Sweboz - How to deal with the Sauro threat freom the east?

Good day fellow EB-fans!
I recently started another Swe campaign. This time I didnt want to go all gaullish to early, so I took also Carrodunum, Gintaeras-Ostan and my Bastarni brethren.. But this time the Sauromatae are very strogn in the east and did alredy break our alliance. I could fight them of for now by hiring 5 mercenary cav (2Celts,1Germ,2HA) but I lost many troops, for now theren are no cavalry mercenaries around and I can't recruit to much cav in the west yet. Even if I could, the Bastarni are quite remote, it would be a pita to rely only on this.
Obviuously I played some swe campaigs before, but I never tried to hold the Bastarni so early on, or the sauros had other stuff to deal with (Armenias, Sakas, Getai and so on).

Regards

Der ZiegenPeter

Sounds like you'll be in massive pain for the first twenty years of your campaign. Good Luck. I've never played as Sweboz, but as Getai I tried moving into the Cremea region early on to nab Bosphorian Archers.....it cost me thousands of men and endless resources before I got the VC provinces and I literally gave up and just defended those provinces with 6 spearmen in each city after that.

In my current Sweboz campaign, I left the Getai to their own devices, and they took Bastarnolandam and Neurije, holding the Sauromatae away from me, as Seliun Gentis has Saures the defender general, so they can't invade Ginataras-Ostan from Sapmi either. It works pretty well, and Lucarottea and Eburonum are my bastions against the Getai incursions every 5-10 years or so they send 3-4 half stacks at me, and I beat them back with my Boii garrisons, rinse and repeat. Eventually, when I decide to take some provinces in the East, I'll probably have no problem from the Sauromatae, because they have lose 2 provinces to the Saka, and 2 to Hayasdan, and have been fighting the strong Getai for a century. Makedonia also keeping the Getai in check in the south, since they took all of greece and North Asia Minor, and have a 2 province Epirus (Dalminion + Epidamnos) as a protectorate against Romans.

I don't think it's good strategy to go east until you have a strong united Germania, because the Getai always have other things to worry about, (I usually see Epirus holding at least half of Getai's homelands by 200B.C., though not in this game) and the Skythians are way too annoying until you have some armored troops, and cavalry/archer support easily available, or they've been severely weakened by other factions and you can just send numberless hordes to absorb arrows. I also find that most of the time in Gaul the Arverni won't attack you until the Aedui are completely wiped out, but the Aedui pick wars with you at the same time they're fighting the Arverni, so it might be useful to keep the Arverni-Aedui civil war around as long as possible, by taking provinces from the one who is winning, and gifting them to the other faction. If they're evenly matched, back the one who is fighting in Italy, or if the Romans drove them both out of Italy, back the Arverni. And always try to keep Celts in North Italy to distract the Romani, and that way the Gauls are even more distracted by the Romans as well as a Civil war and the Lustannians, meaning you're free to develop your economy and military a little more before you have a 3-4 front war going on with Romans/Celts/Getai/Sauromatae.

As the poster below me said, NO you cannot beat the Sauromatae cavalry in the open plains, and you'll have a hard time in unwooded hills as well, though mountains and forests give you a fighting chance. Keep your infantry's fire at will on so if the horse archers get too close they get skewered by javelins, and try to trap the generals in a pocket + stick him like a pig because they just keep regenerating otherwise and Sauromatae bodyguards are almost as brutal as Saka bodyguards (some say worse).

Stopping the Sauromatae will be difficult for the Sweboz. I would think the Sweboz would have to rely on defensive ambush tactics in the forests.

On the open steppe, I don't think the Sweboz can beat the Sauromatae - they are just too vulnerable to missiles.

Sure you can beat the Sauros in the open field. Fight fire with fire.

An army with lots of chevroned Medjinikas archer spearmen, and a few elite Celtic slingers, can hold their own.

Keep Jugundiz hiding in the grass in ambush in loose formation, with javelin autofire on in case the Sauros come to close.

As long as your army has high chevrons (3-4 chevron levies with stone temple of Tyr) and your general is decent the Jugundiz will wear out and overpower anything that comes too close, including the bodyguards.

Also if they have an infantry force, let them tire out a bit in the archery exchange, then charge with some of your infantry (Jugundiz, spearmen or mercs). Sauro infantry generally are of poor quality so they are pretty easy to beat as long as you can catch them.

Regardless be sure to have an herbalist or wise woman with the general because the Sauro arrows will hit home often, especially in hard battle difficulty.

