Scythia

[Goalie]

hehe, yes barbarians with onagers do rock. (pun intended)

[Craterus]

Remember, you have an edit button.

I'll be playing a new campaign on RTW 1.5, but who to play as? Suggestions please.

[BalkanTourist]

How about Pontus? They have an interesting position and a fantastic unit roster. Maybe you can only attack rebels and not attack until attacked b another faction.

[BalkanTourist]

How about Pontus? They have an interesting position and a fantastic unit roster. Maybe you can only attack rebels and not attack until attacked b another faction.

[Goalie]

Remember, you have an edit button.

I'll be playing a new campaign on RTW 1.5, but who to play as? Suggestions please.

Not any more i dont, i got a warning, apparently suggesting to Machine gun illegal immigrans is frowned upon.

[guineawolf]

i read a post about mongolian tactic that how they taking out european army.

first,they use light horse to lure out enemy cavalry(most mobile unit first,then so on and so on),take them out,then enemy range unit,after those,they harass enemy infantry with arrows(mongolian horse archers always carry plenty arrows with them coz they are so rely on their bow),make them shake,then when enemy break and run,they chase them down with light cavalry.

[Fate]

Well i started a scythian campaign yesterday, and ti all started well, alliances with

• Armenia
  Parthia
  Thrace

Dacia attacked thrace, and i sallied out to save my allies, truely crushed the dacians, then i moved onto take their capital in the carpathians. As i did so, campus scythii was poorly garrisoned, and Thrace, the betraying swine, attacked my settlement, ceased fire with the dacians, and, and the dacians came along for tha party aswell!!
Id taken the dacian capital, and when i had seen what they were upto, i razed it to the ground for income, and marched upon Thracia's poorly defended northern territory, with the intention of sacking that, or at least luring their army off my land, so i can out march them and take out the dacians again.
Also, i took pripet quickly (all i used for the attack was one unit of HA!) But now the germans have come from the west and besieged, i know theyve got at least one family member, which pretty much renders my HA useless, so im gonna have to see if i can get reinforcements up there soon

[paul_kiss]

I've got Rome, Egypt, and Parthia behind already. Several days ago started to play for the Scythians. Looks nice so far, although it's too early to make any general conclusions since my troops have only fought with either rebels or the weak Thracian falxmen.

The thing that disturbs me is that the Scythians, as all barbarians, can't have onagres... Neither can they build stone walls. :( I wonder how it'll when I'm sieged in the future...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Bloody.

The Scythians just don't have a quality infantry unit in any category. Their okay -- basic archers and axers -- but nothing exciting.

Without stone walls, its a lot of street fighting.

If you have a city or two you deem CRUCIAL to hold, try to get some rental hoplites from the Sevastopol area or northern Thrace. Nothing like spears to block a street while your axemen scream around from the other side.

[paul_kiss]

while your axemen scream around

Well, and what effect this screaming produce? Kind of supposed to lower the enemy's morale?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Actually, that is what the warcry is supposed to do -- though I don't use it a lot myself.

In this instance, I was referring to a flanking charge attack.

[paul_kiss]

I've had a lot of trouble having my axemen fighting with Greek hoplites (not heavy hoplites).

[IceWolf]

Well I'm up to about 38 territorie now in my Scyth campaign. i started out by making an alliance with the Dacians then rolling over Thrace. I then turned on Dacia. Having secured the territory of my required enemies I set my sights to the south where the money is.
I fought an extended campaign against Macedon while beating off the Germans to the west. At that point I tired of sparring with the Germans and sent a proper army to deal with them pice by piece. I conquered the Greek cities, ome of which were already Brutii, while my northern army gobbled up Germania.
Having secured my cash cow, I sent 3 tacks into the Brutii part of italy with ships while continuing to take Germany. I knocked out all the Brutii except one island then took Capua from the Scips andtook Rome with two stacks. When it wa all done I had conquered all of Italy and Germania. I am now moving west into Gaul to take the Julii holdouts. I sent a stack to Kydonia to finish off the Brutii then re-took Rhodes. I had taken Rhodes early on for the trade bonus.
I am now fighting the Brits in Gaul. AFAIK there is one Julii territory left that will soon fall. I took over the isle of Sicily from the Scips also. When I have taken Gaul and the British isles, I will have my 50 territories.

