Mongol Horse archers using machine guns?

[DonQ]

I know this topic has come up before, but I haven't really seen any satisfactory responses to this issue. The stream of arrows coming from golden horde HA's is literally like a being sprayed with a fire hose. What is with this? I've had entire lines of shield wielding footmen mowed down by 3 or 4 units of Mongol HAs. It doesn't matter what they're doing, they could be retreating, or disorganized and panicky, but they still keep a constant fire hose of arrows flowing at you, with really good accuracy. Even as you chase them with your own cavalry, they mow you down.

Anyway I am playing this mod as sicily, for the first time, and am loving it in most respects. But coming into conflict with the golden horde in the middle east is rapidly changing my opinion

[Andytheplatypus]

I think they are overpowered as well. Its to represent how the mongols mowed over armies historically. You can change their stats in the edu easily

[Duck of Death]

Ancient battlefield commanders felt the same frustration as you.
The Mongol horse archers are supposed to be a pain to deal with.
If they werent, the Horde never would have been as successful as they were.

The best results Ive had was fielding plenty of spearmen for defense and plenty of cavalry to chase them down.

[UndrState]

Yeah, but shouldn't overwhelming numbers be the reason they kick ass?

[k/t]

No, good tactics should.

"is literally like a being sprayed with a fire hose"

Literally?

[DonQ]

Yes, literally. havent you ever been hosed down with a firehouse? Its just like that. but with arrows instead of water. =P

I feel like they've been overpowered in order to make up for their small numbers. in reality it was a combo of tactics and numbers, but in the game the numbers just aren't there so they just made them crazy powerful. I get it. its just annoying as hell to have an entire line of armoured, shield wielding spearman mowed down by just a few HA units and to not be able to do anything about it.

I'm guessing this has been addressed elsewhere but since you brought it up how would one make edits to the game? what's the edu?

[Andytheplatypus]

I'm guessing this has been addressed elsewhere but since you brought it up how would one make edits to the game? what's the edu?

This is the same page I used when i first started messing with the edu (export_descr_unit file located in your data folder of SS file)

A Beginner's Guide to the Export_Descr_Unit

[DonQ]

This is the same page I used when i first started messing with the edu (export_descr_unit file located in your data folder of SS file)

A Beginner's Guide to the Export_Descr_Unit

Tanks

[Yayattasa]

Yes, literally. havent you ever been hosed down with a firehouse? Its just like that. but with arrows instead of water. =P

I feel like they've been overpowered in order to make up for their small numbers. in reality it was a combo of tactics and numbers, but in the game the numbers just aren't there so they just made them crazy powerful. I get it. its just annoying as hell to have an entire line of armoured, shield wielding spearman mowed down by just a few HA units and to not be able to do anything about it.

Get them in sieges, either attacking or defending.

[Carl Jung was right]

I think they are overpowered as well. Its to represent how the mongols mowed over armies historically. You can change their stats in the edu easily

Ancient battlefield commanders felt the same frustration as you.
The Mongol horse archers are supposed to be a pain to deal with.
If they werent, the Horde never would have been as successful as they were.

Except not really.

There's little evidence to suggest that the mongol bow, while certainly quite lethal, was anything other than a harassing weapon. That is because a moving horse is just not a very stable firing platform from which you can make a strongly drawn shot. Many horse archers actually dismounted and fired from foot when they needed to put some serious fire down range. This is what I think happen at Legnica, where the Poles were bogged in several inches of mud, leading to an Agincourt style standoff.

Mongol battle tactics involved moving up close, setting off a volley at point blank range which probably did more to rile up the enemy than actually hurt him, and then lure them into an ambush where they could kill them off piecemeal. This worked extremely well against the disorderly knight armies of the era, but when they came up against a disciplined foe, such as the Mamluks, they didn't fare so well. Also, because the mongol armies were entirely mounted, they moved very fast, made it futile to try to meet them in an open field battle, causing defending armies to huddle inside key cities, leading to drawn out, bloody sieges which the Mongols excelled at. Mongol military success had more to do with strict army meritocracy, brutal training, and capability to perform as-one drill maneuvers than any special equipment or weapon skill superiority over their opponents.

Arabs under Khalid ibn Walid (and other early Muslim conquerors) used virtually the same tactics to great effect.

