mongol uls SO overpowered...

[trojanuch]

Ok so here's the situation.

I've been playing my first VH/VH campaing in this game (this is my first campaing in mtw2 at all), I've chosen Poland to be my faction. Everything seemed to be fine - I did some conquering, fought some defensive wars against HRM. I did not manage to always win the battles (finnaly they became interesting - RC+OS26) - especially when AI force was much stronger than mine, but eventually I menaged to prevail. The game seemed interesting, challanging etc. Also I always tried to have the biggest army possible and still be able to maintain some develpment in my cities/castles (I use RC so the upkeep of army is an issue).

Around 1240 the best unit I had was Polish Nobles (medium-armoured cavalry with some ranged cpabilities), upgraded archers, and of course mercenary heavy infrantry/cavalry). I just managed to convert one of my castles into fortress. And than the mongols came - what crossed my border was 10!! full stack armies consisting almost exclusevly heavy/very heavy cavalry. 5 of them where led by generals with 10 stars or so. There is simply no way to stop ONE such army with anything that is available for you around 1240. I did a test - hired the best mercenary cavalry available (there was 1 unit available) - heavy german knights - they where thorn appart by heavy lancers (and there where about 4-5 units of heavy lancers in every mongol army).

This mongol spawn is way too much - from what I saw they also attacked hungary using similar force - that gives about 15-20 full stack armies consisting exlusevly of uber-soldiers at the time when a large european country could afford 3-4 with only some units being elite (but worse than average mongol unit).

It's like fighting arrows against nukes. I thought mongol power was in their tactics not having armoured super-soldiers who make forntal assault on full mercenary spearmen unit leaving 30 soldiers alive after first charge and not loosing a single cavalrymen! I imagined that the battles with mongols will be something like hardest in RTW fights against african scirmishers (long loose lines, arrows/javelins flying from every direction and a lot of manouvering). I tend to had biggest looses in such battles (eventually loosing some) when playing roman faction but at least they where possible to win....

I don't know maybe I was unlucky or something. But if it's typical than maybe someone can tell me what to do with mongols beacuse otherwise this meens that the grand campaing for every eastern-european faction ends around 1240....

Also maybe it's reasonable to weaken mongols somewhat... Could anyone give me simple suggestion where to do it.

Finally here are the mods I use:
DLV 3.1 + ench2
RC 1.2 for DLV
OS26 (i know it's not popular lately but if you just started to hate because of this than just skip this point )
Zappa's changes

I really apprecieate any suggestions.

Cheers!

[Lumberjack]

AI must not get the same end of turn upkeep penalties.

I'm about 200 turns in, got the 3rd horde and I have two armies in enemy territory and 4 in friendly, you know how much money I lost at the end of the turn? over $12 000, my economy is only finally picking up, for the first 150 turns I could hardly afford to develop my cities, and Ive been careful about keeping ungarrisoned troops, and being on enemy territory.

I'm having the your problem with the Egyptians, theyre sending a constant stream of 1-4 stacks. A full stack of horse archers does a good job of thining them out, but I can hardly keep up with retraining (time and cost)

[ivanhoex]

i have cheated but it was worth it.

this is my tale:

i changed values on mongols, so they tire normally (they are still better) and the run out of ammo normally (they are still better)
but i changed all archers attacks in the world so mongols are finest archers out there and i also changed their armour values so they are finely armoured.

all that said, when horde finally came to my lands (playin turk) i set up a series of forts. in each one leaving a 100fl upkeep army, this way mongols attackd each turn a different fort.
check out the YEARS of the next screenshots:






i kept building forts so i won some time and a could deliver an army up there.

they took a castle, leave it and went for bigger, i came from their back and retook the castle from rebels.

they tried to reach a city, but a rebel spawned right on a bridge, only way to reach, and mongols dont like attacking rebels... so they left to russian lands.



after punishing the russians a litle they came back for my bones again, but this time i have more armies, put them in any pass to my castle and city, built forts in every pass... and they just didnt resolved to go anywhere, one turn they head to one pass the other to the river, the other again to the pass... that gave me A LOT of time. they began to lose generals to aging...


then i was ready... i finnally got some large cities and a fortress and build some minor tech units (also fireguns were available, i have not a huge city yet, anyway not much use against mongols...)

i prepared my castle with naftatuns and dismounted sipahis and ottoman infantry.... i was ready...




i planted my melee both to block incoming stairs and towers and in a box formation, leaving room in front of the door to allow enemies to enter the place, but not expand from there.

put javes and naftatuns around these, and my gral archer just in front of the door (protected by 2 units of dis sipahis and behind the naftas)

the boxed defense (made a battle in custom to show these)



at the walls, fight was HARD. im used to see a militia spear fight off trained spearmen of much better gear (i also diminish militias compared with trained soldiery in my edu).
this time i got my best spearmen being in big trouble against their melee archers.


