Quote Originally Posted by Tarkus View Post
Miotas,

I don't have my copy of EB or the Recruitment Viewer in front of me here at work, so I don't have all the data in front of me. But adding the Athanatoi Hippeis around 246BC is a major cheat, don't you think?????? That sally out of Baktra in 245BC was crazy...your Elite Cataphracts accounted for nearly 1800 of the 2344 total Seleukid casualties!! Unless I'm missing something in the historical part of the Baktrian simulation here, you're not playing on a level field.

I'm struggling through the early phases of my own Baktrian campaign (to be summarized in a separate thread, so as not to dilute your own excellent story), and I now see the value of trying to lay low in the first few decades and building up infrastructure in Baktra and Kophen. I got militarily greedy against the Saka and am now really paying the price...
That wasn't the Athanatoi Hippeis, as rich as I am right now I still doubt that I could afford 5 units of them, that was the generals bodyguards, Hetairoi Kataphraktoi, and they showed up by themselves, I'm not planning on using the Athanatoi Hippeis until I've subjugated India. Plus I had to add them before I started, as I don't think new units are savegame compatible, and as I don't have the knowledge to go fidling with reforms, I could have built them from the start if I'd had the money or the mic level.

But I'm roleplaying that after all those attempted nomad invasions they have decided to upgrade their bodyguards' armour, and if that goes well they will make a separate unit, once they have the money.

And the laying low method is still balancing on a thin wire, I almost lost it a few times, the retraining costs of all those nomad attacks almost crippled my economy, but i struggled through and it really paid off. For that reason I waited until I had played about 20 years before I started writing this to make sure I didn't lose it before I really got started.