M2TW Mongols

[lutzj]

I've found that playing as Egypt in Medieval 2 is a fun challenge: you have a few turns to build up before getting invaded from both the West and East. What I hate is that the Mongols/Timurids are FREAKING UNKILLABLE. When the Mongols invaded, I basically lost city after city in the Holy Land to 'em, before building up a huge army in my core southern cities and taking it all back (just like it happened historically). However, I realized that whenever I took their last city, they basically just re-invaded in the same place and with as many armies as they had originally. I beat them back several more times before giving up and creating this thread. Any thoughts?

 

[aronnax]

Its very simple to deal with the Mongols. First Understand that its impossible to kill them on the field, because:
1. All their Units are Pumped up to high skilled warriors, meaning their peasants will beat the crap out of your peasants.
2. Their Horse Archers are the elite and the backbone of their army. They will outrun you, Outfight you, outshoot you and outkill you.

Roughly One of their units is equivalent to two of yours.
So never engaged them on the field. Unless you happen to have your army made of thousands of Spearman and Archers fighting from the top of the peak that has only one way up. This is (while happening to me once) barely going to happen.

So always engaged them in a city. Fill up the barracks with maybe 8 Missle Units, 5 Spear/Really REALLY STRONG units, 3 Heavy Infantry and the rest Artillery or Calvary of your choice.

Also remenber to upgrade each City with the most advance fortifications, meaning Cannon on walls and towers.
Even if you are facing 2 Full Armies to 1 full of yours, and you know you are sure to lose, dont give up and auto-fight. Fight to the last fricken man. You usually can kill more than an Auto-fight can do. Sometimes you might just win dued to luck (Death of Khan early in battle), Glitches (Two armies assualted the city, one of them did not move) and also some skill (Jamming Spearman into the gate as their Horses try to squeeze into the city with missle archers firing those still outside the city.)

Dont be afraid to lose a city, just use the garrision inside kill the invaders, then while their weak, find the chance and strike back. The win might be short live as they will strike again but every Mongol you kill, is one you wont have to kill later.

Also dont crowd A lot of full armies around one city as the invading army would just go around your heavily fortified city to a weak one.

Thats all the advise I can give, with any luck, you will end up with these results:

Same City Sieged three times

First Siege, won with the combination of Skill, Luck and Glitches (read above for explaination)

Second Siege, Won again much like the first sieged, killed off their King too

Spoiler :

Third Siege, Finally Lost but killed about 250 more people than I had. Also killed their king and one of the relatives

Spoiler :

Good Luck

Also ask Steph. I think he knows how to deal with them too

There are also strategies like holding them off at the rivers in Iraq and Killing off the smaller armies before the regroup to be a big 4 menace

 

[Ajidica]

Yeah, the best way to kill mongols are in siege battles. Of course, the most annoying unit they have isn't their horse archers, (Playing as Byzantines and get cheap longh range missles) but the Khans guards. THos heavy cavalry are annoying.

 

[Stuck in Pi]

Ah, the Mongols. Everybody's favorite enemy. Or not. My way: let citadels defend your perimeter, while having assassins kill all the uber generals. It works pretty well. And then if you have a huge treasury (like I did when playing as Byzantium), bribe the leaderless armies, and you have one less army on your hands!

 

[Ajidica]

How do you get your assasins high level enough? I alwasy get them at 1-2 espionage and they have a 25% chance of killing a captain or a low level diplomat.
Slightly off topic. How do you kill the Huns in BI? Same way as the Mongols?

 

[Stuck in Pi]

I use reload a lot.

 

[Ajidica]

Reload my be cheap, but it is nice if you accidentaly send your cavalry straight into spearmen.

 

[Stuck in Pi]

It's not cheating, not if you have to wait a minute or two because your computer is four years old and can barely handle M2TW.

 

[Ajidica]

My comps older then that, and it can handle MTW2 fine once I got a better graphics card and memory. (My process is from '03). Also, what unit scale are you playing at. Large and huge really slow your comp down.

 

[Stuck in Pi]

medium! Also, I haven't upgraded the CPU from the base

 

[Maniacal]

I think it's a pretty poor excuse for poor AI when you have to make someone really superhuman.

 

[Elta]

I don't have a PC right now and I haven't played in like 3 months, but I do have a secret way of killing them out in the field. Here is what you do:




AS some of you know you can stretch out your units and make them face any directions you want. .... I didn't know for the longest, but I learned. It has something to do with right clicking and dragging, I forget the specifics.

Take 5 artillery (it must be able to fire over your men's heads) and 15 spearmen (make sure they have a shield) Make a huge square facing in all directions. Put the artillery men in the middle of the square.

Fire at the knights (by knights I mean it most literally as in heavy cavelry with spears and lances) first!!! They can brake your lines - take them out!

If you can clean them up you are good.

They will fire their arrows and come out your spearmen and get owned when they do. In an average 20 unit VS 20 unit fight I can when with only losing about half of my spearmen.

When I can I'll take screen shots. I am in the process of fixing my pc atm so I can play games and such. Putting in a new mobo and all that stuff.

 

[Elta]

Another thing!
Here are 3 units that are not bad at all for dealing with mongol archers.

