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[Catastrophic lolcats]

Mongols are a real pain in the plump helmet. I really hate the lack of attrition since it feels extremely gamey and can only be combated in a gamey manner.
It really depends on where you fight the mongols. You'll want to avoid fighting them on the steppes and plains as much as possible. The best place is coastal provinces since you don't suffer any attrition while on boats. Mountains really negate a lot of the horse archer offensive bonuses and can be used to decent success but again attrition will be a major problem. Try to get the best leaders you can for the layout of your army. Large retinue armies are a must to even come close to fighting on even grounds.

Ultimately the Mongols are fairly unbeatable if you're a society that borders the edge of the map. Russians, Cumans and Persians will find it extremely hard to fight the mongols since attrition will destroy your own doom stacks and there isn't any coastal areas to launch attacks from. Norse can have a better chance since they can abuse rivers although you'll have to bring a norse society into the mongol age without converting.

If you really want to game the best [European] retinue in the game seems to be the Italian pikemen formation coupled with Scottish leaders. The pikeman formation will have a big morale bonus while the Scottish leaders will supply you with the over-powered-as-fuck Schiltron tactic.

[Wiles]

I'm not sure how the whole river thing works. I find that sometimes I can take my ships down rivers and sometimes I can't. I don't get it. Next time I can't bring ships down a river I'm going to check and see if it is because one of my fleet levies ins't norse or something. That's the only thing I can think of.

And yeah mongols are a pain. I lost 100k worth of retinues fighting the Illkhanate. It took quite a long time to build my retinues back up after that! I tried fighting them in the steppes by manoeuvring smaller stacks around so I wouldn't lose too much to attrition but they managed to catch my armies separated and wrecked them.  I ended up dealing with them by luring them to the ocean and landing 200k troops on their heads.

 If you can't fight the mongols head on another option is just to wait. Eventually they'll wear their doomstacks down through sieging to the point where you can kill them with your levies.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

There is a technology in the game that stops Norse from travelling down rivers. I believe it's Military Fortification tech level combine with the province's fort level which determines if you can travel down a river or not. In the earliest start you'll be able to travel down all rivers with ease while in 1066 there will be enemy provinces with enough tech to bar you going down the rivers.
If you own the provinces that a river flow through as a norse player you can travel down them without restraint.

[Wiles]

Thanks, that explains a lot. I was rather confused when I could only go halfway down some rivers.

So as a norse player would the "defense retinue" (300 pikemen, 200 archers) be the best bet against horse archers? I have been having trouble in Turkestan because I can't get to it by ship and they have very low supply limits. I can overpower them with sheer numbers eventually but their horse archers heavy armies have been wrecking my armies of equal sizes.

[Dutchling]

Spoiler: Blergh (click to show/hide)

[Sheb]

I tried to stop them in Azerbaijan, and lost around 25k men for only 5k dead Mongols, and had to give up Mesopotamia. So I took a page from history and murdered the Khagan. They now have a child Khagan battling the 5th Mongols Succession Crisis, and I'm nibbling my provinces back.

Dunno what's of their doomstacks, but killing and sieging all their provinces twice over in civil wars must have grind them down a little.

[Digital Hellhound]

What's the problem there, Dutchling? Can't you ransom him out? You'd think he'd agree with your perfect relations.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Thanks, that explains a lot. I was rather confused when I could only go halfway down some rivers.

So as a norse player would the "defense retinue" (300 pikemen, 200 archers) be the best bet against horse archers? I have been having trouble in Turkestan because I can't get to it by ship and they have very low supply limits. I can overpower them with sheer numbers eventually but their horse archers heavy armies have been wrecking my armies of equal sizes.

It's always better to use your own cultural retinue as it gives a bonus to the units equal to that of the highest cultural building (I think it's plus 40% attack for Huscarls?). The only exception to this rule is light horsemen since they're currently extremely underpowered and will actually hurt other units' performance when mixed in with different unit types.

Horse archers have a massive amount of attack in the "skirmish" phrase and cannot be outperformed. The only way to beat mongols is attempting to survive into the "melee" phrase where horse archers lose a lot of their attack. Huscarl retinues are made out of heavy infantry which have decent defence in skirmish, great defence in melee and decent attack in melee. Make sure you have army leaders with a high martial score and heavy infantry traits so they don't use the "reckless charge" ability in skirmish which will completely wreck your armies when facing horse archers.

EDIT: It might be worth it to consider employing non-norse leaders for your armies since Norse and Scandinavian cultures have the Berserker tactic which heavily lowers your defence in exchange for attack. The Irish/Russians generally make great heavy infantry leaders and are easy to capture in raids.   

[Dutchling]

What's the problem there, Dutchling? Can't you ransom him out? You'd think he'd agree with your perfect relations.

I didn't even think of that xD. I care about spreading Islam, not about my court imam :v

[Digital Hellhound]

Oh, okay. Just send the next guy in, then. I'm sure they'll eventually cave in and convert, just so you stop bothering them.

[Dutchling]

After three tries I could no longer send imams to various Norse rulers :/

[Sheb]

I hate how you loose all your cultural buildings when you switch culture. I just went from Russian to Greek because my grandson inherited, and I lost at least 3000 gold worth of Druzhina buildings. :/

[Wiles]

I hate how you loose all your cultural buildings when you switch culture. I just went from Russian to Greek because my grandson inherited, and I lost at least 3000 gold worth of Druzhina buildings. :/

This bugs me so much. I wish they'd change that mechanic so that maybe you can't use them until you switched back. Outright destroying all of your high cost special buildings is quite irritating. It just seems like it's been left that way out of laziness because it makes no sense gameplay wise.

[Sheb]

Especially since you don't have 100% control over your culture -_-'. Except if you only marry people of your culture, educate your child with people of your culture, but then you're really limited.

[Dutchling]

Really? The only time I accidentally changed culture was when I didn't check the culture of the guardian of my heir.
Giving you heir land with a different culture also makes it possible for him to change though.