Question about hordes

[LaMuerte]

I'm pondering about hordes...the kind that is created when you take a faction's last settlement. Having played RTW+BI like most of you , I somehow miss the 'Oh Crap!' feeling you got when a horde arrived at your doorstep. Five stacks of bloodlusted , ravenous , desperate homeless killers , ready to carve a piece out of my empire.

I was pleasantly surprised to see DLV also had this option . But , in my humble opinion , they miss a bit of power to really have me worried. The last French horde I encountered , consisted of one full stack , and two minor stacks, nothing I couldn't handle with one full stack. I shadowed them with a superbly led veteran army , ready to engage them , should they decide to siege one of my towns. However , they simply moved all the way from Toulouse to Marienburg without engaging my army or my towns. After that they left my lands and I stopped tracking them.

I am aware that I do not know the full picture well enough to answer the question 'Can they get more punch?'. Many reasons come to mind as to why they are weak compared to RTW , the first and foremost being this is MTW2 and not RTW. Perhaps there are certain limitations to what this engine can do. Perhaps the lag created by processing hordes would be too big for that kinda horde. Perhaps bigger hordes create problems for other scripts. Perhaps there are stronger hordes , but I just haven't met them yet (to be more clear , I am not talking about Mongols or Timurids) , etc...

I was thus wondering how you guys feel about hordes , and their 'fear factor'. Do you feel the same as me? Or do you think they are just fine ? Perhaps one of the active modders can shed a light as to why they are like this , and wether it is due to engine/system limitations hordes are so small.

Thanks in advance.

edit: Do players respawn as a horde ? Or do we just end up in oblivion , being forgotten by history?

[Tokus*Maximus]

Yeah, we need a higher fear factor. Larger hordes. Especially the Mongol one should be beefed up a bit!