The 7 Hour Battle

[Kamakazi]

So i was bored and decided to have a nice lil game of mtw before i went to bed..... I got on and chosethe Polish. There a little palyed faction by me and i assume by many others. I quickly cheated and got money to build massive armies to crush everything in my path. I also made the instant build cheat so i got citadels and castles in a couple years instead of centuries.

As we all know in 1230 the mongol horde come in in kazar and other near provinces. Knowing this i build up every available troop for YEARS When 1230 rolled around huge masses of horde landed in kazar only so i sent in support the sides?

Kamakazi - 19000
The Horde- 13000

Not bad eh?

So i started out with a main line of chivalric sergeants with a gold armor upgrade and a few sets of archers. As we all know the horde looooves horses and their hgeavies decimated my ranks. Now i dont know if all of you know this but after a good 3 hours of attacking and routing and reinforcements you will eventually lose control. I mean lose it totally. I had the ability to call in reinforcements but i couldnt command them at all. So for an hour i called in lines after lines of men to fight

The battle was pretty even the whole way through. My soldiers held and even pushed back the heavies from time to time. Then i noticed that the mongols stopped comming

where did they go??

Turns out the ai also lost command of their troops and could only summon to the reinforcment flag. So i went on the offensive. And massacred their ranks and my own.

All in all the battle was a total stale mate. I won but i lost 90 percent of my troops too the horde.



Has anyone else done this? i mean a 7 hour battle is intense i never ended up going to bed lol i just sat there defending, attacking, hitting flanks and getting routed. I just thought id share the interesting experience

[sharpshooter]

Ha ha ... what a battle. Thanks for sharing.

I'm not sure about why you lost control of your troops, but it doesn't happen every time. I've taken the Horde on head to head in Khazar a couple of times - once as Turkey and once as England, and never had a problem with control - only with the amount of time it takes. So this may be something with how your pc was handling the game.

The AI didn't lose control of the Horde. When they are beaten in a long battle, (other factions too) the reinforcements only go to the reinforcement point and stop. If you advance past it with the winning combination of troops the enemy faction often flees as soon as they you. Sometimes they don't even get over the horizon, so in a big battle you can have a long period where nothing apparently happens.

For a Catholic faction Halberdiers, Pav Arbalesters and Chivalric Knights would be my choice of 3 to fight the Horde. Chiv Sergeants just aren't tough enough for wave after wave of Mongol HC. Take the Mongol HC charge with Halberdiers, who will clearly win. When MHC recoil then charge the Mongol Foot with the Chiv Knights. Meanwhile the Arbs keep shooting.

With the Turks JHI are the business against the Mongol heavies. Unfortunately you don't get Arbs, so Xbows have to do. They're actuallly very good once you get over the lack of distance compared to the Arbs. I often take Xbows rather than Arbs when I'm on attack, because they move quicker. Khwazi Cav and Armenian Heavies are strong enough to roll up the Mongol Infantry.

In the first head to head the battle ran for 14 hours. I had put some 20,000 troops in Khazar, and the Horde arrived with 30,000. (Putting troops in Khazar always increases the amount of the Horde I later discovered).

I put that battle on pause to eat, sleep etc., then played again, all the while fearing the comp would crash - it took an entire weekend. The second time, with the Turks, I stopped after a few hours as I had already killed the Great Khan, and knew his army would go rebel.

Would anyone else care to share a head to head experience in Khazar?

[Vantek]

Haha, you guys are intense. I'm reluctant to take personal command of a battle that would take longer than an hour, let alone SEVEN or FOURTEEN.

For a Catholic faction Halberdiers, Pav Arbalesters and Chivalric Knights would be my choice of 3 to fight the Horde.

I agree, with the exception of Pavise Arbs, to which I prefer regular Arbs. On defense, even a solid mass of lone Halberdiers would work against the Horde; add a quarter of Arbs to avoid having to wait and get peppered, add a few units of CK (or even maybe just mounted sergeants or Hobilars) for surgical strikes and chasing routers, and you've got them on their knees.

