Scythia

[Elephant]

Today, a turn after I got my Warlord's Stables built, I finally got to try out one of those Scythian Noble Archers. And, really, I was blown away!

Compared to the basic Scythian Horse Archers and their toy-like weapons, these nobles can actually take out a reasonable amount of infantry per volley!

In fact, my 3-bronze chevron Noble Archers took on a Rebel army of 3 Thracian Mercenaries and 1 Scythian Horse Archers in a Hard battle and won! I only lost 9 guys due to being surrounded by the Thracians. The arrows from the enemy HA did not even kill one guy!

Also, I learned to love the Cantabrian Circle, due to the buggy nuisance of HA units taking forever to fire all at once (the first volley that they should fire doesn't, with only the sound and firing animation being available!). Sure, the circle tires my nobles out, but read this: somehow units seem more prone to gaining experience when they kill enemies at Tired to Exhausted status!

Maybe I am crazy, but I think it's worth it for someone to test this out for themselves.

[pezhetairoi]

you may have somnething there...

[Craterus]

I think so.
It's likely because in reality, if you are still able to kill enemies when you are fatigued you are bound to be a good warrior.

[Elephant]

I think so.
It's likely because in reality, if you are still able to kill enemies when you are fatigued you are bound to be a good warrior.

So, anyone care to test it out? But really, I still can't avoid losing some of my precious Noble Archers to those Archer Warbands even though I am in the circle... Hell, they killed 3 guys per volley! Unacceptable!

Those arrows that belong to them craven dogs are not worthy to be stuck on the rotting corpses of my Scythian noblemen! I demand an apology.

[LestaT]

I'm about to finish my Roman campaign (RTR 5.41) and planning to play Sarmation (Synthia).

I'm thinking to pull all my forces from all the settlements / city and only leave one as a base (Capitol). There's only 2 route to take , either westward or southward.

Which one is better ? I'm thinking westward because cities/towns belonging to Dacians, Thracians, the Greeks and macedonians are not that far apart then to go downward south towards armenian first.

My plan was to sell all sellable buildings first and I believe from the starting position I can get a full stack army combine and just acrros the river nearby my capitol llies the Dacian town (ally) which is ripe for plunder.

What do you guys think ?

Cheers....

[Orda Khan]

Head for Thrace, on to Macedon and then Greece. By now those silly Romans will be feeling their feet so destroy them next. I would be inclined to ignore the East

......Orda

[pezhetairoi]

That's my path, with a subsidiary attack into Germania which is also easy pickings since they're mostly phalanx units.

[Elephant]

Wow, the once popular Scythia now apporaches the bottom of the page.

I have seen fit to restart my Scythia campaign, mainly because I didn't rush and allowed my neighbours to have Large Cities with stone walls, which means I made a mistake.

Anyways, it became very interesting by the time I destroyed Thrace (8-10 turns), as Dacia seemed to have become a barbarian superpower of sorts! He owns 8 provinces (thankfully none of which have ocean access), and even betrayed an alliance with me once they had the cash to build up!

I have blitzed the Pontus Capital from a Black Sea assault, and bribed Ancyra (which, in hindsight, might have been a bad investment). Combined with Nicomedia, I think I have established a good hold on Turkey.

That's it so far, but more will come, I am sure.

[pezhetairoi]

Haha, I'm back to push the one-time record-holder for post count back to the top :D

With regards to noble archers getting downed by archer fire, I've been working on a minor mod to the unit stats. This has resulted in me giving horse archers 4 HP, noble archers 5 HP, and chosen archers 5 HP, on a line with identical standard infantry of the line. They survive much better this way, and there's a lot more time to do nasty things to the footarchers' morale.

[Franconicus]

Hi Pez,

back and spamming, are you?

[pezhetairoi]

Yeap, trying my best to equal Craterus' post count :-P

[Craterus]

You're a few thousand off, but keep posting those great guides and battle reports and you'll get there in the end...

[pezhetairoi]

Heh, I'm tailing off... There won't be anymore battle reports, I think? I've been drafted into the army and will enlist for two years starting this december so my attendance on the Org will only be intermittent at best, depending on when I get weekend leave. Guides? Well, I'll wait for EB before compiling another strategy guide again :) I'm currently involving myself in making hand-drawn EB maps sprawled across 4 A4 papers, and making unit lists, preparing recruitment region maps for each unit. Anyhow, I play MM now so any strategic advice I give about RTW is only based on personal memory and experience...

[NEARHOS]

pls i need some help with unlocking the non playable factions.
i edit all of them but only macedon and pontus are playable.when i click the others in imp. campain menu, the game closes and return to the windows.
do i have to unlock only the one i want to play with each time?
please, i am dying to play scythia.

