Mongol and shooting !

[Sennacherib]

am i the only one thinking that mongol army is overpowered ? and shooting too ? in fact shooting made it overpowered. It is so efficient that it destroyed even heavy foot without problem. Knight can't catch them and even they did, they suffer so much of shooting that they 're combat abilities are greatly reduce.
Mongol have good moral value, making them really resilient and rallying more often for a cheap price, givin them an edge in firefight combat. Armoured lancers/bowmen evading cavalry is the best troop in the game for the price of a knight.
all in all it's a very powerful combination, but the shooting is the real problem.

[rbodleyscott]

They shoot exactly the same as horse archers in FOG2 Ancients.The points cost of horse archers has been reduced however, so there are more of them. This was because horse archer armies proved rather uncompetitive in FOG2 Ancients MP play.

A further points rebalancing may be required in due course when we have more widespread experience with the game.

[oscarius]

I think we also have a lot less light foot to shoot them up compared to Ancient. So it's a double whammy of having to take more fire while having less to return.

I enjoyed my match against the Mongols and it was reasonably close for my Highland Scots (a bad start for me but something of a comeback when I managed to surround and destroy a reasonable number of his pursuing horse) but some lists I can't see how they could do better than a draw at best. We don't want to force players into a 'camp in the forests or die' deal.

[Sennacherib]

i already think that shooting is overpowered in antiquity, the difference is that all army have access to a reasonable numbers of skirmishers to soften fire and in the other hand super efficient in firing against mounted so for a lesser cost your mounted archer will be doomed by skirmishers. The other problem is evade move, who create some insane situation. Sometime you don't know why but you stay in combat and you are submerged by low cost troops. Sometime you made an enemy flee and he finish in a better position after ! ready to move in his turn !

[SimonLancaster]

I have just started playing against the Mongols in the league and I do think they are a bit overpowered. Maybe decrease their shooting power by 10% or something I don't know. I will see how I do.

[melm]

On the contrary, Mongols is not competitive in my opinion. As long as the terrain is not open enough and the opponent has enough shooting units, the Mongols are doomed.

If anyone is interested, I can host a history reenaction of Mongol invasion. We can check whether the Mongol army is overpowered or not.

[tyronec]

There are a few factors that favor the Mongols as compared with the mounted bow armies in Ancients, aside from the points costs -
Less light infantry and light cavalry opposition.
They are often facing Knights, which cost more than Ancients style cavalry but are less mobile.
They have evading/shooting lancers.
Defensive spears are not a great troop type to face off against them.

I have had one game against them which was a close win to the Mongols, what I found disturbing was that they were able to shoot a defensive line of spearmen to bits and there was not much my German army could do about it except attack elsewhere.

[Sennacherib]

On the contrary, Mongols is not competitive in my opinion. As long as the terrain is not open enough and the opponent has enough shooting units, the Mongols are doomed.

If anyone is interested, I can host a history reenaction of Mongol invasion. We can check whether the Mongol army is overpowered or not.

if you stay in your terrain nothing will happened ever, you can't beat them, so it's understandable but zero interest in gaming ! i have play lithuanians and manage to win because my opponents made a mistake but with tons of archers too in rough going he manage to destroy me with shooting and better moral than me ! with an army equivalent in number because skirmishers are not cheap, medium cavalry is ! ok why not but it also destroyed everything else, heavy spearmen were doomed by arrows like dismounted knights ! they were effective historically but i don't think they can destroy enemies only with arrows !

[JensAtSaxony]

I currently have no idea how - as a game designer - you could balance troops which should be overpowered by history - in this case mounted men, capable of shooting while riding also backwards and sidewards. This type of technique was historically superior to other armies. And they have won most of the battles with unbelievable less casualties. But I understand that a game works different. Nobody wants to face a superior army with less chance to win.

Actually the mongols are still reduced in their capabilities, I think. For instance, my mongol lancer cav and medium bow cav is often catched by heavy knights cav unit and destroyed (moral) in one turn, which is not realistic, because the mongol lancers would be much faster. But I understand why this is done, because its a game and should be balanced somehow. The balancing is always a tricky issue.

Is the mongols shooting overpowered? To answer the question by myself, I would say yes, but when you take the harzard from flying arrows, you would castrate them. There strengh is to provoke the enemy with getting close and shooting arrows, so that the enemy starts to follow or at least are forced to change there position. If you reduce the arrow threat, the mongols can not process their naturally tactics and are reduced to nothing more than disturbing insects.

Edit: 2 days before I only won a battle with heavy cav, defensive spearmen and some crossbow men against a 100% skirmisher army, because my heavy cav reached the enemy by attacking 3 units of evading and routing skirmishers before That was cool.

