Cumans?

[Lone Crusader]

Hello, I am considering to start a game as cumans. Though it seems like a big challenge, cos of their pagan fate and their troops dont look too good in stats at least.

Has anyone played the cumans, so you could give me some advice what troops should I rely on, cos their only good cavalry come from high tier-stables.

Their infantry looks pretty weak.

[Basileus Antiochus]

I would suggest reading Skantarios's AAR, Pagan Vengence

[Lone Crusader]

Yes, thats an excellent AAR, but still... I wish to know the solution how I am going to build an empire when my strongest cavalry unit is as strong as ordinary feudal knights, and I am supposedly playing a cavalry - favoring faction..

[Lazy]

Cumans are great!
The only "problem" is that their army is completly different from the european ones... so you have to invent new strategies!
They have superior horse-archers! This is how you will win! Build a lots of them and open field battles are about to become boring
Do not try to fight high armoured european knights in melee! Engage them with archers first!
Do not believe in the poor stats of the early archers they have... even those are superior!
You can even refuse to include infantry in your attacking armies => siege an castle with just a few horse-archers... and shoot the enemy after they sallied out!
The infantry does look weak but: some of them wear axes (armour piercing), their best infantry unit is good at melee AND has a bow what makes it one of the best castle-defenders...

Use horses for open fields and sieges! Use infantry to defend your own castles/towns!

Your biggest struggle will be against the mongols/timurids as they rely on horse archers too...

[Lazy]

... create a battle
give your army something like 5 "crappy" horse archers
give the anemy something that you fear... like 10 of it! I pretend now that it does not matter what as long as it is realistic for the AI to build it during campaign!
After beginning the battle DO NOT TOUCH THE MOUSE!!!!! ( exept turning skirmish mode on )
watch your army win!!

[Brunotaurus]

That AAR you suggested has very little in common with a 6.4 late era VH/VH campaign as the cumans. At least i wasn't seeing full Mongol stacks roaming your lands.
And your 2 "feudal-horse-archers" (aka Bekh Druzhi) you are able to recruit within the first 15 turns ain't going to stop them ...

so back to the topic: has anybody got good advise on the cumans? I was thinking about migration, but many units are locals so you're hurting your rooster along the way.

One more thing i did was to move a small army of 1 general and 4-5 horse archers (2 militias even) to the west to Azak. They were attacked by a Kievan general and 12 other units while sieging Azak (on the surrendering turn ofc). But well i won that fight against the Kievan and the battle against the Rebels right after, so fighting through the Kievan and maybe Russian turfs might be an option.

Another option that came to my mind was to rush your horse archers to Constantinople. That should be a significant boost to your rather weak economy, especially since you can get 4+ silk camping merchants out.

[Lone Crusader]

Man, I prefer to play the 6.1 version and you are saying cumans get more units in the newer version? Oh boy..

I know that with good tactics any force is to reckoned with, but I detest the idea of that my troops are going to lose almost every 1vs1 encounter, that is If I dont support 1 unit with another.

And their one-handed axemen, not AP? seriously?

I find that Cumans were never intended to be a fun faction to play, just something to be conquered..
I mean how much pride can you hold in your troops if your supposedly best units equal to the middle-tier other factions units?

It seems like the cumans are missing at least a high-end melee cavalry and missile cavalry units..

Not to mention that there is actually very few units they can produce, compare with france etc. west european factions, who have a wide variety of units.

[Largon]

I had a great campain with them. You have expand west as fast as you can to get more money. I defeated Novgorod and the kievian rus with armies which consisted 1/2 of horsearchers and 1/4 of footarchers.

[Silver Legionary]

I would use this: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=405904
if you want a better experience with the Cumans, and in general.

[Ichon]

Cumans are fun campaign- early era is quite easy as really none of the western factions are much challenge at all while you have 100s turns to conquer before Mongols arrive or the western factions get to plate armor.

Late campaign is much more difficult. I think Cumans could have a few more heavier melee fighters as well. Their tactics weren't all about shooting and they had most HA fighting both as lancer and HA. However I do agree they should be quite limited in infantry- some dismounted versions like they have now probably closer to Janissaries or Norse archers that can both shoot and fight in melee but excel at neither compared to the best of other faction heavy infantry.

[Liandro]

100's of turns? More like 120-125 turns, and when the Mongols come, you're still stuck with junk for fighting in East or West and West is all you'll have because none of your units will or can hold the line against that force of nature. If you want a good Pagan faction the only real choice is Lithuania, throughout all the game they have good to great units. I suppose that's my opinion, but I can't last against the Mongols as the Cumans, I can as the Khwarezmians, Turks, Romans, Rus', but Cumans ... forget it.

[Ichon]

1tpy or 2tpy? 1tpy its about 140 turns before you have Mongols to fight unless you expanded SE as Cumans. If you are playing 2tpy then its about 250+ turns. Cumans after 100 turns should have tons of high XP elite units and quite good mercenaries. I never had much trouble in the early campaign since by 1200 you should be controlling 1/2 the map. Late campaign I agree with your statements... your units don't have enough XP, you can't afford many elites or mercenaries, and expanding west is a bit harder with the stronger western rosters though in 1200s the west still is relatively weak against HA.

[Serbian Hussar]

General, 6 Bekh Druzhinas and 6 Dismounted Bekh Druzhinas and some spearmen, and no one can touch you untill plate armour.

[Anatorax]

I am playing as Kievan Rus now and Cumans are giving me hard time. Fighting them in the open, when they have a bunch of missile cavalry is aggravating. My suggestion is to try to push to the West as soon as possible. The point is that western armies have relatively little light cavalry in their armies in the very beginning and mostly rely on infantry. If you micro-manage your Cavalry you can decimate half of the infantry from distance. You can also rely on the only cavalry armies sometimes and their mobility plus shorter distances between European cities will give you quite an advantage.