Sarmatian Campaign

[nikolai1962]

(incidently I'v found that while it might be common sense to simply leave armenia alone and hope they ignore you, it's good to invest in a little raiding party of 3 or 4 heavy horse archers to go down and mess around with them a bit, block trade roads, pick off small groups of troops, maybe even risk a few larger ones, and just try to survive as long as possible.

Hmm, might try that.

See that rebel army outside Tanais? that's a full stack. Of horse archers. In a forest.

So many kings died fighting them :(

One nice move you can pull as the sarmatians is raiding. It's quite easy on the big wide open steppe to find a lightly guarded town (armenian, dacian or parthian, it's not going to be lightly guarded if it's rebel) and take it, destroy everything inside and get out of there. There's usually a lot of open ground between their territory and your territory, and you have a fully mounted force whereas they'll usually have some foot soldiers, so they'll be slower and wont catch you.

I finally figured this was a good way to get started. Attack somewhere, burn it all and leave with the cash (as you won't have enough guys for a garrison). Only way to get any building started early. Plus it slows down their inevitable attack. One thing about the sarmations is they don't have much to build so once it's done all your cash can go on troops.

On hard setting i always got squashed eventually by rebel attacks on my weak-garrisoned cities as you can't defend them all. Medium may be the only way to go as rebs won't attack your settlements.

[Mujalumbo]

I'm not afraid to say that I wimped out and played on medium campaign difficulty.

Oh, yeah, Uspe can build mines, but so can one of the towns to the north.

[Angadil]

Thanks for the feedback, Greek_fire and Mujalumbo. Very useful stuff for the Sarmatian fine-tuning that we are undertaking. Now some comments over several points you guys have raised. I'll start with an easy one:

Does anybody know what "Baexdzhyntae" and "Uaezdaettae" mean?

"Riders" and "Noblemen", respectively.

One question: Seeing as 'The Sarmatians' represents a pretty loose confederacy of actually quite distinct tribes, would it be possible (without sacrificing any realism) to maybe add a few more tribes to the confederacy? Maybe Gava-Yugra and Gelonus? Either that Or scrap the whole confederacy thing and make it just the Roxolanni with just one province, maybe take the mine out of Uspe and give it to the Roxolani province instead? Let the player expand from a nice, rich, compact little base.

Several issues here. For example, different Sarmatian tribes are only known from II BCE onwards. Therefore, we do not know what Sarmatian subdivisions, if any, existed in 272 BCE. Much less what lands they occupied, etc... The sources (Greek writers, Herodotos mostly, but also others) just speak of "Sauromatae" (or some variant of that name) as a single people without further internal distinctions. Arguably, this probably just reflects lack of knowledge, rather than the actual situation (though the latter cannot be completely ruled out), as there was very little direct contact of the Greek world with the Sarmatians. Second, when we frist get lists of Sarmatian tribes we find some "Royal Sarmatians" mentioned alongside the other groups. When western sources dealing with the steppe nomads speak like that, it usually means that what we have here is a confederation of several tribes lead by a dominant, "Royal" one that gives the name to the whole confederacy. So, it seems reasonably likely that, even when we start hearing about different Sarmatian tribes, they formed a single polity with some sort of central, higher authority. Those two factors led us to consider the current representation of the Sarmatians as the more historically adequate one.

I dunno, I'm sure you guys thought long and hard about the Sarmatians and how the represent them, it just seems like you gave them just enough provinces to be strung out and hard to manage and not nice and compact like the other barbs, and yet not big enough to be a major power and control some serious cash.

Well, the historical situation at EB's start, was roughly that pretty much everyone with a border with Sarmatians was suffering pressure from them, from major raids to full-scale invasions. This was so to such an extent that some scholars even hypothesize that the Sarmatians had experienced some kind of demographic explosion and suddenly their native homelands just couldn't hold them to explain this Sarmatian "push" in all directions. This sort of "generalized Sarmatian agression" is quite central to EB's "concept" of the faction. I do not think we will be abandoning it, as, to our understanding, that is the adequate historical representation. Instead, we will work to implement it better and the feedback you have provided is very valuable for that.

Incidentally, I loved to read how Greek_fire used the very historical tactic of using heavier horse archers to win missile duels with lighter ones. In my experience, you could also use things like height advantage to beat HAs with other HAs, or setting up "micro-ambushes", where two of your units fired on a single one of the AI. Of course, this called for a lot of maneuvering and produced very fluid battles that I think captured quite well the flavor of steppe warfare, but it's been quite a while since I've played a game.

[Mujalumbo]

Does anybody know what "Baexdzhyntae" and "Uaezdaettae" mean?

"Riders" and "Noblemen", respectively.

Cool, thanks!

Yah, you know, I looked at the difference between the Uaezdaettae's and the regular horse archers, and decided that one point of armour didn't justify the expense of recruiting them. (Mostly because the stacks of rebels start out with an exp. or two, and I theorized that'd render the point of armour moot.) I'd go for masses of "plain" HA's.

It's easy enough to win with roughly even (or even odds in favour of the AI). It involves using the Canteberran <sp> Circle formation, and maneuvering your HA's so you can concentrate fire on a single enemy unit at a time. If you're feeling brave, you can parade your family member's heavily-armoured bodyguard around to draw enemy fire, but, er, unless you have a large unit, it's a little risky...

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Sometimes I keep maneuvering in circles till I think I can maximize impact upon the enemy cavalry unit their captain or general is in - if I can smash him on a charge. But usually I keep angling my units around any enemy HA unit that carries spears also - and I go after them first. If it comes down to my guys charging their guys, and I've gotten rid of their spear carrying horse archers, then I think I can have good chances once it gets melee time.