Hordes are so gamey

[Dearmad]

So their doomstacks and crap move around and I can game them and play the rules of thegame against them and win- but loading up on boats and acting like marines, and such is getting old and is just SO gamey! So I'm wondering if there's a mod that adds attrition into the mongols, and more importantly:

allows them to have some form of political uncertainty. I spent thousands of gold and have assassinated about 5 of their main leaders... seems like at some point this should cause some political divide amongst their vast empire, but NO... nothing. Weak. It's like the simulation/strategy game has turned into a game of whack-a-mole video console style. I hate it and want to change it. I want the game to play more like one with still some intrigue and political balance, not like the world is totally NUKED when the horde comes.

 

[Dearmad]

I agree that the hordes should be revamped BUT the world was totally nuked when the hordes came.

That's fine but when I was powerful enough to raise MORE men than they AND had a political alliance that defended against them, I want ther results to be better than facing no attrition horse stacks in MOUNTAINS that wipe out 2x their numbers. AND after I kill 5 of their Khans in a ROW within a month I wanna see some wasps pour uot of their nest and try to grab power over the hordes- I mean I presented some power hungry person a perfect opportunity but they'd rather fight over some faraway province at the extreme of my empire... united. Yeah RIGHT.

SUKZ.

When I am politically AND militarily their superior I don't want a bunch of stupid gamey rules (no attrition, total political unity, etc.) to ruin the experience!

I went into the situation thinking SOME or ANY rules applied when it was just a no rules fuck fest. Great, so I marined them on the beaches.. I feel dirty and the game is not fun anymore in that area. Fun being the MAIN reason to PLAY.

 

[leksu]

That's fine but when I was powerful enough to raise MORE men than they AND had a political alliance that defended against them, I want ther results to be better than facing no attrition horse stacks in MOUNTAINS that wipe out 2x their numbers. AND after I kill 5 of their Khans in a ROW within a month I wanna see some wasps pour uot of their nest and try to grab power over the hordes- I mean I presented some power hungry person a perfect opportunity but they'd rather fight over some faraway province at the extreme of my empire... united. Yeah RIGHT.

SUKZ.

When I am politically AND militarily their superior I don't want a bunch of stupid gamey rules (no attrition, total political unity, etc.) to ruin the experience!

I went into the situation thinking SOME or ANY rules applied when it was just a no rules fuck fest. Great, so I marined them on the beaches.. I feel dirty and the game is not fun anymore in that area. Fun being the MAIN reason to PLAY.

Rebellions occur when a faction has a high military strength in relation to their liege, which never happens to the mongols due to their uber-doomstacks. I agree that they should be nerfed both in terms of numbers and attrition. The Khagan shouldn't get a huge army which could wipe the whole of Europe from the map, but rather something which helps them get started and secure a foothold on the map. The armies also shouldn't be attrition-free, but rather just come in a few smaller stacks instead of one big one. They should be much more effective than other armies, though, especially in steppe terrain, this would help simulate reality a lot better than it does now.

 

[nanton]

This whole horde system is "pretty" badly done, no matter how you look at it. Historically it is horrific, practically unusable and totally senseless in nearly every way. I have played now over 10 games (in other words: I haven't played a game where this doesn't happen) where it always goes to the point when Golden Horde is in Wien (or close... you get the point) and stays there until the end of the game...

What I have read is that always when Khan dies new Khan gets more troops from East and that must be the single most stupid thing in this system (alongside with the attrition). At the time, when irl mongols turned away to participate in their "elections" and actually left Russia etc. lands unattended in CK2 they are getting more troops to hold those areas and conquer more.

I have no words to explain how stupid the system is. How can anyone even think something like that up? And how can it pass through the process and make its way to the game and stay there over official 8 updates without raising more eyebrows?

 

[Dearmad]

Has anyone modded them into a reasonable state? I can't seem to find a mod to address this.

