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Apr 9, 2007
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While in most games, hordes do tend to fall apart in the middle and later stages of the game, I find the power of the Golden Horde at the 1399 date way to overpowered. While Golden Horde seems to do great from that starting date, Timurids almost every time dissolve very fast. While I think it should be the other way around. While I think changes to the hordes awesome, I believe GH should be balanced out.

Just few years back, horde was utterly defeated by Tamerlane, capital and trading centers sacked and destroyed, large parts of it's army annihilated.
Even worse, Tokhtamysh (or Toqtamish) starts the game as a Golden Horde's general, and a very good one at that, while he should be a pretender backed by Lithuania nad Poland. While the alliance did suffer a defeat at 1399 at the hands of Khan Temur Qutlugh. The point is, Golden Horde's power was on the wane, and while Tokhtamysh's rule was able to spark a brief period of rise, it was already on a steady decline. So far I have never seen AI being able to fend them of (while on the contrast human player can do it every time) but as said, if I play in Ireland, almost every time I see horde strech from Novgorod and Krakow to Constantinople, Archangelsk and into Siberia. Ever worse succession crisis are never really serious as it should be. While Russian states were more or less tributes of the various forms of Horde untill 1480, in game they got eaten up very fast.


Every time I play with NON eastern European nation I tend to put Golden Horde's stability and war exhaustion at -3 / 15. I avoid doing it only when I play with Russians, since than it would be cheating. But the AI can't seem to handle the hordes, and more over, almost non of the states (Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Muscowy) can't seem to institute Liberum Veto to fight them of at the early stage. More often than not it's Bohemia and Emperor who is only able to stop them.

Any ideas how to help AI fight them of without cheating ?
 
Well, remove Steppe Horde gov. and make them tribal (which would be also kind of accurate imo).

I already did it and and they weren't blobbing as much. Pretty sure I am going to remove steppe horde gov. for the 2nd time soon.


Edit: Timurids dissolving pretty fast? Sounds odd because in my game they have several advantages over GH (no emperor neighbouring, weaker border countries etc)
 
Edit: Timurids dissolving pretty fast? Sounds odd because in my game they have several advantages over GH (no emperor neighbouring, weaker border countries etc)
They also have more different cultures and religions, making them more unstable.
Also they are surrounded by their enemies, Golden Horde only have one way to expand really. (Since the other hordes never would attack them really.)
 
Thats true. But countries who reach independance from Timurids usually gets vassalized or re-conquered pretty fast. Anyway before I start my next game, I will give them tribal gov. again. It is not only about the overpowered armies/mp but also the weird colonizing by AI nations in the later stages of the game.

For example, tiny countries never send off colonists even when I give them some nice war subsidies leading to occupied territories for several decades :(
 
Well, the Golden Horde in the game seems to be nearly as powerful as they were in the 13th century when they really had an enormous empire and were sacking middle-eastern Europe. But the game starts much later, where the Horde had influence on the Rus until 1480 but could never actually conquer and rule over the Balkans or eastern Europe as they often do it in my games. It's also so annoying with the colonization system, I mean the Cossacks reached the Pacific so quickly. For the AI it is very difficult to achieve this.
 
GH territory needs to have more different cultures with more revolters like the Timurids so it can break down into different countries, this could also stop Poland and Bohemia reaching Siberia.
 
Oh , no , there are already enough trollmia and halsblob snaking the steppes until they find Siberia/Ming!
 
Yeah... There should be Crimean culture, astrakhanian, and uralic(there is but it should be main culture for kazan). And GH should start of with mongolian. This would make it more historical break out of hordes. Also zaporozhie country should be ukrainian... and zaporozhie province should be too. There is no realy need for ukraine...
 
I've never seen a snaking Blobhemia or Austria, but I've seen Muskovy, Novgorod, and Poland snaking before.

I have seen it. And believe me, it is super ugly...

How it happens?

When Poland/Lithuania and Hungary gets eaten up by GH and they are finally bordering Emperor-Austria/Bohemia. If the Khan doesnt die directly afterwards, Austria or Bohemia will snake their way to Siberia. And as already mentioned: very ugly borders.

But ofc, with a bit luck any big eastern european country can blob to Ural.

Until now I had Super-
Bohemia
Lithuania
Austria
Sweden
Denmark
Hungary
Poland
Yaroslavl
Novgorod


Sadly I am still missing Monster-Muscowy...
 
It's only for the first 100 years at most with them. They can only go west so they tend to be more automatically prepared when their next war starts by virtue of positioning. Tims have to split their forces between 2 fronts.

Eventually they will have a succession crisis and will have to sacrifice the country to rebels or their neighbors. They might get out of the first 2-3 relatively unscathed but they will indubitably fall to the ever-increasing stability costs and won't be able to get above -3. War exhaustion can make their stability gains take almost 20 years for one point.