Icewolf

[IceWolf]

Now I've driven the Brits outta Europe proper. I own Greece, Italy, Germania, and Gaul. I've taken one British Isle settlement, 3 more to go. I have 47 territories plus one extended seige going on, so as soon as I can get some more boats I should be in a position to hit 50 assuming there are no more civil revolts.

IceWolf

[glyphz]

Scythia is a very interesting faction. Manual control of battles and quite a bit of micromanagement (IMO, much easier to do compared to M2TW) is the name of the game if a player wants to be very successful, especially early on.
Battles/Strategy

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Poor, yet fast growing early cities, + fast dwindling treasury will require making the most of your early units. Fortunately, the Scythians are blessed w/ perhaps the best basic infantry unit, the horse archers. Skirmishing (long) cavalry as basic infantry unit?! (That's so elite ...Spear warband would have taken the award, if it wasn't for this anomaly). This allows the Scythians, along w/ the Parthians, to have very minimal casualties and the highest chance to win a battle/siege w/ 0 deaths. Very fun and worthwhile, indeed.
You don't get to really blitz, unless you've tried a horse archer faction. It is possible to create a full army of horse units comprised of a majority of horse archers (basic or nobles), supported by melee cav (sarmatian, arab, bedouin and even numidian mercs can do very decent jobs as well) and a general. On the campaign map they can quickly reach their destinations/objectives much faster such as holding a good defensive position or siege enemy cities earlier before reinforcements arrive. Remember low casualties unless you face (Partians, Egyptians or even Britons)

Multiple spies are useful to scout enemy positions allowing you to plan ahead. More importantly, they allow you to gain new settlements or pillage/hit-and-run cities in one turn. Garrison units for conquered cities or the need of infantry to hold siege weapons in case spies fail to open the gates can be accomplished by mercs, until peasants are created. This allows your cav army to move on w/o leaving main army units behind.
Note: never tried this I do not like to buy mercs too much. I end up having foot archers, axemen and even onagers on my armies. Foot archers (love cretan archers and onagers) have fire arrows w/c are useful in bridge battles)

Auto-resolve will lead to avoidable casualties, so manual-control is a must. Then again micromanagement is highly recommended (dont be scared to use the pause button) , as AI skirmishing skills are not top notch, esp. facing enemy cav. Also remember to cancel order (Delete) turn off fire at will (A) for your archers when chasing routers as this will lead to head-scratching friendly fire. I tend to have more Friendly-Fire casualties compared to enemy kills

[Praetor Rick]

I finally modded my game so I could play Scythians. I'm not sure why I picked them, I mean, they can't be that much different from Parthians, right? A Horse Archer is a Horse Archer is a Horse Archer.

*WRONG*! The difference is like night and day. The Scythian starting position is so much nicer - not just in its easy and quick access to some nice cities (total domination of the Black Sea trade is easily within grasp, and then on to Greece), but also surrounded by factions that know nothing of Horse Archers.

The difference between Parthia having to fight Armenia and Egypt compared to Scythia having to fight Thrace and Dacia for short campaign victory is unbelievable. Plus, and this is probably luck, I'm not seeing nearly as much rebel activity in my Scythian campaign as I did as Parthia. I have found the game literally unplayable due to rebel activity in Parthia, to the extent that I was unable to get any trade at all because all of my roads and ports were blockaded and my armies were unable to divert from rebel squashing to do anything else at all - that's not fun, it's asinine.

