready to give their lives to stop the invasion, you need to plan out where to make your first stand. Should you wait for the enemy to attack you inside your stronghold? Block a strategic bridge or canyon access road? Cower atop a very high mountain and attempt to rain arrows down upon them? Or will you use the hills and the plains for your bloody battlefield?
This largely depends upon your taste. Obviously, some tactics work better than others. You can completely wimp out and cower behind your castle walls, but if I were personally controlling the horde, and not the AI, I can assure you that you would be toast, and your little garrison would crumble from only two of my stacks attacking it. Remember, these guys have a lot more than two stacks. Of course, the AI isn’t so good at sieges, and an intermediate player can repel several stacks using a single garrison, which is a very good enemy/ally casualty ratio.
The bridge defense isn’t normally as effective as it used to be in RTW, but it can be if it is slightly modified. Don’t attempt to prevent them from crossing the bridge by blocking it off; let them come. But when they do cross, surround them on all three sides and charge with infantry in the front and cavalry/infantry on the sides, with a hail of flaming arrows into the middle. Do this and you will cause mass routs, and you can butcher them as they flee. This tactic depends on the AI being stupid enough to try to beat you at river crossings, and you cannot block all access points on the map. Some will sneak through from the North or South, because they don’t always spawn from the same place. If you didn’t prepare for this, they will get behind your front line, which is the worst strategic blunder you can make. If I were the Mongols, the war would already be over at this point, because I would systematically capture and burn all your cities to the ground and exterminate your people. So, thank your lucky stars the AI doesn’t know how to truly take advantage of your weaknesses. But still, on principle, avoid letting them get past your forces and assault your cities. You have women and children at home, as well as your military recruiting buildings to think about. Don’t let them touch you. Your brave men are ready to die, but your citizens are not.
Sitting on top of a mountain is silly unless they are chasing your wounded troops. Find a hilltop and cower atop it, it is the only way you can even the odds. Charging downhill and pushing all your forces into the enemy general can cause you to win battles that might otherwise be lost; but you cannot force wins this way, only take advantage of blunders the AI might make.
So that leaves the winding roads in the mountains and valleys of Asia Minor, the Eastern steppes, and the Arabian Desert as your other choices. I personally prefer the Eastern steppes because I like room to maneuver. But you won’t likely be making this choice, as the Mongols and the Timurids can spawn from several different points on the map. You just have to take what you can get.
The stand
Now you have prepared for the Mongol invasion, and it has come. Take your brave troops into battle.
Get some generals with Night Fighter and attack the lead stack of invaders from 3 sides. See if you can’t pick him off completely with one fell swoop, using Night Fighter to fight this stack and only this stack. In any case, their arrows will be rendered fairly useless in the dark. So get Night Fighter.
Bring a couple units of good, light cavalry which can mass-eliminate routers. You don’t want to face these idiots a second time. Leave no one alive, and take no prisoners.
If you can manage to wipe out a good chunk of the enemy on the initial assault, do it. This assumes the Mongols haven’t taken a whole bunch of cities yet and are still bunched together. If you are an Eastern faction, you should do this.
If you are a Western faction, and you find the horde intimidating, then go ahead and wimp out for a while. Let the Mongols come. Let the Timurids come. Let them sack city after city, and carve themselves a nice little Khanate from the Turkish, Russian, and Egyptian territory. Even let them push into Byzantium and Poland. Let them get drunk with celebratory wine and fat with meat from their victory feasts. Let them get spread out over half of the map, and let them grow complacent in their conquest. Let them disperse into the lands and thin out their ranks. Let them garrison cities that they have taken, and watch as their assaulting forces dwindle. Let them think they have won, and watch as they drop their guard. Now they have become a foolish, bloated empire, completely unprepared for a massive counterstrike. NOW STRIKE THEM!
Charge full force through their lands, taking back each city one by one, demolishing what is left of their assault forces, and continue until every last one of these Mongrels are dead. Rinse and repeat for the Timurid scum.
As for the elephants, you should target them with flaming missiles, or whatever missiles you have. Spook the elephants, and they will become rampaging beasts that will inflict damage on the enemy. Then keep your distance and watch the fun.
Alternatively, you hide behind walls and pepper them with arrows until they finally die. I don’t recommend using cavalry on them, but if you have about a thousand troops to spare, infantry with spears and good morale can also take them down, slowly… with lots and lots of casualties.
Gunpowder is good, but if you’ve been in this fight long enough to have gunpowder, you don’t need it. You’re apparently safe from the hordes anyway, and you could simply use the “wait until they become spread thin by their own conquest” strategy. So gunpowder is not necessary.
Victory, thy name is Pizza Guy. Additions, corrections, questions, comments? Post them here.
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