Timurids, however, I've seen survive much, much longer because they can beat up their neighbors quickly enough to make them vassals or extort tributes. So they can be at relative peace relatively fast. If the GH neighbors were OPMs rather than larger nations, they would also be getting tributes and not accidentally flipping provinces to their own doom.
 
I have seen it. And believe me, it is super ugly...

How it happens?

When Poland/Lithuania and Hungary gets eaten up by GH and they are finally bordering Emperor-Austria/Bohemia. If the Khan doesnt die directly afterwards, Austria or Bohemia will snake their way to Siberia. And as already mentioned: very ugly borders.

But ofc, with a bit luck any big eastern european country can blob to Ural.

Until now I had Super-
Bohemia
Lithuania
Austria
Sweden
Denmark
Hungary
Poland
Yaroslavl
Novgorod


Sadly I am still missing Monster-Muscowy...
I've seen big Muscovies 3 out of the 5 games I've played but only witnessed Russia forming once (from Nizny Novgorod).

Let's say if the Mongol hordes did successfully take down the Russians, Poles, and Lithuanians in history, do you think it's a remote possibility for Germany to expand eastward? I think that's quite likely if they found the Horde territories to be easy picking.

In an alternate universe that split off at 1399, a visitor from that universe might find it rather "ahistoric" to see tiny Muscovy (instead of blobby Novgorod) forming Russia, Blobhemia and Austria being reduced to minors, Portugal forming a large colonial empire (and not getting taken out by Castille), and Turkey holding onto a Islamic Bophorus.
 
Sadly, I never saw AI-formed Russia (same for NL, Malaya, Japan, Italy, Mughal and maybe some other I just forgot), although I already saw it here on the forums

In case of blobbing Germany:
Good question. But to the east there was a real strong Poland-Lithuania at that time, otherwise Teutonic Order might have pulled it off.

For HRE-countries otherwise, I am pretty sure that the majority of members would not have been keen to see one of the members blobbing to much eastwards and therefore gaining supremacy within the Empire.
 
Portugal tends to survive in my games... i mean - they seem to be extremaly lucky(in two of mine games, they got PU with aragon - and there are no lucky nations...). However, mostly unless i kill off the gh myself, they expand. But mostly i do everything to beat them down. If i cannot attack them myself, i send spies. I think if you will send war subsidies, and gifts to moscow they may have any chances. Othewise - just no. Russians just get beaten, aspecialy ryzan and moscow, but novgorod also tends to loose few provinces. As poland AI never offer peace to GH until its to late, they just get beaten by GH armies, part by part, just cause they loose budjak, which makes them open for GH attacks.
 
I think that the issue with GH expanding is related to how terrain effects are modeled (not very accurately). Historically, GH military was well suited to steppe and plain environment. They would have difficulty mounting large military campaign in the terrain covered with the deep forests, swamps or mountains. But in the game they expand over such terrain just as it was a steppe. Sure there are some combat penalties, but they don't make a difference when 30K GH stack fights some minor's 4K force.
 
Also, their infantry should be quite weak, and they should tend to have mostly calvary armies. Like 90% calvary... this would slow down them a bit, cause they would have to siege every province they want to take...

EDIT: Maybe a modifier of -50% calvary price, and increased army limit only if they got certain % of calvary in their armies?
 
Main problem is that the Hordes 'annex' provinces to fast and that they do not go for Tribute (as they prefered IRL) rather then annexation/vassalisation as they do in game. Also Horde land should be conquered the same way as it is gained in other words occupying it for a certain amount of time. Needing to colonize each province makes it to difficult for AI to complete.
 
Main problem is that the Hordes 'annex' provinces to fast and that they do not go for Tribute (as they prefered IRL) rather then annexation/vassalisation as they do in game. Also Horde land should be conquered the same way as it is gained in other words occupying it for a certain amount of time. Needing to colonize each province makes it to difficult for AI to complete.

Think that would make Eastern European/Ottoman blobbing MUCH worse.
 
In most of my games, the Hordes stick around for a very long time, even the Timurids get lucky under the AI and usually withstand the rebel surge. I once saw a game where France invaded the Timurids while they were dealing with rebellions at the death of Khan Timur and even though the French forced the Timurids out of Georgia and took over, essentially, most of the western portion of the Timurid Empire. The Timurids withstood it and eventually moved on to conquer Northern India and become the Mughals.
 
I usually mod it so that horde have less bonus on its forcelimit and manpower. It is not easy to have the perfect balance, but it helps Easter Europeans and Ottoman stay alive, as they should. Increasing revolt risks seems to work less well, although maybe I wasn't increasing it enough.

BTW, cossacks were kind of like hordes themselves. Making them vassal of horde govt, which can be annexed later, would be the most realistic option.