but as always, naftatuns won the battle. as the mongols entered trhough the door, they exploded to pieces. even the bodyguards died in one hit.

they collapsed over my boxed melees, but they holded. (fortunaly.) and in the end it was massacre.

if it was only one army attacking, it would have been all fine. 10% loses on my side, 80% or more on theirs. but there where two armies attacking, and i finnally got a lot of casualties because of tiredom plus lack of ammo.




lost 500 of an army of 2000, but i killed 3000 mongols in the process.

i wont have that luck again, most my deads were melee, and i cannot resuply, so im expecting a loss of the castle and hopefully killing as much mongols as people i lose.

no one said mongols are to be laught off, but my experience was (buggily) happier and funnier than it could have been....





btw, also check how bad got rus hit by rebels, they cannot have a territory more than a few turns until it rebels. a miracle they are still out there, especially with ultraexpansionist germany as neighbour
also to note: northern ireland had never have a diferent owner but rebels!! good work, even against those large english and scottish armies attacking each other turn

[verity_blues]

Mongols are Mongols. Unbeaten in history and, somewhat in campaign for that reason. Their arrows are supposed to be like dark clouds falling upon their enemies, slaughtering and scattering them mercilessly.

[Lord Finga]

@ivanhoex: little suggestion for the gate-encirclement-tactic. i always position the infantry in a wider open rectangle than yours on the picture and the general at one of the sides being not on the opposite of the gate. and enough enemy units have entered the midst of the rectangle i select all of my units being part of the rectangle and let them charge the enemy. this tactic works nearly every time! i guarantee that the enemy will rout within 15 seconds after the charge !

[ivanhoex]

=) i used that too, but that tactic wont hold too well against a very heavy horse force, i put mines in defending coz this way i suffer much less friendly fire, and too much friendly fire may start a retreat from my melees, meaning utter destruction XD


i use a wider one some times, but when too much men are inside, and having good troops they just dont retreat instantly, they climb to my walls trough the litle doors at the sides of the big one =P

that makes it all a little more difficult to fight off and thus i preffered this way.


maybe its instant retreat for them if i have naftas, but i use this since javes and javes do not inflict so hard a morale hit




(my changes for edu are mostly for armour values, they are better, and about cavs, having much more melee armour, so a charge wont kill as many heavy cavs, and my point is actually valid in my game, maybe in yours works different)


@verity:
as you can see, as turks i have a fun time againt them, i have actually a chance to outfight them but it will be REALLY tough, even more than elephant artilleried egiptians, not being able to outfight a faction is not fun, and hell, this is a game.

[Darviathar]

Ok...honestly....You're playing VH/VH. I am sure you realize how significant the bonuses are to the computer in battle on VH mode. Hard is not that big....barely noticable. But VH produces some very unrealistic results. I have recently started playing this game after spending about 3 months playing Rome Total Realism (as the Romans, on VH/VH in 4 different games). I quickly learned not to use that difficulty setting here as the Byzantines; My troops aren't near the equal of the Republican legions, and early on it can be almost impossible. I scaled back to Hard/Hard and am getting a fairly enjoyable game . I've only faced a few Mongol Jihad armies, and because of the Dismounted Byzantine Lancer bug (which I just discovered the solution for here) I had to autocalculate each battle. So I haven't faced the Mongols on the field of battle "officially". Quite honestly, I HOPE they are uber bad-asses, because I am rolling the Turks back a bit too easily. I need something to occupy me in the East for at least another 100 years before I begin my attempts to recreate the Roman Empire by retaking Italy.

I noticed that Box formation that someone screenshotted. Looks like an excellent tactic, but I have trouble arranging my units in formation in castle battles; it simply won't let me put them where I want, regardless of how tight I form my ranks. How did you get your soldiers in such an elaborate formation like that?

[ivanhoex]

@darviathar

first, welcome to medieval2, and DLV

in medieval harder difficulty does not affect stats of units, just the artificial intelligence behind them. huge difference against rome.

dlv is designed to be played in vh/vh, if you do in any other difficulty you might encounter problems in your campaign, like indecisive factions and a big etc...




as for formations, i arrange my formations as close as posible to my final formations, then start battle, and pulse P, for pause.

then i arrange them to their final positions / formations.

usually, the walls and streets allows better width for troops after the deployment phase (meaning once battle started)

you might know but maybe not, that holdin spacebar shows where the units are heading, while holding right button of your mouse while ordering them to move allows you to set the unit in an especific depth of rows and set their orientation. (unless you are moving a grouped set of troops, which only allows to set orientation normally)

edit: some times you might have to release pause and pause again instantly, so spacebar actually shows the destinations of your troops, because if they were ordered to move in the same "pause session" this might not be reflected yet because they have not time to "start" their movement, they just received the order to.