How do I beat nomads??

[JodelDiplom]

So the year is 907. I am a Norse-Slavic-tribal king of Rus, ruling the lands between Dniepr and lake Ladoga. My allies and be can throw perhaps 5000 men into battle if everyone shows up, and I have enough prestige to call up maybe 7500 warriors more.

There are now scary nomads all around me. I had my first run-in with a nomad in a small war where I tried to keep a nomad adventurer out of one of my tributaries. That went shockingly bad - I lost my whole realm's levy (then around 4500 men) in one single battle with no survivors. The nomad host made up for its losses in that battle with a shockingly fast That battle left me with a lasting apprehension of nomads. Unfortunately, I am now surrounded by Khazars in the east, and Magyars in the south. (They hold 1/2 of actual Hungary, and 1/2 of their original lands at the TOG start. They block my path of expansion. They are a menace to my realm. And I am deathly afraid of facing them in battle.

So: What can I do?? I have no cavalry, only crappy light infantry and archers. Is there any way in which a 10th century tribal ruler can defeat nomad hordes? Or should I cower in fear, keep away, and concede defeat in case any of them ever invade me?

 

[DukeDayve]

To be honest... you don't. Not as a tribal leader. Not unless you're bringing 100,000 troops to the battle. Tribals are mostly light infantry, whereas nomads are mostly heavy cavalry and horse archers, which are so superior to light infantry you just ain't going to win.

 

[JodelDiplom]

Would feudalizing ASAP help?

 

[Jia Xu]

1) Take advantage of defensive terrain, especially mountains
2) Use retinues and mercenaries
3) Try to get commanders with the organizer trait so you can lead enemy armies on big chases toward defensive terrain and major rivers.

 

[Yuiiut]

No, because feudalising makes you extremely weak in the short term and you need a pile of gold to build yourself up and feudalise your vassals.

 

[majorlupa]

I just played from Charlemagne date as Slovensky guy. United Rus + few more counties around it. My big neighbor was Khazaria of course. All the time I kept my chancellor there and relations with Khagan kept 100+. I enjoyed peace but could not expand much (I didn't want to expand into Finland because of crappy provinces) because Khazars had pretty much all the stuff around me. Then I wanted to roleplay a bit and converted to orthodox. I feudalised, my vassals followed and I my realm levy was around 5-6k. Then I realized that +100 relation with the Khagan doesn't matter and he used conquest CB on me. I hired some mercs with HI, and I was lucky enough to have 3 commanders with defender and brave trait(one was patient) so in theory I can withstand powerful horde skirmish with shieldwall and high morale and defensive stats. But it did not happen, in the battle 7k of my levies+mercs vs 4k of LC+HA mix my losses per day were 100, whereas theirs maybe 11. I lost the battle and just rage quit since I could not really beat hordes in open combat and I was not in mood to play as a vassal to them or drop provinces. I think that going back to slavic right after I feudalised would have been a better idea and I could use attrition to my advantage.

tl;dr You can't beat hordes

 

[shiro the bushi]

marry into them only real way to stop hordes from taking your unfaithful wives and daughter

 

[Soyaman]

To be fair.. There was a reason that the russians were vassals of the nomad hordes for so long.
Although I'd personally gone for the vassal and try to ruin them from within.

 

[TheDungen]

Swear fealty to them. Then start feudalizing, they'll defend you while you do and once you are done and stronger than them then you cna turn on them (you go to because you want to be independent so you can swear fealty to the mongols when they show up. Don't try to fight the mongols, their event spawned troops will crush you, furtunatly the AI are stupid with their event spawned troops and once they've wasted them again turn on your nomad overlords.

But structly speaking, as a pagan you are going to have a hard time to survive, only one holy order (assuming you have reformed, and isn't germanic pagan) and very few allies.

 

[blind-oln]

From my experiance from last game as polish, slavic ruler I can say you need to become feudal and have around 2x of nomad army. You can get 10 000 soldiers from holy order, but you need reformed faith. As tribal I see no chance to defeat nomads. Light infantry is useless against their superior horse units. If you are tribal just try to avoid any wars with nomands until you become feudal and get 2x of nomads army.

 

[TheDungen]

I honestly hate that this is the case, IRL the kievian rus were slowly pushing the nomads back, up until the mongols arrived and changed the playing field.

 

[Ashagar]

Ideally fighting on terms favorable to your forces instead of the enemy would do it, its how Otto the great defeated the Magyars by forcing to fight in a area that favored his forces instead of the enemy, as I recall he ambushed their army in a area between a forest and a river so they couldn't pull off the usual nomadic tactics.

Being tribal though isn't good but if you must fight, try to pick your ground, make them attack you in forests, mountains and hills or at least make them attack you across rivers ideally major rivers because of the penalties on the attackers.

