Restoring the Roman Empire: Worse case scenario

[Kiithis]

Suffice to say I started up a BYZ game and took to restoring the empire. To make a long story short, after many decades I have dismantled and conquered the HRE and taken every other place for the decision.... except one.

There is one holding left in a Tunisian province I already own, and the Ilkhanate just so happen to hold it.

With my ~150k + 25k retinue I have only ever gotten to 40% WS for a few seconds before the doom stack tracks me down. I can't seem to assassinate the leader. I also ran into a problem with bohemia inheriting all of the HRE when I did away with the imperial title so as to keep those lands in the empire. Now they tend to rebel every now and then. Trying to take it away from them only seems to make things worse, but I have many saved games to go back to.

I have no doubt that I will eventually get out of my predicament but at this point in time i'm stuck between the hordes and a super bohemia that wants independence.

 

[Imzadi]

Having never faced the Ilkhanate I need to ask, how big are these doomstacks ?
Boggle the mind to read that 200k aint enough to kick 'em back to Mongolia.
Is it possible to play as these bad asses ?

 

[Bill_Wong]

Having never faced the Ilkhanate I need to ask, how big are these doomstacks ?
Boggle the mind to read that 200k aint enough to kick 'em back to Mongolia.

Haha, I was gonna write the same thing.

 

[Maukka]

Having never faced the Ilkhanate I need to ask, how big are these doomstacks ?
Boggle the mind to read that 200k aint enough to kick 'em back to Mongolia.
Is it possible to play as these bad asses ?

They usually have around 60k troops first divided into 3 stacks with 10k horse archers in each of those stacks, furthermore they tend to get reinforcements from Mongolia every now and then.

 

[MrWeRD]

Not to mention those horse archers currently have a 100% bonus.

 

[justin6477]

Having never faced the Ilkhanate I need to ask, how big are these doomstacks ?
Boggle the mind to read that 200k aint enough to kick 'em back to Mongolia.
Is it possible to play as these bad asses ?

If you want to see the power of their lone doomstacks, fire event 60004, 60005 or 60006. Notice that's 60 thousand, not 6 thousand. They are the reinforcement events for the GH, Ilkhanate and Timurids and give you at least one 20,000 man doomstack.

 

[TheStrangerOrg]

my experience is that whenever you take the war east and thats past jerusalem into the desert and the iranian mountains you get killed by Attrition. Every single war Ive declared on anyone there has been an absolute nightmare because of that, sometimes you can have only like 3k in a province while the fortresses you have to siege have 2.5k garrison. The owners of the provinces can have like 25k in that same province, well... do the math. And then if you fight the mongols, they dont suffer from attrition early on, its enough to go mental imo.

 

[Ols]

Usually when there's one barony left that's loyal to a distant empire inside my realm I use give_title to transfer it. It's just not logical gameplay fighting with hundreds of thousands of men for a minor town.

 

[7ED]

60,000? LOL, what game have you guys been playing? In my Alexiad game, after reunifying the Empire, the Ilkhanate came a-knocking with a 198,000 strong doomstack with 80,000 horse archers, and which is attrition free. I haven't been able to engage it yet, attrition kills everything and retinues are expensive =_= I've got 29+ martial generals leading each flank, and I still get owned.

Only reason I can hold on to the land I have is cuz I have 6 20k stacks mopping up after the doomstack.

Its kind of hilarious, cuz I managed to end an independance civil war by killing the faction leader, and I inherited the massive doomstack he got from the faction civil war event. 144,000 troops. It managed to take the Mongols down from 198k to.... 184k =_=

Without attrition, Ilkhanate is hopelessly broken, not to mention the fact that 198.000 men running through one province is just unrealistic even WITH attrition. If anyone wants to see the savegame, send me a PM. Otherwise its an entertaining game, I've got the eastern half of the empire up to tunis, sardinia, and all of italy united, and I am selective enough with my breeding that I've got a genius for every generation.

 

[KPJ]

Having never faced the Ilkhanate I need to ask, how big are these doomstacks ?
Boggle the mind to read that 200k aint enough to kick 'em back to Mongolia.
Is it possible to play as these bad asses ?

