Tenacity of Hordes in 5.1

[TAMBOURINESNAKE]

Until about a month ago, I had not played EU3 since June or May, right after hordes gained the ability to annex land in a beta patch. I'm in a campaign now around 1500 and both the Golden Horde and Timurids are much, much larger than they were in 1399 and show no sign of cracking.

In 5.1, when do hordes usually break? So far, neither of them have 'lost' a war (insofar as a horde can) and they have most of their neighbours paying them tribute. I'm curious to know when you've seen either or both break in your 5.1 campaigns.

 

[Nessaj]

By 1500 the europeans and muslims should outtech the hordes by far and destroy them easily with superior units and higher morale. It sounds very odd that the hordes survived until 1500; in my games they always collapse after the deaths of the first two rulers

 

[rachini]

the hordes wont last much , usually if you are playing a midlle or western europe country , you will notice the hordes expanding pretty much in whole of eastern europe and annexing or minimizing them to a couple of provinces.

now the good thing that happens is when the come and eat/chop poland and lithuania alont TO , their size is now bigger and they will fall eventually in a couple of decades.
usually you can pretty much hasten that by giving your spies a job (pretty easy given the low spy defence that the hordes have).
after that turning point , its the other way around : higher tech along with nationalist rising everywhere will disintegrate them.

some of my games as austria/bohemia/france , i had seen them eat whole of hungary and polan right to my door.
thats why i learned not to attack poland/lithuania/hungary in the early period of the game just so they can stand a chance against the horde and play their intended role in my plan:meat shields

 

[Vityaz90]

In my games the hordes survive a really long time. Often the Golden Horde reaches the Adria and stay there for a few decades. Very annoying because at this time the Timurids were dangerous but not the other hordes (for middle Europe).

 

[Uebergold]

Depends on difficulty, on very hard they can be super strong for a very long time, especially Timurids because they are bordering weaker nations....

Another important factor is about their leaders. When there are lots of successions, they may start to fell apart in 1450 already. If not, they can be superpowers until ca. 1550 (GH)/1600 (Timurids).

GH can take big parts of Eastern Europe and sometimes even several parts in Scandinavia but when they start to border Austria/Bohemia the decline begins. Timurids will eat mostly big parts of Anatolia (thats why no chance to get big for Ottomans unless they are superlucky or you help them), Arabian Peninsula, Northwest India and sometimes even Northeast Africa from Tripolis to Ethiopia. Sadly in ALL my games they never managed to form Mughal Empire, although I saw it happen here in the forums (so often just 1 or 2 provinces they needed to do it....).

Another downfall for Hordes later on is that they are often using ridiculous doomstacks for fighting rebels -> super high WE -> super high stab cost etc. Otherwise they would be even stronger...