Bactrian Campaign Feedback

[Bava]

As i finished my campaign with Baktria yesterday (Victorraayyy!), i want to give you EB guys some feedback.


First of all i have to say you really succeded in giving Baktria a unique touch. The mosaic GUI, the eastern backround music and the huge variety of greek, persian and indian units result in a great gameplay experience.
And to allow some "persian blood" in the familiy tree is a nice idea!
I really grateful for the extremly detailed unit/building descreptions, reading it really helps you to immerse into the era.

I played on H/H, large settings with BI-exe. After i´ve read the "How to play with BI" thread, i decided to make things not overly complicated and just changed the shortcut from RomeTW.exe to RomeTW-BI.exe and ... it works!
The only thing that might be not right is that i saw rebel stacks with gold and silver upgrades, but that happened only twice and not on my territory.


My campaign lasted from 272 to 228 and i had 2(!) ctds, one non-reproduceable on the campaign map (end turn) and one after a battle with reenforcements, but i fought many of those and it only happened once. So stability has vastly improved in comparison with 0.74, great job!

Progression over the years:

250



240



228




Economy:

Uh well, the mines. When i saw the mine upgrades for the first time
my thought was "+10000...wtf?!". At the beginning i really drowned in cash
and i started to worry about a boring campaign. At the beginning my bactrian warfare mainly was about bribing entire seleukid stacks and sendind them back to their actual owner. Great fun!

But as i expanded i desperately needed the mine income, because:

1. Due to the huge distances i had to field 2 high quality full stacks to defend
my borders effectively against Arche Seleukia. The armies alone arent the
problem, but their reenforcements are (per full stack half a stack of
reenf.).
Things got worse when Pahvala and the Sakae declared war on me and i
had to pay the upkeep for 3 additional armies to defeat them.

2. Garrison unit costs due "distance to capital" is a problem.

3. you cannot trade with your neighbours because you usually are at war with
all them and you have no cash cow like sea ports in the Mediterranean.


After all i´ve read you´re going to generally nerf the mine income a bit, but i suggest to leave Baktria as is or perhaps give them an additional upgrade (+2000, +4000, +7000?).


Military:

Well, as i said before the huge array of units is great and i love the heavily amoured horse archers and the Hoplitai Indoi! The only thing that bothers me a bit (and only a bit) is that they have no real unique infantry unit like the seleukid Thorakitai Argyraspidai. If historical accuracy allows it (though i doubt that ), perhaps merge the Baktrion Agema and the Pheraspidai and/or give one of them something like 12 attack and 28 defense stats. I think that would add a nice touch to a bactrian battle line as the rest of the infantry faction units are pretty much average (the stats, not the skins!).

Here is one of my full stacks:



I killed a lot of seleukids with these guys

Against Pahvala and the Sakae my stacks were mostly horse skirmishers/archers

I´m really interested in gameplay hints and formations of other baktrian players because it was the second time i played Bakria (one RTRPE) and I
certainly need some guidance from experienced players.



P.S. Thank you EB team for this great mod! It is really one of a kind and worth every single day of wait!

P.P.S sorry for my bad english

[Teleklos Archelaou]

That stack is downright evil! Glad to see you're having a blast with the Baktrians.

[Constantine the Great]

My Baktrian campaign ended prematurely when the Seleukidssent a full stack against my almost empty capital while I was campaigning in the Indus valley....

[Zastrow]

Similiar to my situation, I had just sent off a full stack and a half to the indus and then bam, Seleukids and Parthians betray me and its all over. As for Baktrian battle tactics, I much prefer a hammer and anvil style, or pike-flankers with a weak center and a general behind it. Draws the enemy right into a killing zone, just support your pike flankers with some light cavalry.

[Bootsiuv]

I'm currently playing Baktria, except it's on the Extended Greek Mod (an awesome mod, and, at only ~40 MB, it's great for those few 56kers still out there).

I've found that conquering the Indus, gaining access to the Indian ocean, all the while keeping Parthia and the Seleucids happy, is a good early strategy (but you should expect to play some tough battles where you may be significantly outnumbered, especially in the first few years while you're main army is off conquering the surrounding Indian kingdoms).

For a bit of roleplaying, I often accept an offer to become the Seleucids protectorate state, until I'm a little more developed, when I redeclare my independence....I assume that the Indus region would be just as important to Baktria in EB.

BTW, as soon as I get high speed, the first thing I'll be doing is downloading EB.

[Zarax]

Well, the two mods got different balance and development (Baktria is quite vanilla-ish and not much more than a copy of seleucids in XGM) but in any case having the indus valley gives you a nicely covered backyard and decent cash bringer...

[Basileus Seleukeia]

Are those units left of the Baktrioi Agemata Thorakitai? Because, in my version they have a different picture, so, which version did you use for this campaign?

[Bootsiuv]

Well, the two mods got different balance and development (Baktria is quite vanilla-ish and not much more than a copy of seleucids in XGM) but in any case having the indus valley gives you a nicely covered backyard and decent cash bringer...

While I'm sure you're 100% right....XGM is a million times better than vanilla IMO....just the larger map makes it worth downloading, as far as I'm concerned.

EB would have taken 40+ hours to download with my connection, assuming nothing happened in that time to kick me off.