Sure, after they've converted to one of the playable religions (Christianity, or, with Sword of Islam (which I always wanna call Sphere of Influence, thanks EU3), Islam). There is one year in the histories where the Golden Horde is Orthodox Christian, but I forget exactly where... in the 1200s certainly. The Ilkhanate becomes muslim quite early on after their initial invasion in 1200

 

[justin6477]

60,000? LOL, what game have you guys been playing? In my Alexiad game, after reunifying the Empire, the Ilkhanate came a-knocking with a 198,000 strong doomstack with 80,000 horse archers, and which is attrition free. I haven't been able to engage it yet, attrition kills everything and retinues are expensive =_= I've got 29+ martial generals leading each flank, and I still get owned.

Only reason I can hold on to the land I have is cuz I have 6 20k stacks mopping up after the doomstack.

Its kind of hilarious, cuz I managed to end an independance civil war by killing the faction leader, and I inherited the massive doomstack he got from the faction civil war event. 144,000 troops. It managed to take the Mongols down from 198k to.... 184k =_=

Without attrition, Ilkhanate is hopelessly broken, not to mention the fact that 198.000 men running through one province is just unrealistic even WITH attrition. If anyone wants to see the savegame, send me a PM. Otherwise its an entertaining game, I've got the eastern half of the empire up to tunis, sardinia, and all of italy united, and I am selective enough with my breeding that I've got a genius for every generation.

So... why not use the sixty-thousand events I put up top to spawn your own doom stack? Just fire any of those events 10 times and you'll have a stack equal to theirs. Attrition free. Naturally you can disband it after you're done.

Or roam around massacring everything. It's quite fun forming Jerusalem as the Duke of Brittany this way. Mercilessly drop those mongol stacks on the Fatimids until you've holy-war'd all 4 duchies. Then keep them around until your income and levy penalties expire.

 

[Maukka]

60,000? LOL, what game have you guys been playing? In my Alexiad game, after reunifying the Empire, the Ilkhanate came a-knocking with a 198,000 strong doomstack with 80,000 horse archers, and which is attrition free. I haven't been able to engage it yet, attrition kills everything and retinues are expensive =_= I've got 29+ martial generals leading each flank, and I still get owned.

Only reason I can hold on to the land I have is cuz I have 6 20k stacks mopping up after the doomstack.

Its kind of hilarious, cuz I managed to end an independance civil war by killing the faction leader, and I inherited the massive doomstack he got from the faction civil war event. 144,000 troops. It managed to take the Mongols down from 198k to.... 184k =_=

Without attrition, Ilkhanate is hopelessly broken, not to mention the fact that 198.000 men running through one province is just unrealistic even WITH attrition. If anyone wants to see the savegame, send me a PM. Otherwise its an entertaining game, I've got the eastern half of the empire up to tunis, sardinia, and all of italy united, and I am selective enough with my breeding that I've got a genius for every generation.

It seems they buffed the mongols a bit in this patch, they're actually pretty dangerous now even for bigger empires. The best way to survive the mongols now seem to be by constantly being on the offensive against them and trying to get them to attack eachother to whittle down their doomstacks.

 

[leksu]

I crushed the 104k mongol doomstack of the Golden Horde easily with my 156k troops (I also made them cross a river, so they had the penalty). I don't see why everyone is complaining about how big they are.

EDIT: And that wasn't even my full army.

 

[NezzeOne]

I crushed the 104k mongol doomstack of the Golden Horde easily with my 156k troops (I also made them cross a river, so they had the penalty). I don't see why everyone is complaining about how big they are.

EDIT: And that wasn't even my full army.

Except in many cases it's a larger number than 104k. Try about 140k. That suffers no attrition. And they can assault virtually every holding on the map, no problem.

You see where I'm going with this.

 

[leksu]

Except in many cases it's a larger number than 104k. Try about 140k. That suffers no attrition. And they can assault virtually every holding on the map, no problem.

You see where I'm going with this.

Then one could gather 200k... As long as you have relatively significantly more troops than them, you can actually beat them easily.

My point is that some people claim that even beating them with much more troops (like some guy in another thread, who said he couldn't beat the doomstack with 300k troops), which is not true. Mongols die like all other humans too.

 

[NezzeOne]

Then one could gather 200k... As long as you have relatively significantly more troops than them, you can actually beat them easily.

