Playing as Britons, is there any way to beat those Elite Mangudai?

[twiigss]

So I've tried everything. Nothing works. First I tried my usual fully researched Arbalests, didn't work. Then I tried Elite Skirmishers, nope, then I tried onagers, nope, then I tried sort of a mix, I had 4 squads of 60 men each of Elite Skirmishers, and 2 full squads of Petards. As the Elite Skirmishers were busy with the Elite Mangudai, my Petards went in, in 30 men squads each, and that worked to at least take, maybe 3 houses, castle, and town center out. Then I tried 3 squads of 60 men of Arbalests again, they worked good for taking out the onagers, but again, they all died.

So at this point, I'm stuck. Are these Elite Mangudai's just too powerful for a Britons gameplay? Am I supposed to use different types of units against the enemy?

Any tips on what to do are most appreciated.

[Yeowolf]

Try to get the advantage over your opponent before they get to elite mangudai. Mongols get a good fast start due to their hunting bonus, and a very strong lategate due to mangudai and siege, but they don't have much inbetween to help them get to that point (since castle age mangudai are significanty weaker). Elite mangudai require lots of upgrades, and several castles to maintain production.
Britons get a good powerspike when they hit castle with the extra range on their crossbows, and they also have the eco advantage in Castle age with their cheaper TCs. So this is when you need to be taking the fight to them. You also have the advantage in early imp, before the mongols get their mangudai and siege rolling.
Without castles, the Mongols will struggle in late-game. If possible try to prevent them from taking stone, otherwise try to take down their castles.
If Mongols play is right, there isn't really anything you can do against them in late-game if you haven't already got a good lead on them at this point. Siege ram + mangudai will just roll over anything the Britons can put together. They are probably the slightly better civ in this matchup overall (and in general for 1v1) so don't worry too much if your win percentage for this matchup is a little lower than for some other matchups :)

Also, petards are generally poor value for taking down buildings, and should usually only be used to quickly bust through a wall for your army to do damage. The food cost of taking down buildings with petards is just too high.

[twiigss]

Originally posted by Cicero:

Try to get the advantage over your opponent before they get to elite mangudai. Mongols get a good fast start due to their hunting bonus, and a very strong lategate due to mangudai and siege, but they don't have much inbetween to help them get to that point (since castle age mangudai are significanty weaker). Elite mangudai require lots of upgrades, and several castles to maintain production.
Britons get a good powerspike when they hit castle with the extra range on their crossbows, and they also have the eco advantage in Castle age with their cheaper TCs. So this is when you need to be taking the fight to them. You also have the advantage in early imp, before the mongols get their mangudai and siege rolling.
Without castles, the Mongols will struggle in late-game. If possible try to prevent them from taking stone, otherwise try to take down their castles.
If Mongols play is right, there isn't really anything you can do against them in late-game if you haven't already got a good lead on them at this point. Siege ram + mangudai will just roll over anything the Britons can put together. They are probably the slightly better civ in this matchup overall (and in general for 1v1) so don't worry too much if your win percentage for this matchup is a little lower than for some other matchups :)

Also, petards are generally poor value for taking down buildings, and should usually only be used to quickly bust through a wall for your army to do damage. The food cost of taking down buildings with petards is just too high.

Thanks. To me it sounds like it might as well be game over because we're both at imperial, but I did notice I was at imperial much quicker than he was. I did notice my keeps were doing good, if I selected them all and targeted the onagers, but I had like 18 keeps, 2 rows deep, so like 9 keeps per row. Only other thing I noticed is when the Mangudai would attack a keep, if it was just one unit, he'd deal 1hp per attack. So it's like masses of them deal crazy damage.

A long time ago, back when AoE 2 had just gotten the Conquerors expansion, a friend of mine said when he would play online, he'd get frustrated and quit, because people would build a wall 2 or 3 deep, and behind that have like 6 rows of nothing but keeps going the full length of their wall.

