What makes playing Saka the hardest faction in the game?

[artaxerxes]

For me, it is usually the money situation that can make me give up a campaign early. Playing as Carthage or Macedon, fx, came as a relief after trying to master the AS, Saka or Pahlava economies. Nothing can kill a campaign easier than being dead in the water with no income and no army to change the situation. Saka are worse than other factions with money-problems (AS fx aren't exactly poor, they just have so many fronts to invest in) because they have no money-making heartland of any value whatsoever

unless you feel like disbanding all your good units and making 10 mnai a turn selling goats.

that is so unbelievably funny, I actually fell out of my chair laughing :D

[Tuuvi]

I'm currently in the middle of a Saka campaign and I agree that the hardest thing about playing them is the lack of a good economy. What I did to overcome this problem was build pastoralism whenever possible. By carefully budgeting your money and saving up for caravans, markets, farms, roads and Druvaspa religious buildings you can slowly build a decent income. The only problem with pastoralism is you will not be able to recruit your basic HA's, but you will be able to build walls and recruit foot archers and saka spearmen, which make it easier to defend your settlements.

[athanaric]

I'm going to have to agree with Macilrille. Most of my time playing EB has been as the Hai. The reason it's so hard to play as the Hai, more the case in MP than in SP, is the fact that we Hai have what I like to call "The Worst Units in the History of Mankind." As Usher would say himself, the Hai "got it bad."

Hai units are good; they are just very expensive compared to others. Infantry is versatile, but costlier and more restricted by AoR than Roman and Greek infantry; cavalry is strong but a lot more expensive than Parthian or Nomad cavalry.

I'm currently in the middle of a Saka campaign and I agree that the hardest thing about playing them is the lack of a good economy. What I did to overcome this problem was build pastoralism whenever possible. By carefully budgeting your money and saving up for caravans, markets, farms, roads and Druvaspa religious buildings you can slowly build a decent income. The only problem with pastoralism is you will not be able to recruit your basic HA's, but you will be able to build walls and recruit foot archers and saka spearmen, which make it easier to defend your settlements.

Exactly. You have to decide between greed and cavalry unit availability, and with me, greed comes out on top. That's the main difficulty I see, actually (apart from massive unrest due to cultural penalty - hopefully EB II will provide more options for Saka (as in eventually becoming more civilized with a better build tree).

[Tombles]

Interestingly, although Saka units generally have a higher range than Pahlava or Sauromatae, they also have fewer missiles- 30, rather than the usual 40 for steppe cavalry. The only Saka factional unit with 40 missiles is their basic horse archer, which sacrifices its ranged advantage over the other steppe factions in order to carry more missiles. This puts the Saka at a disadvantage in fighting Seleukid phalanx spam, and arguably in shootouts with the other steppe factions.

[Dram]

That is interesting... though as I'm in the middle of a Saka campaign I wish I hadnt read that!

My 2 cents about Saka - It's important when playing a Nomad faction to forget about holding territories. Dont get too attached to anything. There are nomand regions as far as Dacia in which you can quickly set up a nomadic government and train horse archers. By all means you should defend towns with mines or good trading ports, but dont be afraid to leave them behind eventually if theres somewhere better to go to.

The Seleukid east is very poorly defended and full of unarmoured pantopadoi units. You can easily storm through every town (esp the ones without walls!) enslaving everyone. After killing everyone you only have to leave a single cheap unit in town to keep order. You can usually just recruit a persian archer from the merc pool. Then you can move on to the next town!

Run a full cavalry army. If the town has walls just attack them with less troops than they have - they will sally forth to attack you, allowing you to kill them without needing to siege. Even if you cant hold a town due to large amounts of nearby enemies, take it and kill everyone and destroy all their buildings then leave. You can make a lot this way. I got about 26000 all up destroying the town, people and the wonder in Media.

Once you have eneough towns you'll have eneough income to stay out of debt without ever investing in the economies. That can come later!

Anyway in my current campaign I split in 3 directions with my starting armies and got as far as Media and Alexandropolis then had to turn back due to the Baktrians following in my wake to snatch my poorly defended towns away from me. This allowed the Seleukids to re-capture some of their towns but now that I've got the Baktrians pushed back I'll soon be able to turn back to raiding the Seleuckids.

I'm hoping to eventually migrate all the way to Dacia, keeping a 'Sphere of towns' under my control temporarily as I make my way there.

[Hannibal Khan the Great]

You could be the non-Altaic Huns! And if AI wasn't so berserk Pahlava could be a client state in Baktria and India representing the Hephthalites.

[seriousbusiness]

The Saka, Pontos and Hayasdan factions are all very difficult.

It comes down to having such a dodgy economy. Once you defeat your immediate, threatening enemies, your #1 priority must be fixing your long-term economy. Absorbing mining provinces is the single best way of doing that, I've found.