Quote Originally Posted by Caledonian Rhyfelwyr
Just wondering, how do people here tackle these eastern hordes?
With great difficulty and heavy losses...

Playing as the Turks on VH, I was very lucky that the Mongols appeared north of my borders and went into Russia, conquering almost all east Europe. At the time I was heavily involved in wars against Bizantium and Egypt, and if the Mongols came on me with all of their might, I would probably loose the game. We did have some skirmishes along the northeast border, they captured one of my castles, but I soon took it back.

The Timurids were a different story. They appeared in my rear, near the Bagdad. At first, I had some success against them, while their armies were still scattered. Then they concentrated and wiped up 2 of my elite troops, along with my high command generals. And they went directly to my capitol, Antioch.

I decided to change the tactics.
I had a healthy economy, and turn after turn raised a new army and threw it against a horde. My casualties were extremely high, around 80-100%, and I was lucky if I killed 30% of their forces.
After about 20 turns of this war of attrition, I finally managed to break them.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


I noticed that they refused to attack my forts, and since I blocked all approaches to the Antioch, they moved back and forth trying to bypass the forts, giving me the time to launch attack after attack.

What impress me the most when dealing with Timurids is the way my whole battle line would colapse and rout on sight of their high-dread general...