[Franconicus]

This is from Quietus guide:

Unlock All Factions – In RTW, some factions are playable, some are unlockable and some are unplayable. This is how you unlock and play all the factions (thx to littlecheese07 of TWC for this idea).

Go to your folder, RTW>world>maps>campaign>imperial_campaign>desc_str at.txt. Simply move all the factions under the “nonplayable” and "unlockable" that you want play to under “playable”. Thus, in this list, Egypt to Greek_cities are unlockable, Roman_senate to Slave are nonplayable (it is advisable from other players NOT to touch or play the “roman _senate”) and Romans_Julii to Romans_scipii are playable. After you’ve arranged the text files, do not forget to SAVE. You may now play the new factions when you load RTW.

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
romans_julii
romans_brutii
romans_scipii
end
unlockable
egypt
seleucid
carthage
parthia
gauls
germans
britons
greek_cities
end
nonplayable
romans_senate
macedon
pontus
armenia
dacia
scythia
spain
thrace
numidia
slave
end
Maybe this lines should be emailed to every new member!

Nearhos,
A warm welcome to you. Enjoy your Scythian campaign as much as I did! And keep us informed

[NEARHOS]

thanks for the welcome and it is a pleasure to be a member.
The problem i have is after i did all the previous editing.
eventhough all the factions are available as litlte shields in imperial campain menu, from the previously non playable factions, only macedon and pontus are realy playable.When i click on Scythia shield, the game closes automaticaly and returns to the Windows.
Perhaps if i uninstall the game and then install again?
thank you in advance!!!

[Craterus]

That shouldn't make a difference. Have you made sure all the factions are "in line". Use the tab button to make sure they are. All faction names need to start from the same point, but they all need individual lines.

[C-F]

Lol - care to dance ???



Now try to fix that...

[edit] PS, RTW1.3 - only non-playable factions unlock mod [/edit]

[Kickius Buttius]

Nearhos,

I have a friend reporting the same issue. He edited the text file appropriately (you can actually move every faction except slave and roman senate to playable and play them, not just the ones listed in the post above), but crashes to dektop when he selects some of them.

I would try a deinstall and then reinstall. I would also apply the 1.3 patch BEFORE editing the text file.

Make a copy of the original text file before you edit it and stick it on your desktop so that if there is a problem you can just put that copy back in and erase the changed version rather than deinstalling and reinstalling.

Be sure to cut and paste the factions when you do the editing so that you don't accidently include any extra spaces or spell something incorrectly.

Let everybody know if that doesn't work. I sort of dismissed what my friend was saying as I couldn't see how that problem would arise, but having now heard it from you as well I am curious as to what is happening.

Did you edit the file before or after patching to 1.3?

[C-F]

Nearhos,

....
Did you edit the file before or after patching to 1.3?

Neither, patched to 1.3 and then applied the 'all faction unlock mod' from over @ the modding community.
Thanks for your help, but I'm not a programmer...I'll try to build them and then see what unit comes out; I can live with a missplaced picture ...


[edit] Never mind, I thought you were talking to me [/edit]

[x-dANGEr]

One of the easiest campaign, playing on VH/VH.

At the start, gather an army around from your cities, mostly of HA (5 units are more than enough), advance into Thrace and slaughter them all. Assaults aren't your game, so you should starve them out, Once you're done with Thrace, move on to Byzantium. By now, you have turtled Macedonians and they 'will' declare war on you. Ready a stack near their borders, by then your armies should have 8 HA, 5 Barbarian Cav and your general. In battles, if you are sieged, just sally, deplete your ammo on them, then sally again next turn and so on. Always seperate your HA in 2 groups, 1 to the left and 1 to the right. The enemy will devide his troops too, make each group of HA hit the rear of the opposing enemy group. Be ready to flank any lured phalanx fast and easy. I had some problems in (Tanais sb?) so I revolted it then re-occupied it. Killed population, gained some money. For money problems, you should raise taxes as much as you can, and also, factions from all over the map will come to you asking for Trade rights and alliances some times. Don't give those for free, most of your moeny comes from them after all. Germania will also declare war sooner or later, you need the same army, 8 HA and some melee cav. Of course, when you get to get Medians, they are superb to kill armored cav. Try getting those archer nobles as soon as possible, and no need to worry. Spread your spies and assaisans as fast as you can, the enemy will try conquering your cities in 1 turn using spies to open the gates, and against their Phalanx/Heavy Infantry, you are doomed in an assault. So in general, 2 stacks, 1 to germania and another to macedonia. It'll be easy, your fast HA just demolish those phalanxies. If you were attacked and if the odds were too low to you, you simply fight the battle, deplete your ammo and withdraw. If you're attacked again, I think you will be able to win it due to the heavy casualties you did to the enemy army in the battle before. I acutally didn't bother building any of the cities back home, those huge provinces, I just thought they're useless, only good for taxes. I focused on my Thracian cities along with Macedonia ones. They give you some cash, or in other words a lot of cash. Once your warfare starts with Armoured Catas or heavy Roman Cav, Medians are the units to face them. With their AP, those catas and armoured cav are useless, be aware of cata camels though, their morale advantage may chan rout your cav. And don't forget, HF & GL!

