Resumed Mongol invasion of Europe - a great What if in history

[Ironclad]

One of my favourite What ifs in history is what would have happened if the Mongols had resumed their invasion of Europe in the early 1240s after their initiall conquests rather than returning to the east for the next few decades.

Happily for those of us who are fans of the Mongals or this particular what if , Wizards and Warriors from the same team as Kings and Generals who have produced so many great You Tube videos on military history have turned their minds to this alternative history. They are in the process of a three part series to cover this possible event and so far two episodes have been issued on You Tube;

1. What if the Mongols attacked Central Europe - alternative history documentary

2. What if the Mongols attacked Bohemia -alternative history documentary.

I've watched the first one so far and its to the usual high standards of graphics and content that we have come to expect from Kings and Generals. Highly recommended for your viewing.

This would certainly provide a good basis for a campaign using Fog 2 Medieval .

[kronenblatt]

Interesting!

Are the Mongols army lists in FoG2:Medieval any good and can compete against the eastern, central, and western European army lists of the same period?

Andréas

[Ironclad]

I've become more reconciled to them although horse archer arnies are not one of my strong points. Also the heavy casualties that they often sustain in winning (as well as losing) threw me somewhat until the penny dropped that my idealised view of Mongol armies was wide of the mark and that historically they did sometimes suffer heavily in campaigns but had a great capacity to renew their strength through conscripting conquered peoples for subsequent campaigns.

As for performance against knightly armies and others I'd be interested in the comments of players who have greater exoerience with such battles in Fog 2 medieval.

[Karvon]

Mongols can do well, but face a number of challenges.

1. They, and all horse archer armies, are very heavily impacted by the terrain. Any significant amount of difficult, or even rough, terrain really drops their effectiveness. Cavalry armies do best when they have plenty of open space to shift around in.

2. The whole randomness in the evade/pursuit cycle can be a real killer for skirmisher based armies. Your luck/bad luck in this can be all the difference between a crushing victory or defeat. Of course you can do things to minimize the risks like maximizing shooting range and greater depth of deployment, but even those can't save you from the occasional really bad combo of short evades and longer pursuit rolls.

3. Mongols are rather expensive, so point based battles see them usually outnumbered. Smarter opponents will load up on cheaper troops and herd or swamp the smaller Mongol force, particularly if the terrain is constricted.

4. The lack of any serious command control rules in FOG2 eliminate one of the big advantages Mongols historically had in usually outmaneuvering their more cumbersome western opponents at the grand tactical level. This was nicely reflected in DBM as Mongols normally had 4 regular generals for maximum flexibility in pip allocation where as most of their historical opponents were irregular and no ability to swap at all.

Karvon, a lover, but seldom player, of Mongols in FOG2

[MVP7]

In a what-if campaign you'd probably want to add an increasing amount of European "allies" to the Mongol army list as they heavily used the people they had conquered as manpower in their battles. That would add some flexibility to their abilities in terms of terrain but I think taking the horde to sub-optimal terrain would be the most interesting part of the campaign anyway.

[kronenblatt]

Yes, moving the Mongols from east to west, as far west as possible until losing.

[SnuggleBunnies]

One of my favourite What ifs in history is what would have happened if the Mongols had resumed their invasion of Europe in the early 1240s after their initiall conquests rather than returning to the east for the next few decades.

A fun campaign idea, but I'm strongly of the opinion that the death of Ogedei was just one factor in the inability of the Mongols to advance further west, even if they had planned to do so, which isn't totally clear.

This isn't a fringe idea but pretty well trod territory at this point, even Wikipedia goes over it! It's the same with the invasions of Japan, Thomas Conlan 'In Little Need of Divine Intervention' lays out a very strong argument that hard fighting by the samurai, not storms, repelled Kubilai's two invasions of Japan.