The Ilkhanate is here? Oh dear...

[Lucius Drake]

I have a question that concerns one of the most troubling events in the game: the arrival of the Mongol hordes. I'll explain what my issue was before I ask my question:

I was playing an MP game with two friends as the Byzantine Empire. I was the Emperor, and they were two of my vassals -- the idea was that when the Empire was powerful enough that they would start scheming for the throne. To cut it short, we roughly restored the historical borders of the Eastern Roman Empire at it's height under Justinian. Then, the Ilkhanate came. Persia was pretty fractured at this time, so they easily conquered pretty much all of the Middle East that we did not own. It was pretty tense for awhile, as I tried my best to gift them money and sent my Chancellor over to improve relations. Unfortunately, they used that accursed Tribal Invasion CB for Jerusalem. I had seen their doomstack of 145k troops before, so I thought I could try to encircle it with smaller armies and everyone bumrush in... but supply in the Levant is mediocre at best. They caught my 10k retinue of cataphracts (heavy cavalry and horse archers) in my own stupidity and annihilated it. When it came time to engage, I had just lost too many troops to attrition that they slaughtered me. I think I killed 10k of their army to the 50k they killed of mine.

As you can imagine, the Empire's manpower was pretty depleted after that, and I just gave up Jerusalem as I knew it would be pointless to try to engage again, even against their raised levies. To cut it short again, an Independence faction sprung up right after the war which took ten years to put down and many mercenaries which sapped the treasury. After that war ended, a faction sprung up to put my brother on the throne -- ultimately, we all ended getting deposed from our realms (they each had their own subordinate kingdom). We just didn't have enough troops to deal with it. We called it quits after that.

Also, as a side note, the Golden Horde also popped up, but they never conquered anything. Not sure if that is a glitch or not.

To get to the bottom of it: is it possible to defeat the Mongol hordes at all? Or are you just doomed to lose as much territory as they desire to own? I guess I am looking for strategies -- ANYTHING to combat them. Yes, I know that historically they conquered swathes of territory and took a concerned effort to stop, but surely there is a way to do it in game terms? I just don't see a way. It doesn't seem right that an invincible force is placed against that suffers zero attrition whilst you deal with normal game mechanics. Doesn't seem very fair at all.

 

[Velger]

From what I've heard, the mongol horde is currently bugged due to having a high percentage of horse archers, which are bugged to be vastly more destructive than they're meant to be under the culture group that the Mongols fall under.

 

[Lucius Drake]

I've heard that it has something to do with the most recent patch.

 

[Velger]

Yea, it added cultural buildings for all cultures, but some of them were screwed up. Horse Archers for the culture group the Mongols are in get an insane bonus to attack power, and Scottish Pikemen get something like a 150% bonus to defensive power.

 

[grumphie]

problem is twofold:

1. when an mongol army teams up with a stack, it does nto suffer attrition. result: the mongols make hellish deathstacks with all their troops in one place, resulting in about unbeatable stacks of over 100k

2. HA are(or at least we think) currently bugged, due to a few typo's. instead of a bonus of about 15-30% for mongol and altaic culture groups, they get a MASSIVE bonus to morale and damage. this isnt much of a problem in regular play(due to the low amounts of HA) but the mongol stacks of many HA they crush armies that used to crush them, requireing a even larger amount of troops needed to ebat them.

3. invasions get warscore at ridiculus rates, giving about 6-7% warscore for every holding you take, and thus the mongols only need about 20 holdings to win the war.

combine this, and you get a hellish nightmare stack thats impossible to take out unless you have a huge realm, requires extreme microing due to supply limit and the fact that "small" 10k stacks get annialated, and win wars in the blink of an eye because they simply rroll over anything in their path.

 

[Velger]

Personally I think the lack of attrition was kind of a mistake from the get-go. The Mongols have no reason to need to be constantly moving and conquering, when that was sort of the entire point -- to sustain an enormous army through relatively constant warfare.

 

[JonStryker]

In my recent game they seem to be bugged in another way: They started an invasion of my two counties in Khiva. When they sieged those two down they took additional 3 counties in Khwarezm. Those five counties are giving them 90% in warscore. And now they are just sitting there, waiting.
At 86% warscore they won't accept a peace of any sort :/

There might be some restriction in place that prevents them from gaining too much territory outside of the original invasion target. But anyways it's cleary not WAD to have a war that goes on for 40+ years.

 

[meseejos]

I did manage to defeat the Timurid, as soon as the notice came i gathered about 130k troops and marched. while they where moving on the golden horde i called a holy war. splitting up into 3 groups. i managed to bring them up to 90% war score just as they a 150k doomstack spawned almost on top of me. they sued for peace just as it spawned. The doomstack moved off to continue the fight against the GH and I gathered what was left of my troops 90k (more lost to attrition then anything) and dog piled the last county.


.... pure luck though. Had i been half a second slower i would have lost, the Timurid would have wiped out the GH and moved on me next.

on the other hand. the Golden horde NEVER attacked me, moved south along my boarders in northern Russia along the south into Hungary. not that im complaining.

 

[Kanin_Usagi]

A strategy that's always worked (for me) is to wait until the VERY MOMENT THEY SPAWN, before they have a county. Then have one of your daughters marry the heir to the Horde, then KILL THE CURRENT LEADER OF THE HORDE. With a little luck, you can keep inviting them to wars successfully and they'll never be able to declare war against you.

Relies on some luck, and a bit gamey, but the Mongols are glitched and OP'd, so I'll allow an exception for this case.

 

[Lucius Drake]

Is there an event that eventually disbands the deathstacks, or are you ultimately forced to deal with them in some form?