is there ANY way to beat mongols as Rus\Russia?

[Comradebot]

sure. it is possible to win. but still expect to lose some territry. they arent some kind of lstorng enemy like HRE that should be properly balanced. they are the historic menace that obliterated the eastern regions. while its perfectly possible to beat them the first time, theyre ridiculously strong and SHOUDL me near impossible to defeat,

Exactly. The only reason you shouldn't is if you're being a super gamey type who refuses to actually deal with any kind of adversity in CKII and you've planted the entirety of de jure Russia's army on the map's Eastern edge long before the Mongols actually arrive. If you can man up and avoid that, then from personal experience I'd say there's a good chance you lose Perm before you can even organize your armies fully. If you haven't been playing a super-aggressive game, then they'll be the challenge they were meant to be.

With that said, I did beat them with Nubia facing their first invasion (Ilkhanate). They had nearly three times the army, so I just loaded everyone onto boats and moved along the coast picking off the smaller Mongol armies while avoiding the stack. Of course defending the coast of the Levant is a lot easier thanks to this than defending inland Russia.

 

[telegraph]

the easiest way around would be to swear fealty to ERE early in the game, then become emperor through election, then unite Rus and replace greek people with slavic. You should have enough levies to beat mongols right from their first appearance.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

It is very possible to win. In fact, if you know what you're doing and prepare it's even somewhat easy.

There are two parts to beating the Mongols. One is strategic and the other tactical.

The strategic party is simply building a big enough empire to reach something like numerical parity with them. If you're a tiny duchy or small kingdom, of course you're going to lose. Not because it's the Mongols. But because you're facing a big force. If you can't fight the HRE to a stalemate, you probably can't take on the Mongols either. But you have about 200 years to build a decent-sized empire, so this is very doable.

The tactical part is knowing how to win. The two keys here are troop composition and timing. Troop composition means having a retinue that's custom built to face Mongols. You want a ton of heavy infantry / pikes, a little light cav, and very highly skilled commanders. Why? You need to get through the brutal skirmish phase by having your units pick the shieldwall tactic. A lot of heavy infantry / pikes and a good commander will consistently do that. Any other tactic will mean you get wrecked. Then your infantry will destroy Mongols in melee.

Do not face them with a lot of archers. Ever Archers will pick offensive tactics in skirmish. The horse archers will decimate them and you will do hardly enough damage. Your goal in skirmish is not to win. It's just to survive and then beat the horse archers in melee where they're far less effective.

The timing part is simply getting enough units to the right place without too much attrition. You need to split your force into about 20k stacks, get them close to the battlefield, and time them to join the battle at the right time.

If you do those two things, even a 1-1 ratio will often win with the new patch. 1.5 to 1 will consitently beat them.

I did this successfully with the last patch where the Mongols were super-buffed. With the new patch, I absolutely destroyed the Timurids without barely trying.

If you just throw small stacks of trash levies at the Mongols, you will lose. But if you use smart strategy, you can beat them without much trouble.

 

[Mutineer]

I use other startegy on levies. I hire all retinue in form of 400 acrcher 100 heavy infantry and leaving them home in all wars. That let me spend my levies freelly, because I have about 1/3 of realms levies size in cheapest possible retinue (manpower wize).
So, My power rarelly drop below enoght to allow independence faction to rear it agly head, even if I lost all levies in war. That let me spend levies freelly, storming castles and no warry about them mach, which greatly accelerating my empire grow.

I use same startegy in building castles. I do not warry about national buidings and even heavy infantry. I improve milita/archers first. That give me week army quality of trops wize, but big size wise. When storming castle or sieging only size matter. On figtiong other people doomstacks I just bring more or add mercs.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

With that said, I did beat them with Nubia facing their first invasion (Ilkhanate). They had nearly three times the army, so I just loaded everyone onto boats and moved along the coast picking off the smaller Mongol armies while avoiding the stack. Of course defending the coast of the Levant is a lot easier thanks to this than defending inland Russia.

How did you deal with the large stacks though?

 

[Comradebot]

How did you deal with the large stacks though?

