Sabyn Strategy Guide

[The Errant]

Thank's for the replies. Just hope you found it useful.

The Sabyn is the only faction I have played that I'm really missing the vanilla peasant unit in. After a while you really see the lack of population hampering recruitment.

One thing I noticed, is that the Unit descriptions on the homepage (www.europabarbarorum.com). for the both the Saka and Sabyn, is the old Yuezhi discription. Any idea when you're updating the homepage?

[Khazar_Dahvos]

hey Teleklos are you guys of the team just using the african infantry bodygaurd for generals as a placeholder for the moment and do you plan to create a sabyn bodygaurd in the future. It realy doesent matter because the african infantry rock!!!

[Kull]

I played a very long Saba campaign using one of the pre-v.81 EB builds. My strategy was different from yours, partly perhaps from playing VH/VH, but also because it was all-Saba units, no placeholders.

I was very quickly at war with both AS and the Ptolemies, and that was so early in the game, it wasn't even feasible to think of Dumatha. Anyway, the most enjoyable part of the game was I decided not to use a Siege strategy, but rather to try and beat the Greeks in open battle with what is essentially a skirmisher army.

And it is possible, but VERY difficult. You need numbers and tactics. Any thought of going line vs. line against those tough phalanx forces is close to suicidal. After 100 turns I had to leave the campaign and move on to testing newer builds, but by then I had control of all South Arabia and was finally strong enough to think about moving north to Dumatha.

The one salvation of the "South Arabia First" strategy is you have advance warning of incoming invasion stacks from Egypt and Seleukia for MANY turns before they get to your heartlands. So you are never surprised and can make the stack adjustments necessary to increase your odds of victory.

A real fun faction to play! Not least because your unit mix forces you to learn a style of warfare that one would NEVER select if playing almost any other faction. Which, IMO, is one of the greatest strengths of EB.

[The Errant]

Thanks for your reply Kull. It's good to see that some of the EB team takes the trouble to read my strategy guide.

In my earlier campaigns I also went after the Arabian peninsula first. Most of my generals got the "Desert Fighter" ancillary which made skirmishing tactics very viable. One of the other things is that in some parts of the Arabian peninsula, the battle terrain can be rocky which serves to break up the Seleukid phalanxes.
In those conditions having a more mobile army of skirmishers coupled with a few heavy hitters can easily take on those phalanxes.

The main reason I never conquered the eastern arabian provinces in my later Sabyn games, is that they're poor. Try as I might, it takes an age (and very good governors) to make those cities profitable. Not to mention the rebels are damn strong, so taking them in the first place is a pain. This is one of the reasons I decided to leave them unconquered, as they serve as a useful buffer between me and the Seleukids.

Also when you wait to attack Egypt and the AS they tend to have more time to upgrade their Mics. And facing stacks packed with elite units tends to be frustrating.

Still it's good to know you found another way to deal with them. That's the beauty of EB. It's YOUR choise how to rewrite history.

[The Errant]

Okay. I've managed to install the .81 patch so I'm going to be busy actually playing the game for a while.
I'm starting a new campaign with the Sabyn in order to test the viability of my strategy guide and to see what needs revising.

I will be concentrating primarily on getting Egypt and the Levant, going after the Seleukids later.

I have a request to anyone with the 0.81 build of EB. I mentioned in passing on the strategy guide, the idea of taking a stack by ship to conquer the Indian provinces early in the game. The strategy wasn't very feasible in the 0.8 build due to the bugs in unit reqruitment. Particularly for foreign natives.

Now that 0.81 is out and that problem has been solved (I hope) I'd like feedback from anyone who's tried going into India as the Sabyn.

Any experiences (good or bad) from a Sabyn game in India and eastern Persia will be extremely helpful. If you can provide screenshots, so much the better.

Post your replies on this thread or PM them to me.

Thanks

PS. Any. And I do mean any, feedback on the strategy guide is always welcome!!

[Kull]

Be sure to read this thread before starting. There is a bug with Saba farms that we'll be correcting with a "hotfix", but you can manually make the changes to get them working in your new game.

[The Errant]

Thanks for the tip Kull! I really appriciate it.

Based on my experiences on the 0.81 the early strategy is going to need some searious revising. The nerfing of the mine income is what hits me the worst.

Looks like my first new Sabyn game on VH/M is leading up to a crushing defeat. Oh well. I'll just have to start over again.