cheating timurids?

**Alan McG** · January 06, 2011, 03:25 AM

Even though my main game is long over (I'm almost on turn 500) I wanted to conquer the entire known world and I have kept playing way beyond the natural end game.

I am close to the end now. East africa (everything east of algiers) and the middle east remain. The timurids had most settlements starting from hungary and greece, to the middle east. With much pain I have managed to take all the European settlements, and start getting into the middle east. I have 4 of them now. For a short time I managed to get a 5th one but it they took it back.

Turkey still has a couple of cities south of Russia but they have not bothered me at all, even though we are at war as well.

Timurids are the problem. They keep sending full stacks into my new territories, in such numbers that I cant believe they can produce without cheating. Do they actually cheat here, or they just had massive reserves that will eventually run out? I have not had such problems with any other civ..

A different issue is the battle itself. Those *** elephants are just impossible t beat. I have to use auto resolve all the time to get any chance of beating them, and then only by overwhelming numbers. The only thing I have found to be effective are cannons, but the aim is always so rubbish that is not worth it. Anything else I send just keeps getting mowed down!

By the way, apologies if this has been asked to death before, this is my first TW game ever..

**nhinhonhinho** · January 06, 2011, 04:04 AM

Fighting Timurid is always hot dude

. And you're still "lucky" in my opinion.

To see what those Timmies can do and how to fight them take a look at this. That's once of the best AAR I ever seen

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=285227

And here is a infamous pic used many times to "scare" people (don't look at this if you have heart disease)

http://i602.photobucket.com/albums/t...nho/qy8exj.png

The main problem of those Timmies is their elephants and most of Mongol troops (also mean their deadliest troops) have 0 upkeep so they just have to spend some money to get them and come to you. Also the settlement at that time is quite large and rich so they have the access to build more and more troop. And another reasons is: They got reinforcement and their starting money is huge enough to make them never bankrupt. The last thing: Timurid and Mongol don't have objective so they will conquer anything

**Alan McG** · January 06, 2011, 04:16 AM

Ok, that pic looks actually worse than what I'm seeing in my game (thank god).

So they actually get reinforcements from 'outside'? Is that constant through the game while they still exist? I mean I'm close to the year 2,000 in-game (sad, I know).

In the recruitment side, they would certainly be limited to 3 units per castle/turn, right? Or can elephants be built in cities as well? Even if they could, it just seems quite insane, judging by the amount of buggers they send my way.

The Mongols were not an issue. By the time I got to the middle easy they only had one city left (the one on that island west from jerusalem, rhodes i think), and I easily took it. The only factions left are timurids (big pain), turks and egyptians (both pushovers).

**nhinhonhinho** · January 06, 2011, 04:35 AM

You can take a look to their recruitment pool here. Click on the units or barrack and you can see their recruitment speed

http://totalwar.honga.net/faction.php?v=m2tw&f=timurids

As you can see. Elephants don't have great recruitment speed but Mongol cavalry have and they can spam these troops

I heard some "rumor" say Timurid constantly get reinforcements from India and China! Well about 5 full stack/times. In my experience they arrived first with 5-6 full stack. I kill them all then 5-6 full stack move in. I kill them all again and they get destroy.

The easiest way to check they get reinforcements from 'outside' or not is toggle_fow or send spy to the corner of the map.

As you say the Timur have much of Hungary to Greek and Middle East so they have base to churn out troops and throw them at you.

And can you give some pic or kindly share the save file?

**Lennert** · January 06, 2011, 04:43 AM

What faction are you playing??

**Alan McG** · January 06, 2011, 06:19 AM

Playing England. I'll see if I can get some shots next time I play and see unfair stacks crossing my borders, but no screen I have seen so far is as bad as that previous one! I think I will check arquebusiers against elephants, see if the 'noise' scares them or something..

**Alan McG** · January 06, 2011, 07:00 AM

I remmeber another instance here.. with a battle won against timurids once, i didnt finish the battle when i was promted to. Instead i wanted to kill as many units as I could in order to prevent the enemy army from running away..

Well, at the end of a very successful battle, with my entire stack of units pretty much intact.. A SINGLE ELEPHANT running havok proved IMPOSSIBLE to kill, and he kill ALL my units.

Go Timur. Kudos for realism.

**painter** · January 06, 2011, 08:29 AM

You could have ended the battle any time after receiving that prompt and win.

As for the Timurids spamming units, you could recruit dozens of assassins to sabotage their production capacity.

**nhinhonhinho** · January 06, 2011, 10:41 AM

A SINGLE ELEPHANT running havok proved IMPOSSIBLE to kill, and he kill ALL my units.

The best way is don't mess with mad elephants unless you have gun or cannon

**Old Geezer** · January 06, 2011, 11:22 PM

I must take exception to calling the Timurids "cheaters" for swamping us with panzerphants and huge cannons and ugly dudes on lightning fast ponies. These guys are what make the games ultimate challenge. They only come on with a total of 12 stacks usually and always head for a few well known sites. Their poor soldiers are not even 9 chevroned. The only way they have a chance is if you sit back and let them take a dozen settlements and build up an empire. They probably should have flamethrowers on the elephants and at least 4 full armies with nothing but heavily armored horse archers to make for a better fight. The poor elephants don't have a chance against mounted crossbowmen and mounted javelinmen and the AI doesn't even try to protect them.

**rrgg** · January 07, 2011, 01:17 AM

If you can get them in range ribaults work extremely well against elephants

**Lennert** · January 07, 2011, 03:24 AM

Especially the "monster" kind

btw: Rocket launchers work even better..

**King Of Scotland** · January 07, 2011, 05:16 AM

Gunpowder and pikes... light cavalary to distract the elephants and you should be fine. Anyway, I assume you have loads of money since you are playing as England (easiest faction of the game) and most the world is your's, so just create a super-duper big army and destroy them with musketeers and cannons.

**Alan McG** · January 07, 2011, 09:22 PM

Yeah, doing better now. Instead of sending more and more units through their northern border I am now keeping ground there with just enough soldiers and keep sending everything I can by boat to their southern lands. They have those cities almost unprotected, everything is concentrated in the north. I'm close to finishing the game at last!