Sarmatian Campaign

[Greek_fire19]

The Sarmatians are HARD.

It seems to be a faction very few people have tried to seriously embark on a campaign with, but if you do, be warned, it is (in my experience) easily the most difficult factions to play with.

I'm playing this in M/M. If anyone can play on VH/M or VH/VH and survive for 20 years then let me know, because personally I'm pretty sure I couldnt do it.

As I begin the campaign I'm faced with a few major difficulties. The first is money. The Sarmatians aren't actually a ridiculously poor faction. For a barbarian faction they start with a decent number of provinces and they're all more than self sufficient once you disband your troops. The problem is that in order to attack neighbouring territories and hope to succeed you're going to need to train a decent force of horse archers (preferably sarmatian noble horse archers, which are available quite early on, just build a warlords court, I think) and bring them to the enemy town. The thing is, if your main troop producing town is Gava-Yazga and you want to attack Gava-Yugra then (to put it bluntly) you're screwed. Cus by the time you train 6 units and transport them all the way to their target, which is actualy a significant distance of the entire map, you're going to be a long way in debt. You have to be prepared therefore to make all your towns decent troop producing centres quite early on in order to save money.

The next problem is the enemies you face. The sarmatians actually have a bit of a buffer in terms of rebel cities. Hayasdan will be occupied with conquering the caucasian rebel states for at least 20 turns and probably longer (incidently I'v found that while it might be common sense to simply leave armenia alone and hope they ignore you, it's good to invest in a little raiding party of 3 or 4 heavy horse archers to go down and mess around with them a bit, block trade roads, pick off small groups of troops, maybe even risk a few larger ones, and just try to survive as long as possible. In my experience something like that really stunts their growth and buys you time before they start sending full stacks against Uspe, which they will, because they never fight the Seleucids, and rarely fight pontus) Anyhow, you have nothing to worry about in the west for probably almost a hundred years, and if parthia attacks you you should be able to fend them off, so don't worry about that too much. The main problem, the REALLY BIG PROBLEM is rebels.

Take a look at this screenshot: https://img76.imageshack.us/img76/9569/260bc3tm.jpg

See that rebel army outside Tanais? that's a full stack. Of horse archers. In a forest. I tried fighting them once, and maybe I would have won if I'd kept my cool and attacked them systematically and methodically. But fighting horse archers in a forest IS SOO DAMN AGGRAVATING. They keep popping out of nowhere and disappearing into nowhere and because of that it seems like theres twice as many as there actually are and you dont seem to be killing any of them. So after they beat me once I left them alone.

Speaking of Tanais actually, the battle for Tanais may have been the hardest RTW battle I'v ever fought. I really wanted it, so I trained about 5 units of heavy horse archers plus a unit of 3 bronze-chevron ordinary horse archers, plus my king and his son, so that's 800 men, and I'm already going into debt, I absolutely cannot afford more than this. So I attack and they have 1400 horse archers, including maybe 500 heavy horse archers. So the town has no walls and the battle mainly involves them sending out 3-4 units at a time, me shooting at them until I run out of ammo then charging them en-masse to break them (which is hard, damn rebel command stars!) so yeah, in the ned I get them down to about 400 men, except that I'v only got about 150, and my king is dead. So I retreat, the son (the new king) takes all the troops home, retrains them, and marches back. It's not a long way between gava Yazga and Tanais so this took maybe 3 turns, when I get back, they ALREADY have 1100 men, and I'm 100 down with the death of my king, so I might them to a stalemate, with me out of ammo and them unwiling to attack me, so they have maybe 600 men and I have about 400.

So I retreat again, and attack again the next turn, this time it's 400 against their 700, but I have full arrows, and I manage to attack them and cause a chain rout, and capture the settlement.

