so they were few
so they didnt use any other tactics
and they were tactically robust
but they won due to massive raiding
and started to get defeated when facing mass cavalry, which was their own tactic
The other examples were to emphasize that raid warfare was entirely common for the time period. I never said that the Mongols' only tactics were raids. They clearly were not, not when they were breaching walled settlements with hundreds (possibly thousands) of siege engines, re-routing whole rivers to drown cities, invading places off-season while using frozen rivers as highways, planning and executing feigned retreats that extended for days on end, etc.
As for losing to cavalry: the Khwarazmian army they destroyed in battle was primarily mounted, the massed cavalry reserve of their sovereign and the best they had to offer. Even prior to that, the Western Xia were a steppe people not too dissimilar (although sedentary) in tactics from the Mongols. Similarly, the subjugation of various Turkic steppe tribes and confederations (most notably the Cuman-Kipchaks) meant they were going to head-to-head with the closest thing to a mirror of their own armies. The Mongols still dominated those fights.
i dare you to put holes and trip-wires (or trip-ropes to keep it medieval) in a riding track without going to jail
I didn't mention that as a historical counter because it never appears in any historical source. There were all sorts of tricks and traps sprung on Mongol horseman, but the closest thing you can find with regards to forcing dismounted action (because obviously after the first guy gets thrown thanks to a rope tripping his horse, they are going to notice and start ground-guiding their mounts) is impassable or only marginally passable terrain either sheltering a fortification or anchoring a flank. In which cases... the Mongols simply dismounted and fought. And again, the Mongols made use of scouts to a degree that most armies of the time didn't account for. A great many traps were laid for the Mongols that failed to catch them because they'd been watching the ground their main body of troops would be traveling for hours, days or (in the case of especially key terrain) weeks in advance. Additionally, they made heavy use of local guides, gained by playing off political/tribal/ethnic/social/etc. divisions of their enemies, who knew the terrain even better than their scouts did and often served as a vanguard.
yeah, doesnt sound much like a counter. more like "you might be able to defeat them, MAYBE, if you have higher tier troops en masse. which is probably not going to happen because they get horse archers much earlier than you get heavy cav - but even if you do its still a maybe" "oh and you have to play the proper faction or have a high standing with the proper faction, which makes it even more unlikely. unless you get left alone for like 30 hours"
Now onto BL specifically: yes, I expect players to have higher quality troops than the AI. Yes, I expect players to have a lot of them. There is very little stopping a player from amassing 30-50 heavy cavalry early in a playthrough. Gear costs are out of control and scale badly in their cost-effectiveness. Don't waste much money on gear; a decent polearm is less than 2K denars and you can start off with decent armor by picking the right background or gear up by winning tournaments. Invest in your troops instead, then farm the terrible-tier minor factions. Warhorses are a bottleneck, yes. Mountain bandits drop Imperial chargers, which are terrible, but still count as warhorses.
When it come to recruiting you do not need high standing. You need +5 relations with influential (200+ influence) landowners if you're at war. If you're not at war, you need zero. Just don't have negative relations. Don't keep that herd you promised to deliver. Don't get all the troops you promised to train killed off. Don't rob village parties. And for god's sake, never raid the damned villages themselves. Occasionally do the seed grain mission; that's an easy 20+ relations right then and there.
And heavy cavalry does counter horse archers. Horse archers aren't actually all that accurate, it just seems like it because when they shoot into a densely-packed formation, it makes it much harder to miss. Your arrow goes long? You get a headshot. Missed the head? There is another head right behind it.
Meanwhile, heavy cavalry have armor for themselves and their mounts. They aren't as bunched up as infantry either. All of them carry one-shot weapons: Aserai Faris use javelins that one-shot riders and sometimes horses as well. Banner Knights have and use lances; both riders and horses are vulnerable to being one-shot with them. Same story with Khuzait Heavy Lancers but they don't necessarily couch them. Imperial Cataphracts work fine as well. The counter-charge forces the horse archers to break up their Cantabrian circle and when aiming against individal riders rather than whole formations horse archers aren't that accurate.
The only exception to heavy cavalry basically hard-countering horse archers is the T5/T6 of the Khuzait noble line and that is because they have glaives. But the AI never has very many of them so it doesn't matter.
edit: also you cant chose your heavy cav to charge their HA. if they get into melee and their HA hang around the blob your cav is more likely to get stuck in melee with the infantry rather than to pursue their HA. - see my original complaint that you cant attack troops directly
Yes, you can:
1) Press "3" "F1, F2"
2) The AI always charges their HA in first, well before infantry. Your own cavalry will hit them well before they hit the enemy infantry.
3) If you don't trust the charge command and don't want to lead them yourself, here's a tip: the enemy horse archers always turn towards your left, at the
EXACT same distance. Just tell your cavalry to move there and you effectively have the same thing as a counter-charge, because all the HAs will either pile-up or break away even further.
but lets say genghis khans horse archers were as OP as everyone says: it still makes the game worse, so its not an argument. nuclear missiles are real, so why not end every game in 2 minutes with a nuke to your enemies face? oh right, because its not fun... but i still dont believe horse archers were as good. its almost like the tiger tank from WW2. it did hardly contribute, yet has the highest REP status...
Well, it wasn't that his horse archers themselves were OP; they weren't any substantially different than those of the Turks, Cuman-Kipchaks, Mamelukes, or the various Sinicized steppe peoples they'd defeated in the east.
Whether they make the game worse is a subjective opinion though, although honestly Mount and Blade has always made the advantages of being mounted very stark. Before Khuzaits, it was Swadian Knights and -- if you were a contrarian but still wanted to F1 F3 everything -- Sarranid Mamelukes.