I avoided it, and lucked out when they split a group off a couple times. Even so, that just helped me win the next war. With boats, I can move far faster than their giant stack, and retake holdings and siege some of their holdings while the doomstack lumbered around the Levant.

EDIT: And I still threw guys at it as soon as I knew I could at least get a white peace, if not outright win (I did end up winning the actual invasion). After enough wars, the doomstack was small enough to be beaten by dogpiling my whole army on it, and after that I eventually managed to finish it off.

But I stayed at war with em'. When I beat back their invasion, I declared a holy war and kept throwing troops at their stack. Managed to sneak out a white peace, then they invaded again, and I kept at it.

 

[anonymouswolfm]

I avoided it, and lucked out when they split a group off a couple times.

Was this pre 1.07? Because after the new patch they don't seem to split off at all. Which means they have one super doomstack going up to 130k (or more), more than half of which are horse archers. Unless one is a super empire being able to raise at least 150k levies and crush them in one decisive battle, there's no way to stop them as they storm your holdings and build up the 100% warscore pretty quick. Usually taking 4 or 5 provinces alone (together with all its holdings) would be enough for them to secure victory.

 

[Westernesse]

It shouldn't be too hard if your starting in 1066 as any of the Rus. dynasty duchies. They key is to prevent most of the civil wars, except if it benefits you or your heir (assuming your using seniority). You should initially declare several holy wars against neighboring pagans/muslims and get all your allies involved. Depending on how lucky you get with seniority and a few claim wars against allies (really easy if you do it after a duke dies and his lands are split in say 4 to his sons), you should be able to form Russia by 1090-1110. Then drive back the Cummans, work on inheriting some combination of the thrones of Poland/Sweden/Hungry/ERE. Conquering muslim/ERE lands is important to help your tech level advance. You might lose a kingdom when the Mongols first come, but you can wear them down. At least that how my Polosk game went.

 

[Kalderus]

You could say that about a lot of countries in a lot of PI games. Is playing Hawaii in Victoria 2 a lost cause? Yeah, probably. You can play it anyway though!

Beating the Mongols with Russia alone sounds impractical. You have like 200 years before the Golden Horde shows up, right? Use that time to build an empire. You need to expand into places which are rich and can be relied on to provide plentiful levies. I doubt that any lone kingdom in the game can defeat one of the Mongol hordes on arrival. Whenever possible, break into Anatolia and Greece. If you can conquer Byzantium, you should be more capable of defeating the Golden Horde when they land. I managed to do it!

If you think fighting them with Russia alone is hard, try fighting them with just Persia!

I just love this logic that keeps popping up now and again: "Don't worry about the imbalanced, ahistorical mongol stacks, Timmy, you can still beat them if you just become Mega-Emperor of half of Europe."

 

[Jia Xu]

I just love this logic that keeps popping up now and again: "Don't worry about the imbalanced, ahistorical mongol stacks, Timmy, you can still beat them if you just become Mega-Emperor of half of Europe."

And I just love the complaining about it. "This is ahistorical! The Mongols shouldn't be able to conquer eastern Europe! I'm playing somewhere in the region, therefore I want to be able to beat them with just my own little regional power! Moscow beating the Mongols in 1300 is obviously the most historical scenario!"

If you cared about history, you'd care more about outcomes than the methods. The Mongols are supposed to destroy. They do that quite efficiently. I can beat them now in their current state which causes lazy gamers to whine about how powerful they are. If they were dumbed down, they would just be a cakewalk. I'd roll over them effortlessly and that would hardly be historical.

 

[NewbieOne]

Sorry if this sounds simplistic but you could actually live under the horde for a while and try to take it over from the inside, possibly even in a peaceful way. Like put the chaplain in their capital forever after and wait to see what happens. Marry with the khagan's family. Keep kingly titles on you under him as he's an emperor tier. Make use of the fact you won't be DoW-ed from the outside so easily. Etc. Sometimes an occasional Russian prince would have had a good relationship with the Mongols historically (Alexander Nevsky's one with Sartaq Khan wasn't bad, the latter was a Christian convert, actually, and is playable).

