Thrace

[Maltz]

From the reply and view counts, I guess Thrace is rather an unpopular faction. Indeed, Thrace does not have a lot of "character". It sits between prosper and barren; its hybrids between the barbarian and Greeks. There is no ultimate killer unit in Thrace, meaning if our campaign is dragged too long and the enemies develop well, Thrace is gonna suck and sink. Yep, I can't think of a reason why people will be a Thrace fan; perhaps they were Imagawa fan in STW. (same color)

The bright side is Thrace is quite powerful early on. The 2nd level melee infantry is falxmen, powerful attack and decent defense. Can't really beat them easily! The 1st level ranged unit is peltasts, not bad for melee as well. 2nd level ranged unit is archer, which is quite standard. The 1st level cavalry is jav. cav. (militia cavalry). Missle cavalry is always useful - you better learn it. As you can see, with a mixture peltasts-falxmen-archers-militra cavalry, your army is very healthy. Numidia only has peltasts and jav. cav. and we could survive.

I just played as Thrace for about 5 yrs. Same as Dacia, I ignored all rebels and poured all my starting army south to get rid off Macedon. There are a few hard battles, but generally speaking any able-minded, brave-enough player can handle them. AI Macedon has a killing weakness - its cavalry is way faster than its phalanx. So there are always 20-30 seconds to defeat cavalry first, then kill the pikemen next. Any 2 unit can kill a pikeman. The key of avoiding casaulty - I am sure you already know - is not to charge face-on in the first place. charge from the side/back instead.

*** some updates ***

Now it is 9 yrs into the campaign and I own 18 provinces: the entire Balkan up to the point of Dacia territory, plus the former Brutii. Dacia had some last big battles with my new clan leader, which are very exciting. Scipii is about to lose Capua. Senate army got a plague from somewhere... poor.

For all Greek towns I just "occupied", because there is no cultural penalty. (Good to be in the greater Greek family!) Falxmen saved a lot of days, while the addition of archers certainly helped sieges a lot.

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There is certainly some fun factor in Thrace, just uncharacteristic. Not very easy, nor very hard to play...