So anyway, the moral of the story is, while it may look easy to capture a steppe town with no walls, the horse archers that guard it can make it a nightmare, and if you leave it too long theres likely to be hundreds and hundreds of them. Also beware getting attacked in the open by bands of rebels. Anywhere else on the map and they'll be relatively harmless infantry, but here they'll almost certainly be horse archers. If you're transferring a family member to another town make sure to plan his route to avoid the rebels.

One final thing is, even though they're more expensive, I now almost exclusively train heavy horse archers, and if I had the option I'd train cataphract horse archers. They don't have the manouverability of ordinary horse archers, but most horse archer/horse archer engagements involve a prolonged arrow exchange, and all you've gotta do is be able to survive their arrows while making yours count, so get heavy horse archers. It also means you know you'll win a 1-1 melée, where you wouldnt know that with normal horse archers. These two factors can allow you to beat a much larger force of horse archers.

The only other thing with the sarmatians is you HAVE TO EXPAND. Without it you'll always be a backwater faction. It's very important that you get lots of money quickly and use it to built a decent infrastructure. Finally, when you're building temples, try to build 'circle of the fire' temples, cus they give more tradeable goods, and if you have them in all towns it can make a big difference to your money making ability.

One nice move you can pull as the sarmatians is raiding. It's quite easy on the big wide open steppe to find a lightly guarded town (armenian, dacian or parthian, it's not going to be lightly guarded if it's rebel) and take it, destroy everything inside and get out of there. There's usually a lot of open ground between their territory and your territory, and you have a fully mounted force whereas they'll usually have some foot soldiers, so they'll be slower and wont catch you.

https://img76.imageshack.us/my.php?image=256bc2cj.jpg

In this picture you can see I just sacked Kiat. Destroyed all the buildings and ran away. Cost me a lot in unit upkeep but I made 15000 just from knocking down the buildings so it does work. Hope this was helpful, I'll try to add more when I'v played a little further.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Very nice Greek Fire. I love reading other folks' strategy. I will say that the sarmatians, even in the next build, aren't going to get a whole lot easier yet. THere will be a lot of new things and units for them in the next build though, and we will need to balance it all out, but eventually we will have something that is comparative to the other factions, in difficulty, I think. Currently they are the hardest ones to play by far (not counting yuezhi, who will get the boot). I have played a lot of short campaigns as the sarmatians, and always find myself trying to take one extra settlement (tanais often) with my initial troops. THen trying to build up my population numbers and buildings, but by that time the armenians and parthians are way too difficult to handle.

[Mujalumbo]

I haven't played a .74 Sarmatian campaign any significant distance.

In my previous campaign, I kicked seven kinds of stuffing out of the Armenians. I actually wiped them out without taking any of their towns at all. The trick was to bide my time and muster a large force, say, 10-12 horse archers and some family members for heavy cav., and just loiter in their fields.

Both the Sweboz and Sauromatae start out dirt poor, their lands are dirt poor, but EB makes up for it with the Forager trait. You gotta be super aggressive and get right in there and mix it up. As long as you keep desecrating a tile per turn, you'll be fine.

Edit: What opening moves do you make as the Sauromatae? Disband and build? Consolidate your forces and attack? What, man? What?! ;)

Also. Does anybody know what "Baexdzhyntae" and "Uaezdaettae" mean?

[abou]

I think this is where using a time limit would help you, Greek Fire, and I would argue that in this instance it would be more realistic. If a force ran out of arrows they would probably just leave the field, regroup and rearm, and then attack again. In R:TW you can just wait for the clock to run out and then attack again next chance you get without allowing them to retrain. If you have no time limit you need to either finish the battle or withdraw, both of which can be disastrous.

[Greek_fire19]

The time limit thing is a good idea actually, but i'v got used to playing without it. Next time I play I'll definately turn it on, there's been a lot of stalemates in my campaign, where i realise I'd rather just take a draw.

Good to hear that they're getting new units, teleklos! It would also be nice if shifty's yurts made it into the next build, to really add to the nomadic atmosphere. I read also in the new preview that they're getting some government resource types, which would be awesome, cus having no governments to impose makes it quite difficult.

