How do you defeat the Mongols or equivalent?

>>53884257
Lighter, faster horse archers and even more nomadic life-style.

Better bows. We had horse archer nomads since the fucking scythians, but if you can outrange them, you can create infantry squares with archers safely in the middle picking them off.

The problem with mongols was that they had amazing recurve bows that outranged contemporary bows by about 100 yards on top of a culture that created perfect horsemen and archers, that could shoot someone through the throat on a watch tower 100s of meters away. So... Get you some British or Italian mercenaries, I guess.

Spam infantry archers, they will shoot double the arrows.

>>53884257
the biggest weakness of horse archers is that they need a lot of space to work an maneuver in

they are also crap at charging uphill, although this is shared with all cavalry

Ask the vietnamese.

>>53884257
Poison barbs hidden up Finnish Vaginas

>>53884257
Walls and holes?

>>53884381
The mongols seemed to be tremendously good at sieges for some reason. Ask all of mainland China, Baghdad and Eastern Europe.

>>53884257
Just be careful of catapult when you spam archer. They got the best unit in the game before the patch.

Iron Golems. Construct as many as you can and charge them all with hunting down and killing the mongols. The mongols will find their famous arrows breaking uselessly upon the metallic skins of the golems, and will flee. They will outpace them... initially.

But the golems do not eat, tire or deviate. The golems will follow the mongols, chasing them as relentlessly as death itself, and when they catch them, they will rip them apart. The steppes shall run red with blood, until not a man, woman or child remains alive, and the iron fiends take root, waiting for new orders.

>>53884257
typhoons

>>53884463
they used muslim siege engineers when they came across castles
chinese forts successfully held them off until they brought in experts

>>53884629
And that changes exactly what? What's your advice? "Don't let mongols bribe/kidnap experts"?

>>53884257
GUNS, LOTS OF GUNS

>>53884629
But how did they get them before they ransacked baghdad or was that a fluke?

>>53884783
This man speaks the truth.

Engage on favourable terms
Examples: breaking of sieges, river crossings, returning from raids (when they are burdened with spoils and slaves), direct strikes at their settlements (well, camps) - using rivers to get close, or when weather allows (that is: preferably at winter)
Alternatively, strategic retreats. Horses need provisions, after all. Fun fact: no one knows to this day just how mongols managed to wage winter campaign of the conquest of Rus - some believe that history is fake altogether because of the logistics that must have been involved

And, finally, battlefield defences

>>53884845
they apparently used chinese artillery and engineers in addition to their regular forces

they did not fight in the classic mongol way, but built palisades and dug ditches

it was also their third time, so they had practice

>>53884289
Bird riders?
>>53884257
Men and horses need food. Fast moving army means strained supply lines.

Infighting among horde's nobles can and should be exploited. Form aliances, don't be greedy on bribes, divide and conquer.

Convert them to your faith.

There are many ways.

>>53884879
>no one knows to this day just how mongols managed to wage winter campaign of the conquest of Rus
Do you know how damn cold are Mongolian winters?

>>53884257
By using actual tactics in combat, rather than charging them blindly.

Trying to win the competition with them in better light cavalry/archers is just retarded and easiest way to get smacked.

You invite them to immigrate in your land, and then you slowly assimilate and mix them with your population them until they cease to be mongols.

>>53884733
>Enemy can't harm you
>B-but what does it change
Light archer cavalry is utterly useless for anything else than harrassing disorganised troops that took the bait for enemy "routing" from the battlefield.
If you can't even besiege a fort, you can't do shit to your enemy. And no, setting up a camp around fort doesn't count, because you can easily be take into pincers from both fort's sally and reinforcements from the outside.

>>53884918
> Infighting among horde's nobles can and should be exploited. Form aliances, don't be greedy on bribes, divide and conquer.
That goes both ways, though - and mongols were adept in dividing as well
>>53884942
People are doubting speed of the mongolian army movement, and how they managed to bring enough food with them

>>53884783
came here to post this

>>53885042
>and how they managed to bring enough food with them
They were fighting just at the edge of their land you know.

>>53885101
Quick check on map gives me around 400 km for the depth of their incursion. Also - edge of their land is kind of not appropriate description of far-flung campaigns of conquest. They didn't live at the area before, did they?

