Preparing for golden horde

[Valynor]

I'm around 1110, Ere emperor since 1100.
i got back pretty much all Anatolia, south Italy with the exception of Sicily, which is going to be my next HW.
Having never met Mongols on the battlefield (the only game I continued till 1300 I was an unambitiousFrisia kingdom), I was wondering how to prepare best.
Expanding towards east is a good thing? i mean, I can keep holywarring pagans for land, but then I'd have mongols suddenly on me.
Is it better to conquer only the coastal middle east and Italy and hoping the hordes would keep other streets?

I don' think I'd be able (luck of skill, patience and experience)in a century or so to do that and take on HRE that seems, from what I read, a requisite to win a mongols war, so I'm trying to minimize impact. Or am I doomed?

 

[Lorehead]

If you're going to be fighting the Mongols, cataphract retinues in the mountains of Anatolia are a good way of doing it; and you'd probably do worse fighting them out on the steppe. If you can put a lot of Orthodox kingdoms east of you, though, that increases the odds that the Mongols will convert to Orthodoxy themselves, and leave you alone.

 

[JonStryker]

One good idea is to make lots of rather strong vassal kingdoms and transfer vassalage of a county near the Mongols' spawn region to each of them. This allows you to raise big armies in distant regions. That way you can quickly annihilate the 20k stacks when they arrive. Just try to prevent them from combining all their forces into one mega stack. And if they do, don't hesitate to disband levies when such a stack is after you and you can't bring in enough troops in time.
When I want to take care of a bigger stack I usually lure them into attacking me in mountainous region/over a river. That way I get loads of defense boni. You can lure a stack to a province by walking at it. If the AI thinks it is stronger it will respond by walking toward the attacking stack. If you a) make sure they arrive before your luring-stack does and b) raise your Kings' levies in the right moment you'll have a good chance to win the battle.