One question: Seeing as 'The Sarmatians' represents a pretty loose confederacy of actually quite distinct tribes, would it be possible (without sacrificing any realism) to maybe add a few more tribes to the confederacy? Maybe Gava-Yugra and Gelonus? Either that Or scrap the whole confederacy thing and make it just the Roxolanni with just one province, maybe take the mine out of Uspe and give it to the Roxolani province instead? Let the player expand from a nice, rich, compact little base.

I dunno, I'm sure you guys thought long and hard about the Sarmatians and how the represent them, it just seems like you gave them just enough provinces to be strung out and hard to manage and not nice and compact like the other barbs, and yet not big enough to be a major power and control some serious cash.

Its just annoying that you never see them do anything interesting on the campaign map. they just sit there and wait to be swamped by parthia and armenia.

EDIT: Mujalumbo: I don't think you have any option but to expand. If you disband then you're not going to have the cash for a meaningful army for at least 20 turns, and when you do expand then it'll be slow and cumbersome cus you'll have to move your army alll across the map. Better to use the armies you got to expand wherever you can. The battle for gelonus is tough but winnable, but you'll be lucky to take Gava Yugra (I wasn't) However, if you can take Tanais too eventualy then you've got a nice base.

Oh, and one final tip: ALWAYS BUILD A MINE IN USPE

It could easily make the difference between victory and defeat.

And watch out for the armenians. They'll ALWAYS come eventually.

[Mujalumbo]

Concur re: mines and Armenia. Mines add "only" 1000 Mnai, but if you get a family member in there who wants to settle, is a trader and miner, well, that's a significant chunk of income for our poor, cash-strapped steppe nomads...

The Hayasdan (Armenia) always come lookin' for a fight. Without fail. The Sauromatae have it hard enough as it is, so, take what you've got and knock them out. Pre-7.4, I've noticed the Getai come spilling out into the steppe. I don't know if they progress the same way in 7.4, but it might be a good idea to keep an eye on them, anyway.

(Y'know... I'm gonna try something. I'm gonna get a "Lives on the Move" family member with the Forager trait, combine all my starting forces, and go park them in Amernian lands.)

[nikolai1962]

(incidently I'v found that while it might be common sense to simply leave armenia alone and hope they ignore you, it's good to invest in a little raiding party of 3 or 4 heavy horse archers to go down and mess around with them a bit, block trade roads, pick off small groups of troops, maybe even risk a few larger ones, and just try to survive as long as possible.

Hmm, might try that.

See that rebel army outside Tanais? that's a full stack. Of horse archers. In a forest.

So many kings died fighting them :(

One nice move you can pull as the sarmatians is raiding. It's quite easy on the big wide open steppe to find a lightly guarded town (armenian, dacian or parthian, it's not going to be lightly guarded if it's rebel) and take it, destroy everything inside and get out of there. There's usually a lot of open ground between their territory and your territory, and you have a fully mounted force whereas they'll usually have some foot soldiers, so they'll be slower and wont catch you.

I finally figured this was a good way to get started. Attack somewhere, burn it all and leave with the cash (as you won't have enough guys for a garrison). Only way to get any building started early. Plus it slows down their inevitable attack. One thing about the sarmations is they don't have much to build so once it's done all your cash can go on troops.

On hard setting i always got squashed eventually by rebel attacks on my weak-garrisoned cities as you can't defend them all. Medium may be the only way to go as rebs won't attack your settlements.

[Mujalumbo]

I'm not afraid to say that I wimped out and played on medium campaign difficulty.

Oh, yeah, Uspe can build mines, but so can one of the towns to the north.

[Angadil]

Thanks for the feedback, Greek_fire and Mujalumbo. Very useful stuff for the Sarmatian fine-tuning that we are undertaking. Now some comments over several points you guys have raised. I'll start with an easy one:

Does anybody know what "Baexdzhyntae" and "Uaezdaettae" mean?