>>53884918
>Men and horses need food. Fast moving army means strained supply lines.
Mongols usually bring everything with them and have no supply line. They can literally live off goat milk, and the goats go with them.

Hire mongols to kill the mongols.

>>53885175
Let me tell you how it worked. Mongols come and knock on the door. You open up, they ask if you are fine with being the Great Khan's subject. If you say yes, they move on to the next door, and you must pay taxes to them, feed their horses, etc. Your lands are their lands now too.

>>53885215
Lies.

>>53885215
Do the horses live on goat milk as well?
I mean: humans are actually more durable then horses, and in any food shortage case, horses will die first.
That Mongols operated as a mounted army that lived off unfamiliar lands (where, for example, just letting horses graze may kill them!) is nothing short of a miracle.

>>53884257
Summon a typhoon

>>53885261
Dispalled by their shamans, too bad

West nile virus

>>53885042
>mongols were adept in dividing as well
Hahahahahahahahaha... no

Unless by "dividing" you mean doing an absolute overkill on people who didn't surrender.

>>53885215
>I don't understand logistics: The Post
Also, they weren't all-mounted army. Not even half of them.

>>53885251
They actually just overfed their horses so they got fat and could survive without eating longer.

>>53885413
Wrong again
They have pitted princes of Rus against each other after conquering them, preventing forging of alliances against their rule.
Like, for example, Prince Daniil of Galich was forced to participate in punitive expedition on Poland, his would-be ally

>>53885031
>Enemy can't harm you
Except by your own admission they can.

Lots of field artillery like Scorpios can help.

>>53885031
Except Ghenghis Khan *did* figure out how to siege, in fact he did it so effectively that at the end of his campaigning life it was like clockwork.

He learned much from his captured intellectuals from all over the world. THat's why his empire had roadstations, postage, paper money, tribute flowing in from everywhere, vassals, and all the wealth of all the lands in and around present-day Mongolia, from Siberia to India, from the south China sea to the eastern borders of present-day Europe.

>>53885474
>They have pitted princes of Rus against each other after conquering them
A Kievan prince was a foreigner to a Smolensk prince and to a Pskovite prince. There were no united Russian nation back then. And waging wars is a vassal's duty, nothing wrong with that too.

>>53884257
Kill the Khan, watch the horde fracture.

>>53885310
Which is why they managed to conquer Japan so easily.

Oh wait the other thing.

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>>53884257
War carts, bring your fort with you. Artillery, outfire and outrange them, be it with hand trebuchets, rockets, scorpios or cannons. Remember that a bow's maximum range seldom hurts its targets. Be pacient, don't get baited. Burn pastures. Killing one actual mongol is worth more than ten vassal levies.

https://periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/fighting-tactics-of-the-middle-byzantine-armies-against-slavs-eurasian-steppe-peoples-part-i/

http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com.br/2017/02/qi-ji-guangs-che-ying-p1.html

http://deremilitari.org/2014/06/the-art-of-war-under-chinggis-qahan-genghis-khan/

http://deremilitari.org/2014/05/the-mongol-siege-of-xiangyang-and-fan-cheng-and-the-song-military/

http://deremilitari.org/2014/07/the-mongols-in-the-west/

http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Technology/en/CatapultTypes.html

http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Technology/en/Catapults.html

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/140820.html

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/202835.html

Do you mean early conquest mongols of Ghengis's early life? Bribe rivals, infantry squares/archers/light cavalry or just wait them out.

Golden Horde or Yuan Dynasty mongols? You're really fucked if you resist because they really were min maxing assholes. Its honestly better to just pay tribute and they usually just leave you alone. That is unless you were one continent away from their home base.

The Hungarians actually had some success using tons of castles and the vast distances meant the mongols could never muster a real conquest force. Well more accurately, they had other shit to do than care about Europe at the time.

>>53884257
Machine guns

>Battlefield siege weapons

Is this a joke? Real life isnt age of empires and your ancestors were not retards. The mongols are not going to charge straight into pike walls or engage on conditions favourable to the defender.

Battlefield artillery is a meme until reliable gunpowder. Also if they could have gotten guns, better bows or light cavalry they would have. Very few cultures had access to native horse archer cavalry in significant numbers.