[Alp Arlsan]

I am very glad to hear that Rick. Yes the Scythians are extremely fun, conquer the barebacked barbarians, easy stuff, then create a strong frontier against all civilisation. Rake in the money, tier up and launch devastating raids deep into enemy territory, raze it to the ground and return to your new homeland. very fun.

[Myth]

I was bored last night. I had been traveling for 7 hours straight on a bus, readung Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and i had felt the need for some TW, but my crappy laptop can't run Europa Barbarorum and definitely can't run MTW2. So, onward to vanilla RTW!

I could have continued with my Brutii save. I actually loaded it - hello! 7 star general, a full stack of pricipes/veites/cavalry, knocking on Macedonia's door. The most profitable greek cities were mine. Naval supperiority was mine. And i had 11,000 denarii in the treasury, even with all my cities stacked with completely full build ques. Not that there's no challange... But i was bored.

The Seleucids were also a possiblity, but those slow phalanxes and the horrible mobility in the vastly spread out empire was too time consuming for me. I felt that i just wanted to conquer, pure and simple. Unhindered by terrain, slow units, long battles where i sit and wait for the AI to impale itself on my pikes or pilli. I thought - wouldn't it be nice to emulate the Barbarian Invasion horde factions in goold old RTW? Just massess of horses and plowing trough the civilized countries?

It would be! And so i started with the Scythians, and boy did i have fun! Of course, i hate that RTW vanilla makes the barbarian factions look like neanderthals in the late game - city after city rebelling due to lack of peace buildings and squalor. So even though i started a long campaing, I told myself i want to conquer Macedonia, Greece and the romans. Once i sacked rome, burned it down and massacred it's population, then perhaps I'd feel good enough and just leave it at that.

So, first thing's first, I looked around my starting settlements - a few measly huts and an outhouse is hardly a city. The territories are vast but poor, however they are bordering the black sea. Here is what i did:

Disbanded all the Archer Warbands but the ones that are with the faction leader (the upkeep is too high and they are not needed for anything but fighting Thrace).

On turn 1, i built roads everywhere. I set out with the faction leader and laid siege to the Thracian city south of Campus Schythi. I had placed my spy there beforehand and he had managed to open the gates, but i recruited the uinit of Thracian mercenaries the moment i laid siege to the town anyway (but not before, as they will slow down your stack and you will be unable to siege on turn 1). Next turn i killed the garrison and the Thracian faction heir with relative ease, even though Horse Archers don't shine in city battles.

I moved out my general (sititng on the bottom middle of your provinces, he has a goldsmith retinue) and grabbed some more HA's, and sent him to meet up in the newly conquered settlement with my goold ol' faction leader, who now had some pretty useful combat retinues. Meanwhile, the faction heir got some HA's and HA mercs and went North-East to take out the lonely Pontic settlement on the edge of the map - I'll be damned if i leave such a liability at my back. It took me a while to find the damn village (several turns worth of trudging trough darkness and sands).

Meanwhile, i've been growing my villages in to towns, getting ports, traders, markets and temples with +2 exp. That, combined with selling map info, trade rights and promises of attacking Thrace (which i did anyway) got me enough denarii to sustain myself. Onwards to the south and the taking of the Thracian capital (which is where my current day home town of Veliko Turnovo is at btw). The Thracian faction leader was kind enough to assault my general (who had exchanged retinues with the faction leader and was now a very good warlord) in an uphill battle. 2 units of thracian mercs and 2 archer warbands was all the non-cavalry i had. However, burning arrows + skirmish mode off on those archers make thracian jav cav in to burning piles of horse goo. Meanwhile my HA's were going back and forth, trying to take out these scary scary thracian infantrymen (forgot their name, but they wiled some nasty scythes). It was a close battle, some of my units routed but that warlord's stack i had plowed trough so many peltasts... He got several chevrons right in to the battle.

