First Contact with the Mongols - Strategy.

[Galain_Ironhide]

Hi there to all fellow guild members.

i've been playing my campaign as England and am going great guns.Well I encountered the Mongols for the first time last night whilst on a crusade to take Antioch (which was occupied by them).

I had a General who had recently taken Tunis and Tripoli from the Sicilians and then this Crusade came up. I only had a small army with my general in Tripoli (3 Yeoman archers, 3 units of various knights, 2 units of dismounted knights and 1 unit of Levy Spearmen). So I used this army plus my general to go on crusade to take Antioch, going across Africa and Egypt as it was the quickest route for any general to get there.

I got past the 3 Egyptian cities and recruited merc units which were
1 x Nigerian Tribesmen (sorry going off memory may be diferent name), 3 x Turkoman mnted Archers, 4 x Kwazi Cav, and about 4 units of religious fanatics. In total I had about 980 men at my disposal.

As soon as I got close to jeruselum thats where I think my jaw dropped and realised that this General was screwed. Surrounding him after his moves for that turn was about 6 stacks of Mongolian infantry. The turn ended and then the action happened. I got attacked first by two stacks with aproximately 650 men in each, some how I got through this. I mainly attacked with my Cavalry while mostly staying steadfast with the rest of my infantry and protecting my own archers. I beat these first two stacks but payed the price of using my Cav as I lost nearly 40% of them, plus also as the Mongolians infantry drew near I attacked with my infantry, sick of being hit with a hail of arrows. By getting drawn out and spread too far apart this then caused me to probably lose a considerable amount of my infantry.

All up I won and still had about 600 men left in my army.

Then the next wave came which was another 850 mad Mongolians. As I had lost a good portion of my cav in the last effort I had to try and be more conservative. This proved to be futile as my whole army got peppered by an endless onslaught caused by their heavy Archer Cav. This again caused me to get drawn away from my original lines, scattering units everywhere. Again I prevailed taking heavy losses losing about 80% of my force plus my General was the only soldier in his unit.

Of course the next wave came which was another 800 or 900 Mongolians and of course 120 against that quantity is very hard to win, so I got slaughtered and my general is now pushing up the daisy's.

I've learnt a few things here (I knew the situation was desperate and I was going to finally be beaten by the AI eventually), especially letting my Cav perish at the start when I probably should have been more patient. But I am interested to know how you guys handle fighting the Monolians, and how you go about preserving the lives of your more important units.

(please do not see this as me crying for help - I had a ball just hanging in there! I just thought this would be good thread for listening to some good stategies by different members)

Have fun all.

[TheLastPrivate]

With extremely high dread of mongolian generals and experience of their elite troops, its gonna be close to impossible to fight all of the 6 stacks off with 1 army. Reinforcement is a bad idea as u cannot control them in M2tw, and even 1v1 can be a tough issue depending on your roster/general. I'm very surprised u held that long, as usually your lower-morale troops will rout as soon as their first cavalry charge.
The key is to use generals who can fight night battles, who can try to isolate and destroy one stack at a time. If you can, you can field huge stacks yourself - the AI will not attack 4 stacks of enemy army as they view it as far too strong for them to attack, and by using Zone of Control you can isolate mongol stacks and destroy them.

As for units, it sounds like you are playing English and Longbows are perfect for the job. You really don't want to charge at the mongols as your troops will suffer way too much damage (unless you are polish or some of thoese melee-intensive factions), and stakes at your flanks will take out enemy lancers. Your tactic is to lure their cavalry with light cavalry, while your longbowmen kill their horse archers (and they are very good at this). Have your general unit lead enemy cavalry across the line of fire of longbowmen to massacrethem, and when their HA and cavalry are neutralized use your cavalry to charge their infantry as they have almost no spears.
Using bridges to neutralize enemy cavalry is good too.

Lastly, if you don't have to fight mongols and they are not immediate threat, don't bother with them too much - you have to prepare yourself for the boubonic plague.

[TevashSzat]

This is how I deal with them:

Get best general with night fighting trait and have him in a cav heavy army with between 1/3 to 1/2 heavy cav. Have your cav in 1 or 2 big groups and use them to hunt down HAs. It will take a while, but you will box them in. If you catch one or few, your large numbers will ensure that you win.

Keep your infantry line steady with some half decent archer support so HAs wont decimate it completely. Don't engage the enemy infantry line. Wait it out until you have achieved cav domination after which you can do a nice mass charge from all sides for a quick route, but if they do move forward, immedietely have at least half of your cav back and hopefully, charge into the back of their line. The rest of your cav should be chasing the enemy HA and making sure that they dont get off a good charge.

