What would an authentic Bosphoran Kingdom army look like?

**QuintusSertorius** · 04-16-2014, 10:36

I'm looking at this idea again, as my second game now things are a bit more settled in my new Pergamon game. Taking the "anyone with less than 10 armour is a pincushion" principle, the units I need to build a field army (rather than garrison) with are thus:

Classical Hoplites
Thuerophoroi (and later Thorakitai)
Thrakian Peltastai
Bosporan Heavy Archers
Thrakian Prodromoi

Then perhaps a couple of local foot archers (Scythian, not Greek) who'll get murdered, but are cheap to replace. Once again I'm trying to avoid just fielding my own horse archers, though I may have one unit in the stack.

**QuintusSertorius** · 04-16-2014, 21:33

Hmmm, I'm being reminded why this experiment failed last time: money. I've got Pantikapaion and Tanais, and even with some rapid development with add_money and process_cq, I can't pull in enough to maintain their garrisons of two levy hoplites and two levy skirmishers each. Though Tanais currently has a Client Ruler, which isn't helping. Even so, lacking the plentiful mines of Asia Minor that my Pergamon game has, I don't think the Bosporan Kingdom can be self-sustaining.

EDIT: Lost the client ruler and shrunk the garrison of Tanais a little and I'm now making a (small) profit every season. Assuming the harvest is good (in which case it's a loss). No idea how I'm going to recruit an army from this economic base!

**moonburn** · 04-17-2014, 17:16

in eb2 the garrisoned units don´t cost upkeep up to a point so you can keep your elite units kind of saved

as for the army formation it seems wierd that you would use cavalry thraikioi units and not the greek light medium or noble equivalents
also slingers and archers particulary should be in a fair amount in any bosphoran army since they must fight the heavy lancers slingers from the sides or back shooting at them is a must or use slingers to target them specifically forcing them to come to you and then use the peltastai to flank crossfire them and finally engulf them on multiple fronts

horse archers you can just deplet them with classics and hoploi on defensive move turning towards them and they´ll run out of arrows and after that you just have to make sure a unit isn´t trampled down (massive horse units envolving 1 single unit at a time is a tactic i use particulary with the german cavalary and it breaks them easy and with so many horses you can do it 5 to 6 times before the horses get tired and you must rest those units behinde your general and foot troops )

against a steppe army deplet their horse archers with the hoplitais force their armoured unit to engage the phallanx line flank them with thureporoi or peltastai cross fire them and engulf them meanwhile your cavalary units should be busy either chasing their foot archers or preventing their horse archers from providing suport to their armoured units already engaged

**QuintusSertorius** · 04-17-2014, 18:38

So after nearly 15 years (60 turns!) of building up my economy in Pantikapaion and Tanais and hoping no one took notice of me (having stone walls around both settlements helped - I think that deterred the Sauromatae better than the puny garrisons did), I'm finally in a position to recruit my well-armoured force and strike out at Chersonesos. It has a large garrison of variable quality, but it's also got stone walls and has virtually everything I need development-wise, so it's an instant boost and recruitment centre.

Originally Posted by moonburn

in eb2 the garrisoned units don´t cost upkeep up to a point so you can keep your elite units kind of saved

as for the army formation it seems wierd that you would use cavalry thraikioi units and not the greek light medium or noble equivalents
also slingers and archers particulary should be in a fair amount in any bosphoran army since they must fight the heavy lancers slingers from the sides or back shooting at them is a must or use slingers to target them specifically forcing them to come to you and then use the peltastai to flank crossfire them and finally engulf them on multiple fronts

horse archers you can just deplet them with classics and hoploi on defensive move turning towards them and they´ll run out of arrows and after that you just have to make sure a unit isn´t trampled down (massive horse units envolving 1 single unit at a time is a tactic i use particulary with the german cavalary and it breaks them easy and with so many horses you can do it 5 to 6 times before the horses get tired and you must rest those units behinde your general and foot troops )

against a steppe army deplet their horse archers with the hoplitais force their armoured unit to engage the phallanx line flank them with thureporoi or peltastai cross fire them and engulf them meanwhile your cavalary units should be busy either chasing their foot archers or preventing their horse archers from providing suport to their armoured units already engaged

I don't really need elite units; after all I'm playing with migrated Epeiros outside of its core zone, I can only build a type III in the settlements I have. Bosporan Heavy Archers are about as elite as it gets in these parts.

Greek light cavalry are worthless here; they're too slow to catch horse archers and too lightly armoured not to get pincushioned. Essentially any unit with less than 10 armour is a waste of money (levy hoplites are only good for garrison duty, only classical are heavy enough for the battle line). Thus regular archers and slingers are pointless; they'll be dead long before they get many shots off. Even regular (non-Thrakioi) peltastai aren't armoured enough, though they might do in a pinch.

As to Greek noble cavalry (or even Thessalians or others), I can't recruit them and in any case I've got Family Members to spare as my heavies (up to four non-governor FMs now - it'll be three once I've installed one in Chersonesos). I've found Molosson Agema much better than proper heavy cavalry, because they don't tire so fast. You shouldn't be hanging around in melee, which is the only reason really heavy armour is useful.

I've just queued up the bulk of this force, so we'll see how effective it is soon.

**QuintusSertorius** · 04-18-2014, 10:54

My heavy force proved up to the job of taking Chersonesos, with only 25% losses, which isn't bad for an assault on a stone-walled city with a garrison the same size as the assaulting force. My royal army is currently:
3 Hoplitai
2 Thureophoroi
1 Thrakian Peltastai
1 Bosporan Heavy Archer
1 Scythian Foot Archer
4 Family Members (Molosson Agema)

I also had a unit of Sphendonetai to keep the defender's heads down, but disbanded them once the city was taken, since they're useless in the field against horse archers. Those were all the "spare" FMs I had and I can't afford cavalry of my own.

My economic situation has gone from dicey (I was losing a small amount of money every turn as a result of those troops) to healthily positive again. Three settlements seems to be the right number to maintain a separate army in this part of the world. Next: Olbia, though I need to consolidate some first, that has a near-full stack inside.

**QuintusSertorius** · 04-19-2014, 12:18

At the risk of turning this into a sort of AAR, I'm now poised to take Olbia, after several failed Sauromatae sieges significantly reduced the garrison. I'll be building stone walls as a priority; several times now puny Sauromatae stacks have sniffed around, found stone-walled settlements and wandered off. They didn't like the look of my royal army, either, though I'm sure once I've got Olbia and border them in a number of places and bar any southwestward advancement they'll decide it's worth a go.