I don't know about that, I don't think a full stack of jugundiz could beat a full stack of HA spam from Sauromatae, let alone a big siege battle, or when outnumbered. Especially if you attack them early when they're still strong, you will encounter some heavy resistance, and you will have to send experienced troops from germania all the way into the steppe, a 5-6 turn endeavor one way. It's possible, but it'd be a pain in the ass and you would be better served to conquer your immediate surroundings and consolidate your forces until the Sauromatae are weakened and your other enemies subdued. I don't think going into the steppe would be a german priority, they would much rather raid the rich lands to the south and west.

the only thing that worriews me here is the FM's of the Sauro's...

go stack alot of slingers, yes slingers and spread them out and focus fire on 1 HA at the time...

as peopl said you just have to use fire with fire slinglers and archer spearmen i mean the persians also used archer spearmen to beat the steppes people

meh, push forward with a lot of blood from Juguntz.... (make em arrow fodder, they are cheap as hell afterall)

and then finish em off with Medinikas...

after you got their settlement (s), you can start pumping out your HA on your own if you make puppet kingdoms

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Originally Posted by Cute Wolf

meh, push forward with a lot of blood from Juguntz.... (make em arrow fodder, they are cheap as hell afterall)

and then finish em off with Medinikas...

after you got their settlement (s), you can start pumping out your HA on your own if you make puppet kingdoms

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Thats what i did. Charge east with numbers and try and stick to the forests to the north of the map. Once you get close enough to a city break out into the open and try and take it within one or 2 turns. Sneak attacks work.

Once you control a city just do what cute wolf said and use some of your own horse archers or even some steppe foot archers to counter the enemy.

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Originally Posted by ziegenpeter

Good day fellow EB-fans!
I recently started another Swe campaign. This time I didnt want to go all gaullish to early, so I took also Carrodunum, Gintaeras-Ostan and my Bastarni brethren.. But this time the Sauromatae are very strogn in the east and did alredy break our alliance. I could fight them of for now by hiring 5 mercenary cav (2Celts,1Germ,2HA) but I lost many troops, for now theren are no cavalry mercenaries around and I can't recruit to much cav in the west yet. Even if I could, the Bastarni are quite remote, it would be a pita to rely only on this.
Obviuously I played some swe campaigs before, but I never tried to hold the Bastarni so early on, or the sauros had other stuff to deal with (Armenias, Sakas, Getai and so on).

Regards

Der ZiegenPeter

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You cant expect to win a fight against the horse-people, its impossible.

Accept them as your rightfully rulers and your people will be spared.

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Originally Posted by CashMunny

I don't know about that, I don't think a full stack of jugundiz could beat a full stack of HA spam from Sauromatae, let alone a big siege battle, or when outnumbered. Especially if you attack them early when they're still strong, you will encounter some heavy resistance, and you will have to send experienced troops from germania all the way into the steppe, a 5-6 turn endeavor one way. It's possible, but it'd be a pain in the ass and you would be better served to conquer your immediate surroundings and consolidate your forces until the Sauromatae are weakened and your other enemies subdued. I don't think going into the steppe would be a german priority, they would much rather raid the rich lands to the south and west.

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I always play hard battle difficulty where enemy attack is increased, I believe the bonus is like +4 which makes slingers, skirmishers, and especially horse archers significantly more lethal. That said I already did play a game where I pushed east with the Sweboz (usually I go more south and west). In this game I went for the complete Baltic coast which eventually dragged me into conflict with the Sauromatae. I pushed east with level 4 Baltic archer spearmen (medjininkas) and skirmishers and a general, a couple HA mercs and some slingers from the Boii cities. Casualties tended to be higher than against Euro infantry armies (e.g. Gauls, Romani) but I won consistently.

The key to success with the Sweboz vs. Sauromatae is high morale, loose infantry order and lots of long range missile troops. This basically goes for most any faction. Low grade Sauro horse archers like Aorsi riders and Sauro HAs are easy to shoot down with quality 3-4 chevron slingers and Medjininkas. Its that simple and if you don't know it just try a custom battle on normal difficulty, set the Medjininkas in loose order in a long rectangle, 6 on 6 its simple numbers, 960 archer-spearmen vs. 600 light horse archers the infantry will win. Add chevron bonuses from Temples of Tyr and t3 governments and the Sweboz edge only increases which enables them to hold up fairly well even in hard battle difficulty.

Against Sauromatae nobles, foot archers aren't as effective due to the nobles' armor. This is why a combination of slingers and Medjininkas is ideal, medjininkas for general numbers and spear attack for the final push, and slingers for shooting down armored HAs. Sweboz can levy Celt slingers with 3 chevrons easily and this makes for a very strong cheap levy against the steppe troops.