 

[Kalderus]

And I just love the complaining about it. "This is ahistorical! The Mongols shouldn't be able to conquer eastern Europe! I'm playing somewhere in the region, therefore I want to be able to beat them with just my own little regional power! Moscow beating the Mongols in 1300 is obviously the most historical scenario!"

If you cared about history, you'd care more about outcomes than the methods. The Mongols are supposed to destroy. They do that quite efficiently. I can beat them now in their current state which causes lazy gamers to whine about how powerful they are. If they were dumbed down, they would just be a cakewalk. I'd roll over them effortlessly and that would hardly be historical.

Oh, of course, the Mongols actually losing to a strong, centralized united Russia is ahistorical, but the Mongols putting ten-fifteen times a province's population in troops in the province is of course perfectly accurate and acceptable. Silly me, I shouldn't criticize the "oops you die" button being pushed, since I'm obviously just a "lazy gamer."

And in regards to living under the Mongols, while that might have worked decently in reality, in CKII, expect that infidel and foreigner modifier to quickly send your dynasty on a one-way trip to the trash can.

 

[Shadowkire]

Oh, of course, the Mongols actually losing to a strong, centralized united Russia is ahistorical, but the Mongols putting ten-fifteen times a province's population in troops in the province is of course perfectly accurate and acceptable. Silly me, I shouldn't criticize the "oops you die" button being pushed, since I'm obviously just a "lazy gamer."

And in regards to living under the Mongols, while that might have worked decently in reality, in CKII, expect that infidel and foreigner modifier to quickly send your dynasty on a one-way trip to the trash can.

So the ahistorical part is how the mongols in the game get around a game mechanic like county supply/attrition? I don't like how attrition is handled in the game, where a stack that is hauling butt through a county in less than a month takes losses because of a lack of supply that somehow kills the soldiers in the stack but leaves the county unaffected.

And as for the relationship modifiers: you counter that by giving money to the khan, kind of like what happened in history.

 

[Comradebot]

Was this pre 1.07? Because after the new patch they don't seem to split off at all. Which means they have one super doomstack going up to 130k (or more), more than half of which are horse archers. Unless one is a super empire being able to raise at least 150k levies and crush them in one decisive battle, there's no way to stop them as they storm your holdings and build up the 100% warscore pretty quick. Usually taking 4 or 5 provinces alone (together with all its holdings) would be enough for them to secure victory.

It was 1.07. Absolutely no clue why the did it, and I've tried to replicate it. Wasn't a full split, just a couple 20somethingk stacks, leaving a still terrifying 80kish one running about. But even with such a terrifying stack, I could drop 50k guys from boats wherever, storm a place, and flee.

 

[grumphie]

And I just love the complaining about it. "This is ahistorical! The Mongols shouldn't be able to conquer eastern Europe! I'm playing somewhere in the region, therefore I want to be able to beat them with just my own little regional power! Moscow beating the Mongols in 1300 is obviously the most historical scenario!"

If you cared about history, you'd care more about outcomes than the methods. The Mongols are supposed to destroy. They do that quite efficiently. I can beat them now in their current state which causes lazy gamers to whine about how powerful they are. If they were dumbed down, they would just be a cakewalk. I'd roll over them effortlessly and that would hardly be historical.

and as dev's stated multiple times before: gameplay>history

and a near unbeatable force certainly is no good gameplay. yes, they should be terrifying. yes, they should be hard to withstand. no, they should not put all their troops ina single, giant stacks making them a YOU LOSE button.

 

[unmerged(312767)]

Mongols were beatable before. They splitted their stacks that could be destroyed separately by several combined 20k stacks of yours that suffer no attrition. That was very hard. That required careful and extensive planning and maneuvering. But that was executable. You could beat them.
Now, once mongol stack reaches 60k+(usually 80k) all you can do is to watch them roll over your country. Because to beat that doomstack you'll need 100+k of troops in one province.
Also, with 60-80k of troops, they suffer almost no casualties when assaulting your castles, so you can't wear them down that way.