Whatever you do, do NOT attack the Mongols with an army with 15 stacks of Longbowmen in. Doesn't work.
this army is a bit of an overexaggeration of course, but longbowmen are actually one of the best units for fighting mongols . Mainly cause they can deploy stakes and stakes destroy mongolian infantry, especially during sieges. This plus their good range and high missile attack stats.
I'm currently playing (battles) vh/h late campaign as Byzantine Empire ~ at turn 50 , have a wide land stretching from italy to caucasus region. Just recently got attacked by mongols. So far all it takes is :
1. 1 uber spy and 1 uber assasin to get rid of the good generals they send
2. 1 full stack (under the Emperor's command) army defending the border province in Tbilisi castle (key position, i think if i ever lose it to mongolians i might be in trouble). Stack consists of good veteran infantry (in SS mongols have decently armored dismounted soldiers and they bring alot for sieges) , javelinmen and most importantly about 4 mourtatoi archers that can deploy stakes. Needless to say that these stakes are the bane of mongolian cavalry during sieges, the AI is quite retarded and always sends the cavalry charging, they die in hundreds and thousands.
3. Another army that consists entirely of cavalry (heavy, missile, light) to fend off their reinforcing armies (that sometimes consist entirely of horse archers ).
If not for the pesky mongols Genoa and Venice would've been mine for a long time
. And looks like the mongols have a lot of unused resources out in those steppes and fighting novgorodians (my spy actually spotted around 4 armies of mongols in Novgorodian lands, one of them having a full stack of elite cav/inf/horse archers, trebuchets... i want a showdown with that army eventually when i'm ready
).
Can't decide on the next campaign i'd play when i'm done eventually with this one. Denmark/Norway/Scotland (i wanted to focus on conquering England with either one of these) or Novgorod (awesome units that look awesome too, imo ).
P.S. I know it's obvious , but just gotta say that Stainless Steel is galaxies better than vanilla MTW , i kind of feel sorry for people who still play vanilla.