Baktria Gameplay Guide, by Teleklos Archelaou - *SPOILERS INSIDE*
Baktria Guide
Baktria in 272 is still a satrapy of the vast Seleukid Empire, though one whose satrap is acting more and more independently. Located on the border of the empire, in a rebellious land, your objective is to survive and expand into territories to your east. If you are successful you may rebel against the Seleukidai, but until you strengthen your position, you will find their presence a great asset.
Beginning the game:
Controlling the satrapy of Baktria has its difficulties but it is not a faction which should pose some of the hardest challenges. But before you move one unit one cursor, you will need to make a number of decisions and changes if you wish your faction to flourish. Your first objective should be to ensure a healthy profit comes into the coffers of the satrapy. That is, it will be your first objective once you initiate the script that is necessary to begin the game. This action will ensure that we have four turns a year and that countless other things are being done behind the scenes to make the game more enjoyable. You will have to do this each time you start a new game or load a saved game, but you only have to do it once, at the start of the game/load.
When your advisor pops up at the start of the game, click on him. He will then ask you to click on the “Show Me How” button. Click on this, then the script will be activated. This action is especially crucial. Plus, if you don’t do this, he will continually pester you until you do. You cannot escape him by turning off the advisor, so go ahead and do it now.
Finances:
Your satrapy only consists of one great city at the start of the game, but it is a good one. After you have initiated the background scripts, your attention should be turned toward your finances. You will go quickly into debt if you do not make some decisions within your first turn. Immediately send your diplomat west to talk with the Seleukids and to reinstate trade rights, which have recently lapsed. Your alliance is still strong with them, but satrapies don’t always see eye-to-eye with the great king. You will want to set your taxation in Baktra to “Very High” so that you can be sure to take in as much mnai in taxes as possible.
You also need to think about troop strength. Some of your units are quite expensive. In your capital city you have a unit of Dahai Horse Archers. Take a look at the cost per turn for them:
Their upkeep is one of the highest in your army. They might be a good unit to disband in order to bring your army upkeep costs down to a more reasonable level. If you want to use your troops in the east to quickly bring another province under your control, it might be best to retain them until you can capture another province, but if you don't want to immediately set out for war, then you should disband more units.
Security:
Baktria is still a wild land, and a vast one. The mountains obscure one’s view and it is easy for bands of rebels and brigands to lurk in the mountain passes. As a border satrapy, one of your first objectives will be to secure your own province and to do so you will need to erect watchtowers in various places to ensure you know exactly what is happening throughout your lands. Use spies as well to keep informed of things happening inside and outside your own borders.
Your first military decisions are relatively simple. With the Seleukids to your west and north, you do not have any worries or interest in moving armies those directions, except to put down any rebellious locals. The passes over the Kush are protected by Kophen. The ranges to the northeast are protected by Gava-Haomavarga. Your first moves must be in these directions. You can see the two eastern cities that would appear to be your first targets here:
Keeping your forces in the east of Baktria divided may work for a tactical genius, but it might prove safer to combine them and move after one of the two cities. Use your spy, Kineas Taxilaios, to provide information on Kophen, which you will see is not as well protected (and now is a good time to build a second spy back in Baktra to keep you informed of what is going on in the western part of your satrapy).
The commander there, Khortdad, is excellent but very young. With combined armies and a good strategy of attack, you should be able to take control of the city. Protect your archers and use them well. You will find that with the large numbers of horse-archers and various types of foot-archers, you will need to spread your troops into “loose” formation quite often. But once you are inside the walls of a city, bring them back to “tight” formation.
More options then appear before you: to the east, as the Kush descend into India, you will find numerous provinces with many riches. But don’t allow the mountain passes to the south of Kophen go unprotected. Watchtowers will keep you informed. The decision to attack Gava-Haomavarga will depend upon your willingness to attack the horse-archers, but the thought of attacking the town with your current forces seems terrifying.
Diplomacy:
After you have renewed trade rights with the Seleukids, you may send your diplomat farther west to Nisa and the Pahlava. But it will not take too long to send him across the mountains to the northeast to engage the Yuezhi. Trade might benefit you both if they move closer to your borders or if you move closer to theirs. Any other diplomatic moves at this early stage in the game are not of the utmost urgency. You may ally with the Yuezhi if you like, but if you both attempt to expand into territories that border both your lands, you may find them less than willing to cooperate.
Building:
Managing a nascent empire with just one province is quite different than most of the factions in EB in many respects. One big difference is that (for a few turns at least) you only have one city to enhance. Since the satrapy is fairly large, it would be wise to start building the next level of roads throughout the province. Hamaxatoi Hodoi (Paved Carriage Roads) will help increase your revenues and speed you along the way through your province. They are a sound first choice for enhancing your city.
Additional Reminders and other New Features:
Baktria has some scripted elements that you will find quite interesting once you are well into a game. You won't notice many of them immediately, but (as a hint) you will encounter some of them when you finally decide the time is right to rebel from the Seleukid Empire.