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>>53884257
Mobility's cool, but there's more things in life
Like hiding in your cart
Shooting in a line
At the catholics
That don't get bread and wine

>>53886364
Stay noided anon.

>>53886219
>Hey Alexander, I'm sorry but I can't allow you to use these mangonels to defend against the Scythians while we cross this river, because battlefield artillery is a fucking JOKE
>Hephaeston- you cocksucker- this is why nobody will ever believe you're the greatest general to ever live

>>53884257
Foot archers, fast light cavalry, and heavy cavalry.

Mongolian horses were pretty slow for horses, but they were a fairly low maintenance breed. Don't try to chase them down for 2 weeks like some noteworthy idiots did and they won't be able to use that to their advantage.

>>53884257
There isn't one magic thing that will make you beat them. Use a combination of:
Fight in jungles, marshes, or mountains to negate the advantages of horses. Use better equipment (faster horse breeds, better ranged weapons, plate armor...). Use better intelligence and bait to force them into choke points and then ambush them.
Kill the leader in its camp (assassins).
Cause political tensions.
Pay traitors.
Bait them with a trap city. Poison wine supplies and wells, hide troops in hidden tunnels under the city. Once the mongols are pillaging the city and are drunk, attack. Or lock them in the city and set fire to it while they're inside.
Use scorched earth tactics as you fall back to cut down their supplies.

>>53884257
By moving to France.

>>53884590
If we are going the full fantasy route then why not use magic to turn them into chickens? Chickens are pretty much harmless and now you also got your army a food supply that will last for a fair while.

>>53885235
>Lies
True, they also nourished themselves by drinking a concotion made out of mixing blood and milk from their horses. Their horses were meanwhile used to living of off the scarcities of the mongolian steppe which meant that they weren't exactly picky eaters.

>>53884257
Anyone who has ever played Medieval 2: Total war knows there is only one way to defeat the steppe peoples.

Assassination.

Even in real life the whole Mongol invasion was called off after Genghis Khan died. In TW I would play Byzantines and get destroyed every time the Mongols and Timurids came around. I would lose 2-3 full armies against one of theirs. However, once I began spamming high-level assassins against their generals they were never again a threat.

This makes me want to play a super defensive Venice focused on diplomats and assassination...

>>53885426
I thought it was the other way around. Each man would ride with 2-3 horses to always have a fresh one to bear him, as well as to make their army seem larger.

Of course, I know they had dismounted archers and spearmen and artillerymen during sieges, but many of them had multiple horses on the march

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>>53884257
The Mongol's greatest weapon was not the horse or the bow, but the ingenious strategic and tactical geniuses of her commanders. Genghis Khan, and the men he chose to lead his armies, were geniuses to the point they inflated the Mongolian army tenfold with quick manouvering of terrain. They also employed tactics not used until World War 2. These guys don't just charge and storm the enemy, they do hit and run tactics, feints, and encirclement and asymetrical warfare unlike any the medieval world has ever seen. The Horse archer was just that icing on the cake that make these stratagem just that much more effective. Don't forget, horse archers existed for a long time, they waited a thousand years before conquering the world because until then nobody could unite and lead them effectively. I wouldn't be surprised if Genghis Khan is to be transported to today's era, he would be as successful now with our modern military as he was back then, if not more so.

So yeah, assassination is the only way to beat the Mongols at their heights. That, or dragons. Lots of dragons.

>>53884257

Forests, and hit and run tactics in said forests.

>>53884257
Surrender and let my superior culture assimilate them in just 3 generations.
100% effective as long as you have that superior culture.

>>53887431

t. Angela Merkel

>>53885426
>Culture that literally relies entirely on horses not all mounted.

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Do people really think forests will do anything to stop the greatest minmaxers in history?

>>53884590
Mongol sorcerers, what now?

>>53884942
The cold isn't the question, it's feeding and watering their horses (and themselves) on the march.

All much easier to do at home, even in a god-forsaken winter.

>>53886599
You forget: be brutal. The Mongols themselves understood this, and so did other leaders like Vlad III. Your enemies should fear facing you. No cruelty is too great. Pain should be lingering, tremendous, and hideous.

>>53886155
>Quality post that actually cites its sources
>Zero responses
Typical.

