Question(s) about the Mongols

[Humpleberry]

The question is this... Heck, two questions.

1) I have Mongols all the way to Stettin (Szczecin) and Krakow... is it worth it to continue playing, as they are sending stack after stack to attack me and, worse, are allied with HRE (what the... !).

At war with Denmark, HRE, Mongols and Hungary (which is pretty powerful).

I am England btw, on medium/hard, long campaign, vanilla, took out France and Scotland.

Is it worth continuing or am I screwed?

2) Is this usual in this game? Historically the mongols DID go all this way but then they retreated to Russia. In this game, do the mongols retreat, or do they just use these huge captured cities to endlessly pump an invincible stream of zerg hordes towards me?

Time wise the Timurids are here already, no idea where as the mongols and HRE are successfully making my life miserable.

Portugal are great allies, Spain is not bothering me.

[Double A]

Liberally apply longbows. The one thing HA's can't stand up to is a foot archer unit, unless they charge it. And that's where your wooden stakes come in.

Tims are more evil, you better hope the Mongols win since they don't have fecking elephants with cannons.

[Dave Strider]

Spam longbows and gunners. Spearmen too. Block off mountain passes so their advantage in horse archery is negated by a fight in a mountain pass.

[Humpleberry]

I think I have a solution to mongols, and it is surprisingly simple.

Make them do sieges, and when you see a ram getting close to your gate, sally out, take out the crew, and run back quickly to the safety of the walls. You should be able to handle their infantry with ladders and towers (well, I can).

Trouble is after defeating a powerful army here come the next two, three, five more... again and again...

And while I can pull out a win 2:1 on hard with my English archers and infantry (secret is to make a circle/square, a la Napoleonic Brits, place stakes, put all your inf/cav in the circle and watch the AI embarass itself, I cannot do that against the mongols due to their outclassing me in archery (every damn mongol unit is an archer unit) and their general bonuses being insane.

I cannot siege, say, Stettin when I see 5 stacks of mongol armies with uber generals (for some reason they send 1 army stack at a time towards my cities).

I think this stalemate can go on forever, unless the computer gets bored and sends ALL its stacks to my closest city (rinse, repeat).

[Double A]

Step 1: Get them to attack you in a castle or city.
Step 2: Put all your longbows at the gate, turn on stakes.
Step 3: Start battle, move bowmen to walls.
Step 4: Get gates to open somehow (ram or bait unit).
Step 5: Laugh maniacally as you watch the Mongol cavalry impale itself on your stake wall.
Step 6: Kill everything else.

[Marechal Ney]

Am I the only person who experiences really lame Mongols? I WANT a massive Mongol/Timurid invasion, but never get one ):

[painter]

Upgrade your city and castle defences to cannon towers. They can reach out and destroy siege equipment and then proceed to utterly destroy the besieging army without any action on your part, unless they flee.

As for the square, on medium battle difficulty, you don't need to fully enclose your forces. A unit of longbowmen staking to the right and another to the left was sufficient for me for the Mongols to avoid direct confrontation. As for English archers versus Mongol archers, be sure to claim the high ground. Not a gentle slope but a proper higher ground, hill or the mountain side. Such high ground will make your archers more effective and theirs much less effective.

[Humpleberry]

So I am getting a "continue playing" then?

But this can go on forever, a stalemate of the mongols sending a stack to my city, me beating them, then another stack just as I retrained my force. Rinse/repeat. Do the damn pony lovers retreat from Europe back to, I guess, China, or do I have to eject them myself?

[Valandur]

The Mongols have pretty low upkeep so stack spam is extremely likely but you should be able to take down the Mongols with armies basically made up of heavy cavalry and longbowmen. Lure out their horse archers and take them out with your archers and once they are dead you can pretty much deal with the rest of the army as the Mongol Heavy Lancers are generally overrated.
The Mongol's weakness is siege/bridge/difficult terrain battles when archers are nigh useless and heavy infantry can win you the battle.
The Mongol Generals always have insane bonuses, even later generation ones which can still have plenty of command and dread so you'll nearly always be at a disadvantage there.

Hold your cities and make sure they focus on your front line. Send out a few small forces and land them up near Novgorod (I'm judging they have conquered Russia), and sack their castles/fortresses/citadels which should stop the flow of manpower. Then, abandon them and let massive rebel stacks form in the settlements. Continue massacring them at your very walls and you'll probably notice that the remaining Mongol stacks will try and reconquer the rebel settlements, allowing you to push forward and begin conquering their cities and destroying their economy. When taking the castles and such, make sure you are moving quickly and try to avoid contact with Mongol forces (unless tiny).

[painter]

You will have to eject them yourself. The Mongols and the Timurids in this game will not retreat and will happily destroy every European faction if possible.

If you do not wish to continue fighting such annoying and unpleasant enemies then you should end the game now. And then in your new game, get to the Middle East first (preferably before turn 30 unless you are more experienced) and conquer it so that you may lay a reception party for the initial groups of invading Mongols and Timurids. While this is may be rather demanding if you haven't learned to pacify the Middle East so early in the game, they are at their most vulnerable at that time.

Of course, the Mongols and the Timurids have three spawn points, making it very difficult to lay a reception party at all three points. But if you don't mind adjusting the odds in your favour, you can control the random number generator so that they will always appear below Baghdad. There are two river crossing there, which make for great battlegrounds as long as they keep throwing their forces at you there. Unfortunately, they don't have to cross the rivers and may ignore your forces stationed there or choose to try their luck elsewhere after you have bloodied their noses.

[FootSoldier]

Wow. I've never seen them come through to Stettin, but then I've generally fought them earlier in Russia or in the Middle East.

