>>>>- Mongols had the largest ever empire in land mass, stretching from Korea to Poland and Russia to China.
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>>>>- having a military completely based on light calvary, made them extremely mobile and hard for other armies to fight
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>>>>- though a rustic civilization (based on herding with no cities) they would quickly embrace any military or other technique that could give them an advantage be it gunpowder, catapult, currency or writing
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>>>They didn't learn the dangers of quickly embacing new technologies. Kubla (sp?) Khan built and lost the largest invasion fleet of ancient times.
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>>>Stick with what you're good at until you learn something else enough to be good at that.
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>>Kublai was a better diplomat than general. This is why the empire peaked then went into decline during his reign. In fact, he only effectively ruled 1/4 of the empire. As well, they weren't sailors. Also the weren't as good as the Samurai for fighting in close quarters, which was necessary to establish a beach head. Throw in a typhoon and the rest is history.
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>I just watched a documentary the other night about this, and it was neither the dangers of quickly embracing new technologies nor just the Typhoon what sunk the fleet, it was the eagerness of attack Japan fast what brought disaster. The chinese were able to make very good ships that could survive a typhoon, by using some water filled compartment in the middle of the boat, and in fact, most of the leaders of the invasion survived the typhoon, the problem was that Kublai wanted to invade Japan quick, and wanted the fleet to be constructed in less than a year, and because this was not possible, they confiscated and used river boats, which of course were not suitable to survive a typhoon and capsized for they had a shallow bottom with no keel, most of the people on board of these died, while the ones that were in the "technological advanced" ships survived

That documentary also said that the Chinese didn't have much time to build the ships, so they cut corners. There was also implication that they might have built them poorly becuase they hated the Mongols and wanted them to lose.

I think though, if they would have mastered naval warfare they would have understood that the boats were poorly made. Also they might have been able to use the fleet in different ways to defeat the Samurai.