How to dominate the Mongols with France out in the open fields!

[Elta]

Rules for the match up:
I gave both myself and the Mongols 7,500 dinari. - I picked this number because it is around the average number of units in my grand campgagin battles.
I picked the grassy plane because it is totally flat and this would give the Mongols an advantage.
All other setting standard.
Pressed random to generate the mongol army

They had IIRC 2 or 3 spearman
2 knights
1 body guard
6 horse archers - half heavy, half light
1 peasant unit

Here is what you do: set your long range fire over your own men capable artillery in the middle set on double lines.

On the outside of them protect them with heavy spearmen like so:



As you can see I have five units outside facing outside prepared for a cavalry rush and one in reserve to help when the others get attacked.

As they come to me ( a few units off screen )


Here is how these fights always happen:
1. They will fire arrows around you and take out some of your men: Don't move! At the same time they will move their Knights/light horse spearmen and infantry/infantry archers closer.

2. When they are close hit them with the artillery!
Remember the you will only kill a few of their men with this, but the reason you bring them is to force them to attack. Other wise they would just pepper you with their rockets (which they didn't bring this time) and arrows till they were ready, then they would send in every unit to rush you. Then you would have a mass route and lose.

You force them in and beat them close up. They don't really have any ground units that can hang with your spearmen and you will beat their cavalry close up.

3. After the horse archers run out of arrows they will rush you as well and of course get crushed.

In the end it should look something like this




Enough of that only fight them in seiges nonsense.
Don't let Europe get turned into pasture land

 

[Civfan333]

wow......thank for info!

 

[Ajidica]

Wouldn't it be better to use archers instead of siege engines? You would have to have good archers, but wouldn't they inflict more casualties?

 

[Elta]

You can mix and match, they don't have to be all artillery, you need at least one or to though I think.

The reason is that their units will just wait you out if you use arrows, with artillery you force them to attack you with their melee units early on.

If they wait till the end they can over run you

 

[Backwards Logic]

The strategy looks good and I certainly can't deny its effectiveness, but aren't the numbers of troops the Mongols typically field a little low? They come into campaign with what, 5 or 6 full stacks grouped together? This would work after a series of city siege battles to lessen their numbers, but as for engaging them early I'm not convinced anyone could win. I unfortunately don't have Medieval Two Total War with me on my laptop, but I would be curious to see this battle done with the Mongols at 2x strength (double their troop numbers, leave yours the same) and see what the outcome is. If you win that, try 3x, and keep going until you lose. Post them too please, so I can see . I'm very curious as to how that would work out.

 

[Civfan333]

Backwards makes a good point, but he's the french, so unless he managed to get ALL the way to the middle east by the time the Mongols arrive, that's probably what he'd most likely facing against.......but if you're like the egyptians, then I'd just scream for help......

 

[Ajidica]

Actually, in my one game (Byzantium) that got as far as the mongol invasion, the turks were destroyed first. From what I could tell, the Egyptians managed to get Gaza up to a citadel, and managed to destroy 2 mongol armies and nearly destroy a third. The egyptians lost because Spain got lucky, and managed to destroy the moors by now and were attacking egypts western flank. If spain hadn't attacked, egypt would have destroyed the mongol horses. (Note: The mongol armies just piled up at gaza, didn't try to go around). Of course, then the mongols decided to attack byzantium. I was fighting against both the HRE, Hungary, Poland, Genoa, and Venice (Venice was a non-entity, I had taken all their cities except for the one on Crete, couldn't get around to making a fleet), so my entire asiatic garrison was the starting garrison. Yeah, I was screwed.

EDIT: Sorry for the rambling and long post.

 

[Civfan333]

wow....you were screwed......but das ok.....because some my posts are rambling too....

 

[Ajidica]

Something else about this stratagy I noticed. You can use it with almost any western european nation. almmost all of them get armoured serjeants.
Wouldn't this be even better as Scotland? I think they have siege engines.

 

[lutzj]

Maybe, but I don't think the Scots hold up too well against archers since they have so little armor.

 

[Ajidica]

They have noble pikes. They really hurt. (Found out hard way)

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

You can mix and match, they don't have to be all artillery, you need at least one or to though I think.

The reason is that their units will just wait you out if you use arrows, with artillery you force them to attack you with their melee units early on.

If they wait till the end they can over run you

Would they not also be firing volleys of arrows into your ranks? If so, why not simply wait until they themselves are out of arrows and force them into melee combat?

Or have your archers hold fire until the enemy cavalry archers get in a bit closer and have every unit of archers fire on a single enemy cavalry unit.

But I suppose one should stick with whatever works best for them.

 

[Ajidica]

I alwasy thought archers work better, especially against cavalry. Archers are more acurate and they also fire faster. It may also be that I rarely build more siege engines then I need.