For how long will this go on? Mongols

Sooo.. It is 1245 and my empire game with Hungary was looking up, having succesfully defended myself againts random barbs (79 horsearcher kills , 10 deaths on my side) I have expanded to 9 cities. I plan to take Serbia, Venice declares war on the same round and marches 2 knights, 2 trebs, 1 guisarmier and a maceman next to one of my cities, alas, he has not taken the Hungarian UU into account. The Huszar looks like the best unit in the entire game.

I hit his stack with my 10 80% withdrawal Huszars and the Venetian stack is no more. All well and good, except that the Mongols spawn on the next round - 2 Keshiks on my eastern border and 6 Keshiks inside my cultural borders(!). They're strength 12, light cavalry type and ignore terrain, so they can reach two different cities from where they spawn. To be able to take them out with just one casualty or something of that order, I will need around 10 fully healed 80% withdrawal Huszars at the ready. Alright, this is possible, but what a moment, these Keshiks will just keep popping up almost every single round won't they? And at random inside my cultural borders?

So my questions are:
1. When does the Mongolian invasion end?
2. Spawning in stacks of six - inside my cultural borders - really?
3. Did anyone beat the UHV on emperor with a mongol-spawn-area civilization? Any tips? (I tried Kiev earlier but ran into the same problem).

If I may make a comment on balance on emperor level for the 2.0 version, I'd say that at the moment, the UHV of Western civs are much easier than they are for those eastern civs who will see the Mongol spawn. Mongols are the single biggest (insurmountable, impossible?) challenge as far as I'm concerned in the emperor game.

Keshiks are light cavalry with str 12: this makes them even more so formidable because guisarmiers, arbalestiers and spearmen become decidedly worthless. Hungary, Kiev and Lithuania all have only their UU and knights that are able to do anything about Keshiks. Does this strike you as overpowered?

While I really enjoy the early barbarian challenge on emperor for Kiev for example, once the Mongols appear it just impossible for me at least to even just last out my UHV time.

Cheers

Check Barbs.py under Assets/Python for all the details.

You don't know how outrageous Barbs are in this game until you've played Byzantium.

I advise you to not play on Emperor. Play on Monarch instead. On Emperor the Barbs are further imbalanced, so that many AIs (most notably Spain, France, Cordoba, Arabia) will die in the most pathetic ways to Barbs.

iOnlySignIn said:

Check Barbs.py under Assets/Python for all the details.

You don't know how outrageous Barbs are in this game until you've played Byzantium.

I advise you to not play on Emperor. Play on Monarch instead. On Emperor the Barbs are further imbalanced, so that many AIs (most notably Spain, France, Cordoba, Arabia) will die in the most pathetic ways to Barbs.

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This.

Best way to deal with Mongols is walls and castles in every city, then fill your cities with Crossbowmen. Four city defence promoted crossbows in a castle should be able to defend against six Keshiks - you're just going to have to accept that the Mongols will tear up the countryside.

Swarbs said:

This.

Best way to deal with Mongols is walls and castles in every city, then fill your cities with Crossbowmen. Four city defence promoted crossbows in a castle should be able to defend against six Keshiks - you're just going to have to accept that the Mongols will tear up the countryside.

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I would say otherwise. This strategy is great to survive, but you'll have your countryside reduced to dust. The strong Hvy Cavalry unit of the time seems to me the best way to handle Keshiks.

With Hungary, their UU with some backup from nearby places seem great to counter the mongols. Use these high Withdraw units and then use anything you have left near the spawn to wipe what's left.

With Kievan Rus' and Byzantium the Druzhinas and Cataphracts are awesome weapons against Keshiks.

But if you can rush in tech to get the Knight before the mongols, they become dinner for your army. Never played in Emperor though, so maybe the strategy will need a review.

Cataphract with double strength promotion still gives too low chance to kill off Seljuks/Keshiks. If they win, its barely.

Yeah, I must admit I'm not sure how the retreat odds and combat odds work. It's 74% Combat odds for a Cataphract with double Str ups against a Keshik and 6.5% retreat odds. It's 80.5% survival odds and 74% of win, or 74% of survival odds and 67.5% of win? Or is it different from these two?

Anyway, I'm not aware of how many Keshiks are spawning now, but if you had something between 15-20 Cataphracts in 1.0 upon the first Keshik spawn, you could handle it without a single improvement lost. This on Monarch, surely on Emperor things might be more difficult because of the handicap cost.

Of course you may lose something between 1/4 to 1/3 of your Cataphract army, but this means not losing a single improvement or even a single turn of using your best tiles of the moment. I couldn't believe in my Caesarea being one of my best producing cities, making wonders and spawning cataphracts in less then 5 turns. With a GA you become the Supreme Master of the game, without a single tile lost. On Monarch the handicap allows you to make such a huge army, but on Emperor I don't know.

It's the price of unstoppable growth.