Overall, after i won the Thracian capital fell in one turn and the faction was vanquished by turn 4 or 5. Sadly i had to stop playing the game at that point, but i will keep you guys posted once i get some more free time. My next immediate targets are: getting Byzantium from the rebels to complete my dominance of the Western shores of the Black Sea (that trade agreement with Armenia really helps your economy btw, be sure to get it asap). Then plowing trough the Macedonians, although it will take numbers to deal with their good melee cavalry. The Greeks will be a piece of cake IF i can get them to come out of their cities. I do not want to be fighting hoplites among the narrow streets of Sparta. Then.. It's good night Romans! Pre-Marian legions can't use testudo, and pre-Marian archers can't decimate my HA's. Good luck to them i say.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Hehehe.....that's the kind of mentality for HA factions Hit 'em hard and move on.......

IMO, it's better to leave the Parthians in Campus Sakae alone unless you plan on sacking it and moving on. In fact, after several years, I leave Campus Alanni (after destroying all the buildings) and the resulting rebel stack is more than enough to keep the Parthians busy. That army, along with mercs recruited along the way head for Chersonesos, a far more valuable settlement with it's Black Sea port, and much closer to the capital, which I eventually move to Tylis. I also abandon the northern most settlement, Campus Sarmatae, for similar reasons as Alanni....too far from the capital to maintain law and order without buildings that help. It's poor in resources, anyways.

Anyways, good luck!

[Myth]

I've been wandering, is it worth it to make the temple that grants the Noblewomen? How do they rank compared to Noblemen and good old regular HAs?

[ReluctantSamurai]

Not worth the money, IMHO. The mounted light cav do have AP capabilities, IIRC, as they wield axes, but the archer unit is too small (36 on large setting) and don't offer any real advantage over the Noble Archers other than perhaps a range advantage (I certainly could be wrong on that account) as they use compound bows.

The Noble Archer is your best bet, I would say....good HA stats and can go to melee when necessary as they are more heavily armored than regular HA.

Just my 2cents........

[Myth]

I watched almost all of PrinceOfMacedon's replays in YouTube. Noblewomen for him are cheese units, because they have Armour Piercing axes. They basically trounce heavy cav like Cataphracts even though they are considered light cav. Or at least that's what he said.

[placenik]

Not worth the money, IMHO. The mounted light cav do have AP capabilities, IIRC, as they wield axes, but the archer unit is too small (36 on large setting) and don't offer any real advantage over the Noble Archers other than perhaps a range advantage (I certainly could be wrong on that account) as they use compound bows.

The Noble Archer is your best bet, I would say....good HA stats and can go to melee when necessary as they are more heavily armored than regular HA.

Just my 2cents........

Noble woman have only one advantage over Noble archers- they are lighty-light cavalery (they have same speed as regular HA). This makes them ONLY ultra-light - long-range - melee-capable horse archers in the game. Cruel handicap of only 36 units per squad, and retrain logistics, and also catch that there is no way to get hefty +2 Artemis temple bonus in Macedonia, made me not to use them. If they were 54 (on large), they would be overkill.

PS: Head Hunting Maidens are best "light" cavalry, because they have AP, but 2 turn build, no exp bonus from temples + retrainability problem can be annoying.

[Tsar Alexsandr]

Noble woman have only one advantage over Noble archers- they are lighty-light cavalery (they have same speed as regular HA). This makes them ONLY ultra-light - long-range - melee-capable horse archers in the game. Cruel handicap of only 36 units per squad, and retrain logistics, and also catch that there is no way to get hefty +2 Artemis temple bonus in Macedonia, made me not to use them. If they were 54 (on large), they would be overkill.

PS: Head Hunting Maidens are best "light" cavalry, because they have AP, but 2 turn build, no exp bonus from temples + retrainability problem can be annoying.

Noble Scythian Women have one other bonus. They are cheaper than Scythian Noble Horse archers. I tend to build up my settlements with the temples of Api so I can build them. (A stables building is much more expensive.) They're okay, but logistics and retraining/training is an issue. But I'll build some. :D From time to time.