[Nehesy]

The best way of making quick money when the need arises is to raid Pontus (modern Turkey) through the black sea. Have spies or diplomats close to their towns and you'll see what I mean. I was monitoring their cities and found that when they started a war with TSE they moved alot of troops south and left their northern cities like Nicomedia, Pergamum (captured from the greeks), Ancyra etc with only about 3 garrison units in each town. I quickly assembled 3 small task forces mostly of noble archers, HA and a group of axemen for the battering ram aspect, put them on a ship and sent them to northern Turkey. I kill the garrisons with no problems at all and exterminate their towns. For instance in razing Nicomedia I earned 32,000 denarii. Pergamum was about 27,000 and Ancyra something above 20,000 also.

That's almost 80,000 denarii!! Even if the big pontic armies come back and attacking my raiders and they all die I've still earned ALOT of money.

My personal experience is that pontus anyway always backstabs me by blockading my black sea ports. So it's no worries to raid them and break alliances. Ofcourse it's a + if you get an ceasefire after the raid to get the amount of trade in the black sea again that could be very positive.



In my scythian campaign I used alot of ships to assault with raiding armies.
My current situation was that I had all the steppes, including the parthian north east town. I had all dacia except the last small town in the west. I had all Thrace and Byzantium. I was moving on to fight vs brutii that kicked Alexander the Greats remaining imperium badly and used it as a buffert zone as someone earlier mentioned in the topic.

I raided Athens that belonged to brutii in the same way as I raided the pontic towns and earned above 40,000 denarii (!!!!) if im not wrong.

After that my scythian campaign ended because everytime I captured Athens the game crashed.

[Barbarossa1221]

I'm doing a campaign right now where I just squashed the last vestiges of rome on the penninsula. A combined army of axeman noble horse archers(so crunchy!) and onagers did the job very well at sacking those well walled roman cities. So i expect the only problem in conquering gaul and the rest of Europe is distance predictable problems at home and dissent within.
So I'm thinking of an all horse army for europe for the speed and hiring maybe a few mercs of infantry to take down the walls.

[macsen rufus]

For instance in razing Nicomedia I earned 32,000 denarii. Pergamum was about 27,000 and Ancyra something above 20,000 also.

I just packed my faction leader, a few nobles and the siege train of chosen archers, axes and onagers off to Turkey, all eager for those rich pickings, but I feel someone got there before me.... Nicomedia raised a piffling 74 slaves and 3 denarii loot, although it was fun watching my attack dogs chew their way through two whole units of eastern infantry, a cash cow it certainly wasn't! And after all that I couldn't even sell the territory to my allies. Oh well, on to Ancyra tonight, I guess.

[stevieg]

Dont think Scythians had anything to do with Amazons, is there any positive infos on books/records out there? If there was any, prob convert them more barbarian types compare to Xena but lost faith with the true God (Artemis).

~Vikings

In answer to that question, the story of the Scythians and the Amazons is in one of Herodotus' "Histories".

The Scythians and the Amazons fight, and then when the victorious Scythians strip the armor off the fallen Amazons as trophies, they realize they have been fighting women warriors and send their young men to breed with them.

In this story the Amazons are the barbarians and the Scythians the more civilized people.

[Franconicus]

Good information, stevieg!

And hey, welcome

[Goalie]

i havent tried a campaign with the scythians yet, but i have played with them in multiplayer. I have a really good 15k armies. I love that these barbarians have onagers. Their noble archers are very good, along with axemen and chosen archer warbands.

[Craterus]

You want to make use of the Scythians strengths: kickass horse archers.

Whenever I played as the Scythians online, I would only get 2 (max.) units of Axemen. Their horse-archers are deadly, but it requires a lot of micro-management which is exceptionally difficult online (no pause).

In the campaign, you can pull off some great cav maneuvers (often with the help of the pause button) as the Scythians.

[sacredband3]

yes, the scytians are difficult to play with, especially when you have them Bettkicker19, the horse archers are pesky and who heard of barbarians with onagers? Also axemen are no slouch when it comes to hand to hand fighting.

[Goalie]

hehe, yes barbarians with onagers do rock.