The Mongol counter?

[Acamas]

I seem to can't find a solid counter against the Mongols. I know they gather in huge numbers and leave their cities open. Right now they completely destroyed all of my Crusader Cities, one of them was a Citadel which took them 4 times before they finally conquered it. I re-invaded and captured only 2 cities out of the 6 I lost from the Crusades. I am Venice and I've developed 3 armies mixed with mostly gun-men, cannons, and Venican Archers, cavalry and spearmen but I still fought them and lost 2 of my 3 armies in order to destroy all of the Mongols.

Does anyone know a good strategy to crush the Mongols with Venice? They seem to be extremely good at everything, even melee combat.

[the_mango55]

With Venice?

Take a couple of cities or castles that they own or want, stock them with about 6 units of heavy infantry and spearmen, as many units of Venitian archers as you can, and the rest Pavise Crossbows. Then let them attack you. Keep all of your ranged units on the walls. Since their best units are all cavalry, they won't be able to get to you, they will deplete their numbers trying to take the city.

[SIlver General65]

Guns I thought mongols come in turn like 70 man you held out in defence for hundreds of years

[Acamas]

That usually works. But eventually they get tons of spy's into your city and you lose. I am wondering if anyone knows how to crush them on the battlefield, not behind castle walls because I can never beat them very well on the battlefield. It seems the AI is WAY better than the AI on RTW because I'm kind of losing a large franction of my army in every single battle even when the odds are completely supporting me.

Right now on the campaign map, I conquered all of my lost Crusader cities and more. But I only did this by completely surrounding Mongol armies with huge amounts of units and letting the computer beat them. Then I got small units with artillary and took most of their undefended cities. Eventually all of them ran to the city of Antioch including their faction leader, where I crushed them by letting the computer do it for me.

[Hoffman]

As the Spanish, and having managed to take the Crusade successfully I had to fight the Mongols off until I too had Cannon.
I lost Jerusalem, Antioch, Alleppo... every city and citadel and fortress except Acre.

I found with the Spanish, who until very late in the game lack decent Spearmen the only way to really beat the mongolians is to use a couple units of the heaviest Infantry to hold the gate, while Pavise Crossbowmen hold the walls, and about 4-6 units of Trebuchets take care of most of the Mongolian Siege Equipment.

Acre managed to hold out until the Timurid Invasion, when I had also taken most of the French coastline back at home and was able to send a sizable force to relive the Army at Acre. On the field Chivalric Knights are the only counter I've found to Mongolian Heavy Lancers, while also using units of Mailed Knights to chase down/route the hordes of Horse Archers.

If I can I've found the best way to defeat Mongolian Armies is to send a detachment of Heavy Cavalry ahead of the main infantry force to bait out and kill their Heavy Cavalry, then pull back, bring up the infantry and scores of Pavise Crossbowmen/Artillery defended by Sword 'n Bucklers or Dismounted Chivalric Knights. I'm just now getting to Pike Infantry in Iberia so it'll be nearly 10 turns before the first battalions of pikes can get to the Holy Land.

The Timurids are fairly easy to beat as they rely too much on the Elephant-Tanks which can be taken out quite simply by good placement of Artillery, more often than not, though I find that my Artillery sends the Elephants rampaging throughout the Timurid Army, making my job much easier.

[Sher Khan]

Hmm... how to fight the Mongols on the open field? Very doable, even without a general to face their 10-dread generals.

What you need are tons of armoured sergeants, preferably well experienced and with all armor upgrades possible. Next, stock up on archers. Yes, Pavise crossbows are nice, but you'll find that just a horde of peasant archers or even better, Venetian archers, set on flaming arrow fire will suffice - perhaps perform better than the crossbows. Fire arrows, apart from their morale effects, are awesome against massed cavalry where a single arrow will burn an enemy to death. Finally, invest in some heavy infantry. Not a lot, but enough to fall back on. Your spearmen will do the real work here.


