What would an authentic Bosphoran Kingdom army look like?

[A_Dane]

Gotta voice in again: There's no way, that I'd ever use toxotoi unless it was for a cheap garrison unit/I was in dire need. Especially not, when you got access to the very cheap skythian foot archers too. As others have said, why would a rich city/kingdom, use one of the worst archers in the game, when they have access to other cheap, and alot more efficient, archers?

[athanaric]

I agree on both fronts, too many heavy archers and it stops being both challenging and realistic. Though they're archer-swordsmen, rather than archer-spearmen (which I believe the Persians are), which would make them less durable against cavalry.

Heavy Persians carry swords.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These have knives. (0.04)
Spears. (0.13)
Swords. (0.1)

[QuintusSertorius]

Comparing the Lonchophoroi and the Aspidophoroi doesn't make sense - the two play separate roles.

Now, javelin cavalry are rather underpowered in EB when compared with lancers, which are at a relatively fair power level, and we intend to fix this in NOM by the melee power of non-lance cavalry weapons, and decreasing the cost of non-lance cavalry (except horse archers).

I was comparing Aspidophoroi to Hippokontistai, and Lonchophoroi to regular Hippeis. Comparing two kinds of skirmisher cavalry and two kinds of medium cavalry.

When I played EB Online, before my Hamachi screwed up (finally got it running again but homework is getting the better of me these days) I favored the Sauromatae - the weakest of the steppe factions in terms of armour, etc. and probably not favored against other Steppe factions, but they enjoy some key advantages:

-Access to Bastarnae. While crap against missiles, your HAs will take the brunt of enemy missile attacks. Keep these away from missiles and they're golden shock infantry.
-Scythian Nobles - Very cost-efficient, superior lancers; better than Lonchophoroi and significantly cheaper
-Aorsi/Scythian Riders - much less expensive than Dahae and much more effective than Saka Riders (since overhand cav spears are so bad in EB). Much better than horse archers, since they pack a charge that will actually put the smackdown on wavering enemies or flanks/rear

Meh, not interested in a genuine steppe faction. The fun here is playing a (migrated) Hellenic-regional fusion. Just like playing Massilia with Greek and Celtic units.

I think he meant that both are the best things the KH factional barrack has against sauros, In which I agree. he just compared lonchophoroi to hippeis.

yep @ sauromatae are real good at getting effective light-medium troops rather fast without too many heavy troops availible.

Epirote, but yes.

Gotta voice in again: There's no way, that I'd ever use toxotoi unless it was for a cheap garrison unit/I was in dire need. Especially not, when you got access to the very cheap skythian foot archers too. As others have said, why would a rich city/kingdom, use one of the worst archers in the game, when they have access to other cheap, and alot more efficient, archers?

Agreed.

Heavy Persians carry swords.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These have knives. (0.04)
Spears. (0.13)
Swords. (0.1)

Ah, I stand corrected. In which case the two are fairly comparable.

[QuintusSertorius]

Here's my starting position, with two likely targets scoped:



Both settlements have identical garrisons, as you can see money is a bit of a problem right now and I don't have an army.

[rotten]

Hmm, bit harsh with those two eleutheroi stacks near your cities. They'll probably screw it up royally though. Is that a full stack in Tanaris and an almost full stack near it?

[bobbin]

Heavy Persians carry swords.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These have knives. (0.04)
Spears. (0.13)
Swords. (0.1)

But the Bosporan Heavy Archers carry longswords with 0.225 lethality, they are a lot more powerful.

Regarding Toxotai, I'd say they are a definite no no for the steppe, they have crappy range (143m) and a very poor amount of arrows (15).

As others have pointed out, it would be pretty illogical for the Bosporans to use inferior troops such as the Toxotai when they have abundant access to the best archers in Europe.

[A_Dane]

I had to conqueror Olbia first, from the Sauros in my game. There was no way in hell, I could aquire Pantikapaion because of the that Eleutheroi stack next to it.

Strangely enough, the Sauros agreed to peace afterwards... even though I killed their FM.

Gave me enough time, to build up my barracks & get a steady cash flow, to when they finally did attack again :D

[QuintusSertorius]

Hmm, bit harsh with those two eleutheroi stacks near your cities. They'll probably screw it up royally though. Is that a full stack in Tanaris and an almost full stack near it?

No, Tanais is empty, probably just a FM there. Not interested in going in that direction besides Tanais; the region is resource-poor, spread out and vulnerable to the Sauromatae. Kallatis and Sinope on the other hand are nice, fat targets. Though might be difficult to defend later on. Kallatis may be easier if I have a nomad client ruler and horse archer force to defend it from the Getai and Makedonians.

I had to conqueror Olbia first, from the Sauros in my game. There was no way in hell, I could aquire Pantikapaion because of the that Eleutheroi stack next to it.

Strangely enough, the Sauros agreed to peace afterwards... even though I killed their FM.

Gave me enough time, to build up my barracks & get a steady cash flow, to when they finally did attack again :D

I'm looking at Kallatis and Sinope as more urgent targets than Olbia. I think both will provide more money.

I just realised my earlier commentary about cavalry is kind of moot; I can't recruit Lonchophoroi or Aspidophoroi in either settlement, I'm too far outside the Epirote core.

[A_Dane]

My main problem was this: A) I had to fight the Eleutheroi army near Chersenessos too (it attacked me), so didn't have enough money/men, to actually go take Sinope, It got a pretty large garrison.
b) I'll need a cavalry wing later in the game, and Skythian nobles would be perfect for that, Olbia would make a great place to build up, as a place to recruit those guys.
c) the seleucids took my capital right after I got chersenessos, so If i took sinope, I'd be in war with them much sooner than i wanted to, and the Sauros would attack eventually.
Hence my choice fell on the weakly garrisoned, but rather large, city of Olbia :) Your game might be evolving differently, just throwing it out there :)

[QuintusSertorius]

I'm just realising, I should probably have taken Tanais, rather than Chersonesus as my other starting settlement, since it's the other half of the Bosphorous. Either way, all the lands on the Black Sea coast are my targets eventually, though they may prove difficult to defend unless I use a navy to transport my main army(ies) about.

[QuintusSertorius]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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.

[QuintusSertorius]

My dominion in 239BC - just about to liberate the Greeks of Sinope from the Pontic yoke:



Also the world map zoomed a bit - you can tell how extensively I've been messing with AI advancement by the amount of still-independent areas: