Unlimited Golden Horde

[r johnson]

I gotta say the Horde atm doesn't worry you?

[Heidrek]

What difficulty level are you playing on? The Horde is normally a major factor in my games if I'm playing a faction that starts anywhere near their appearance. Unless contained immediately they can cause massive damage to an expanding empire in my experience.

How many troops does the Horde start with? 10,000? More?

[Martok]

Welcome to the Org, Cmdrnarrain! Glad to see you here.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a mod in which the GH appear beyond 1231. To be perfectly honest, I'm not even certain it would even be possible to to mod that. I'm no modder, however, so I may very well be wrong in thinking that.

How many troops does the Horde start with? 10,000? More?

It varies. The size of the Mongols' initial army depends on two main factors:

1.) Which version of the game you're playing: In the original MTW, the Horde appearance tended to be rather...underwhelming, as it would usually show up with less than 5000 men. If you're playing MTW with the VI expansion installed, however (or MTW Eras/Gold Edition), the Mongols appear with a significantly larger army -- somewhere between 15,000 to 40,000 troops. Obviously, that's still a pretty wide range, which indirectly leads to the second (and even more important) factor....

2.) The size of the defending garrisons in "Horde provinces": The more troops one has stationed in a province in which the Mongols can appear, then the larger the Horde's army will be. Thus, if a faction has 500 men stationed in Khazar, they're more likely to see a relatively smaller Mongol force -- say, a "mere" 16,000 men. If a faction has a huge army of 6,000 troops, however, then the Khan's army is going to be correspondingly huge -- well over 30,000 for sure. (I personally have fought Mongol invasions consisting of 32,000 men, and I know of players who say they've fought as many as 38,000.)

The difficulty level you choose may very well also have an effect on the size of the Golden Horde -- I honestly can't recall now whether it does or not -- but either way, the single biggest determinant is still how big the garrison is that's defending a "Horde province".

[Jxrc]

The size of the defending garrisons in "Horde provinces"[/B]: The more troops one has stationed in a province in which the Mongols can appear, then the larger the Horde's army will be. Thus, if a faction has 500 men stationed in Khazar, they're more likely to see a relatively smaller Mongol force -- say, a "mere" 16,000 men. If a faction has a huge army of 6,000 troops, however, then the Khan's army is going to be correspondingly huge -- well over 30,000 for sure. (I personally have fought Mongol invasions consisting of 32,000 men, and I know of players who say they've fought as many as 38,000.)

Are you sure about that ? Seems to me that the size of the Horde depends on the size of the army of the faction with the most troops. Few times Khazar was guarded by two units of Byz peasants and slav warriors and the GH was still huge. IF I am correct that could be an explanation for the fact that the GH is always much smaller if you play in High rather than Early.

[Agent Miles]

It may be both factors. I did a test once where I reloaded and put more troops in Khazar and more GH troops did show up there. So that much is true. I probably had the largest standing army too, so I got over 20k Ghers.

[Cmdrnarrain]

I'm playing XL with the Eras expansion. I really do not remember a time when I have not crushed the horde with a relatively small army of 1,500 men (mostly bows and spears) on the defensive as there is little point in attacking the horde unless you like chasing horse archers around the map.

I was hoping there was a mod which represented the horde arriving in waves. That way they actually have a chance of taking the world instead of being bogged down before Hungry. I think the horde appearing in waves would be really scary especially if you play the Turks or Cumens.

[drone]

My understanding is that they tend to run out of money after a while, that's why they bog down. Maybe mod down their unit cost and upkeep figures, to keep them viable. Not a modder myself, but that shouldn't be too difficult to do.

Does anyone know the building requisites for Golden Horde units? Maybe lower them as well.

[caravel]

I believe their recruitment requirements are quite low, but reducing the support costs would be the thing to do if you want a juggernaut horde.

As to making them appear in waves, that can't be done. The emerging factions such as the Burgundians, Swiss and GH cannot be modded to appear at different dates. Nor can you mod it so that extra troops arrive every few years (as in the MI campaign for STW). Unfortunately this is all hardcoded.

Apart from support costs you can also improve the Horde by modding out the infantry element, namely the Golden Horde Warriors. Masses of these appearing in battle is not very realistic as historically the Mongols wouldn't have fought like this and they are very easy for the player to simply run down. Another fix is to improve the standards of some of the starting mongol generals and khans, as they are quite weak, this should pretty much do the trick. If you wanted to go further you could tinker with the MHC/MHA's stats but this needs to be done with caution to avoid overpowering them.

[drone]

Another thought popped into my head on Horde size. As Martok mentioned:

2.) The size of the defending garrisons in "Horde provinces": The more troops one has stationed in a province in which the Mongols can appear, then the larger the Horde's army will be. Thus, if a faction has 500 men stationed in Khazar, they're more likely to see a relatively smaller Mongol force -- say, a "mere" 16,000 men. If a faction has a huge army of 6,000 troops, however, then the Khan's army is going to be correspondingly huge -- well over 30,000 for sure. (I personally have fought Mongol invasions consisting of 32,000 men, and I know of players who say they've fought as many as 38,000.)

So the more troops you have in the province, the more Horde. I wonder how this calculation is done. Is it based on point values of the defenders, or just number of troops? If it's based on point values, then I would assume that lowering the Horde recruitment costs would bring more Horde units to the invasion.

Also, is it possible to mod the Horde's "king and heirs" statistics, to make them more difficult to kill off. Once they go rebel, I would assume they would get saddled with the rebel faction's debt and pretty much stall out.