 

[Battle bunny]

Well, the hordes sometimes work and sometimes they don't. It's really the lack of attrition that is the problem. In a 1204 start, an alliance between my Bulgaria and an allied Terteroba Khanate (that is, Cumania) managed to prevent the Golden Horde from ever getting a foothold, by throwing stack after stack at the 20k horde until it was whittled away. The Horde was left with 2 provinces in Siberia that then got conquered by a neighbouring chiefdom. A hundred years later, the Timurids came with 60k troops. That's three times as many, and me and the Cumans (who were now under my dynasty, but not under my rule) had more than tripled our strength during those hundred years, but because of attrition it was hopeless that we would be able to even reach the stack before half of our units died. In my opinion, the hordes should suffer attrition, but a reduced one (maybe 75% less, but enough to eventually wear them down) to represent that they are accustomed to a nomadic way of life but still have to eat and drink.

 

[Lord Finnish]

The lack of attrition is the main game killer they have. This is especially apparent when playing as Byzantines when the Golden Horde likes to attack Alania and Georgia. The supply limit tends to be only 10-15k and there is no way you can ship enough troops to fight their 50k stacks before everyone starves to death in the mountains. It is also virtually impossible to make counterattacks for the same reason.

 

[unmerged(494787)]

It's not hard. Just don't stack everyone in the same province. With Organized generals you can easily outmaneuver the horde and time your reinforcements to arrive the day after the mongols do - and you don't take attrition while battling. Once you've broken the horde, it's relatively easy to keep them on the run with a smaller force. Fortunately for the Byzantines, they get the biggest bang for their buck with their Cataphract retinues. If you really want to abuse the system, you can raise the levies in the province where the retinues and horde stack are fighting while the fighting is already ongoing!

 

[Spartanlemur]

They need to be nerfed, but not too much. Their invasion primarily succeeded due to poor organisation in Eastern Europe and the fractured landscape. A united Roman Empire should under no circumstances be unable to beat the horde due to attrition. The fact that attrition prevents this indeed ruins the game at present. Perhaps the solution is to modify attrition in a way which allows large empires to combat deathstacks?

 

[unmerged(494787)]

Don't fight harder, fight smarter. There are already too many attrition-immune deathstacks wandering around, it's just that that's the only real way to make Mongols a real threat to a player due to the terrible AI. We don't need large realms having them too. Use the tactics I outlined with the retinue system and it's entirely possible to beat them. You just need to spend a little time preparing and planning. Obviously a small realm won't have the retinue power to beat the Mongols, but I don't see a problem with that. If you're that small, just swear fealty to the horde now that they won't revoke your titles.

 

[Jia Xu]

You guys aren't thinking clearly. If the Mongols didn't have a special attrition bonus, most of them would die in the first few months. They first arrive with 80K soldiers and spawn in a province with a supply limit of 3, or something like that. If they didn't have a free pass on attrition, the player would beat them every time without ever fighting them until they're not worth fighting. You could just wait for them to be reduced to 10% of what they started with due to attrition losses, and then clean them up when they're just rabble.

I've beaten the Golden Horde on arrival before, so I don't know why anyone pretends its impossible. It's not! It's just really, really, really hard. It's the hardest challenge in the game even. In fact, it's probably one of the few legitimate threats to a player in any PI game. If you think they're too strong, then mod out their events or something.

 

[Blademonkey]

I like Jack's suggestions and will try it on my current game when they show up, but I think the challenge here is representing the massive threat and impact that they had in game. I think the thing that is missing is the ebb and flow of their activities. Nanton rightly points out that they should turn up - rampage for a while - stop, regroup, rampage for a while, stop regroup and to a degree, settle down a little. However, given Ghengis had given them the mandate to conquer to the Western Sea, this too needs to be a possibility. It's a hard balancing act and I'd love to see it done better, but let's face it, they were a class above everybody they cam up against, not just tactically but logistically and just about every other 'cally you can think of.

It makes for a frustrating game experience but I guess at least we aren't living through it.

 

[Spartanlemur]

My main point was that they shouldn't be a threat as long as one giant blob exists in Western Europe. If the Roman Empire is restored, or the HRE conquers the Byzantine Empire or anything of that nature, the Mongols should crash and burn virtually as they arrive. After all, the main reason they were successful was a Europe strong as a whole, but heavily fractured by frequent infighting.
Perhaps there should be a Mongol specific attrition event if you own X territories which involves diverting supply lines east (reduced capacity in the West, more in the East until the Mongol threat is over? Something needs to be done and it shouldn't be hundreds of years of careful preparation for an event which historically should surprise us.