>>53888189
There's not much to say to such an outlay of facts, and most are scattered throughout the thread, anyway.

Burning pastures is a rarely-mentioned one, though.

>>53884257
Surrender, then subsume them into your culture. Worked for China.

Spam castles and crossbowmen like the Hungarians

>>53888001
Edgelord ideology always works great until you cause people to get crueler than you in response.

>>53888296
> Burning pastures is a rarely-mentioned one, though
A bit of a trivia: burning of steppes was used as a defensive measure by... Crimean tatars against the Russian army. It worked several times, most notably against the ill-fated expedition of the Prince Golytsin, whose armt was hit so badly by logistic issues that it was barely able to go there and back, which led to ascension of Peter the Great to power

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>>53887106

>>53884257
Be Hungarian

>>53888486
No, you're already dealing with a people who understood and weaponized fear. If you don't use it too, you're just setting aside a valuable tool for no reason.

>>53884257
foot archers

>>53886155

Excellent post anon, not OP, but I'll look into this.

>>53888001
According to The Principles of Self-Defense of Jeff Cooper you should respond to an aggression fast, aggressively and violently.

Like the old Swiss did, kill all enemies, no quarter, no prisoners. Drown them in marshes and lakes!

>>53884257
Sit somewhere safe like remote island

>>53884783
This. If the mongols waited like 2 more centuries before attacking europe, they would've been slaughtered. Steppe peoples which traditionally were so dangerous because of mobility and missile weapons when western armies were built around infantry, suddenly had to deal with armies fielding massive amounts of guns. It didn't even matter if those guns were worse than bows at the time, you point them all in one direction and fire at once, that's a lot of lead in the air.

>>53884879
Mongolia was used to bitter winters, and the winter meant the lakes and rivers were frozen so they had more room.

>>53887489
Forests severely weaken their best advantage.

>>53884257
Parthian shot was designed to attack pursuing cavalry, not infantry, the idea that horse archers are a magical trump card against any other kind of troop is silly.

>>53889616
Heavy Infantry usually has good chances against cavalry, archer or not, Russia had only light levies and heavy cavalry for the bulk of their armies.

>>53889701
They didn't fight in forests you know

>>53889616
Also stuff like cannon. Even relatively primitive cannons both do some amount of damage, and upset horses fairly badly. Certainly ones not very used to cannons.

They caught on at least partially for that reason in Russia and other parts of eastern europe purely for the "fuck your cavalry" aspect.

And then people and their horses sort of got over it and even trained them to deal with it, but then the cannon got relatively more dangerous, etc.

But yeah, I think being able to just put that much lead in the air and also have a formation that one way or the other, could receive a charge reasonably well made a big difference. Look at how the Russian Empire spread all the way to the Pacific and generally roundly assfucked the Steppe peoples in their way, on average, anyway. I mean, it was harder at first, and they still had problems or losses, but the general trend was "haha, that's cute. You have a horse and a bow. Get fucked.".

>>53889817
Europe back then was like 90% forest, there was little ground for horses to graze and it formed a natural barrier to the east.

>>53889858
Keep in mind that for centuries Russia was contained in territory due to steppe peoples. Once they got guns and started using the steppe peoples against each other, suddenly they made massive headway in only a single generation.

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>>53889558
Prisoners are only for torturing for information and murdering in front of enemy hosts.

>>53890814
But what about the ransoms?

>>53890898
Merciless death to the Turk.

>>53884882

During the Siege of Kuja in Korea they boiled their prisoners alive within sight of the walls and out of bow range.

Then they methodically refined the human fat of their prisoners into explosives to blow holes in walls.

Don't fuck with the Mongols.

>>53887336

They also tied tree branches to the horses tails to drag across the dry ground. It kicked up a huge dust cloud that both screened their numbers from scouts and led enemies to believe they had an enormous horde on the way causing them to surrender in terror.

>>53886155
Checked

Longbows, pikemen and billhooks.
And perhaps something to spook the fuck out of horses.

>>53884257

You hire other nomads. Also castles

>>53886155
>War carts, bring your fort with you. Artillery, outfire and outrange them, be it with hand trebuchets, rockets, scorpios or cannons. Remember that a bow's maximum range seldom hurts its targets. Be pacient, don't get baited. Burn pastures. Killing one actual mongol is worth more than ten vassal levies.
You are the heroe we need!