[Ashur_Arbaces]

Originally posted by twiigss:

Originally posted by Cicero:

Try to get the advantage over your opponent before they get to elite mangudai. Mongols get a good fast start due to their hunting bonus, and a very strong lategate due to mangudai and siege, but they don't have much inbetween to help them get to that point (since castle age mangudai are significanty weaker). Elite mangudai require lots of upgrades, and several castles to maintain production.
Britons get a good powerspike when they hit castle with the extra range on their crossbows, and they also have the eco advantage in Castle age with their cheaper TCs. So this is when you need to be taking the fight to them. You also have the advantage in early imp, before the mongols get their mangudai and siege rolling.
Without castles, the Mongols will struggle in late-game. If possible try to prevent them from taking stone, otherwise try to take down their castles.
If Mongols play is right, there isn't really anything you can do against them in late-game if you haven't already got a good lead on them at this point. Siege ram + mangudai will just roll over anything the Britons can put together. They are probably the slightly better civ in this matchup overall (and in general for 1v1) so don't worry too much if your win percentage for this matchup is a little lower than for some other matchups :)

Also, petards are generally poor value for taking down buildings, and should usually only be used to quickly bust through a wall for your army to do damage. The food cost of taking down buildings with petards is just too high.

Thanks. To me it sounds like it might as well be game over because we're both at imperial, but I did notice I was at imperial much quicker than he was. I did notice my keeps were doing good, if I selected them all and targeted the onagers, but I had like 18 keeps, 2 rows deep, so like 9 keeps per row. Only other thing I noticed is when the Mangudai would attack a keep, if it was just one unit, he'd deal 1hp per attack. So it's like masses of them deal crazy damage.

A long time ago, back when AoE 2 had just gotten the Conquerors expansion, a friend of mine said when he would play online, he'd get frustrated and quit, because people would build a wall 2 or 3 deep, and behind that have like 6 rows of nothing but keeps going the full length of their wall.

Siege Rams will turn Keeps into rubble before you can blink.

[twiigss]

Actually those onagers were tearing my keeps apart more than the rams were, cause he had like 10 to 12 onagers, plus the 40 or 50 Elite Mangudai.

[Shade-O]

Halbadiers will be very important both as a meatshield and they are dangerous to the siege and Mangudais. You want to use the spread formation to minimize aoe damage.
Trebuchets can be used to counter the onagers although you will need to keep those onagers at a good distance.
Archers and skirmishers remains as a good option against the Mangudai since cost efficiency wise they will beat the Mangudai untill the Mongols has research Parthian tactics.

Like Cicero said, castle age is where you are probably the strongest while the Mongols are at their weakest since Mangudais really needs the Elite upgrade before they're good. Add in knights to further perpetuate your advantage. Your crossbrows can even shoot from long woodlines so be on the lookout where you can raid where your enemy has to walk around before they reach those archers. Denying/destroying castle will go a long way to set the Mongols back.

With that all said however. Mangudais are incredibly hard to counter if the Mongol player is actively microing his/her Mangudais then the Mongol player may very well masterfully dodge all your projectiles while firing back with little to no casualties, especially as the Britons who lacks balistics.

[grraf]

Don't bother with the halberdiers these get shred by mangudai/cav archers or kited all day by hussars.... what u need are mass xbow into arbalest+mass trebs; since u will reach imp first u need to start rolling out with a mass of xbows and preferably 2 castles non stop doing trebs... focus on nothing but his castles&tcs&siege worksops as what ever he tries in late castle/early imp is noth going to even dent a mass of arbs with +2 range

[Shade-O]

Originally posted by grraf:

Don't bother with the halberdiers these get shred by mangudai/cav archers or kited all day by hussars.... what u need are mass xbow into arbalest+mass trebs; since u will reach imp first u need to start rolling out with a mass of xbows and preferably 2 castles non stop doing trebs... focus on nothing but his castles&tcs&siege worksops as what ever he tries in late castle/early imp is noth going to even dent a mass of arbs with +2 range

Oookay and what about the rams? The Mongolian variety might be faster than you think which is partially why i recommended the halbs.
Also how exactly does a hussar kite Halb?

[twiigss]

Originally posted by Shade-O:

Halbadiers will be very important both as a meatshield and they are dangerous to the siege and Mangudais. You want to use the spread formation to minimize aoe damage.
Trebuchets can be used to counter the onagers although you will need to keep those onagers at a good distance.
Archers and skirmishers remains as a good option against the Mangudai since cost efficiency wise they will beat the Mangudai untill the Mongols has research Parthian tactics.

