About the Amazons

[Maltz]

Hello:

I was wondering whether we could collect some info. about the Amazons in RTW. I had my first encounter with them last night. There was one field army consisting of ~5 missle chariots, while in the town there were another 2.

I was the defender on the field, brining 2 cataphract archers, 3 horse archers, 1 barb. cavalry, 2 barb. infantry warband merc. plus my ~8 star general (showed up as 10, probably due to his cavalry command bonus). About the same strength as the Amazons on the blue-red bar.

I noticed that amazon chariots were extremely high attack and defense numbers, yet you know, nowadays girls don't want to wear too much. I mean their armor was only about 5.

So I want to shoot them instead of chase them into melee. I hid into a corner, with 2-row-deep cataphract archers being the outer circle, protecting other horse archers within. The core was my generals well protected. There is no way the amazons can shoot my general without being exposed to my entire arrow crew. I also made the entire army in loose formation.

The Amazons' chariots didn't charge in but stayed outside as two groups, enjoying a shoot out against my own HA horde. They lost BADLY. Finally I killed all but 2 cargo, losing just 10 men (all cataphracts). I would be doomed if they were long-ranged - fortunately they aren't.

Then I didn't bother fighting the similar, just small-scale things over, so I just bribed the town over with 7.4k.

I wish to collect some other experiences regarding fighting the amazons. Not a lot of campaigns extend to this area, so maybe collectively it is a good story.

[LordKhaine]

I still want to be able to bribe an amazon stack to my army. I want an amazon general!

[Oaty]

Then I didn't bother fighting the similar, just small-scale things over, so I just bribed the town over with 7.4k.

Your lucky. I went to bribe them and they wanted 200k, I double checked. My next question was for 200k what do I get? I better have 1 happy army at that price!!!!!

[Empedocles]

Sorry for my ignorance, what amazons? the women? they exist in RTW? WHERE????

Diego, from Argentina

[Maltz]

Hello: The Amazons are mysterious female-warrior culture of this time period. RTW put them in a strange far-away kingdom on the north edge of the map. They are visible when you play as Scythia. Your north town borders the Amazons (as Rebel). There is a gold mine on the strategy map. To get there you need to cross a large swamp, going into the forest & crossing a river. Starting from the closest town it will take a good 5-year march.

I sometimes find bribing "owned" towns super expansive. When I played as the Brutii some Persian towns also asked me for 200k. I guess high bribe price is usually because:

(1) Garrison size: proportional to their size + quality. Family members boost the cost of bribing like 5 times.

(2) Current buildings: apparantly you have to buy not only the lands, but also the houses. For well-developed towns I get 200k offerings, or no offering at all probably because I don't have enough cash...(? or it is their capital) So I suppose later in the game few towns are really buyable - unless the players are also millionairs. Perhaps population counts, too?

(3) Presence of spy: In one case I found 2 spies raised the price from 10k to 70k. If I agree I also bought the spies over.

(4) Presence of diplomat: I don't remember any example. Maybe they don't even make a difference...? I am not sure.

(5) Difficulty level: When I replayed the tutorial everything was so cheap to bribe, about half-price or less as I had In VH difficulty. In VH a typical, 1000-men, 4-building, 3-garrison rebel town costs about 6k to bribe. I have not compared with the other difficulties, though.

I think I was indeed lucky to bring a HA-heavy army. I guess HA is the solution so many things - they are almost invincible on the field!

[Silver Rusher]

Amazons live in Hyperboria. On an interesting side note: The Amazons are actually Greek Culture despite living very very far away. The same is true of Massilia in Transalpine Gaul.

[Kraxis]

The same is true of Massilia in Transalpine Gaul.

Which can't surprise you, or what?
They were Greeks that lived in a Greek city, laid down by Greeks. It was actually the place the Athenians planned on going to prior to the battle of Salamis.

[Silver Rusher]

Nah, I'm just saying that it's a little out of place. I would have thought the Massilians would be barbarians.

[Red Harvest]

First time I encountered them I didn't realize what they were. My diplomat saw the town but not the army outside...so I sent a small ill equipped army up north to subdue the town. This was the first and only successful ambush that I can recall by the AI. I had a unit of merc horse archers, but was badly out numbered in that regard and had perhaps one unit of cav and a few units of infantry. It wasn't pretty.

[Es Arkajae]

Amazonian chariots have no scythes, don't be afraid to send in your cavalry to mix it up.

[Silver Rusher]

Hyperboria is a real wierd province; I've never been up there myself but I cheated when I saw this thread to see what was going on, using "toggle_fow". (sorry who I spolied it for) The settlement, Themiskrye (or something like that) is really well hidden. It's in the middle of this huge forest enclosure, with a small opening. I see why it must be hard to kill the Amazons.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Hm....i've heard about the amazons, but never found them. Do they live in that little northern province which seems to be permanently a rebel colour on the map?

[Watchman]

Yeah, it's that one. I got curious about it when I was playing the Roman campaign through and sent a spy to look it up. Took me a moment to figure out the route up there (it's actually pretty darn obvious, even from the printed world map).

True, on the battlefield the Amazon chariots look like they don't have scythes; the same goes for all chariots save the Egyptians' and the Scythed Chariots (ie. Pontic char. archers, the Amazons, the two Barb chariots). But look up their unit info panel some time and you will notice they have them (not the barbarians, though; doesn't seem to slow them down too much). The assorted unit and mount statistics files say as much, too.

I tried some custom-game tests on the subject (I made a merc version of the Amazons for the job, too) and turns out the "scythe-less" chariot archers tear up cavalry right fine. Just as good as the "scythed" Egyptian kind. Which is to say, most of the time they need to be on the move and preferably charging when they meet the enemy unit, else they're nine time out of then so much scrap wood. Alas, chariots on the whole have this really annoying habit of slowing down to crawling speed just before the last leg to the enemy unit (I guess it'd be about twenty or thirty meters IRL) and then accelerating to full charge, at least if you've double-clicked them to attack. Against infantry it's no problem, but if cavalry counter-charges they're usually too slow...

Goes without saying that chariots who try to skirmish away from cavalry - nevermind fast ones - aren't going to do too well, but then again I've also seen General's Bodyguard cavalrymen die trying to catch routing chariots. I guess those scythes (whether they show on screen or not - that was a routing Briton Warlord) are damn dangerous to horses just on general principles.

Oh yeah, and chariots and their crew have pretty different statistics. I think ranged attacks "roll" against the crew's armor, while most everything else "rolls" against the chariots' (puny) ratings, which are the ones the UI panels display. The Amazons are the second best armored chariot crew in the whole game (they have the 11 that seems to be universal for that breastplate-helmet-greaves combo), while the first prize goes to those cataphract-looking fellas who ride the Scythed Chariots (18, as with the horse- and camel-riding kind).

Odd thing: according to export_descr_units Pontic chariot crews seem to have two hit points each, and alone among chariot riders have a melee defense skill... A not too shabby 5, at that.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I sent in a discovery channel team (a ragtag band of soldiers in other words) to investigate them about an hour ago, and they were ambushed halfway there. The chariots are a real pain in the arse to get, because they kept running away from me, and my merc scythian horse archers weren't doing much. But now i've conquered their town, and i'm happy. Only problem is, you can't build a road in there province, even if you have selected build a road, it won't appear.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Sorry to double post, but i've just been researching the amazons, and i got some information saying that their town of Themiskyra has never been found, but apparently they lived in northern turkey. However, in RTW, they live somewhere far up in russia.

The Amazons