In general, although you have probably gotten into a habit of ignoring your advisor or turning him off, you *must* pay close attention to your advisor in EB. You should also pay much closer attention to messages at the start of each turn. Faction announcements convey more information than you are used to receiving in vanilla RTW.
There are a few new Baktrian traits, but more will be added as the progression of the mod develops. The new traits will take a little getting used to (especially some of the names). There will be standard traits that apply to all factions, or groups of factions, and those are all in English, but there are also some new ones specifically for the Baktrian characters, which will be in Greek. Some of these you will want to watch carefully. Even though you are located far from Hellas itself, every four years the Olympic Games are still held there, and there is a small chance that some of your characters, if they are in the right age group, in a city, and fit enough to compete, may participate. Keep in mind that some Baktrian ethnicities are more likely to compete than others. If you are campaigning in the field or on duty at an important border crossing, your character will not participate, but if he has spent the season inside a city (one that is not under siege), then he may compete. You will first receive a message that he is going to compete, and then at the end of the summer you will receive another message notifying you of the results. You will want to pay close attention to see if he was successful or a failure.
You will also want to play a lot of attention to what ethnicity any characters are who are presented to you as candidates for adoption or for marriage into your family. There are Baktrians, Sogidans, true Hellenes, Makedonians, men of mixed ancestry, Indians and many others.
If you need a character who is going to be a governor for the most part, try to select a sharp Hellen. If you need a field general, then go for a Makedonian if he is available, but some other non-Hellenic men would make excellent generals as well (an Indian might be a better infantry commander while a Sogdian might be a better cavalry commander). Ethnicities don’t ensure that a character will develop a certain way, but the chances for him to acquire certain traits are enhanced if he is a certain ethnicity. But no ethnicity will make up for the problems he will have if you select one who is dull, uncharismatic, and languorous. This fellow was offered as a potential son-in-law within the first year or two of a recent campaign.
He doesn't have many traits yet, but what he does have looks quite promising. You might be interested to know that within a few years, he was progressing well, but had a sick and ignorant wife, and was pretty gloomy. He got caught just inside the walls of Taksashila attempting to help some pikemen who were surrounded and was speared. His side of the attack totally collapsed, but the satrap himself pulled together the rest of the force and succeeded in taking the city.
When it comes to traits, there is much that could be discussed for someone who is new to EB. You should look at the trait FAQ first if you are curious. Some general changes: you must be careful not to march too far too quickly as their state of exhaustion and morale will change; keep an eye on your characters’ health if they are in dangerous situations in the field, especially after particularly dangerous battles; when your characters marry you will find that certain types of wives and in-laws can greatly affect your character’s temperament; their ability to learn and better themselves is greatly dependent upon their personality type and their battle history; and finally you will quickly notice that in winter your generals are not able to travel as far as in the other months (note that this does not apply in some provinces - and you can see our friend Triballos approaching the city he is about to die in).
In EB, you will find the diplomats for the AI factions to be much more of a nuisance at times. They have a habit of bribing your towns and generals (especially if their traits reduce costs to bribe) much more often than in vanilla RTW. If you find diplomats (especially Eleutheroi ones) hanging around your cities, I would advise keeping a diplomat of your own in each town for assurances. It often makes a town or general much more difficult to bribe if you have one of your own there.
Governments:
Finally, you will find the Baktrian governments to be fairly easy to use. The Baktrian Homeland is the type that you want to build in as many provinces as you can. It is restricted geographically, but it is the type of government that can produce the best long-term units and buildings. When you need to build other types of government, a Baktrian Satrapy is a good sound choice and it can be constructed in many places:
You may put in place semiautonomous satrapies or set up alliances in any province you conquer, but remember that the types of troops and buildings and the level of control you have over the province will not be nearly as great, although it will more quickly contribute to your coffers and return to a state of normalcy rather quickly as well.
In conquering Taksashila, we encounter a government building.
It was styled on a Parthian principality, but it is now almost totally damaged. What do we do now, as we do not see any governments in our building choices? First we must destroy the previous government building. We do not destroy the (currently "blank") government precursor structures; they allow the game to determine which governments our faction can place there. First let's destroy the old one (the Pahlav Kumarift). You always need to destroy the old government buildings - you will not be able to construct your new ones and the bonuses are restricted to benefit only the faction that created it.
Once that unpleasantness is behind us, we will then have our new government choices laid out nicely:
We can actually build a Baktrian Homeland here, so that is definitely what we will do, after we tidy things up a bit. It takes a while for such a radical change to be put into effect, but it is always the best choice when you can establish that type of government.
One other thing: this modification is still in its early stages of release, so don't dare forget to save often. If you experience a CTD or some other type of problem, please post on the forums or read the FAQs closely.
Enjoy the journey and don’t forget to read the building descriptions, the traits, the unit descriptions, the messages, and all the other new content that has been poured into this faction! Chairete!
