Tips for fighting the Mongols?

[RZZZA]

I'm playing as England, its 1275 right now and I hold most of the west along with all of Egypt. I'm trying to defend the Byzantines and Russians from the Mongol Horde but I'm surprised to see how many full stacks the Mongols have. It's got to be at least 30 full stacks.

Do these guys just keep spawning full stacks of armies or will I eventually be able to drive them back if I destroy some of these?

The way I've been doing it is training full stacks of feudal knights and sending them out. It's pretty expensive, I can't afford more than 3 full stacks of feudal knights at a time. They're blitzing the Kievan Rus pretty hard now and I don't know if I'll be able to stop them from destroying them.

Tips?

[Strengelicher]

The Mongol spawning will eventually stop. Wear them down and you can beat them.

[certoipus]

I never lead battles myself.
But once I've stopped Mongols - near Edessa (playing as Egypt).
I've made about 10 full armies (various soldiers) and attack Mongols one by one - 4 my armies vs 1 Mongol army.

[jado818]

tips to defeat the mongols


try sending wave after wave of men

[Paragon]

tips to defeat the mongols


try sending wave after wave of men

Mongols have a limited killing hability, so I sent wave after wave of men until they were done!

[PapaRosario]

Best tip for defeating the Mongols:

surrender_regions Mongols

[Darwin's Monstrosity]

The Mongols stop spawning after a while, and until you've got them dwindled down to almost nothing, they'll be bankrupt. Meaning: Every time you thrash one of their armies, it's pretty much gone for good. Beat them down over time as the overall strategy. For tactics, don't fight them in the field unless they're pretty inferior or you've got nothing to lose. Let them come to your cities, and when they come, have ~5 units of archers, ~5-8 units of spearmen, 1 general, ~2-3 artillery units (catapults or up, no ballistas, ballistas suck), ~3-4 heavy infantry units, ~1-3 units of heavy infantry.

Since you're England, your archers'll have stakes, or you can get those Martio-what's-its around Syria, which do have stakes. Deploy all your units in your square, and have your archers set up stakes right in front of the pathway the Mongols'll come down once they break through. Set your spearmen back about fifteen feet surrounding that path in kind of a \___/ formation. Mix your heavy infantry in there with the spearmen for when the dismounted soldiers come. The stakes should basically go in between the tips of that spearmen formation (Between the top left of the \ to the top right of the /). Set your artillery another thirty or forty feet behind, looking straight down the pathway the Mongols'll come from. Then set your archers up behind the spearmen a little ways back, but make sure you deploy them out with their stakes blocking the hallways. Move them into those positions once you've started the battle.

I'm doing this as the Fatimids, and I'm crushing the Mongols. I tried holding them at the walls a few times but I took way too many casualties (even with stakes deployed at the gates - when you fight them at the gates, the infantry come first and the horses don't get to charge through. When they're not charging, the stakes are pretty ineffective.) I just used this to defend Damascus - I had 1500 soldiers, they had 1700. I lost 300 (about ~100 were from friendly fire from my catapults from bad targeting), they lost 1650. Almost none got past the stakes, the few that did were quickly chopped up. They routed pretty quickly if the hit the stakes. There'll be a few units of horse archers or foot archers left over using this tactic, but that's what your heavy cavalry are for. Just charge the remnants and they'll rout or die pretty quickly.

You don't really want to fight the Mongols in the field, like I said. If you can afford to keep throwing stacks of Feudal Knights at them, go ahead, but that's pretty costly and inefficient. I understand it if you're trying to save the Russians and Byzantines, but if you're wondering how to beat the Mongols in general, this is it. It's the most efficient way I know of to wear them down.

Happy hunting!

[RZZZA]

Yeah I want to protect the Russians. Byzantines are rich and strong so they can protect themselves, But Russians in my game are vulnerable.

[Navajo Joe]

Feudal Knights are too slow and lack flexibility, against faster nimble horsemen. If you want to fight them on a plain, recruit Mercenary Horse Archers, Hobilars and Mercernary Light Cavarly, though you will take high losses, even lose. Best is to hold them on a bridge, or a mountain pass or let them besiege you. Don't use to many stakes, give them a chance leave a gap for them, plug it with spearmen.

If you want to see stack reduction , call a Crusade, in my last campaign I called a Crusade on Khiva, I counted 15 Crusade armies pass Damaghan, they all died, but they hurt the Mongols so much, led to their fall

[RZZZA]

Feudal Knights are too slow and lack flexibility, against faster nimble horsemen. If you want to fight them on a plain, recruit Mercenary Horse Archers, Hobilars and Mercernary Light Cavarly, though you will take high losses, even lose. Best is to hold them on a bridge, or a mountain pass or let them besiege you. Don't use to many stakes, give them a chance leave a gap for them, plug it with spearmen.