 

[unmerged(312767)]

Been there
Hordes moved from very strong to unbeatable in the latest patch, once they cannot split once united. once doomstack reach 80k+ soldiers it is impossible to beat it. Before, they could split and be taked separately, now, they just roll without any hope of fighting back.
So the most reasonable solution - use cheats to beat them and continue playing normally.

 

[Talq]

Rebellions occur when a faction has a high military strength in relation to their liege, which never happens to the mongols due to their uber-doomstacks. I agree that they should be nerfed both in terms of numbers and attrition. The Khagan shouldn't get a huge army which could wipe the whole of Europe from the map, but rather something which helps them get started and secure a foothold on the map. The armies also shouldn't be attrition-free, but rather just come in a few smaller stacks instead of one big one. They should be much more effective than other armies, though, especially in steppe terrain, this would help simulate reality a lot better than it does now.

The mongols also seem to have a materially lower chance of joining factions, period. You can expect vassals with negative relations not in prison to be members of a faction, except for mongols in the hordes. Given the faction system is actually less dangerous at the multiple kingdom/empire level its not a great design decision.

The mongols have been deliberately souped up to be very dangerous & to do better than historically. Whether that is to everybody's tastes (as someone else put it, 'I'm playing a historical strategy game. I don't want an end boss') is another matter.

 

[Lorehead]

Do they do better than historically? It wasn’t long ago that someone complained that Egypt was the one realm that could stop them.

 

[unmerged(494787)]

I've beaten the 80k and 100k doomstacks. Of course, I did it with a united Roman Empire and deliberately sacrificed what was left of the Muslims and Russia to burn some of the stacks before our showdown (the stacks were 120k-140k when they showed up). I even did it in the mountains bordering Mesopotamia and Persia for the Ilkhanate and Alania for the Golden Horde - no medieval marines necessary. You get a massive piety boost for beating a stack, which (if catholic) is more than enough to get all the piety you spent on Holy Orders back (speaking of Holy Orders, hiring them as catholic is an awesome idea for fighting the hordes. Just put 3 500-man retinue units in the army so you can assign your own leaders).

Obviously, Orthodox have the problem that they can't hire Holy Orders but there should be some decent-ish mercenaries around. You may want to build up a nice (10k+) gold reserve beforehand though, 80k troops in Cataphract retinues being reduced to half strength causes you to hemorrhage gold like you wouldn't believe.

 

[Talq]

Do they do better than historically? It wasn’t long ago that someone complained that Egypt was the one realm that could stop them.

Well historically, the Golden horde took the area where cumania is at the start of the game and had the russian principalities as vassals (in game, that would be part of the empire). The Ilkhanate took persia. The initial mongol advance defeated a polish & a hungarian army, but neither of those places were occupied. They do better than that fairly consistently. The purging of the local nobility of anywhere they take & the lack of internal dissension is also ahistoric.

 

[unmerged(462833)]

In my game Ilkhanate destroyed Sunni up to the borders of Mesopotamia / Egypt. Meanwhile GH captured most of Cumans and won 2 wars against United Kingdom Ruthenia / Rus (Perm and Volga Bolgaria). I was sure they can't be stopped... And then a suprise. Ilkhanate was teared with revolting vassals (independent league). I played as kingdom of Taurica / Serbia / Croatia / Georgia / Wallachia / Alania / Bulgaria under Emperor, army was about 50.000 soldiers. I joined 3rd Mongol Invasion against Ruthenia. Mongols started to assaulting holdings... And then I realised that my help weasn't needed - before I arrived Ruthenian army destroyed Mongols stacks... Few years later GH gained new free stacks and declared war against united Kingdom of Hungary / Poland (they incorporated one Duchy in Rus into Poland). Meanwhile I was taking over Byzantine Empire, so I didn't join. But Ruthenia joined Hungary and crushed Mongols again before Hungarian arrives. Only due to the support of Ilkhanate GH didn't loose territory when Ruthenia declared holy war after the previous was ended (and due to the fact that Hungary had revolt in Poland and also I didn't decide to attack Ilkhanate as Empire in spite of the fact I could). What is funny, Ruthenia didn't loose, their war ended with white peace.... Honestly, Ruthenia and Rus is unstopabble in my game, not Hordes...