I'd fight it out in 2 ways. Seems like an interesting scenario, so I'd stick with it. What I wouldn't do is sit on the defensive waiting for stack after stack to come at you. They will eventually grind you down if you do that.

First, I'm with the canon tower theory. Build them immediately if you don't have them. Then, don't wait for the Mongols to attack the city/castle once they siege it. Attack them on the first round they siege from within the city, so they don't have ladders and towers. You don't need to actually sally. Unrealistically perhaps, they will form up in range of your canon towers, and get shot to pieces. Usually their general dies in this barrage. They'll withdraw at around 60% casualties, and you'll have 0 casualties since you didn't sally, and didn't suffer a couple of rounds of sieging. It's a boring battle - you just watch them taking casualties for 15 minutes, but it works.

Second - am I the only one who fights the Mongols in the field? I like to attack quickly and break up their formations, not getting into long exchanges of arrow fire.

You'll need say 10 longbows, 2 or 3 billmen, and the rest heavy cavalry - a couple of general's units in the stack is ideal. Maybe some light horse for chasing routers. Maybe a couple of DFK. The English higher level longbows will be stronger in melee than Mongol Warriors. Advance your longbows, concentrating fire on one enemy unit at time - on their flanks. Support with a couple of bills for their heavy cavalry - maybe a DFK or two for the melee.

When in range charge the MW and MFA with your longbows for hand to hand melee. Pick flank units and charge from the side with cavalry as the longbows engage in melee if you can. The MW and MFA will rout. Chase the routers - hobilars will do for this. At the end stage your longbows will outshoot their remaining Heavy Horse Archers.

Keep the foot units advancing - don't get into long exchanges of fire.

I advance the heavy archer units (longbows) by running them in front of each other, i.e.

. (Mongol Position)
. MWMWMW MFAMFAMFAMFA


. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA (firing arrows)

. Bills AAAAAAAAAAAAAA (firing) Bills

. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA ^^^(running to take up the front position, and to melee if in range)

If the Mongol Heavy Cavalry do get through to your longbows then engage them in melee (disable skirmish, or use alt attack) don't let them retreat. Hold them there while you bring in a bill unit or heavy cavalry, then walk the longbows back out of melee.

Yes, you'll take casualties, but you'll defeat them. I've used this method of fighting Mongols in the open with heavy archer units with the Russians (dismounted Dvor), the Turks (Ottoman Infantry) the Byzantines (Byz Guard) and the Venetians (Venetian guard), so the English longbows should do the same. It will only be really tough if it's a complete stack of their silver units - and they only have so many of those. Try it!

I also like the plan to sack some of their cities/castles in the rear, and to let them rebel. That should prove distracting to the Mongols.

Go for Stettin and their cities/castles as soon as you can. Don't sit on the defensive. Also, you can run single units onto their territories and behind their lines. These are throw-away units. The Mongols will turn to fight them, slowing their advance, and this buys you time and gives you room to manoeuvre.

Good luck - and keep us posted!

[Silverheart]

Keep playing, definitely!
Make extensive use of Longbowmen for stakes and Swordsmen/DFK to stand behind the stakes and protecting walls.
A defensive strategy works really well against the Mongols, and England is one of the best factions for defeating them - No horse archers, perhaps, but with such quality archers and heavy infantry they don´t need much else to hold their ground.

[FootSoldier]

Well Humpleberry - different opinions on how, but all agreed with continue. You're probably making some envious of the opportunity (me for one) ... :d

I'm sure you'll have to eject them yourself. This means going forward and attacking them at some point.

My battle tactics are offensive against the Mongols, and they work for me. Most seem to recommend defensive battles. Personally, I dislike having my troops under extended arrow fire, and my longer exchanges with the Mongols seem to come out even at best unless I've got a real advantage of much higher ground. I have successfully fought defensive battles when weaker, but using cavalry offensively against their archers. I can't remember what happened when I played England against them - too long ago. However, I do acknowledge the alternative methods if they've worked for others.

Unless you're against their silver stacks the battles should be winnable enough. Otherwise still winnable, but much harder/higher casualties.

Be "Fine with blood" :d

I do like the idea of landing a force at Novgorod too. Get spies behind their lines as soon as you can, so you can see where their reinforcements are coming from, and where they are weak.

[Humpleberry]

Ok played to the end. Was actually fun to lose. The Mongols were the faction with most territories, a global power. They were unbeatable, and while nibbling at their empire the game went to the last turn. The surprise of the game was the Papacy, which became a military power (allied to me all game), and pushed Mongols and Hungarians all on their own. Spain and Portugal are scum backstabbers, we hates them. Portugal went mental and sent armies all over, including to Milan and Sicily which I occupied.

I can't believe that the game stated I lost as the English, as I occupy all of Western Europe... Henry V would cut off his own left nut to accomplish what I did in this game.

[FootSoldier]

Sympathy Humpleberry. I assume you lost because you got to turn 225 without taking 45 territories and/or Jerusalem. I guess you know you can continue anyway - the "loss" only means you didn't hit the game objectives.

I'm curious though - did you take the fight to the Mongols? "Fear is a weapon ... " as the Mongol generals keep saying, and they sure scare many into holding back. In truth, no one is unbeatable whatever the situation - the player can always win.

So I'm wondering what tactics you used against them. Did you hold them at Stettin? Did you push forward? Did you defeat them in open battle? Since they (and then the Timurids) turn up every campaign you're gonna need to sort out some way of defeating them. After learning how to conquer everyone else they are the game challenge ...

I'm glad you enjoyed it. "There are some defeats more triumphant than victories"

[Humpleberry]

It was a stalemate, but had many epic battles and had great fun. I do not see how people can win with 45 territories plus Jerusalem on VH/VH...

This is one fun game

[FootSoldier]

Yeah, you can do it. Have another go