[imnothere]

note you can move your cavalry OUT of stakes without casualties as the sticks are not sticking at your horses' chest.

i didnt realise this and was only exploiting this for the past 2 weeks.

i was very surpised that you withstood the attacks (even from AI) for that long without lots of spearmen. even with mercenary spearmen, pikemen, etc... my unit would have been already running half way to Bern. from the sound of it, at least you kept your units together. it is very hard to keep units from scattering all over the battlefield when fighting the middle-east and eastern (mongol/timurid) forces. well done.

more yeoman would have help, alot. even longbow archers are superior to the mercenary crossbowmen that i was using initially. for the middle-east screnario, spear-wall units are not that great due to wide-open space.

[Syrous_PL]

Net Hercules contra plures, or something to that effect. Well, Mongols are tough because their generals are top notch and their troops are usually experienced. I would try to stay out of their way as much as possible. They tend to go for Antioch and Jerusalem, so you may want to get out of those cities and try to make peace with Mongols. I had a game where they would attack me, then make peace 2 turns later and even pay me some tribute, then do it all over again. So, get on their good side and avoid confrontation until their armies dissipate all over the map and you don't have to deal with 6 stacks at the time.
Defending in castles/cities can be a good way to slowly reduce their numbers. I would put my archers (playing as Poland) in front of the gates and have them deploy stakes. Then when the battle starts you run up to the walls, but the stakes stay there and cause severe damage to Mongolian cavalry once they break through. Hopefuly you can take out many that way and cause the rest to rout.
I would avoid open field encounters as they will wear you down with horse archers and finish off with heavy cav.

[Cadwallon]

I was the poles, with lithuanian archers who have stakes. I'd managed to carve a reasonable pole away from pole in the Holy Land when the Mongols invade. I'm not sure whether this is buggy - but if defending a castle or bridge, stakes can get up to 90% casulaties against horsemen. And without horsemen mongols are pretty second rate. Providing you have some decent spearmen or heavy infantry, plus archers with stakes, mongols just don't stand a chance.

Haven't tried them against elephants yet!

[Syrous_PL]

Woodens stakes don't work against elephants, sadly. But they are great vs cavalry. Just don't run your general into them

[Henry707]

Ahh Galain, that's the best part of MTW2 - that cold realization when you first come up against the hoard & think S£&$!!!

Sometimes I think forums can give too much advice & spoil the challenge by describing when, where & formation etc. If you are not ready for it, the mongol invasion has much the same impact as it had in real life - shock - much bigger then anything etc etc etc.

I'm playing the Egyptians at the moment & it's always on your mind as my cities are so exposed. If I were you, I'd learn what you can about the armies & retreat back to say Cyprus to re-group & re-arm.

If you want to take them on, get a reinforcements from England, plenty of longbows. Check your finances as well. Clear out the hospitals as there will be some heavy casualties.

Good luck

Henri

[Galain_Ironhide]

Ahh Galain, that's the best part of MTW2 - that cold realization when you first come up against the hoard & think S£&$!!!

ROFL. You hit the nail on the head there Henry707

I have been away on business a lot lately so I havent much chance to encounter them again. However with the small amount of time I have been able to put into my English campaign, I have been building up an army in the heart of my lands. I have 42 provinces (and about 95 turns left), so I have no desire to conquer any more European lands.
I will march from Venice (the edge of my kingdom), take Constantinople from the Byzantines (they have been annoying me for decades) and cross the land bridge there, plus take a citadel (located to the left of Trebizond - which I have owned since about turn 30ish)to replenish my troops, which is only loosely defended by the Turks, then finally drive into the Holy lands and take Jerusalem from those Mongol dogs! (thus ending my game - )

My army consists of 7 generals with a minimum of 5 stars (one is a 10star and still young) fully stacked with at least 6 units of Longbows, plus 3-4 units of heavy cav, 3-4 units of spears and the rest dismounted knights - oh and plus mortars and trebs too.

It's going to be a long trip and there will be many fights on the way, I am sure. But I think the AI wont pose much of threat until I get into the Mongol lands.

I'll keep you good people posted as to how my "English Crusade" goes. LOL I am so looking forward to this, whichever which way the tide of war may go!

[Galain_Ironhide]

My army consists of 7 generals with a minimum of 5 stars (one is a 10star and still young) fully stacked with at least 6 units of Longbows, plus 3-4 units of heavy cav, 3-4 units of spears and the rest dismounted knights - oh and plus mortars and trebs too.

To avoid confusion. I meant 7 full stacks each with a general consisting of roughly the above.

Tally Ho!