 

[TheDungen]

Ideally fighting on terms favorable to your forces instead of the enemy would do it, its how Otto the great defeated the Magyars by forcing to fight in a area that favored his forces instead of the enemy, as I recall he ambushed their army in a area between a forest and a river so they couldn't pull off the usual nomadic tactics.

Being tribal though isn't good but if you must fight, try to pick your ground, make them attack you in forests, mountains and hills or at least make them attack you across rivers ideally major rivers because of the penalties on the attackers.

Unfourtunatly terrain penatlies in ck2 are much more lenient than in eu4.

 

[JodelDiplom]

To be fair.. There was a reason that the russians were vassals of the nomad hordes for so long.
Although I'd personally gone for the vassal and try to ruin them from within.

Yeah I know Russians and Mongols and all that. But before that, there was Sviatoslav the Wise and the Khazars, where the relationship was the other way around:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars#Rise_of_the_Rus.27_and_the_collapse_of_the_Khazarian_state
synopsis: in the 960s Sviatoslav the Wise, heir of Rurik and ruler of Kiev, fought a series of campaigns against the Khazars, razed their fortresses at Itil and Sarkel to the ground, and broke the power of the nomads for some generations.

I was kinda hoping there would be a way for me to roleplay Sviatoslav in some way, and destroy or at least defeat and splinter the Khazars in-game.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

The problem isn't that the nomads are so militarily overpowered because at least historically speaking that has generally been the case.

The problem is that the nomads presented in game are far too stable and do not accurate represent what were historically a cacophony of competing ethnicities, clans, and tribes all vying for supremacy with only a rare occurance every so often of one becoming dominant enough to unleash a full scale invasion on settled society. The nomad polities should be incessantly infighting, destroying each other, and erupting once they've reached critical mass. You don't see this in game because clan politics are far too easy to manage, even for the AI, while for a player nomad, defeating the AI nomads is far too easy due to how easily gamed combat tactics are. Pure unit types being superior to a well mixed combined arms army is about the dumbest way of representing things, when this has almost never been true in the history of anything.

 

[TheDungen]

The problem isn't that the nomads are so militarily overpowered because at least historically speaking that has generally been the case.

The problem is that the nomads presented in game are far too stable and do not accurate represent what were historically a cacophony of competing ethnicities, clans, and tribes all vying for supremacy with only a rare occurance every so often of one becoming dominant enough to unleash a full scale invasion on settled society. The nomad polities should be incessantly infighting, destroying each other, and erupting once they've reached critical mass. You don't see this in game because clan politics are far too easy to manage, even for the AI, while for a player nomad, defeating the AI nomads is far too easy due to how easily gamed combat tactics are. Pure unit types being superior to a well mixed combined arms army is about the dumbest way of representing things, when this has almost never been true in the history of anything.

No it has not, the mongols are the exception. Aside from them you have only the turks in the ck2 era, who are somewhat successfull nomads (and not all turkish peoples are fully nomadic) and the turks while doing well in persia do badly in the west (remember khazars are a west turkish people). When the turks later fight byzantium they are no longer nomadic so that doesn't apply.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

No it has not, the mongols are the exception. Aside from them you have only the turks in the ck2 era, who are somewhat successfull nomads (and not all turkish peoples are fully nomadic) and the turks while doing well in persia do badly in the west (remember khazars are a west turkish people). When the turks later fight byzantium they are no longer nomadic so that doesn't apply.

Which is why we're talking about nomads, not "semi-nomads" or half nomads. As they're represented in the game there are only one type of nomads as far as I know.

 

[TheDungen]

Which is why we're talking about nomads, not "semi-nomads" or half nomads. As they're represented in the game there are only one type of nomads as far as I know.

Then they litterally only represent the mongols. All other nomads were semi nomads and actually worked better wth the tribal mechanics. In fact the mongols also worked better witht he tribal mechanics atleast then you didn't get everything from the eastern end of the map to the black sea mongol cultured.

 

[Yxklyx]

Then they litterally only represent the mongols. All other nomads were semi nomads and actually worked better wth the tribal mechanics. In fact the mongols also worked better witht he tribal mechanics atleast then you didn't get everything from the eastern end of the map to the black sea mongol cultured.

Yeah, I agree that Horse Lords is not realistic at all when it comes to the early "nomads" but it does make that part of the map more interesting and can lead to Byzantine/Abbasid collapses - so it's like Sunset Invasion in that regard.

 

[TheDungen]

Yeah, I agree that Horse Lords is not realistic at all when it comes to the early "nomads" but it does make that part of the map more interesting and can lead to Byzantine/Abbasid collapses - so it's like Sunset Invasion in that regard.

Except that all those nifty culture out on the steppes are gone within a few centuries.