Finally you just have to wipe out the enemy infantry, use shield bearing large number units like Duguntiz, not bastarnae since they die too easily. Dacian skirmishers are likewise decent and Jugundiz skirmishers are great for their versatility. Also Voinu cannibal spearmen are great for their fear effect and high morale once you take their cities, and Baltic light spearmen are also very effective due to their huge numbers. March through the steppe, don't waste time on too many battles, end movements in forests whenever possible, and besiege their cities and destroy the Sauro MICs. If you are good at controlling your armies it is very feasible, I sacked multiple Sauro cities, captured and Germanized Greater Skythia, captured the two Greek Bosphoros poleis, and levied 2 chevron Bosphoran archers and Skythian riders from Skythia and sacked and totally destroyed the Sauro capital. So yes I know exactly what I am talking about, casualty rates were above average but I put down many Sauro bodyguards and was generally victorious on VH campaign Hard battle difficulty, it would have been far easier with lower casualty rates on normal battle difficulty.

I might add that once you develop regional MICs in Greater Skythia, things become easier since the population there tends to be pretty large, which enables you to levy Bosphoran armored archers, as well as Skythian foot archers, riders, and IIRC Greek sphendonetai and hoplitai as well which makes German reinforcements from the Bastarnae unnecessary. Either way the formula is the same, foot archers + slingers protected by spearmen, a good general with a healer, maybe 2-3 light cavalry for cleanup and you're good.

Yeah, I don't mean it's not POSSIBLE, but it's probably not worth it. Skythia isn't very rich, and you don't need horse archers if you're not fighting them anyways, and there's 300 years to a campaign, so I feel like conquering Skythia could be a task for later than the first 100 years. Germans would have no use for so much pasture land, they didn't have the people to fill it, and they didn't need horses. It would be cool to see how the germans would have to become semi-nomadic and take up horse breeding, but this isn't a possibility in this game, so it seems like it would be useless to take these regions, when you could be building up your economy, raiding the fertile lands, and become rich and powerful that way, and then when you have reached the edge of Iberia and Italia, only then should you really turn your attentions eastwards onto the steppe.

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Originally Posted by CashMunny

Yeah, I don't mean it's not POSSIBLE, but it's probably not worth it. Skythia isn't very rich, and you don't need horse archers if you're not fighting them anyways, and there's 300 years to a campaign, so I feel like conquering Skythia could be a task for later than the first 100 years. Germans would have no use for so much pasture land, they didn't have the people to fill it, and they didn't need horses. It would be cool to see how the germans would have to become semi-nomadic and take up horse breeding, but this isn't a possibility in this game, so it seems like it would be useless to take these regions, when you could be building up your economy, raiding the fertile lands, and become rich and powerful that way, and then when you have reached the edge of Iberia and Italia, only then should you really turn your attentions eastwards onto the steppe.

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I largely agree since I prefer to crush the Celts as Sweboz, or turtle until 4 chevron stacks and smash the Boii and Rhaetians. But historically the Germans did use cavalry, e.g. the Jutland peninsula of old was also called Reidgotland signifying the fact the the Gots/Juts that lived there bred horses in significant numbers and could fight on horseback. The Goths eventually pushed into mainland Europe (the visigoths) but others pushed out east and established the Ostrogothic kingdom which sprawled from the Baltic to the Black Sea before the Hunnish conquest. The Viking era saw the same thing again as the Swedes/Rus pushed out east and established cities like Novgorod and Kiew and ultimately destroyed the Khazar khanate, which was a steppe power, only to be conquered in turn by the Mongols a couple centuries later. So Germans out east is not that farfetched, though in EB unfortunately maritime trade>>>agriculture, and animal husbandry, the real reason to push out east, is all but irrrelevant.

Hide in the trees until they run out of arrows. Most of your stuff is completely imbalanced in the presence of trees.

It's so unusual, from my experience, to see the Sweboz having trouble (they are the bane of my Celtic campaigns), i quite like this thread.

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Originally Posted by Brennus

It's so unusual, from my experience, to see the Sweboz having trouble (they are the bane of my Celtic campaigns), i quite like this thread.

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actually, Sewboz going east is almost like invading Russia on winter, they search for trouble themselves...

Hmm I was thinking that a) Woods are a good Idea, but b) also towns. Bastarnolandam is now held by a force of almost a fullstack of HA. Half of them are light half of them really heavy. I wonder what I should use against that stack. I reckon Duguntiz are alwqays welcome against cavalry and Sloxonez with their AP clubs mightserve well against those heavy dudes.

You want to fight with faction troops only? Or would you concider foreign warriors as an option? Skandinavian spearmen seem to me the right choice - better shield (4), good charge, tough unit; Jugundiz and Skutjonez will help a lot, but you will still take huge causalities. The latter would offer you a strategy of combined forces: you´ll need your own HA´s ( cantabrian circle rulez ) and/or good archers, like the Skythians, Kretans, even Medinicas, together with some really heavily armoured units like classical hoplites, merc phalangitai ( everything with a shield value of 4 and more + heavy armour ). Some Bastarne might help in cutting down the Sauro tank bodyguards in the end ( Slaxonez might be enough, though ).