Bottom line, horse archers in this game should not be like cowboys with Colts. The OP is perfectly justified in trying to edit descr.unit to nerf them.

[+Marius+]

...disorderly knight armies of the era,

There weren't any knight armies in 1241. especially in eastern Europe.
The vast majority of European corpses in the fields after those battles were barely clothed farmers with pitchforks in their hands that were just unlucky to be drafted to fight against an army of equal size who were all professional soldiers on horseback.

Lets not forget that at the battle of Mohi, when the entire Hungarian army was in a state of disarray and being completely massacred by the Mongols, a single small unit of German knights charged the Mongol line and butchered a path all the way to Batu khan(he decided to personally lead the attack of the vanguard against a Hungarian defensive position) and whose life was saved by his royal bodyguards(who also took serious damage; 30 killed) by those "disorderly knights". The knights were killed to the last man but still...

It is also historically recorded that the Mongolian casualties from the entire battle were so high that they refused to chase the routing Hungarian army that was in such chaos and with so few survivors it could barely be called an army at that point. This was not an easily won battle, at least not as easily as people often presume, especially when one takes into consideration the state of the Mongol army after the battle was so bad that they so calmly accepted the fact that they had no choice but to let the king of Hungary and his nobles slip from their tight grasp.


On topic ;

Horse archers can be easily nerfed by reducing their range attack by 1 or 2(depending on how overpowered they are) and reducing those insane ranges to a maximum of 70 to 90 instead of certain units having 170-210 range while being on horseback:facepalm:

I did this to my game and it works excellent...ly.

[Carl Jung was right]

There weren't any knight armies in 1241. especially in eastern Europe.
The vast majority of European corpses in the fields after those battles were barely clothed farmers with pitchforks in their hands that were just unlucky to be drafted to fight against an army of equal size who were all professional soldiers on horseback.

Which concurs with what I was saying. The Mongols were professional soldiers compared to their adversaries, that was the source of their success. The typical image of the mongol horse archer mowing down everything in machine gun precision is a video game cliche. I also used an improper choice of words. I didn't mean that the entire European army was made up of knights. But when a small portion of heavy cavalry nobles happens to be pretty much the only potent offensive arm within the typical medieval force, it's not unreasonable to call it a "knight army", although there were always exceptions, depending on the leadership, culture and times.

Lets not forget that at the battle of Mohi, when the entire Hungarian army was in a state of disarray and being completely massacred by the Mongols, a single small unit of German knights charged the Mongol line and butchered a path all the way to Batu khan(he decided to personally lead the attack of the vanguard against a Hungarian defensive position) and whose life was saved by his royal bodyguards(who also took serious damage; 30 killed) by those "disorderly knights". The knights were killed to the last man but still...

I was not aware of that, but thanks for informing me. This feat of arms does indeed sound like it came out of a romantic epic. But let's not forget that history is prone to ethnocentric interpretations. In order to lessen the impact of a negative event or a great loss, historians often embellish or overstate the role their nations played in it. It's hard to tell apart the real facts of the case from what's merely a story. Sometimes the former is stranger than the latter. But if we look at the general trend of the times, I stand by with what I said about knights being "disorderly". The knights were often under inept, nepotistic leadership and were themselves hardly the shining examples of organized military discipline. It is no wonder that Friedrich II, German Emperor was terrified by the scope of the imminent Mongol threat.

It is also historically recorded that the Mongolian casualties from the entire battle were so high that they refused to chase the routing Hungarian army that was in such chaos and with so few survivors it could barely be called an army at that point. This was not an easily won battle, at least not as easily as people often presume, especially when one takes into consideration the state of the Mongol army after the battle was so bad that they so calmly accepted the fact that they had no choice but to let the king of Hungary and his nobles slip from their tight grasp.

Going back to what I earlier wrote, few ethnic legacies have an air of mystical trepidation as that of the Mongols. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people think that Mongols effortlessly swept many of their opposition, simply by outclassing them in virtually every way. In reality Mongol victories over China, Russia and the Khwarezmian Empire were won by a hair-breadth and often involved staggering losses among the Mongols (which in turn, prompted their reputation for unspeakable brutality post battle). The great Genghis Khan made many tactical mistakes and errors in judgement that resulted in near annihilation of his force, and was oftentimes whisked from a moment's death away by his generals. This goes to show that nothing came easy or certain to the Mongols, formidable and militarily advanced for their time though they may have been, had it not been for the political weakness of their enemies setting the stars in their favor.