"Riders" and "Noblemen", respectively.

One question: Seeing as 'The Sarmatians' represents a pretty loose confederacy of actually quite distinct tribes, would it be possible (without sacrificing any realism) to maybe add a few more tribes to the confederacy? Maybe Gava-Yugra and Gelonus? Either that Or scrap the whole confederacy thing and make it just the Roxolanni with just one province, maybe take the mine out of Uspe and give it to the Roxolani province instead? Let the player expand from a nice, rich, compact little base.

Several issues here. For example, different Sarmatian tribes are only known from II BCE onwards. Therefore, we do not know what Sarmatian subdivisions, if any, existed in 272 BCE. Much less what lands they occupied, etc... The sources (Greek writers, Herodotos mostly, but also others) just speak of "Sauromatae" (or some variant of that name) as a single people without further internal distinctions. Arguably, this probably just reflects lack of knowledge, rather than the actual situation (though the latter cannot be completely ruled out), as there was very little direct contact of the Greek world with the Sarmatians. Second, when we frist get lists of Sarmatian tribes we find some "Royal Sarmatians" mentioned alongside the other groups. When western sources dealing with the steppe nomads speak like that, it usually means that what we have here is a confederation of several tribes lead by a dominant, "Royal" one that gives the name to the whole confederacy. So, it seems reasonably likely that, even when we start hearing about different Sarmatian tribes, they formed a single polity with some sort of central, higher authority. Those two factors led us to consider the current representation of the Sarmatians as the more historically adequate one.

I dunno, I'm sure you guys thought long and hard about the Sarmatians and how the represent them, it just seems like you gave them just enough provinces to be strung out and hard to manage and not nice and compact like the other barbs, and yet not big enough to be a major power and control some serious cash.

Well, the historical situation at EB's start, was roughly that pretty much everyone with a border with Sarmatians was suffering pressure from them, from major raids to full-scale invasions. This was so to such an extent that some scholars even hypothesize that the Sarmatians had experienced some kind of demographic explosion and suddenly their native homelands just couldn't hold them to explain this Sarmatian "push" in all directions. This sort of "generalized Sarmatian agression" is quite central to EB's "concept" of the faction. I do not think we will be abandoning it, as, to our understanding, that is the adequate historical representation. Instead, we will work to implement it better and the feedback you have provided is very valuable for that.

Incidentally, I loved to read how Greek_fire used the very historical tactic of using heavier horse archers to win missile duels with lighter ones. In my experience, you could also use things like height advantage to beat HAs with other HAs, or setting up "micro-ambushes", where two of your units fired on a single one of the AI. Of course, this called for a lot of maneuvering and produced very fluid battles that I think captured quite well the flavor of steppe warfare, but it's been quite a while since I've played a game.

[Mujalumbo]

Does anybody know what "Baexdzhyntae" and "Uaezdaettae" mean?

"Riders" and "Noblemen", respectively.

Cool, thanks!

Yah, you know, I looked at the difference between the Uaezdaettae's and the regular horse archers, and decided that one point of armour didn't justify the expense of recruiting them. (Mostly because the stacks of rebels start out with an exp. or two, and I theorized that'd render the point of armour moot.) I'd go for masses of "plain" HA's.

It's easy enough to win with roughly even (or even odds in favour of the AI). It involves using the Canteberran <sp> Circle formation, and maneuvering your HA's so you can concentrate fire on a single enemy unit at a time. If you're feeling brave, you can parade your family member's heavily-armoured bodyguard around to draw enemy fire, but, er, unless you have a large unit, it's a little risky...

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Sometimes I keep maneuvering in circles till I think I can maximize impact upon the enemy cavalry unit their captain or general is in - if I can smash him on a charge. But usually I keep angling my units around any enemy HA unit that carries spears also - and I go after them first. If it comes down to my guys charging their guys, and I've gotten rid of their spear carrying horse archers, then I think I can have good chances once it gets melee time.