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.

Quote Originally Posted by moonburn View Post
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.