Saumromatae cultural conversion and spreading the empire

I cannot convert the culture of foreign cities and have been completely unable to expand off the steppes.

I assume this could be fixed by building something called 'migration', working off the logic of other EBI to EBII changes. However I can't find it. And no amount of other buildings or temples convert anything.

When I came across the forums I also began to notice hints of a Sauromatae reform where building tribute extortion in five cities could trigger a reform.

But whenever I take a settled city I eventually get a disorder malus on top of the (perfectly explainable) cultural differences malus no matter how much mercy or cruelty I use, even when I exterminate its populous multiple times. I am forced to garrison ~80% of my armies in two small towns just to stop them revolting. It is in no way practicable for me to take five towns to ensure a reform which I don't know will fix my problem.

I soon took to just sacking and raping the balkans right down to Sparta just to satiate my frustration with not being able to found a new Sarmatian civilization. As much fun as it is being a nasty piece of work, I just want to invade Dacia and create a Feudal Equestrian state just like the Parthians achieved historically in Persia. That's what I am looking for even if in-game my Sarmatians remain ultimately a pastoral people.

I have no culture conversion. And I must scream.

I'm not a team member and I don't have EB2 installed at the moment, but looking through the game files, it seems that passing the reforms will alleviate your problem somewhat- the reformed settled administration will boost steppe nomadism up to 30%, which will help a little.

That said, the reformed settled administration barely gives troops outside of certain areas (iran, india, and some hellenistic areas), and seems to be a little buggy. The only cavalry unit outside of the above areas that can be recruited in a region with reformed settled administration is the Early Saka Nobles. However, this is only recruitable by the Saka Rauka. The government type can only be built by the Sauromatae.

Given that the Sauromatae roster is quite small at the moment, and that they're apparently set to be expanded in the next patch (judging by the official twitter), I would recommend waiting until then. If you still wish to brave it out, however, (and I might be a little late here given how your post was 8 days ago) it would probably be better to invade either Germania or Spain, since both of these regions start with nomadic camps, while Dacia does not. With the settled administration bugged, relying solely on settled regions for troops is unfeasable.

Oh, and I believe you're supposed to build allied governments in newly conquered settled regions first. It'll delay your reform, but give you time to build up the infrastructure to get the region under control. Once pacified, you can destroy the allied government and build Sauromatae government there.



EDIT: The Saka seem to have more fleshed out settled reforms, maybe you could try them if this doesn't work out for you. Though they're a little too far to the east.