Beating the Mongols

This is a concise and thorough guide on how to beat Medieval 2's trickiest faction.

How to beat them

The mongols are a pain in the ar5e
they are tough fast and slightly less returded than the other AI factions in the game but still a little "special"
The have the best cavalry, the best generals and they get 11 free amries
they can also survive without settlements


Beating them is the sign of promise in a total war player, wiping them out is the sign of skill and doing it without any defeats or losses of settlements shows true military genius

So why do so many people struggle with them? I think the cause of the problem is the fact that most total war players dont manage to conquer the whole map before they show up around 1220ish. you need to pick a faction that starts in the east or be able to take all the settlements in the game to be in with a chance of fighting them on your own terms.
Most of your battles should be defensive sieges, preferably in fortresses or citadels. balista towers help.

Spearmen, pikemen, polearms, crossbows, good archers and heavy cavalry should form the bulk of your army

watch the video to see how to set your army up.

How the Mongols work

The mongols have the best cavalry in the game, not because it has the highest stats but because it always has really high experience and their generals are OP. A full frontal charge from 5 mongol heavy lancers along with a general like Subutai or Jebe can rout your entire army if you dont have a decent general. Their cavalry also has better stamina i find, even without the xp.
On top of that they also have the best horse archers in the game. Well armoured, good stamina, good missile damage, fast and huge experience. To top it all off their Mongol infantry unit is a cross between archers and light infantry so they are decent in melee as well as being very capable archers.

The best way to beat the mongols is in a defensive siege. this way your own troops will have far better moral. The mongols cavalry based armies also do not fare so well in these kind of engagements because of medieval 2's pathfinding in settlements. In defensive sieges you can also set up loads of traps for the enemy and do huge damage to them before the hand to han combat even starts. Defensive stakes, towers, boiling oil(kingdoms only), artillery and crossbow nests are just some of the many ways you can kill huge numbers of the enemy before they get close. After playing enoug sieges you will be able to predict where they enemy are going to place they ladders and siege towers so you will then be able to place your missile units in places where they cannot be touched. If you are using towers however it is worth your while not activating them until their is a ram at your gates. this sounds crazy but if the towers are working then they are just going to destroy all the enemy's rams and they will never be able to get their cavalry into combat. towers can do lots of damage to the enemy units but this is nothing compared to what a combination of stakes, spears, pikes and crossbows can do. Its is worth your while placing some missile units on the ground about 50 meters behind the walls, this way they will be able to shoot at anything that scales the walls or comes through the gate.

A lot of people make armies of only spearmen and archers to fight the mongols. this is somewhat counter productive because without quality heavy infantry you will struggle to kill the mongol infantry or keep the walls in your control. A couple of units of heavy cavalry also help to run down fleeing enemies after their general dies.

[ImrahilofDolAmroth]

I beat them in a field battle with croswbowmen and spears and catapults and a few knights as Milan whie onother tiem a full stack of knights hosptiler and fudal knights agaist a partal stack of mongels and got slautered note my infatry were out nemberd

[Phobos82]

And sometimes, Mongols were going in the sea. There are weaker ships. So you can beat the ship, because your ships are better.

[PanZagloba]

I personally just collect bigger force, spam random units and wait for Mongols to split their forces and then attack a single army with big ascendence, Then moving armies to the city and wait for another single army

[AndyInnit⚡⚡]

i defeated the mongols in open field battles as turkey recently, using armies consisting of only janissary archers and saracen militia,
I managed to grow Constantinople. cairo, antioch and jerusalem to the point where all 4 cities has royal barracks, so i could spam janissary units before the mongols entered the map
then i converted every castle into cities, my army literally consisted of saracen militia to guard towns and a few half stack roving armies of turkomans, both can be recruited from cities. but due to everything being a city, i had loads of spare gold.
I lost the first few battles, but after a few turns id ground the mongols down to nothing around the plains of Sarkel, and wiped them out.

the best thing about this strat, is that you are going to be able to spam muskets as soon as gunpowder is invented, and youll be able to do the same to the timiurids, except with musket and cannon spam.

[Tanya]

use high level assassins and spies. follow them around and try to kill as many generals as you can before you engage them in battle. park armies at river crossings to block their advance. also if you're playing as egypt get those kwarizmian cavalry mercs.

[Ture]

I played as France and essentially just rebuilt the kingdom of Charlemagne. The Mongols took the northern route through Russia, Poland and were spread thin over all of their conquered territory. Fighting Hungarians in the South, Russians and Turks in the east, Danes in the North and the Holy Roman Remnant in the west, where I marched in with armies with a single purpose: nullify their cavalry with pikes, polearms and missiles.

Although the Mongol hordes extracted a heavy toll on my armies, overall my advance suffered no setbacks. The Mongol armies were spread far apart, unable to come to the aid of one another. I was able to mop them up one after the other.

[Son0fDredd]

Also if you manage to keep them in the north east, they tend to get confused in the big empty spaces between cities and you can play a game of cat and mouse with them trying to catch them in a pinch movement with 2-3 armies. Weaken them and try to use your assasins. Rinse and repeat. Even if you dont immediatly destroy them, you can keep them at bay like this for centuries in a more or less comfortable way.

[ChronoGhost145]

enough good pikes or spears combined with enough good archers or xbows? the mongols in the game are easy plus ai from most TW games is basic af

[svensebastian]

English Crusaders, Knights, and stakemen means yeomen and longbowmen

[Mighty Matt]

kill the whole blood line with mass assassin