There are many responses that can counter them - I know - archers, walls, especially stone walls, counter attacks. Yes, yes and yes and I’m sure there are more than this n00b doesn’t know, but honestly. Do you think they are fun to play against? I find them incredibly stressful for the attacked player but not very difficult for the attacker. I did the other day see some pretty good micro from the attacking Mongol player as they split their Mangudai into three groups and managed to rampage through all three players after finding a hole in our wall. But I don’t think they are FUN. Mechanics which are not fun, even if they have a counter or they have a way to play against should be tweaked, in my humble opinion.
The APM/effort required to counter them should be on par with the APM/effort required to conduct them and at the moment I think the difficulty and demanding element is in the defence rather than in the offence.
I think units which fire whilst moving aren’t a good mechanic and should be changed.
I’m not sure what needs changing exactly, but they should be less than torturous to play against and require the same level of expertise to deal with as to utilize. Thoughts?
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They are weak, if you are having problems against them is because you are not countering them well.
In gold or platinum leagues they are near useless unit, and in diamond on conqueror no one uses them.
Too squishy, costs gold, and can be countered by archers, towers, stone walls, pallisades, outposts, etc…
If you are getting raided by mangudai, build your base properly (add outposts with springalds, a keep, etc…). It’s useful also to add pallisade segments to guide them to where you want them to pass. For example if you have built a keep, put pallisades to force them pass near the keep.
Also don’t forget that they are good at raiding your unprotected villagers, bur if you see someone doing too many mangudai, go for his base because probably he will not have enough defensive capacity, and if you manage to ruin his economy it’s over.
For example rus horse archer or abbasid camel archers is much better unit tha mangudai, if you play some of these civs spam them when facing mangudai.
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I laugh everytime I see mongol going full mangudai, because 99.99% its free win.
How I deal with them is I hit castle faster than them and go lancers or horsemen. Lancers I micro against them in such way that once they start running away I run away too. Then I run around tree line so they won’t have good vision of my units while I turn around and charge at them.
Everytime if mongol is not paying close attention to it they lose 1-10 mangudais to my charges / melee hit and I don’t lose anything unless units are low hp. While I keep them busy I hit their economy with small group of lancers and force them either lose entire army or economy.
Sure I dont like playing against them, but idm because its free win and mostly I dont like playing against them because I remember how my allies just keep spamming them and being useless.
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Feudal french knights and English longbow I find far more boring to play against.
Because it’s always the same spam unit most of the times with very little variation.
At least with Mangudai you get to more action happening at different areas.
Regardless, Mangudai are borderline useless, they have their very specific niche uses and function more as a form of supportive unit than anything else, dealing with backline raiders and support your own raiders.
Tbh, if they were stronger and were more usefull in the frontlines, we would most likely see a reduction in the use of them in backline raiding.
Give them a Bonus against siege like they have in AoE2 and you’ll see them far less killing vills and doing more tactical moves in the battlefield instead.
There are many ways to easily counter Mangudai that has already been mentioned.
But for the early games, Towers put a complete stop to it.
They are harmless against buildings, having towers close to your eco so you can quickly garrison vills.
And Improve Textiles does wonder against Mangudai raid.
If your Dheli, HRE or any other civ with early Monks, having them near your villagers will just heal them up again.
Knights however, almost 1hit KO your vills with their charge attacks before you even get a chanse to respond.
Mangudai’s require a huge investment in order to start sweeping up vills.
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I think the problem is that low ELO players get wrecked by Mangudai and it’s a game breaking mechanic…so considered not fun.
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Perhaps their auto-fire while moving and 100% accuracy is too devastating to ‘regular’ players who also need time to fortify and wall up fully.
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Mangudai is just play with your prey unit. If you got damaged in dark age or somehow lost your military and so the map control to Mongol, they can prevent you from walling your base and make mangudai runbys until you tap out just for fun.
i feel the same when they came its so stressfull but this is their play style get ready your archers and towers or you can play mongol and terorize the people 
and its very fun when you play with them 
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Mangudai cost 160 resources, which is the equivalent of 2 archers… Or a tower with almost an emplacement. So if the opponent make 10 mangudai i suppose you have free resources to make enough units and towers to properly counter. Stand on a big pile of resources and don’t use it, don’t make you the winner for sure
Yes, this. Though I’ve been playing the aoe series for years, I suck lol. And they really do wreak havoc at lower levels. I know there are good counters and tbh I do try my best to implement them, but they are quite painful to deal with. Basically they are mosquitoes. High elo players have houses with mosquito screens, low elo players don’t. That’s what it feels like to me. So the high elo players are like just close the screen. I’ve no screen lol.
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nah, Mangudais are total trash and the most useless unique unit in the game that costs too much and countered by any ranged unit.
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I didn’t expect Mangudai to be so weak and some people would think they were too strong. Learn to guard against them and stop the habit of always wanting to ask developers to nerf units they don’t know how to deal with.
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I dont understand why unique units aren strong. Mangudai, jans, camel.riders arent choosen to play. If ı play with mongols, I want mongol unique units can be played. When I watch pro youtube videos, pros.dont choose jans. I only see that archers, pikes, mangonel which is so boring. If we dont play unique units as they.are useless why devs add them to the game.
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I think you somewhat avoided the point. I’m a low elo player and they’re not fun to play against. The mechanic of attacking whilst moving is problematic at higher levels too as it has to be low damage to compensate for it. So perhaps a rework is needed. “Learn to guard against them” is a rather arrogant and unhelpful comment.
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You can basically use palisade walls and any trash ranged unit to counter Mangudais.
You will win resources effectively as archers are cheaper and mangudais are super expensive.
Build archers (if defending) or horsemen (if approaching). With archers he wont be able to raid your economy anymore since they are way more cost efficient plus bigger range and horsemen are faster than mangudai so you can hunt them down. Mangudai have such a low range and health that they indeed require lots of APM to be microed efficiently.
My advice is to take out archers (not spearman, not horseman) and put an outpost on the gold. The mangudai should not be before 5:30 min at your base.