How I lost an empire

[Aki Provence]

Greetings,

I'm a little bit frustrated, so don't expect anything amazing. After I reached my height with King Baktrios I. in owning 12 provinces, thereby subjugating the nomadic tribes of Saka Rauka and bringing the Pahlva Horse Empire on the verge of extinction and reclaiming two lost ancestral provinces from Seleucia I lost my momentum in this grand endeavour. Somehow The Grey Death (GD) won the war in the west and south or drew a stalemate at least, and ushered their elite phalanx to the East to crush the nearly 40 years of rebellion in Baktria. Waves and Waves of enemies descended upon my brave people. Hoping to end this bloodshed among philhellens, I accepted to become a protectorate. No sooner were we celebrating peace in our times, when out of a sudden he betrayed us and attacked. The Horse Kingdom recuperated in the meantime and retook A-Margianea, in order to salvage as much as I could, I used the burning earth method on both fronts, so that the two provinces I took from GD went back to him. Due to serious mismanagement on my side I lost Chucha to rebel nomads. The sun sets for the greaco-indian kingdom. So it was roughly about 233 BC when I had a debt of -79k, my last resort troops barricaded themselves in the once proud baktrian capital and a second force force-marched to Taksila, opened and battle...and there the game crashed. I never believed in omens but if this wasn't one...what is??

My two cents view on what went wrong:

- I overextended my territories
- I lost the diplomatic battle against Seleucia (I never started one)
- I certainly should hang my building minister (it is essential to know what type of government builduing to use and when)
- Ahh, I should have conquered the Indian rebels...earlier...much earlier
- I got into wars with every starting neighbour in my vicinity except for the sarmatians, try to avoid war with the Seleucid as long as possible ( i was already at war with him in 264 BC)
- Perhaps a different military doctrine would have been better, yes? I lost perhaps 10+ rounds to reach the heart of Saka Rauka. And I nearly lost.

I'm open for suggestions. Thanks for your time

[Intranetusa]

You lost as Baktria? At VH/M? That sounds very fun actually =D

Anyways, my strategy for fighting a large number of opponents/silver death:
Take control of key choke points and use the terrain to your advantage. I'm usually able destroy armies at least 3x my size just my commanding the high ground in a hilly/mountainous battle. When fighting horse archer armies, force them into siege battles or recruit horse archers/archers of your own.

If you have a few troops and are cornered by a large enemy, start at the very corner of the map (yes I know it's an exploit)...this way the enemies can't surround and flank you. When you're going to lose the battle no matter what and can't retreat effectively, do as much damage as possible to the enemy. (kill as many of them as possible)

As for conquering territories, I usually blitz and never let the enemy have a moments rest...I conquer one province, occupy/expel/enslave (depending on if I need the money), then move out immediately on the next turn. When I'm blitzing, I usually don't bother waiting to train my faction troops in my main cities, I just recruit a ton of mercs...the money you get from steam rolling cities every other turn usually more than makes up for merc recruitment/upkeep.

Also, to conserve money, I only use levies/slingers/archers/etc to garrison my inner cities, and mostly levies + a few regular troops to garrison the cities in hotly contested battle zones.

And one of things I found useful is to not make your cities multitask - make them do specific things. Generally, I build farms/drainage systems first so they all expand in population (more tax money). Then I make most of my cities pure economic cities (focus on building economy and population only) and a few other cities (ones of the fringes) as military cities (focus on building barracks and increase population).

[IrishHitman]

The way to beat the Saka (or any steppe faction) is to seize their towns and avoid fighting in open battle. Camp out on bridges and river crossings when en route to said towns.

[Lovejoy]

Great first post! Very fun and interesting. I would have moved against the Seleucid much earlier. They are weak in the start but become much stronger later. Dont bother going against Saka, it takes far too long and its not worth much. Anyhow, better luck next time!

[SwissBarbar]

You can scratch point about "diplomatic battle" , there simply is no such thing in this game. If you become protectorate of someone, you can bet, that it will last for not more than 3 turns until they betray you, and be it only by blocking one of your harbours. The only good thing about becoming a protectorate, when offered to you, is, that you can earn a lot of money with it. Start with 20 or 30'000 Mnai in your counter-offer

[the man with no name]

I believe that they "betray you" only because they commanded their armies to attack you before you become a protectorate thus they don't stop their armies(stupid AIs), thus giving you the "betrayal."

[Beefy187]

I normally find Baktria campaign easy after I seize control of India.
Expand East as fast as possible, then build lots of mines would be the best advice I can give.

Build 2 Horse archer squad made from 5 Scythian riders. Run around and shoot on the back of the phalanx. When the phalanx get tired, charge at them one by one.

