Peasant armies can defeat the Mongols

[Bond]

It's a fact.

I am playing my Egyptian campaign and had armies mixed with spearmen, archers, calvary, etc. and suffered defeat time and time again. Once in a while I'd get a win, but at great expense not only in the # of troops, but in my economy. Army upkeep combined with a few bribes to get ride of their armies drained my economy. I was nearly breaking 200,000 florins and now had barely 25,000 florins. My friend and I were playing and he suggested buying peasants just because of how broke I was. I was able to build a few peasant armies at low price/upkeep, and to my surprise they were beating the mongol armies. I was able to eventually destroy them with my peasants.

Notice: This doesn't work against the Timiruds as they recruit infantry and have elephants. I have learned that the hard way

[dr_guerra]

I've never had problems killing the Mongols, but your idea seems interesting. Do you merely auto resolve, or manage your glorious peasant armies to victory?

[Bond]

auto..computer couldn't handle 12,000 troops on the battlefield and those are just my reinforcements

[Strom]

Auto-resolve is generally horribly unfair to cavalry (including horse archers) and to siege defenders (who don't seem to get much benefit from their fortifications.)

For example:
Me: One general and two units of heavy english mounted knights
Rebel: One longbowman, one town militia

Auto resolve: Battle lost, all units suffer 50% casualties or so, about 3 rebels killed. (Yes, not a typo, 3 rebels.)

Manual resolve: Battle won, two casualties taken, zero rebels survived.

[Solrac]

Indeed, auto-resolve is unfair in many situations. For example, some time ago, I was playing as France. I captured Antioque and Jeruselam during a crusade and changed (with time progress) Antioque into a citadel. When the mongols sieged Jerusalem I auto-resolve the battle (+/- 1200 french units VS +/- 2500 mongols) and I loose. Then when they sieged my citadel, I fought manualy and I win (+/- 1000 french VS 2300 mongols)

[Gornard]

I have a rather simplistic and maybe ameteurish way of defeating the mongels without autoresolve:

1, Be far away - Obviously this is useless if your an eastern border country, but it's best not to be in the area when there armies come in clusters

2, Wait for them to settle a while - After they establish themselves, their high experinced armies won't disapear, but they will split up and move around the map as a result of various wars and jihads. Fighting the armies individually is much easier.

3, Take the initiative - I find if i let them come to me they can often bring friends, making defending in seiges difficult. It's best to seek their armies out as soon as war is declared

4, Always use crusades if available - if your catholic of course, the pope rarely refuses a crusade against them in my experience so far. The intention is not to take their city straight away but to get your armies to any isolated mongel stack asap.

5, (most importantly) always attack in twos - Even if you can't make 2 full stacks, 2 blanced armies over half way full will do the job against an army full of gold chevron mognel horse archers etc. This may sound obvious, but playing as sicily and other nations that don't get horse archers till very late in the game means my cavalry ends up chasing them around the map. The advantage of two armies means two starting positions in the battlefield. This means rather then being a liability your infantry can close in, your two groups of heavy cavalry can succesfully flank them, it's much harder for them to get out of range of foot archers and artillary and their army splits it's attention between the 2. The result is a scatering effect on the mongels while two smaller armies close in and take them apart.

6, Finally use limited war. After a crushing defeat like this the settled mongels will be ready to negotiate, you can usually get 1 or 2 territories off them with a ceasefire, and you don't have to worry about the rest of the high experience stacks coming to exact revenge. Hey presto you get free cities and free troops for minimal loses. Keep doing this throught the game (i find they declare war on me regualrly) and they will lose their experinced armies and territory and become no more of a threat then any other muslim nation.

Granted i haven't tried this in many games but it seems to work. Hope it wasn't too obvious.

[REDrake]

I my current game with Spain they quickly overrun most of Eastern Europe destroying Poland in the process. I used a crusade against Breslau hoping that by adding more factions to fight them mongols could be destroyed. Unfortunately, those HRE, Hungary and Papal State armies were nothing compared to Mongols. It relied still on me to cross the Europe and defeat them with only one army (mostly Chivalric Knights and Dismounted Chivalric Knights) and defeat several full stacks of armies. I then sold the lands I captured to HRE and mongols were finally subdued. My general reach maximum piety, loyalty, chivalry and command with that campaign.