For me it's easier to get the technology for the Noble Scythian women than the men too.

Other than that though, might as well just stick with the guys. The Noble Horse Archer women are a pretty good unit, but the Head Hunting Maidens should probably be more useful. The Noble Horse Archers do more damage than the Noble Scythian women. In hand to hand anyhow.

[ReluctantSamurai]

It was the unit size and replacement hassle that led me to not use them. You definitely do not want to be using the Temple of Api on full-grown Greek or Roman (or should I say ex-Greek or Roman) cities for the population/squalor headaches.

Sooooo, they had a looong way to go back to the "wild" country to get refit, and hence out of action for the time it took to transit there and back. I had to resort to carrying replacements in a fleet set off-shore to reduce turnover time, and of course that's nothing but a magnet for enemy fleets to show up for. Meanwhile, Noble Archers can be refit just about anyplace that has an advanced enough stables. That was enough to convince me they weren't worth the hassle.

[Tsar Alexsandr]

It was the unit size and replacement hassle that led me to not use them. You definitely do not want to be using the Temple of Api on full-grown Greek or Roman (or should I say ex-Greek or Roman) cities for the population/squalor headaches.

Sooooo, they had a looong way to go back to the "wild" country to get refit, and hence out of action for the time it took to transit there and back. I had to resort to carrying replacements in a fleet set off-shore to reduce turnover time, and of course that's nothing but a magnet for enemy fleets to show up for. Meanwhile, Noble Archers can be refit just about anyplace that has an advanced enough stables. That was enough to convince me they weren't worth the hassle.

Well in that case then, yeah, they're not. XD If you have the money the other troops are far better.

I haven't been playing as them long enough yet to be making a lot of my best units.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Don't get me wrong.....it was great fun creating an all-female army and turning them loose on the Greeks and Romans. And the ladies (can barbarian women be called ladies??) kicked butt and took no names........but..........the reality of the situation, after the novelty wore off, was a logistical headache. But it was cool watching Greek phalanx and Roman heavy infantry become pin cushions before being ridden down by the axe-wielding maidens

[Tsar Alexsandr]

Don't get me wrong.....it was great fun creating an all-female army and turning them loose on the Greeks and Romans. And the ladies (can barbarian women be called ladies??) kicked butt and took no names........but..........the reality of the situation, after the novelty wore off, was a logistical headache. But it was cool watching Greek phalanx and Roman heavy infantry become pin cushions before being ridden down by the axe-wielding maidens

Indeed. XD And I dunno. If they prefer to be called sir, comrade, lady, amazon or whatever.... but I do know this... you'd better find out before you address them.... cause otherwise you might end up getting disbanded from the unit.... XD

Yeah, it can be a real logistical nightmare. I'm keeping mine in the realitively smaller barbarian settlements. (I also use my navy to ship armies around anyhow.) Their bonuses are pretty nice. Damage to armour, fast moving, etc.... so they're good to have in a unit. They can be quite effective. :D But yeah, if you have the money, it's better to work with armies that are easier to retrain. And if you keep em back home well... they can always fight those random rebels that pop up lol...

[Tsar Alexsandr]

How about Pontus? They have an interesting position and a fantastic unit roster. Maybe you can only attack rebels and not attack until attacked b another faction.

Pontus is a very interesting faction. :D You get javalien armed cavalry that are very good, Pontic Cavalry and a Pontic Heavy cavalry, a great heavy cavalry unit that is very well Disiplined the Cappadocian Cavalry, and chariots. Both Chariot archers (with two archers in the Chariot!) and scythed chariots for mass destruction and carnage. XD They also have a good pike unit. So, great cavalry, and great infantry. They're a pretty good faction all around. ^_^

[IceWolf]

What does XD mean?

Thanks Icewolf