[Nosy_Rat]

So far I can't tell if the point decrease really made horse archers that much stronger - their main weakness was not the unit cost, but dependance on terrain - on the wide open map they were already doing pretty ok in Ancients, but any terrain features severely restrict their ability to attack. So I think that point decrease is more of "win more" situation - it makes horse archers better at what they were already good(-ish), but kinda doesn't solve the underlying issue behind their unpopularity/uncompetiveness (in the League format at least) - inability to perform well reliably.

Some other changes from Ancients that affect horse archers are:

1. More and cheaper armored units (especially infantry) on the battlefield - bows are pretty ineffective against those.
2. Fewer light units on average - definitely a good thing for the Mongol boys.
3. Crossbows - archers were already a bane of cavalry armies and it seems crossbows are even more scary in that regard.
4. Knights - not sure what exactly the odds are, but I think knights due to their guaranteed +4 AP on every pursuit actually have a better chance of catching up to evaders than usual cavalry (especially if they are charging into deep formation of horse archers as they just keep triggering new pursuits until catching up to somebody).

So I think it's a bit too early to talk about how overpowered Mongol hordes are.

[companion]

Horse archer armies existed since antiquity and were time and again countered by shooting-heavy foot units composed of levied commoners and sometimes professionals.
These could be mixed foot that combined some spearmen with large body of archers or archers that themselves wielded spears. This pattern is common for both East and West.

Typical western European medieval armies have none of such counters and worse, most of the value is concentrated in a small number of attrition-adverse elites. No wonder Mongols are such a pain to play against.

For balance purposes, IF Mongols indeed prove to be unusually strong, my proposal is to reduce impact potency and maybe also melee capability of non-lancer, non-lightspear bow cavalries. i.e. do not allow automatic flank attack cohesion drop against lancers and heavy foot. Limit POA bonus for unpinned flank attack, etc.
In the alternative, allow field fortifications against Mongols in all battle types.

This would mean that in a map that is not a featureless agricultural or clean steppe, balance will tip over from Mongol to the opponent once the 5 rounds of full power shootings are done.

[Geffalrus]

Personally, I think the Mongols should be a strong list, I just think the lancer component is a bit too strong, since it contributes a ton of shooting power (superior shooting hits harder), can still evade, and can punish non-Knights with a lancer charge.

And let's not forget those trebuchets. Heavy artillery that can move. Camp all you like, the Mongols can drop rocks on you while having enough slippery cavalry to dart in and ensure that the targeted unit faces a cohesion check.

There are definitely units that can counter Mongols in a limited fashion, but let's talk through them:

- Knights can theoretically catch them (I've yet to see it, but sure) and have superior impact and melee values. They also cost 74 points. So either you have some lone knights who get surrounded and flanked, or you have a much smaller army that gets wholly surrounded and flanked.

- Crossbows are great at shooting cavalry. However, most lists (medium size) can't field more than 5 units of xbows, which is a little limited when facing an entire mongol horde. And if those xbows ever get charged by mongol lancers, they're in serious trouble.

- Dismounted knights. Powerful and resilient, but can't catch anything faster than a trebuchet.

- Longbows. Haven't tested them yet, but theoretically they could do good at range while having some army lists that can bring them in quantity. More expensive than xbows, though, and even more vulnerable to melee.

- Lithuanians. I really want to test this myself, but seems like great potential for a "ships passing in the night" situation where the Lithuanians don't want to venture into the open, and the Mongols don't want to venture into the forest against 8 million archers.

Anyway, I think the lancers are little under-priced, but also a proper way to show how powerful steppe cavalry were back then. Good unit, just slightly too cheap. I think a lot more testing is needed to see what the Europeans vs. Mongols meta looks like. Surprised no one has talked about the Tatars........

[pompeytheflatulent]

I am kind of torn on the Mongol lance equipped horse archers. They are a little too flighty for their own good. Had one unit standing on a height 100 hill evade a charge from knights even though they would have been up 12 POA on impact and up 12 POA in melee. Another unit evaded a charge from spearmen when they should have taken the +162 POA impact and then fell back. During those times I wonder to myself why I am paying the 10 points extra over 56 point superior horse-archers. Other times these guys advance into a wall of superior light spear cavalry and just obliterates everything, and I am like 'These guys are the best thing since sliced bread!' Anyway I think we are all ignoring the really urgent issue here: can we please come up with a less lame sounding name than 'Best Equipped Cavalry'?