All these tacticool responses. The answer is you convert them to Islam or whatever your civ religion is. Suddenly, they have no appetite to attack a fellow believer.

>>53895819
>Islam
>no appetite to attack a fellow believer.
Oh you sweet summer child!

>>53895819
That didn't really work.

>>53886155
I would worry they might use your fire tactic against you.

As powerful and well defended your mobile fort may be you're fucked if they ride down wind and light a fire of their own.

>>53895819
Oh you naive child...

>>53889754
Which is why the Golden Horde had more than that. Anyone who thinks the hordes had horse archers and nothing else is just as silly.

>>53891405
>The Siege of Kuju which occurred in 1231 was a decisive Goryeo victory against the Mongol Empire.
>Despite the fact the Goryeo army was heavily outnumbered and after over thirty days of brutal siege warfare, Goryeo soldiers still refused to surrender and with mounting Mongol casualties, the Mongol army could not take the city and had to withdraw.

Pretty shit example.

>>53884257
pay them to go be someone else's problem?

>>53887887
How so? There's a lot of steppe until you reach the birch forests and marshes further west. Anything short of scorched earth practices (like against Napoleon) should match conditions back home.

>>53884257
When their envoys come demanding trade, accept them.

>>53887887
>All much easier to do at home, even in a god-forsaken winter
What if your home is on the back of your horse?

>>53884463
Yeah, good at catapulting plague victims into cities to cause disease outbreaks.

>>53897828
If it works...

>>53884360
This. Jungle and bushy hills all over. Good luck free riding at the same pace locals move.

>>53895819
Life is not a fucking game of Sid Meier's Civilization you fool.
Not only is spread of religion a tactically unreliable tactic, it takes centuries to ingrain itself in the culture of a people.
Not to mention the ridiculous notion that religious infighting doesn't exist, even though it's arguably the single largest source of conflict in history.

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>Muh guns
>muh castles
>muh forests

Christ, all these people talking about using things that arent likely to pop up on the step. MFW these motherfuckers dont know about Jaxartes.

>>53898300
This motherfucker did it while crossing a river too.

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>>53888189
>>53889408
>>53894324
Thank you.

>>53895363
Are you being sarcastic? I can't tell.

>>53888296
>>53888518
>>53896844
Scorched earth is easier when you can retreat all your assets instead of relying on sedentarism and fixed communities. Darius I campaign against the scythians was a great example of this. However, it remains something that damages you. If the invader torches a place he does not intend to keep, it only hurts the invaded. BTW, it is hard to be a full nomadic nation. There'll be cities to extort, farms to complement herding, sacred places and necropolises to protect. Darius seems to have failed in mapping this beforehand.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/darius-iii

I also realized that the blockhouse strategy used in the Boer Wars might work here. Which was combined with scorching the enemy land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War#British_response
Instead of making a line of fortifications such as Hadrian's Wall, pepper the enemy territory with outposts and towers. This wouldn't work after the mongols figured out siege warfare to the point of being the first known people to use trenches, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_siege_of_Kaifeng#Military_technology

>No one kingdom or province is able to resist the Tartars; because they use soldiers out of every country of their dominions. If the neighbouring province to that which they invade will not aid them, they waste it, and with the inhabitants, whom they take with them, they proceed to fight against the other province. They place their captives in the front of the battle, and if they fight not courageously they put them to the sword. Therefore, if Christians would resist them, it is expedient that the provinces and governors of countries should all agree, and so by a united force should meet their encounter.
http://deremilitari.org/2016/09/description-of-mongol-warfare-from-friar-john-of-plano-carpini/

>>53884257
a 60km-radius circle filled with Gympie Gympie, Bullet Ants, and Sandbox Trees. Centered right on their horse formation.
The wizard needs to be stopped.

>>53889616
Mongols brought the Gun to Europe though.

AR 15

>>53884257
Use castles like what was done in real life. Building hundreds of stone castles and splitting your army up into small garrisons will force the Mongols to engage in what historically they hated the most. Protracted siege warfare seizing thick stone castles on fortified high ground that makes any assault a very bloody affair to make them hemorrhage troops to disease and missile fire.