Mounted crossbowmen: They are just as fast and do just fine against mongols. They are good close up (against mongol archers) and have 2.5 times as much ammo as horse archers. Yes they don't do as much damage, but they have the armor piercing ability and that helps. They can take on Mongols

Alan Light cavelry: The greatest unit in the game in my opinion. They are at max speed. Fight really well close up and they have a solid charge of 5. Sadly they are mercenary only I like to keep a general around the black see just to recruit these guys. Point click = dead mongol archers. They can not be out run and as they will only lose one or two guys because they do not get shot at when they are in full charge. Eventually the mongols will either start fighting close up and lose or they run away during the whole fight while the rest of their men die. Once their friends die they will run too.

+ Alan have high moral and are by far the greatest unit for harassing and destroying enemy artillery in a field battle. Send them far right or left of the main battle and have them attack the minute you see the artillery is not protected by some other unit. I can usually take all of the artillery men out in one charge and move away unharmed before anyone can do anything. ....... this even works against humans online in matches where every faction has every mercenary available

Validitory (IIRC that is how it's spelled): the noble horse archers for the Byzantines. why are they so great? they are as fast as any unit in the game. They are as good on horse as archery wise as anyone and the PWN! all other horse archers in hand to hand.

Don't believe me?
look at the stats and try it!http://files.filefront.com/the+FUSIL+v12/;7433387;/fileinfo.html

 

[Ajidica]

Its Vardarotai as the horse archers for Byzantium. It is really fun when you can get a unit of Varangian Guards into Mongol Horse archers or trap them in a cavalry charge by cataphracts.

 

[BEHIND_THE_MASK]

I've only fought one battle with the Mongols... And I lost.

I was close, If I had been fighting one army and not two then I might have won... close.

My idea was to try and counter them using their own strategy. Cavalry.

I was the Turks (Worst Location Ever) and I stocked up on Missle Cav. and Heavy Cav... Missle Cav. Unexperienced, same with my General and Heavy Cav.

Damn Mongols.

 

[Ajidica]

Don't try and fight mongols with cavalry, you will loose badly. THey are the best cavalry ever. The tactic I used have them attack well defended cities, they will take heavy casualties, but you will probably loose. When they are weakended enought, hit them with a large army, and remove them from the map.

 

[duckmanbro]

So how long does the Mongol hoard keep pummeling the eastern world for? I have most of the Middle Eastern cities claimed, and I can't hold out for much longer, I keep getting slaughtered.

I guess I have to make better use of the newly found gunpowder units.

(BTW, playing as Milan, thus castles are few and far between)

 

[Ajidica]

What is Genoa doing in the Middle East? Wait until you get a good army, then attack the spread out Mongol armies. Best way to do that is to have a ship at each of the crossing ponts at the Bosphorus (Constantinople). The AI armies cant cross and they are to dumb to go via Russia and the Crimea.

 

[lutzj]

Spoiler Size :

Its very simple to deal with the Mongols. First Understand that its impossible to kill them on the field, because:
1. All their Units are Pumped up to high skilled warriors, meaning their peasants will beat the crap out of your peasants.
2. Their Horse Archers are the elite and the backbone of their army. They will outrun you, Outfight you, outshoot you and outkill you.

Roughly One of their units is equivalent to two of yours.
So never engaged them on the field. Unless you happen to have your army made of thousands of Spearman and Archers fighting from the top of the peak that has only one way up. This is (while happening to me once) barely going to happen.

So always engaged them in a city. Fill up the barracks with maybe 8 Missle Units, 5 Spear/Really REALLY STRONG units, 3 Heavy Infantry and the rest Artillery or Calvary of your choice.

Also remenber to upgrade each City with the most advance fortifications, meaning Cannon on walls and towers.
Even if you are facing 2 Full Armies to 1 full of yours, and you know you are sure to lose, dont give up and auto-fight. Fight to the last fricken man. You usually can kill more than an Auto-fight can do. Sometimes you might just win dued to luck (Death of Khan early in battle), Glitches (Two armies assualted the city, one of them did not move) and also some skill (Jamming Spearman into the gate as their Horses try to squeeze into the city with missle archers firing those still outside the city.)

Dont be afraid to lose a city, just use the garrision inside kill the invaders, then while their weak, find the chance and strike back. The win might be short live as they will strike again but every Mongol you kill, is one you wont have to kill later.

Also dont crowd A lot of full armies around one city as the invading army would just go around your heavily fortified city to a weak one.

Thats all the advise I can give, with any luck, you will end up with these results:

Same City Sieged three times

First Siege, won with the combination of Skill, Luck and Glitches (read above for explaination)


Second Siege, Won again much like the first sieged, killed off their King too

Spoiler :

Third Siege, Finally Lost but killed about 250 more people than I had. Also killed their king and one of the relatives

Spoiler :

Good Luck

Also ask Steph. I think he knows how to deal with them too

There are also strategies like holding them off at the rivers in Iraq and Killing off the smaller armies before the regroup to be a big 4 menace

That's how I manage to beat them the first couple times, but when they lose their last city they come back at full strength.

 

[duckmanbro]

So is there a certain period when they just stop turning up? I'm on the brink of being wiped out in the Middle East (as Milan still (don't ask why )), and they just keep pouring in past Baghdad.