Next, you need to choose where to fight the Mongols. Never fight against more than two armies at once. If you can, try and engage a Mongol army at a point and direction where they will receive little or no reinforcement during the battle. Along with these precision attacks, make sure you're fighting on rather mountainous terrain (and make sure you have the height advantage when engaging on the campaign map).

Once the battle begins, survey your surrounding land and get creative. Exploit cliffs and hills that are easily defended and preferably accessible by the Mongols from only one or two pathways. Concentrate a spearwall on this downward slope and mass your archers a ways behind the main line. Hopefully you'll find a steep cliffside where they can fire from without fear of a frontal Mongol charge. Keep your heavy infantry just behind the spearline.

Your main goal is to have the Mongols come to you first. Since their horse archers are the fastest, they'll reach your lines first. Hopefully, they'll begin to rain fire on your (hopefully well-armoured) spearman and heavy infantry. This will result in a few casualties, but hopefully not so much. While the HAs are busy with that, have your archers (if you can, set to fire arrows) concentrate fire on each HA unit until they are decimated, routed, or forced to retreat.

Do not pursue.

Soon, the Mongol heavy cav and infantry will approach. The Mongol infantry are content at just sitting back and firing arrows. Have your archers teach them a lesson with concentrated fire arrow rains and crossbow bolts. However, only try and keep a small majority or equal number advantage when engaging in an archer bout. You'll need the majority of your archers to fire death on the Mongolian Heavy Lancers and their General's Bodyguard units.

You're going for casualties here, since they'll be hard to rout with just archer fire. Sooner or later, the Mongols will invest in their lancer charge, even with their general thrown into the charge. Here is where you'll make the Mongol stock drop. Just have your spearmen hold the line. If in defend mode, they'll perform admirably, but certainly take lots of casualties if a Mongol charge succeeds.

This is where you send in your Heavy Infantry to plug up the breakthrough. Only a few areas will allow the Mongol horses to push through simply by sheer weight of their numbers. While this sort of breaks your line, it's perfect to charge with Venetian heavy infantry and crush them.

Sooner or later, if all goes well and God is with you on this day, your men will capture or kill the Mongol general. Soon afterwards, their cavalry will be in good rout. Only their Mongol infantry and foot archers will remain. Simply charge and overwhelm them with infantry numbers and concentrated archer fire.

Hopefully, you'll have some cavalry to chase down the routers, of which they'll be plenty. Don't rely on them in battle too much, since they'll take lots of casualties that way, but save them for the final clean-up. Keep them away from arrow-range of the Mongols and you'll find that chasing down the Mongols will result in a supreme victory for the children of Abraham!

[Commander_Vimes]

load of pikeman surrounding loads of archers so they don't get flanked and u can just wait there tillthey come

[Azkatari]

pretty cheap, but i just stacked antioch with archers and spearmen and a general, mongols always seem to aim for antioch for some reason in my game,bypass several cities for it.

while turn after turn they attacked antioch, i used up 3 gazillion assassins to kill off their family members one by one until they become a rebel faction
what's wierd is that once they become rebel, they lose all their elite troops and become regular rebel armies with militia and so on

[Kalis]

As Venice I would do this (assuming full stack)
3-4 spearmen of any type.
3-4 cavalry (any type)
everything else archers.

With so many archers, you will, in fact, have the ranged advantage over the mongol horse archers (which is historically impossible, but meh).

Turn off skirmish mode on your archers.
If they charge you with their cavalry, send your cavalry in (stopping them from charging your lines), and send the spearmen in to rip them apart.

Venetian archers also make great melee troops! 11 melee attack is incredibly high (the same as dismounted knight).

You only need 3-4 spearmen to kill the enemy cavalry. To be honest in fact, you don't even need them. Spearmen get +8 vs cavalry, and since italian militia have 7, it totals up to 15, which is only slightly higher than your venetian archers at 11.

The hardest part of using this army is making sure your archers don't shoot your own forces to death!

PS: Archers are better than guns against unarmoured opponents like the mongols. While guns have a crazy high damage shot, they reload very slowly. Against a horde, you're better off with archers who get 5 shots off for every gun shot.
That, and most archers are armoured (which makes them take very little losses from archers). Guns are not.