[Andronikos]

As Baktria:

- build mines, you can become the richest eastern kingdom, conquer India (there are mines too)
- make Saka Rauka and Pahlava your allies (they will betray you, especially on VH, but it can earn you some time and you won't fight all three at one time or it will happen only after you are superpower), don't conquer Antiochia Margiane and Marakanda, it just provokes Saka
- fight against Seleucids first they have better cities, let nomads be, archery duels and steppe battles cost you men and thus money, you need money for mines, battles with Seleucids could be won with minor casualties.
- in cities that are frequently attacked build stone walls, but not the largest ones (with those enemy gets towers with balistae), train huge garrison of slingers and archers, sally in each turn of siege, slingers can kill enemy general from walls, have HAs or skirmisher cav. in cities to provoke enemy to come into range of your archers on walls
archers:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Persian archers - your basic archer, good range, attack, 25 arrows,
Persian archer spearmen - only a little weaker, but can stand longer in melee, another basic unit, cheaper than previous
Indian longbowmen - powerful attack, sadly few arrows (15), but their sword is a deadly weapon and they make one of the best soldiers in cities defence, they are more light infantry with bows
Subeshi, Persian heavy archers - 35 arrows, very long range, high attack you can get them in northern/southern cities in regional barracks

Your late bodyguards are monsters, they eat hetairoi and Seleukid bodyguards for breakfast, Pahlavan and Saka cataphracts are inferior to them, can cause routing on first charge, especially if you have FM with 50 bodyguards (on large)

You DON'T NEED cataphracts, elephants, elites, train them only after you become rich. Few phalanxes, bodyguards, cheaper HAs, archers, light infantry (baktrian and eastern axemen) and light/medium cavalry (Kambojas, Baktrians) are enough to win early battles

With mines established, India conquered, elephants, cataphracts, guild warriors and elite HAs, you are the greatest and richest empire in the world with unstopable armies.

[schlappi]

You DON'T NEED cataphracts, elephants, elites, train them only after you become rich.

Recruiting those into every noteable army is a question of prestige and honour!

[IrishHitman]

Recruiting those into every noteable army is a question of prestige and honour!

Train them only if they're effective.

For instance, as Makedonia, I don't bother my arse training Hypaspists, but I take careful note to train Hetairoi. Hypaspists are only good at holding lines, and phalanx units do it better.
Hetairoi are monsters at breaking lines, and there aren't many units in ANY faction better at doing that, never mind within the Mak faction.

A word of warning against Elephants.
They're crap, 'cause they're vunerable.

[Mr Polska]

A word of warning against Elephants.
They're crap, 'cause they're vunerable.

And also bloody expensive,.

[IrishHitman]

And also bloody expensive,.

Indeed.
They're the least cost-effective unit in the game, in my opinion.

[Beefy187]

Indeed.
They're the least cost-effective unit in the game, in my opinion.

Keep them reserved in battle. Fear factor that elephants provides is worth it for the civilized faction.

Not to mention the gate breaking abilities.

In battle, keep them till mid game. When the battle starts stagnating, get the elephants on the right (or left hand side) of the enemy and drive them cross the battle lines. That should rout them all.

I like the elephants. They do have some nifty tricks.

[Aki Provence]

I let my old campaign be and started a fresh one. I tried to learn from my mistakes and I can humbly say it worked well (M/M). For starters, I made peace with S-R, left the A-S alone for a few years, DID not attack Taksashila as soon as possible and did not build mines. I conquered the rebel provinces in the East and went down to Alexandropolis. Somewhere in the middle I took Marakanda but not Alexander-Eschate and built up my strength. The crazy ptolomean envoy helped my war-torn economy by signing a peace treaty worth 14000 mnai :-) On another note, I found it really difficult in attacking Taksashila early in the game, I made something comletely different. At some point in the game I got into contact with the Seleucid, it was inevitable after all, and battled my way into Anticipation-City (can't remember the greek name) and then Aria.

What helped a lot was having the Pahlava as an ally for a few turns anyway, turned out that nomad blood (Saka declared war) is thicker than a long standing alliance, because the Horse Empire pinned down several legions of A-S phalanxes. The Pani took Hekatompylos and blocked A-R from engaging me directly. This opened the road for a deep strike mission into the persepolis valley. From Aria, I sent Diodotus I. to accomplish the task and he was up to it. Only then did I sent an expeditionary force under Zolios, soon to become Indarchos, to subjugate India...from south to north. I have to say that this was, so far, the most interesting part of the game. Reading the info on the indian buildings, just reminded me on the wondrous game the people from EB have made. It is all in their, the flava, the effort, the historicity...chapeau! sorry I digress. Back to the game proper.

So as I was saying, I got tired of the damn horse attacks from Saka and gradually conquered his provinces, where I, and here I sadly have to admit I did not learn from prior experience (the crebral cortex must have lost this bit of info :-/) got stuck with a lot of veteran units upholding the law in Chighu. To make a long story short, the Saka are now restricted to one province.

I started to attack the Pahlva after the Seleucid lost A-Margiane first to rebels and then to the Pani. But a bolding plan evolved, and instead of attacking the obvious I started to attack Asaak. In quick succession the Pani lost Margiane, Nisa, Khiva and finally Hekatompylos. Now they are on the verge of being a rarity on hunting parties. All this could only be done with the help of the veterans from the first Ghandaran infantry unit and the Black Lancers.

Now I stand at the crossroads to either mob up the nomads in the north or continue my ancient feud with the Seleucid over a scarf which Alexandros probably wore. I'm also eager to kick the Ptolomeans right in their huge football-like forehead and let my people go.

[IrishHitman]

Keep them reserved in battle. Fear factor that elephants provides is worth it for the civilized faction.

Not to mention the gate breaking abilities.

In battle, keep them till mid game. When the battle starts stagnating, get the elephants on the right (or left hand side) of the enemy and drive them cross the battle lines. That should rout them all.

I like the elephants. They do have some nifty tricks.

Elephants get fried alive if you try to use them on any decent city...