Horse archers can be easily nerfed by reducing their range attack by 1 or 2(depending on how overpowered they are) and reducing those insane ranges to a maximum of 70 to 90 instead of certain units having 170-210 range while being on horseback:facepalm:.

That's a great suggestion. In fact, I would recommend it to simply lowering their attack value.

[+Marius+]

his feat of arms does indeed sound like it came out of a romantic epic. But let's not forget that history is prone to ethnocentric interpretations. In order to lessen the impact of a negative event or a great loss, historians often embellish or overstate the role their nations played in it.

...actually the written sources telling us of the battle are mostly Mongol/Chinese, the Hungarians make no mention of the massacre of Batu's royal bodyguards or the initial sally.

But I agree with you with the rest of what you wrote.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

The trouble is not so much the rain of arrows - at least I do not think there is a special animation for Mongol horse archers - but lifting the fog of war to see 65 Mongol stacks all silver chevroned starting out of Samarkand in a long column that ends in front of one of your settlements.

[k/t]

Because the AI of CA games sucks, giving the Mongols huge amounts of units is the only way to make them have anything close to their historical impact. Many people have tried to script invasions better, but they weren't successful. I think it's pretty good as it is now. The Mongols take some regions, cause some damage, but then they collapse and they're wiped out. Pretty realistic.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Because the AI of CA games sucks, giving the Mongols huge amounts of units is the only way to make them have anything close to their historical impact. Many people have tried to script invasions better, but they weren't successful. I think it's pretty good as it is now.

In my next campaign I will be saying this from the safety of my English castle.

Below are two screenshots from when I lifted the fog of war. I counted no fewer than 65 full stacks, most of them heading for Trebizond.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For every battle the Mongols lost they got five - yes, five - FREE silver chevroned stacks of the best units in the game, worth probably more than my faction's entire army. Meanwhile, I had instead to send the remnants of whatever was left from that battle all across my lands to get them retrained. Assuming that the Mongols did not besiege my settlement straight away with another stack, before I got those shreds out. I had to use every trick there was: sack the settlement in their rear to get them distracted, bring flamethrowers from Constantinople, put stakes at the gates, sally out with catapults and hit them on the turn before they attacked, build forts in their rear ... This kind of thing makes you use every exploit there is, you feel like you are trying to win some kind of crazy bet while everyone is laughing at you ...

[Sint]

In my next campaign I will be saying this from the safety of my English castle.

Below are two screenshots from when I lifted the fog of war. I counted no fewer than 65 full stacks, most of them heading for Trebizond.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For every battle the Mongols lost they got five - yes, five - FREE silver chevroned stacks of the best units in the game, worth probably more than my faction's entire army. Meanwhile, I had instead to send the remnants of whatever was left from that battle all across my lands to get them retrained. Assuming that the Mongols did not besiege my settlement straight away with another stack, before I got those shreds out. I had to use every trick there was: sack the settlement in their rear to get them distracted, bring flamethrowers from Constantinople, put stakes at the gates, sally out with catapults and hit them on the turn before they attacked, build forts in their rear ... This kind of thing makes you use every exploit there is, you feel like you are trying to win some kind of crazy bet while everyone is laughing at you ...

It's not that bad in a early campaign,during my last HRR campaign the mongols counqured a lot of territory,but they couldn't recruit more troops ,so the Fatamids and Byzantines destroyed them after a few decades.

[k/t]

The RR/RC Compilation has a lot fewer Mongol armies appearing. I think there were 12-14 initial ones and maybe 5 more after.

[Geoffrey of Villehardouin]

Is the real recruitment option at setup different from the RR/RC compilation? I had the impression your mod was integrated into SS. Also does the RR/RC compilation have its own campaign script?

[k/t]

It's not my mod, it's Point Blank's, and while an older version of RR/RC was integrated in SS, the RR/RC Compilation is a big submod (made by Point Blank) with many changes (for the better). It has its own forum.

Yes, it has its own everything.