If you want to see stack reduction , call a Crusade, in my last campaign I called a Crusade on Khiva, I counted 15 Crusade armies pass Damaghan, they all died, but they hurt the Mongols so much, led to their fall

Yeah but if I call a crusade, they're going to attack the Russians and/or Byzantines on their way to the Mongols. I don't want that.

[Darwin's Monstrosity]

In my campaigns the crusading armies only go after their target, they ignore things along the way even if they're poorly defended. Call a crusade and let the rich, squishy Christian kingdoms give them hell!

[Heart of Madness]

I dealt with the Venetians as the Byzantines the same was as Paragon in the Crusades campaign. Constantinople wasn't defended well enough for the invasion but I sent the full stack that was in there led by the emperor against the nearest army and I just tore it apart. I think my command went up by 3 after that and I sent one unit of cavalry to find the troops that escaped with their general. I never did so he must have turned rebel or died in the forest somewhere.

Anyways then I attacked the Doge and his heir and the battle ended in my favor again, but a whole heck of a lot escaped. I chased them down the next turn and finished off what was left of them. Killed their heir mid-cavalry charge amidst all my horsemen, and the only man to escape that day was the Doge himself. My archers kept missing him. I executed the heir and the next turn it said the Venetian faction was destroyed.

The whole point of the story: They never made it to Constantinople. I'd say direct combat would work well. Cavalry is hard to go up against so I would probably do the stakes thing.

[Navajo Joe]

I assure you they will go direct to the target, its if the Russians or Byzantines attack them

[Mr Stereo1]

If you're playing as England, the answer is, as always, more longbowmen. Normally when I need to fight the Mongols in the field I gather as many good long range missile units as I can, guard them with some good anti-cavalry high armour defensive infantry, and keep a couple of units of heavy and light cavalry back in case they're dumb enough to charge. The only part of the Mongol armies, numbers aside, that's caused me problems is the skirmisher cavalry. If you have enough good missile units to trade fire with them they'll either be wiped out, meaning you can move onto their main force, or their army will charge yours and you can get to grips with them.

[Anjin]

In my experince the only way to beat Skirmisher Cavalry is Skirmisher Cavalry and the problem is the have the best the way i beat them as england was to say the least, not very heroic I allied them and sent 8 stacks to the heart of their empire in iraq i declared war and laid seige to 2 cities. I forget they kept sending 1 stack at a time and i surrounded them with 3 stacks with archers and spearmen. So i did a mix of everything mentioned, except that i was a back stabbing bastard. Anyways 50 long turn later i was emperor of a desrt wasteland.

[Korsan82]

You can consider this as cheating but having an archer unit which can deploy stakes will kill an entire army in a siege. Just place the stakes at a gate, let them brake the gate and watch how their horses run into death. The remaining troops should be easily beaten.

Well... it's not a matter of consideration. This clearly is abusing the AI

[spH3RiCal]

Block all the narrow passages with forts and fill them with spearmen and archers with stakes.

[HauptmanT]

Block all the narrow passages with forts and fill them with spearmen and archers with stakes.

This.

Cheap spear units holding forts will tear the Mongoloids up. Defense in depth. Dont put 15 units into 1 fort, Make 3 forts with 5... It's all about wearing them down. They cant heal or replace troops.

And never ever fight them in the open. Even bridge fights are dangerous. You want walls and their towers.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Forts are probably not useful if you are far away, but if they reach your provinces, it would be an option. I just made a videoclip (you can set the settings at HD) called Gul'dursun siege.



If they will not attack defensive positions (bridges, fords, forts or settlements - as is the case in Kingdoms Crusades) then yes, the best way to fight them is with a lot of cavalry. If you do not have enough, set ambushes with spearmen near cheap artillery or archer units or near your general. If in a campaign battle they stay on the defensive on top of a hill, you could hit them with artillery safely from a distance - but unfortunately they always seem to go on the attack even if outnumbered, at least in SS 6.1. If in doubt, play safe and autoresolve.

For overall strategic planning with a large army, maybe check my Antioch AAR. I almost always play eastern factions so as to fight the Mongols asap, so I am not sure what one does with 30 stacks. A crusade, as suggested, could be an option.

[jado818]

I'm playing with the scottish faction at the moment and have nearly finished off all the catholic factions.. fighting off one last crusade then they should be done for ;p

but with the gracul AI activated the islamic factions have nearly destroyed the mongols by 1340. gracul AI seems to always pump out units so its been pretty effective countering the golden horde.