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Originally Posted by vollorix

You want to fight with faction troops only? Or would you concider foreign warriors as an option? Skandinavian spearmen seem to me the right choice - better shield (4), good charge, tough unit; Jugundiz and Skutjonez will help a lot, but you will still take huge causalities. The latter would offer you a strategy of combined forces: you´ll need your own HA´s ( cantabrian circle rulez ) and/or good archers, like the Skythians, Kretans, even Medinicas, together with some really heavily armoured units like classical hoplites, merc phalangitai ( everything with a shield value of 4 and more + heavy armour ). Some Bastarne might help in cutting down the Sauro tank bodyguards in the end ( Slaxonez might be enough, though ).

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Aye, mercenaries are a nice option indeed, gotta agree wi'ya.


About towns, i know its obvious the advantage, but what if the AI besiege the town and force you to go meet them in the open field or else you'll lose the city by ranning out of food?

If you sally against Sauros you´re going to regret it for the rest of your life ^^
Autoresolve with some heavy troops, preferebly phalangitai + multiple star general, that´s what i´d do...

Your strength against horse archers is your walls, and shielded troops, so keep behind the walls and hope they try to assault, or if it's down to the last few turns, bring another army and overwhelm them with numbers if they keep starving you out. I would say sloxonez could be better used than Bastarnae Falxmen, because falxmen die horrendously from arrow fire, and sloxonez have large shields and larger numbers, and they are almost as strong offensively, while being comparably cheap. Speutogordozez could be useful, a few units could be useful to dehorse those heavy bodyguards, and they can chase them too if you keep them in reserve until they're entangled.

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Originally Posted by vollorix

If you sally against Sauros you´re going to regret it for the rest of your life ^^
Autoresolve with some heavy troops, preferebly phalangitai + multiple star general, that´s what i´d do...

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Autoresolve ain' an option!

If there are no near/possible/built reinforcements near and so you need to sally out:
lets say the sauromatae forces are on the north part of the city, i would sally out my forces through the south gate and organize my forces in there, and then walk around the city and meet them, while on the fight, i would also try to lure them near the towers at the walls (if the city has any anyway), so additional damage can be made on them.

About the result of this, well, you can expect taking lots of casulties, but if you got good defensive infantry and some archers/slingers i don't think its impossible, ohh no.

The range of Sauros HAs is enoough to keep them away from the walls while shooting at your units. And normaly, their troops immidietly move away and take positions far away from the gates, but unlike other infantry based armies they are permanently on skirmishing mod if you attack them with anything else then skirmishers/archers. And while you are moving forward they´ll shoot your poor armoured troops down, since shield value 3 of most of your units won´t even protect them from the front, so they will be shot to pieces...

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Originally Posted by vollorix

The range of Sauros HAs is enoough to keep them away from the walls while shooting at your units. And normaly, their troops immidietly move away and take positions far away from the gates, but unlike other infantry based armies they are permanently on skirmishing mod if you attack them with anything else then skirmishers/archers. And while you are moving forward they´ll shoot your poor armoured troops down, since shield value 3 of most of your units won´t even protect them from the front, so they will be shot to pieces...

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Exactly.
I think that Baltic archers, Celtic slingers are a good combo on open field. When it comes to fighting in a city, as I said before I'd rather rely on Duguntiz (Skandinavian spearman are to far away!) and Sloxonez, maybe some Dacian skirmishers. The problem is that they never seem to assault a city, I always have to attack them with a second army, with costly HA mercs. And since I don't have taken any scythian regions yet I can't recruit any fancy bosporan archers or greek hoplites or HA. I eventually lost the Bastarnae, so I have to get back to the drawing board. For now rule over all the germanic regions, plus Ascaucalis, Carrodunum and G-Ostan. I don't want to conquer gaul so early, since the celts are able to build better stuff (paved roads, stone walls) and I want to take a place in a made nest. Muahahaha

Ahh true, but thats what i would do, giving the fact i would have a decent unit to exhaust their arrows, but if such unit wasn't in the defending army, well, hm....

ahh... this is where i would invade the Alps for some lovely celtic slingers... get them some chevrons by auto-res'sing on some rebels and use them... deadly stuff :D

its allmost like cheating? but but but... you aint getting nowhere with your Suebi troops they will tear you apart... allso, i find the idear: "if you cant beat them, copy them" perfect for this one... hire loads of merc HA's and Riders... and slingers :P

Well my Slingers from Carrodunum start witch 1 silver(!) chevron! lvl4 gov+field of games+temple of tiuwaz and then there is also the smithy...
btw: do missile units get a melee bonus from smithies? they never have the sword symbol.

I don't know. But they should get armor bonuses, which is good since they have like 2 armor to start with it's a 50% increase in armor technically.