[zind]

I my current game with Spain they quickly overrun most of Eastern Europe destroying Poland in the process. I used a crusade against Breslau hoping that by adding more factions to fight them mongols could be destroyed. Unfortunately, those HRE, Hungary and Papal State armies were nothing compared to Mongols. It relied still on me to cross the Europe and defeat them with only one army (mostly Chivalric Knights and Dismounted Chivalric Knights) and defeat several full stacks of armies. I then sold the lands I captured to HRE and mongols were finally subdued. My general reach maximum piety, loyalty, chivalry and command with that campaign.

OMG< Spain is by far my favorite faction, and i remember a campaign long ago where my empire spand from lisbon, to france, and parts of northern italy, and lots of nort africa, any way, The mongol empire stretched from eastern russia, all the way to durazzo. So I see that my mighty spanish empire is ready for another enemy, I look over the langs of the mongols, I make one stack army, With 4 bombards, and a mix of half filled units and mercenaries, and one musketter unit. Any way, I landed my army south of durazzo. I slammed it with my army and took it. Next turn i sent my army eastward to take thessalicona, on the mongols turn they attacked me with there most massive army, I placed all of my army wayyyy up in the mountains and had the 4 cannons behind my infantry, the mongols funneld up the mountain. My cannons smashed into them with unusual effect. the mongol army was stretched out and crushed, after that battle, my army blitzkrieged itself all the way to Constantinople. It was fun, but the massive mongol empire eventually ate up my over extended assault.

[Desperado †]

Indeed, auto-resolve is unfair in many situations.

Yes, but you can use it to your advantage. If your general Is caught by an enourmous army when he has no movment points left, chances are if you play he'll probably die - especially if they have light / missile cavalry, but he'll probably definetly escape if you auto resolve.

[Prince_of_Macedon]

This won't work online, unfortunately, unless the Mongol player is messing around (bigtime).

[dr_guerra]

I typically kill the Mongols before they settle. Once they get a city, they become difficult to root out.

[chimeer]

Why not just use lots of archers and allow the mongols to come to you. It isn't hard to beat their full stacks 1 at a time if your army has 6+ crossbowmen or preferabley regular archers that have long range. Wait for them to come to you in the battle hit them hard with your archers then when they set their's up to fire back at you charge your infantry using light calvalry to loop around behind their lines and pick off stragglers. Your archers either shoot the horse archers or rain fire onto their main line. The line breaks and your light calvary captures alot of prisoners.

On a side note what happens if you kill their first 2 stacks right off the bat do their reinforcements still come?

[Bond]

Why not just use lots of archers and allow the mongols to come to you. It isn't hard to beat their full stacks 1 at a time if your army has 6+ crossbowmen or preferabley regular archers that have long range.

hard to get 'em one at a time. most(if not all) of their generals can do night battles and they move in a horde formation

[Dead Sun]

they didn't use to in medieval original. i knew the were coming so i slaughtered them and they never came back. personally never tried it, but as the turks i destroyd about 4 of their primary armies (took a dent in my economy),even killed their leader, but they kept rolling over thehills, so i'd say no. they'll have smething like ten hordes and you can try kkilling them all, just don't bat urself up ifuu cant do it, hehe

[High Chunker Greens]

Archers and castles. Easy as that

[SoulBreaker360]

how many stacks of p;easents do you need to take down one of their sacks?

[Bond]

don't know the exact figures

but i'd say 2-3 full peasant armies can top 1 mongol army(assuming that this is one of their horde armies that lack infantry)

[Solrac]

I prefer spend more florins with better armies

[Wizzerdrix]

zind thanks for the story. OP, gotta try this, thank you. I dont think even my super computer can handle 12000 units but I'll see tomorrow

[Magno]

12000 peasants per mongol army which are about 9 that comes to a total of 108000 peasants in total, that is the majority of the population of the faction right there.