[rbodleyscott]

I am kind of torn on the Mongol lance equipped horse archers. They are a little too flighty for their own good. Had one unit standing on a height 100 hill evade a charge from knights even though they would have been up 12 POA on impact and up 12 POA in melee. Another unit evaded a charge from spearmen when they should have taken the +162 POA impact and then fell back. During those times I wonder to myself why I am paying the 10 points extra over 56 point superior horse-archers. Other times these guys advance into a wall of superior light spear cavalry and just obliterates everything, and I am like 'These guys are the best thing since sliced bread!' Anyway I think we are all ignoring the really urgent issue here: can we please come up with a less lame sounding name than 'Best Equipped Cavalry'?

Not really, as they will be used in Mongol, Mamluk, Ottoman, later Rus(sian) and other armies. I am not keen on filling the squads file with cloned units just so they can have different names. That is why we have used such vague names for such widely used unit types.

You may say that having multiple clones of the identical unit in the squads file isn't really an issue, and in some ways it isn't. However, currently we are just over half-way to the limit on units in the squads file, and while no doubt that limit could be increased, we also don't want to be accused of "padding out" the number of units by cloning them. And having different textures for each army list is precluded by budgetary and art time constraints.

[pompeytheflatulent]

Not really, as they will be used in Mongol, Mamluk, Ottoman, later Rus(sian) and other armies. I am not keen on filling the squads file with cloned units just so they can have different names. That is why we have used such vague names for such widely used unit types.

Ok that makes perfect sense if there won't be any cosmetic differences between the different units. I understand that there are better places to devout resources than making reskins of mechanically identical units. Also is this confirmation that work as already begun on Crusades DLC?

On the knights charging best equipped cavalry on a height 100 hill situation, I recreated this in hotseat mode. My initial POA estimates were correct: on impact knights get +100POA knightly lancers, BEC get +100POA height difference, +12POA quality difference. In melee knights get +50POA swordsmen difference, +50POA armor difference, BEC get +100POA height difference, +12 quality difference. So BEC are up 12POA both on impact and in melee. I made sure there were no other units nearby when I tested this. The BEC would stand and fight if charged from an adjacent square, but would evade if the knights charged them from 2 squares away. Could you shed some insight into the the logic behind the BEC deciding to stand or evade?

[rbodleyscott]

Not really, as they will be used in Mongol, Mamluk, Ottoman, later Rus(sian) and other armies. I am not keen on filling the squads file with cloned units just so they can have different names. That is why we have used such vague names for such widely used unit types.

Ok that makes perfect sense if there won't be any cosmetic differences between the different units. I understand that there are better places to devout resources than making reskins of mechanically identical units. Also is this confirmation that work as already begun on Crusades DLC?

I couldn't possibly comment.

On the knights charging best equipped cavalry on a height 100 hill situation, I recreated this in hotseat mode. My initial POA estimates were correct: on impact knights get +100POA knightly lancers, BEC get +100POA height difference, +12POA quality difference. In melee knights get +50POA swordsmen difference, +50POA armor difference, BEC get +100POA height difference, +12 quality difference. So BEC are up 12POA both on impact and in melee. I made sure there were no other units nearby when I tested this. The BEC would stand and fight if charged from an adjacent square, but would evade if the knights charged them from 2 squares away. Could you shed some insight into the the logic behind the BEC deciding to stand or evade?

Cavalry equipped with bows have a higher threshold for deciding to stand than those without.

[vaalen]

The Mongols are not overpowered in the game, when you look at the historical record. They were practically invincible, except when they were fighting in terrain that was unfavorable to them. They had a degree of discipline and tactical acumen that was unmatched during their expansion period.

During their expansionist period, they defeated almost every army they faced, No one else in history conquered so much so quickly. They declined, after awhile,
and became far less effective, a decline that was foretold by the founder of their empire, Genghis Khan.

They are overpowered in History, not the game.

[AlexDetrojan]

Weren't the mongols 'overpowered' in real life?

[Geffalrus]

My opinion would be that one should always be a little careful of making armies "overpowered" as a means of historical replication. FoG and all the related games only deal with a small portion of military conflict - that which takes place on the battlefield. A lot of what made various armies overpowered in history were logistical factors that these games can't model (but Field of Glory: Empires actually kind of can.....). Limiting both armies to an exactly equal 1200 points makes for good well balanced gameplay, but not historical accuracy.

Anyway, I am glad to see a steppe army potentially be properly competitive in formal competition. Balancing horse archers in multiplayer must be an insane task.

[Gnaeus]

If there is a rebalance for the sake of multiplayer, I hope that there is an option that reflects RBS' best judgment on relative capabilities on a tactical level. I'm currently listening to a series of lectures on the Mongols and there are reasons, some of them tactical, why they created one of the world's largest empires in a relatively short period of time.