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2- Roma has superior strategic mobility along the coast, and untouchable stragtic depth in North Africa, Greece (Thermopylae anyone), Britian, Spain and Italy, Scicily, sardina, Corsica etc. None of these areas will sustain a horse army for long.
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They wouldn't have to sustain them for very long as they would simply create a local famine and keep moving. And of course fighting along the coast already implies the Mongols would have crushed field armies on the way.
Taking North Africa cuts off grain to Rome. If the Romans are hemmed inside of Italy then the richest parts of the empire are open to be sacked. A Mongol army feeding off local resources in grain growing provinces means a famine in the empire.
If a horse army doesn’t care for the local population at all then you will be surprised how much a province can feed a horse army. And then one had to factor in the refugee issue.
Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica might make nice final stands after the Mongols have conquered the mainland, but the Mongols did build a navy and reached (and briefly took with a small force) Java.
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The Legions had a large number of slingers an archers as well as cavalry, javlainers, and engineers. in one repsect the Mongols were like the Romans.
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The javelin is outranged by the reflex bow: as are most Roman weapons. The Mongol cavalryman might carry 40-60 arrows which took of less space then a javelin of which only a handful could be carried. Roman cavalry could likely not stand up to Mongol cavalry either in shock (compared to heavy Mongol cavalry) and skirmishing or numbers. And the Mongols had engineers of their own.
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in any case, the mongols were beaten by the mamelukes, and no one else, really (the japanese hardly count: they really WERE saved by the kamikaze). song china stopped them for a while with mass-produced gunpowder weapons (firebolts, guns, grenades, flamethrowers, rockets, poison-gas rockets, even!), but in the end, even the song went under. and the song were able to raise men far more easily than rome, even in rome's heyday.
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They lost in Java and Vietnam if one considers the Yuan a Mongol state.
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That seems to me to e the greatest problem; they may have had Chinese siege experts, ut it would have been extremely tricky to get them from China to Asia Minor, Dacia, or Palestine. They got their siege weapons from China, but they didn't tug them across Asia into Europe, and, guess what: the Romans had siege weapons too-weapons superior to those of China: i.e. the ballisti.
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Mongol siege weapons were brought into the Middle East: Hulegu’s sack of Baghdad is an example of siege weapons tugged across Asia. And before he used them on Baghdad he used them on Persia.
Mongol siege equipment is what turned them from a force of cavalry raiders to empire builders as unlike past steppe raiders the Mongols could reliably seize a defended city.
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And their armor was NOT superior to Roman armor. Roman armor was highly adavanced being a cross between scaled, and chain mail. Whereas the Mongols wore leather. And again: the Romans also had calvary-very good calvary. As a matter of fact, each legion's auxillary force contained a force of Archers, as well as calvary.
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The Mongols were a force of horse-archers and could field large numbers with lots of horses. Rome's cavalry was small in comparison to the force the Mongols could bring to the field. And not all Mongols had leather once they left Mongolia: armor was acquired through their victories so by the time they reached the Middle East armor was more common.
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The Mongols after the death of the first two generations were really not all that feirce, that is why the Mamlukes beat them. It is doubtful the Mongols had the staying power to subjagate Rome. great parts of Europe are not conductive to horse archers or cavalry in general. Ther eis a reason infantry dominated ancient Europe.
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The Mamlukes won in no small part because the Illkhanate was forced to go to war with the Golden Horde and sent only a rump force against the Mamlukes: who by the way fought in a similar style to the Mongols and backed away from sending forces to help the Caliph because they knew they couldn't face the Hulegu.
And the Mongols kept control over China, Persia, Central Asia and Russia for quite some time.
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3- Rome had superior strategic mobility along the coast. She could move entire armies to threatened cities with impunity. While the Mongols would have controlled the interior, but the bulk of the population and wealth was along the coast.
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And that bulk of the population and wealth would be subject to raids and sieges by the Mongols. And there is the political issue of being in that situation, with cities full of refugees causing disease and food storages.
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1-10,000 men is not enough to affec tthe reduction of the Roman cities and centers of gravity.
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Turko-Mongol forces could number over 100,000 for an invasion.