Any thoughts on faking a Crimean Helleno-Skythian faction?

I've always been intrigued by the idea of playing a Helleno-Skythian state around the north shore of the Black Sea. I'm interested in the mix of units (hoplites and horse archers) and the mix of opposition. I have hopes that such a faction will be in EB2, but in the meantime I'm wondering if I could make a reasonable approximation in EB 1.0. If I can get it off the ground, I'll upload a save for other people to play and maybe do an AAR.

The obvious answer seems to migrate with a suitable faction. Then I'd want to build Greek buildings and recruit Helleno-Skythian troops out of a factional/regional MIC mix. That means finding a faction with the right governments, buildings, and recruiting in the area. Looking at the recruitment viewer and build trees, it seems that...

- The Sauromatae could just expand to the coast, and their own military counts as Skythian for practical purposes, but they can't build anything much more substantial than a tent.

- The Hai aren't bad, they could do local Helleno-Skythian recruiting and their generals can stick to government and command battles from the back. Their building tree has about the right capabilities, even if it's cosmetically the wrong culture. I did migrate them here in 0.81, fleeing the AS. But they now have the whole reform thing, which means they have to be in a specific place to get their government and building tree.

- The Getai are better placed, and they too could stick to local recruiting, and their FMs would fit quite well. But their city building tree isn't quite up to it. Also, I think I'd rather play a separate game where they expand this way early to get a Dacian-Thracian-Helleno-Skythian troop mix. That looks like huge fun, but a different thing from what I'm after here.

- The KH are the jackpot. Their build tree has everything I'd want. It's region 2+ govt, but I can live with not being Spartan in the Crimea. They can recruit most factional troops in at least one province here, and they can tune the Helleno-Skythian balance by choosing appropriate governments/MICs. They miss Athenian/Spartan units which is fine. They can't develop pikes here, but such is life.

Does anyone have thoughts or suggestions on the above?

The trouble is, getting the KH into the Crimea is non-trivial. If I conquer up the coast in approved EB fashion it involves a respectable KH campaign before I start. I suppose I could load everybody on a boat and hope to make it through the Seleucid/Mak/Eleutheroi navies, but that seems unlikely to work.

I suspect the answer may involve cheat codes, either to just take Pantikapaion/Chersonesos and put a starting army in them or to get the naval expedition up there in one piece. I have no idea about what cheat codes can do. Can anybody suggest where I hould learn?

Any thoughts/advice on what to do or how to do it would be welcome.

You can kinda do that with Pontos... with luck you can conquer all of the Black Sea coast and make the sea a Pontic Lake. And the recruitment gets you both Greek and Skythian units...

Use the move character cheats.

Note that it doesn't work for captains, only FMs and admirals.

It can work for captains, all you have to do is do:
move_character "Captain Soandso" x,y

Does it?

I never uesd it, but I'm sure I saw somebody else here say that i didn't work for captians. :shrug:

something along the lines of the kingdom of cimmerian bosphorus?

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Originally Posted by Gaivs

something along the lines of the kingdom of cimmerian bosphorus?

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Yeah, the actual kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporos was ruled by Hellenic-Thracians. I think it is exactly what you are looking for. It did pretty well for itself, too. If there were more faction slots in the game, I wouldn't be surprised if they made an appearance.

if only we had more faction slots...if only...

i mean, imagine what we could do with, oh, 30 faction slots...

I think I will do that with the Hai now...

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Originally Posted by paullus

if only we had more faction slots...if only...

i mean, imagine what we could do with, oh, 30 faction slots...

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Or the 32 possible in Medieval II perhaps.....

Where do you get the 32 from?

Yes, its 30. (or 31 if you count rebels.) 30 playable, anyway.

I've got this pretty much working. My procedure (with console codes in italics) was:

- Start a KH game in the normal way. Use whatever mods, difficulty, unit sizes etc you want.
- Move all armies outside of town, leaving one unit each in Athens and Sparta so the Maks can't waltz in.
- Destroy MICs and governments in your three starting cities.
- Use show_cursorstat to get the coordinates of a point a little to the east of Pantikapaion.
- Use move_character several times to move all family members plus the diplomat and spy to the coordinates you just got. AFAICT you need the the first two words of whatever text appears on screen when you mouse over them, so if it's "Freddos Bloggos Lakedaimonos" you want something like move_character "Freddos Bloggos", 185, 158.
- Repeat the last two steps to put your admiral in the sea just outside Pantikapaion.
- Lay siege to Pantikapaion.
- Hit end of turn.
- Capture Pantikapaion, either the old fashioned way or with auto_win.
- Move the captial to Pantikapaion. Set the tax rate to very high in Athens/Sparta/Rhodes, which should drive them into unrest.
- Use add_money 15000, queue up a provisional military government in Pantikapaion, and use process_cq Pantikapaion to instabuild it. Do the same with a type 2 government.
- Disband a few Greek infantry units, queue up some Skythian archers and/or horse archers to build a local style army. You can use the existing level 2 factional/regions MICs.
- Hit end of turn a couple of times, fight off anyone who attacks Pantikapaion, disband your navy if that's your style, send out your diplomat and spy to do their stuff, generally start play.
- Before winter 272 the three KH cities should rebel to the Eleutheroi, hopefully before the Maks/Epeirotes get them, and spawn Eleutheroi garrisons. Disband the units of your army that they eject.