Like Cicero said, castle age is where you are probably the strongest while the Mongols are at their weakest since Mangudais really needs the Elite upgrade before they're good. Add in knights to further perpetuate your advantage. Your crossbrows can even shoot from long woodlines so be on the lookout where you can raid where your enemy has to walk around before they reach those archers. Denying/destroying castle will go a long way to set the Mongols back.

With that all said however. Mangudais are incredibly hard to counter if the Mongol player is actively microing his/her Mangudais then the Mongol player may very well masterfully dodge all your projectiles while firing back with little to no casualties, especially as the Britons who lacks balistics.

Well at one point I had 4 full squads, 60 men each, so that's 240 men of Elite Skirmishers. They didn't last at all. And it doesn't matter who I decide to mass build, those Elite Mangudai are insane. But my test of, okay, let me send out these 2 squads to keep those guys busy while I send out Petards because my thought was if the Mangudai are busy fighting archers or infantry for example, then the Petards should be able to walk right on by, and I was literally 99% correct.

A couple of Petards died on the way, but for the most part, I'd say at least 110 Petards got used on buildings.

[twiigss]

Okay, so I loaded up my game which was at a previous point, but he already has Elite Mangudai. So I tried something. I built a line of keeps, 3 deep, 9 keeps in a row, then I built maybe 3 squares away, 15 keeps in a block. THAT did the trick. All his onagers, capped rams, and Elite Mangudai that were attacking those keeps, all dead, mostly with just the keeps attacking. But I first focus on the onagers, then just let them auto attack the Mangudai. I brought in about 30 Arbalests I had from earlier, so now I just have to come in hard with whatever squad I'm thinking of probably Arbalests and hopefully go from there. I think they destroyed maybe 3 keeps so far.

Well nevermind. I don't even know what to say here. The keeps definitely worked, but I needed about 55 of them and all tightly put together. So I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I took in a small army of Arbalests and started attacking some of his villagers walking along a lake, and he says:

Kitboga: My peasants wert puling wretches (a puny 25 hit points)!
Kitboga: No wonder thou wert victorious! I shall abdicate.
Kitboga has resigned.

Sooo what happened? Why did he feel like he had to resign? He had farms, forests, a market, if he was out of gold or stone that he needed he could have just used the market, but instead chose to resign. I'll gladly take the win, just confused now lol.

[Kenvert]

Playing original dataset? If yes Mangudai is the best unit in the game.
In the HD expansions dataset they were nerfed. Use cavalry and skirmishers. Still very hard to beat them once they are massed and well microed.

[twiigss]

Originally posted by Kenvert:

Playing original dataset? If yes Mangudai is the best unit in the game.
In the HD expansions dataset they were nerfed. Use cavalry and skirmishers. Still very hard to beat them once they are massed and well microed.

Ah, yes, I'm playing with the original dataset. Well at any rate he had at least 40 to 50 Elite Mangudai and my keeps killed them all. After I built those keeps, I didn't really need any other archers or infantry, because those keeps were plenty to kill off his massive army.

[Saracenna]

Elite skirms work great and are a go to vs any archer civ including mongols or britons. As with any of the trash units, you need to well outnumber them which should be easy since skirms are cheap and not made at a castle. Halbs take bonus damage from mangs sure, but they are still great to use. Theres a good resonance vid where he uses trash to push back a mongols player in a team game as japanese using a similar tactic. Might recommend you watch it. Glhf.

[talgaby]

The Briton elite skirmisher is one of the greatest units against an elite mangudai on the original dataset, since they not only do a lot of damage but they completely outrange the riders. The only thing they are bad at is stopping random small pockets of raiding.

[CHI LONG QUA]

Literally just spam skirms dude. From 10 ranges if necessary. Use longbow/arb to snipe their onagers. Mongol hussars only have 4 pierce armour.

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

Britons have longbows that out-range castles, plus they have Warwolf tech for their trebuchets. Take out the castles and you won't see any more Mangudai.