Mongols are great on the field but they were complete shit at tackling European style siege warfare. The only reason why the Rus got rolled by them was because the dumb bastards were still building rammed earth forts in the 13th century while everybody else had moved on to stone and gravel.

Well if Medieval II Total War is anything to go by then I'll just use a shitton of expendeble fast light Cav to lock their archers in place then smash em to bits with heavy cav.

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>>53901236
Just for example however, the Hungarians when they squared away with the Mongols twice were probably amongst the Horde's worst experiences in terms of getting dragged into the medieval version of Vietnam. While in the first war the Hungarians largely used rammed earth wooden forts, the people's staunch refusal to ever surrender and their "to the bitter end" resolve dragged the Mongols into attrition based warfare, which is their key weakness. Though the Mongols did make a great deal of progress, this was largely because of Hungary being poor at the time and relying on older wooden castles opposed to the modern stone ones found in the Roman Empire or Western Europe at the time.

But when King Bela got around to it, he built a fucking shitload of stone castles. The Horde came back and got dragged into a campaign of endless sieges, and it bled them. The Mongols lost possibly as many as 50,000 men while all the Hungarians had to do was sit in their brand spanking new stone castles, fuckup the Horde's supply lines with raids, or engage in pitched battles on THEIR terms.

>tl;dr

To beat the mongols, act like an Iron Warrior.

1. Live on island
2. Tell kami of the sea to drown Mongol ships in a storm

Literally all there is to it.

>>53903450
Repeat if necessary

>>53897939
Don't forget lots of waterway that render horses unusable in most of the region. Vietnamese troops conducted effective guerrilla tactics in their home field. Tropical diseases don't help either

Naval battle was a fairly effective way of repelling the Mongols, like the Japanese also did.

>>53887399
Not really no, the Mongol's greatest weapon was really the horse and bow.

Genghis Khan was no doubt a military genius but his conquests were, like all great conquerors of history, facilitated by the culture and times he lived in.
The foundation of their success was built upon their lifestyle of nomadic/pastoralist herding making their people naturally "literate" in skills that other cultures expended a great deal of time and wealth into training.
The foundation of Genghis' success was a confluence of political and regional factors where the Mongols had been agitating against Chinese pressure for generations and were at boiling point. He was born into a politically powerful position and then did what dozens of leaders had done before- united the amorphous tribes of steppe peoples into a singular temporary nation for expansion.

>>53887431
it only worked out for China and Kwarezm. Russia, despite also having more developed culture, get rollsed over and remained so for 250 years, even absorbing some mongolian culture instead of assimilating them.

>>53884257
don't fight in open terrain,
use crossbows,
use longbows,
scorched earth tactics the required suplly for horse and rider must be immense use time to your adventage,
force them to siege your stone fortresses,
dig murder holes and position other nasty surprises.

>>53904252
>Naval battle was a fairly effective way of repelling the mongols, like the Japanese also did.
You mean typhoons are an effective way of repelling Mongols. Nips didn't do shit compared to what the seasonal typhoons did.

>>53884257
By not being a retard. Mongols won many victories by pretending to run away and luring their pursuers into a trap. They also won victories by picking off individual forces that, together, could have mounted a reasonable defense.

>>53884463
They were good at sieging cities through intimidation and brute force. When Eastern European armies retreated to their castles, the Mongols just kept going. One of the big what-if points about the Mongol invasion is that there were European forces holed up in castles all along their point of entry.

>>53887887
>The cold isn't the question, it's feeding and watering their horses (and themselves) on the march.

Well, that's the thing about the Mongols. They were used to some of the shittiest conditions on the planet at the time. They were dirt-poor herders and raiders until they were united. There are accounts of Mongols having coats made out of the sown together hides of field mice.

They could wage war in the Russian winter because they were an army of Rambo's.

>>53888486
You don't get it. This isn't a case where people treat each other with respect according to pre-established rules. This is a foreign enemy who does not view you as human, and who is already utilizing maximum cruelty.

So your argument is that a method of defense is undesirable because you consider it in poor taste. Well, I'll be sure to remember that while the Mongols rape your wife and children in front of your dismembered ass.