At the start of winter 272 I had my one city in the Crimea, with a Helleno-Skythian army of sorts that I couldn't afford, and Eleutheroi hammering on the gates. A pretty normal start, in other words. I had five family members which is more than I really want, but so it goes. I will have to play a little more to see whether this is a viable start.

Obviously, you could adapt the process a little if you want to start with Chersonesos instead of Pantikapaion, or to start with both.

I found a few lists of cheat codes on Google, which include things like capture_settlement, process_rq and kill_character. They would let me get everything in place a bit quicker and get rid of my Spartan FMs. But I just get "unrecognised command" when I type them in the console. Can anybody help with this?

Basically the same as what I did in a campaign a few months back, good luck, I hope you have as much fun with it as I did! :2thumbsup:

I would rather change descr_strat.txt:

[Back up your files first]

Cut & Paste all current Greek towns under the rebell rooster. Change the garrisons that there are only units that can be used by the rebells. To be on the save side you should use mercs.

Cut & Paste the rebell towns that you want to have at the start under the Greek rooster. Set up garrisons at your choice. Give all FMs, Agents and ships coordinates in and around your starting towns.

Change the entries for the "hellenistic infantry spartiateshoplitai" into "greek infantry greek general" so you don't have Spartans as bodyguard for your Bosporian FMs.

Delate the two "defensive stacks" on the Crimean.

Done. Save. Start playing.

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under the Greek rooster

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He means "roster" here, I think. Or chicken. Or cock.

Am I supposed to pay upkeep on FM bodyguards? They show zero upkeep when I examine them, but I've somehow ended up with an army upkeep of about 1450/turn despite having absolutely no troops or navy. And if I send them out to fight Eleutheroi and get about 50% casualties, my army upkeep drops by about 50%. If this is wrong, maybe I need to clean up my EB install and try it again...

I guess tomorrow I will also have a look at the modding approach konny suggested.

Depends on what the FMs you have. I think the starting spartan generals for the KH are the only FMs with an army upkeep. You can check the upkeep for your FMs bodyguards by clicking on the button that shows you details about their bodyguard unit.

Foot

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Originally Posted by Foot

Depends on what the FMs you have. I think the starting spartan generals for the KH are the only FMs with an army upkeep. You can check the upkeep for your FMs bodyguards by clicking on the button that shows you details about their bodyguard unit.

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Yep, that's it. The three spartan generals have upkeep, and if I disband all other units they add up exactly to the "Army Upkeep" total shown on the faction financial summary.

I have a pretty spectacular wages bill too, over 1000/turn, I'll have to work out where that's going and think of something to do about it. The Crimean Greeks are currently making Pontos look like a financial cakewalk...

{edit} It appears my 1150/turn "Wages" is 100 for the spy, 50 for the diplomat, and 200 each for five FMs (whilst the spartan bodyguards are in "Army Upkeep"). At least, if I get an FM killed it drops by 200 and demolishing every possible building has no effect on it. This is more FMs than a one city faction can afford, they'd have to start with Pantikapaion + Chersonesos + Olbia to justify five FMs. Or I have to get the FM count down.

I thought it was 31 (including Saxons from tutorial) + 1 non-playable slave.

I am likely wrong though.

Hi Morte 66.
That's a really interesting starting position, even though I would have chosen a different approach and had build a fleet, sending a nice stack of troops up to the Pontos Euxinos. Good luck with your campaign and lots of fun:2thumbsup: ! May your battles be bloody and victorious. hey, probably you could present a screenshot here after some development on your map? It would also be interesting to see how things are going on in Greece without the KH around.

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Originally Posted by marodeur

Hi Morte 66.
hey, probably you could present a screenshot here after some development on your map? It would also be interesting to see how things are going on in Greece without the KH around.

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Sure. I'm having a bit of grief at the moment. I tried the modding approach, which let me change the Spartan bodyguards and prune the family tree to balance the economics. But I guess I got it wrong because when I started a new game I couldn't save for some reason. So I'm starting again and (mostly) going back to my original approach.

It seems to have happened "naturally" in my game. The KH have been pushed off the Greek peninsula entirely. They hold onto Rhodes, Crete and the Crimean territories while the Epirotes and Makedons (with the former gaining the upper hand now) war endlessly over Sparta and Athens.

Of course this game has one of the most unusual map divisions I've seen since .80. The Romans have pushed a thick dagger through the middle of Gaul together with their allies the Sweboz, who hold the Normandy coast and are laying siege to the last outpost of the Aedui. The Lusotans have crossed the Pyrenees into Toulouse, the Carthaginians hold all of Magna Graecia except for Syracuse (held by the Romans), the Getai have holdings in Anatolia, Pontos holds Tylis (Byzantion remains independent), the Hai have pushed north into the fringes of the steppe only to be intercepted by the Saka, whose highly successful early blitz migration faltered with the comeback of the Sarmatians to the west and Parthians (whom they almost wiped out at one point, capturing territories as south as Khiva) and Baktrians (me) to the east snatching their earlier gains. Now they are a nomadic duchy located exclusively above the Hai :dizzy2: .