My point is that some people claim that even beating them with much more troops (like some guy in another thread, who said he couldn't beat the doomstack with 300k troops), which is not true. Mongols die like all other humans too.

Not really! Horse Archers, especially in large numbers, tend to murder the absolute -hell- out of normal troops during the Skirmish phase of battle. Not only that, but I'd like to see you assemble a 200k army without attrition-ing a bunch of them :/

I mean, if you have a terrain bonus (like you did,) I could see it being feasible. But when you're trying to defend desert hell-holes like the Kingdom of Syria or Arabia, things tend to sway in favor of the Mongols -purely because- they don't suffer attrition.

 

[Kiithis]

My main goals in the war with the Ilkhanate was to either bum rush them fast enough, raising the WS high enough to get them to capitulate before the heavy protracted fighting started, alas I only got to 40% only to see that WS drop like a stone. After that, what was left of my armies had all been smashed by the doomstack or took attrition down to just my retinue. I have only one good strategy in that I need to draw the horde to water, as you don't suffer attrition on a boat. If I can some how lead them to a good spot and land my troops near by i can take them before I lose too many forces.

But before I tried that I figured I'll just console the barony and face them another day for more than just some pile of stone in north africa.

 

[DominusNovus]

Well, if you can maintain a coastal mountainous province with high supply limit, just have your main army there as bait, and the rest of your army (outnumbering the doomstack as much as possible) in boats offshore. Then, the moment battle is begun, unload the troops. Should help you win the battle. There's plenty of variants on that general idea.

 

[Emperor Marcus]

I have yet to face the Mongols, We've been neighbors in peace while they have been gobling up the remains of the muslim nations, I even have one persian province and the Kingdom of Mesopotamia (as a indicator of how far east my Roman Empire has gone), its been a decade or more since the Golden Horde arrives a few years ago.

So i've been more focus in taking the fight into europe to conquer more former roman territories than bother with the peaceful Mongols. Not like I havnt been preparing, making a large retinue army of cataphract regiments (200 horse archers and 300 cataphracts each) to bolster my levy armies to combat athe Mongol horde if they decide to get uppity. Have about 30 of them so far stationed at Constatninople. Which translates into around 9000 Cataphracts and 6000 Horse Archers. Would make more but i got two other regular standing armies of around 18000 men each with more of a pikemen, archer, and heavy infantry mix.

 

[Emperor Marcus]

I have yet to face the Mongols, We've been neighbors in peace while they have been gobling up the remains of the muslim nations, I even have one persian province and the Kingdom of Mesopotamia (as a indicator of how far east my Roman Empire has gone), its been a decade or more since the Golden Horde arrives a few years ago.

So i've been more focus in taking the fight into europe to conquer more former roman territories than bother with the peaceful Mongols. Not like I havnt been preparing, making a large retinue army of cataphract regiments (200 horse archers and 300 cataphracts each) to bolster my levy armies to combat athe Mongol horde if they decide to get uppity. Have about 30 of them so far stationed at Constatninople. Which translates into around 9000 Cataphracts and 6000 Horse Archers. Would make more but i got two other regular standing armies of around 18000 men each with more of a pikemen, archer, and heavy infantry mix.

Ya now that i have faced them (after they killed every muslim nation in Arabia so it iether needs to expand into the golden horde or me they choose me).

I gotta say their incredibly annoying. Mostly due to the fact they have a 200k stack army roaming around Mesopotamia... Its a relatively slow army (sometimes) so its mostly becoming a indecisive war for awhile now with me getting one step ahead of them reconquering provinces after the 200k army conquered it, then conquering swaths of other mongol provinces. And its still +2% warscore in their favor due to the 200k army catching a army or two of mine before they could escape them...

I kinda wish now they would get attrition damage the bastards.... would be useful to pull a desert like scorched earth strategy against them...

Have had to levy the entire Empire's levies against them (I basically have increased my territories now to reach from the Atlantic including 90% of France, 3 duchies in Hispania, Kingdoms of Africa, Italy, Serbia, etc, I outnumber them 5:1 but thanks to attrition and their lack of its mostly a meat grinder and avoiding their mountain of a stack that is the size of nearly half my entire army of a empire that spans only slightly less the size of the Roman Empire did at its height under Trajan (with the exception of Britanna, and rest of Hispania and a few duchies in HRE).