74% of win, not of merely survival.

It all depends on the difficulty level - playing as Monarch you get +10% against barbs which makes it easy to kill them off outside of cities. Tech is also easier - I'm playing Monarch Byzantium right now and have a stack of 10 double promoted knights whacking the Keshiks as they emerge.

But as Emperor you don't get the bonus, so double promoted Cataphract (Str10 + 20%, 2 first strikes) would only have around a 50-60% victory chance against Keshik (Str12, 1 first strike). With a run of bad luck you can have a whole stack wiped out at those odds. It will also be much harder to tech to Guilds before the Mongols arrive to get Knights, particularly if you're playing Hungary and also have to get Free Religion before anyone else.

If anything, the Mongols, and barbs in general, show how much more difficult it is on Emperor. It's a triple whammy - many more barbs, no bonus against barbs, harder to tech to stay ahead of barbs. For Byzantium it's even worse what with the Sassanids, Seljuks and Mongols all giving you a good beating for large portions of the game, and all you can do is hide in your castles and hope.

You dont have 20 cats for Seljuk spawn since the time required to build them and tech it is far too slow. The timed barbed invasions spawn every other turn meaning after two stacks with normal odds all your cats are probably healing. Then for the Keshik spawn you have knights since long. And they are superior to cats.

It would be more interesting if Byzantium got cats much earlier. They are so expensive to build that they would not alter balance.

Well, I haven't tried 1.1 yet, but on 1.0 I could have 20 cats at the time the Selyuq spawned easily (Monarch).

Not allowing Arabia to break off with the lame get the capital tactic, you have a huge territory since the beggining, and not losing anything to barbs (maybe a couple improvements to sassanids, nothing major) lets you get Farriers and Blast Furnace really early (Cottages!),as this is your priority not anything else like Guisarmiers, Trebuchets and Castles. I usually started making cats around 900 AD, so about 1060 I already had 20+, and of course you keep making them until the last selyuq.

I'm going through my first byzantium game in 1.1 and I'll see how it works now.

Spirictum said:

Well, I haven't tried 1.1 yet, but on 1.0 I could have 20 cats at the time the Selyuq spawned easily (Monarch).

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Ditto for me playing Monarch, supported by Tagmata and Varangians who soaked up any pressure from surviving Seljuks. Which is fine, but the problem is then that once the Seljuks are dead Byzantium is ridiculously easy on Monarch - you just chew up everything that's thrown at you.

Ideally I'd like a rebalancing to the barbs to make Byzantium, and other civs, able to survive against the early barbs without massive losses, so you can experience a more challenging but still fun late game. At the moment you lag behind barbs all the way on Emperor, and so end up with no way to stabilise yourself, and the only option being to barely hang on with no chance to grow or develop a strong empire and rely largely on luck to win the growth and territory UHVs.

Same with France, Bulgaria and others - Emperor level barbs make the early UHVs near impossible and reliant on luck, but then on Monarch level the later UHVs are laughably easy once you meet conquest goals and get a huge empire.

I think the reason Byzantium is easy for a Human player after the Seljuk invasion is because you are able to prevent Crusades from happening entirely, by recovering Jerusalem.

No Crusades => No diverted Crusade => No problem. You can crush Venice (and the other Catholics) at your leisure or just let them rot.

iOnlySignIn said:

I think the reason Byzantium is easy for a Human player after the Seljuk invasion is because you are able to prevent Crusades from happening entirely, by recovering Jerusalem.

No Crusades => No diverted Crusade => No problem. You can crush Venice (and the other Catholics) at your leisure or just let them rot.

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Actually I've never had a diverted crusade when playing Byz on Monarch. Isabella diverted one, I assume to Cordoba, but none to Byz.

I think the main issue is it is too easy to contain the Arabs at Antioch and Alexandria, and the Sassanids and Seljuks are just barbarians. So the three major civilizations that presented the greatest challenge to the ERE are very underpowered in RFCE, and their long term impact is minimal - even on Emperor, Byz won't permanently lose the interior of Anatolia to the Seljuks as you can just retake it once the spawn ends.

In my experience the Mongol invasion comes in two waves. The first wave starts around 1240 AD and it lasts approx. until 1300 AD. The second wave starts in late 14th century, but I'm not sure how long it lasts. Currently playing as Arabia on Viceroy and I'm far into the 15th century already, but I still see the Mongols spawning.

Does the second wave historically represent Timurids?

rfcfanatic said:

In my experience the Mongol invasion comes in two waves. The first wave starts around 1240 AD and it lasts approx. until 1300 AD. The second wave starts in late 14th century, but I'm not sure how long it lasts. Currently playing as Arabia on Viceroy and I'm far into the 15th century already, but I still see the Mongols spawning.

Does the second wave historically represent Timurids?

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1236-1288, first wave spawning, mostly for eastern europe
1359-1432, second wave spawning (Timurids), mostly for the middle east