I often take Xbows rather than Arbs when I'm on attack, because they move quicker.

???

[sharpshooter]

@ Vantek

Um ... am I imagining that Xbows move faster than Arbs? I make them run anyway, because they do enough standing around to recover. I got a grudging respect for Xbows from playing the Turks, who don't get Arbs in vanilla MTW. Then I started to like them and use them, but generally I'll only make a few before I can get Arbs. Then I'll use those ones on attack.

I often thought Xbows should come in like Gunpowder, as a special weapon in Early. They were used, for example, at the Battle of Hastings, so could even be present from the start of Early, though I believe it was mostly Italian states that developed them. It always seemed odd that you can get Mounted Xbows from the beginning of Early, but no one on foot.

Now I'm gonna have to check the units file ...

[drone]

Crossbows and Arbalests both have movement speeds of 6/10/11 (pavise versions are 4/8/9). Apart from the extra 75 florins to recruit, there is no reason not to buy Arbalests over Crossbows. Arbalests have a longer range, better accuracy, better armor piercing, more damage, same reload time, same upkeep, and work better in rain.

The requirements for Arbalests are messed up. They should probably be a Late-only unit, the way they are in the vanilla game they make Crossbow units obsolete.

[sharpshooter]

Ha ha, silly me. I never thought to check those speeds specifically. Thanks KoTR.

Ok, Xbows are completely out now. I might mod them into early though - does anyone know if you can put their availability into a special event like Gundpowder is?

[Vantek]

I think it's pretty easy to slightly mod the game so that crossbows get to keep their use (and arquebousiers gain one at that), say make arbalest slower to reload and more expensive, they're actually kinda OP as it is, nothing beats a turtled arbalest+halberdier half-hexagon in the mountains except simply a whole lot more (pavise) arbalests and a bucketload of patience.

IMO siege equipment should be slowly movable and it should be possible to bring in withdrawn (but not routed?) units on a whim again, so you could more easily, entertainingly and logically break those nasty mountain turtles on attack. Of course, it would probably be even more disastrous for the incompetent AI...

[Knight of the Rose]

Thanks KoTRDrone.

Give credit where credit is due. Please respect the Master of Relentless Knowledge



/KotR

[drone]

Please respect the Master of Relentless Knowledge

Well, that would actually be Ironside. I just tend to remember stuff that I type, and haven't killed the wiki brain cells off with beer yet.

[Ironside]

Have I been summoned?

Since I don't know enough about modding to answer sharpshooter's question (it's either very hard or impossible though) and I'll auto-calc when the enemy got more than 5000 men (due to the time it takes) it's not much to comment here.

Personal modding of crossbows is slightly lower reload speed (12 instead of 15) and added to early.

[gollum]

The gunpowder event is hardcoded as far as i know sharpshooter, however nothing prevents you to take out the dependency of the gunpowder buildings to the event and designate gunpowder units in any era you like. The building.prod is the file you are after; it can be edited either with as test or using the handy gnome editor.

Conversely you can make the crossbows dependent to gunpowder by either making the gunsmith their required building and leave it linked to gunpowder or by making the 2nd level bowyer dependent to the gunpowder event. However in that case make sure that factions who get bow units like the Bulgarian Brigands or the Turkomans, Futtuwas, Nizaris and the like can make these via another building.

If i were you i'd leave the crossbows as high units and make the arbalests late units as they litteraly dominate anything else in terms of firepower and even factions like the Byzantines or the Egyptians or the English that get decent bow units can drop them altogether for arbs.

[caravel]

Ha ha, silly me. I never thought to check those speeds specifically. Thanks KoTR.

Ok, Xbows are completely out now. I might mod them into early though - does anyone know if you can put their availability into a special event like Gundpowder is?

Events are hardcoded (compass and gunpowder). You can tie buildings (not units) to either of these two existing events though.

-Edit: Gah, gollum, gah

[gollum]