Gaesatae overpowered?

[The Errant]

Who wants to play a MP with me? I get only 6 units of full-power Gaesatae, with gold chevrons, gold armour and gold swords, you get what you want.

Anyone?

Fine. I'll take a full stack of celtic slingers. With double gold chevrons and no general.

[antisocialmunky]

Lol, I don't think that's going to work, I've done bridge battles with slingers vs Gaestae and it doesn't workout so well for the slingers...

You could just get the ultimate army of 20 uber gold uber Kataphract-type horse archers.

[The Errant]

I fought the Galatikoi Tindanotae, the Galatian version of the nude, mad drugged up barbarians with mostly slinger armies. The key is in flanking. Even against phalangites the armor bonuses from the front are simply overpowering. You need height or mobility. Easiest way to kill elite units with slingers is to leave one or two firing at them, make sure to disable skirmish mode. Then disable skirmish mode from the rest and have them flank on both sides. The elites will charge those units with disabled skirmish modes. Once your flanking slingers are on both sides and to the back of the charging elites, reactivate skirmish mode for your bait and watch the crossfire oblitirate the enemy. Works for Argyraspidai, Thorakitai Argyraspidai, Galatikoi Tindanotae, Hypaspistai, Hetaroi, Hellenikon Katapractoi etc. etc.

edit. Forgot to mention. Allways focus your fire on a single enemy unit. Minimum of four slingers per enemy unit, not counting whoever you got as bait. The Celtic Slingers are even better than the eastern ones due to their freakishly long range and almost inexhaustable supply of ammo.

[Tellos Athenaios]

edit. Forgot to mention. Allways focus your fire on a single enemy unit. Minimum of four slingers per enemy unit, not counting whoever you got as bait. The Celtic Slingers are even better than the eastern ones due to their freakishly long range and almost inexhaustable supply of ammo.

That's an interesting strategy here, never payed that much attention to skirmish mode since my units always get caught... There's a slight problem though, needing 4 units to obliterate 1 or 2 is fine, but what are you going to do to take care of the rest of the army in the meanwhile? I suppose you'd need plenty of space for both the skirmishing and the trap too. Perhaps you could use some light javcav to greater effect for the luring purpose: you can keep them just out of the Gaesatae range, but they'll tempt the fanatics into a vain charge anyway (being cavalry after all). Especially Hippakontistai, they have a decent secondary attack as well.

[The Errant]

That's an interesting strategy here, never payed that much attention to skirmish mode since my units always get caught... There's a slight problem though, needing 4 units to obliterate 1 or 2 is fine, but what are you going to do to take care of the rest of the army in the meanwhile? I suppose you'd need plenty of space for both the skirmishing and the trap too. Perhaps you could use some light javcav to greater effect for the luring purpose: you can keep them just out of the Gaesatae range, but they'll tempt the fanatics into a vain charge anyway (being cavalry after all). Especially Hippakontistai, they have a decent secondary attack as well.

Not to spoil your fun but javcav dosen't cut it. Sure their more mobile. However against a phalangitai unit especially the pike phalanxes the only place they are vulnerable to javelins is directly from the back. Unless you use settings that allow unlimited ammo, a unit of javcav will run out of ammo too soon. At best they can inflict maybe a handful of casualties per unit of javcav on a unit of pikephalangites.
The slingers on the other hand have plenty of ammo to spare. And hording them in large numbers allows you to set up lethal crossfire zones where no matter what direction the phalanx turns to a unit or more of slinger will always be firing at it from the vulnerable back or flank. There is no surer way to absolutely decimate enemy armies. Apart from cavalry, slingers are some of the fastest units around and can withdraw whenever they feel threatened. Once they run out of ammo simply withdraw. If your facing cavalry. Target them first. With a large enough stack of slingers you can even decimate Catapracht units. Sure you will take casualties, but while you may loose a unit or two to their charge when seven or eight other units are firing bullets at the catas, usually from their exposed backside or flank. You can even rout the most powerful cavalry in the game.

Note. I don't like hording slingers and using exploit tactics. I prefer balanced stacks and fair fights. However playing the Sabyn I've had to face two maybe three seleucid stacks coming my way on the same turn. Most of those stacks were packed with elite units and they even bought all the local mercs on their way down the peninsula. With a normal stack of my regular troops I'd face over 50 % casualties trying to destroy their first stack alone. No way I could handle number two and three on the same turn. Especially since the seleucids will just send another one with their limitless treasury.
Since the AI is basically cheating by getting those scripted cash bonuses for provinces held, the only way to stand against a faction as powerful as the seleucids was to either cheat more money to myself. Adjust the stats of my troops to make the uber powerful. Or use the one exploit already available in the game without cheating. Hording masses of cheap slingers and slaughtering the enemy at range. It's neither fun nor glorious on the long run, they are the desperate tactics of the drowning man. But they kept me from drowning, so I won't complain.

edit. The Galatians are recruitable to a varying degree with a level 4 gov and the reagional barracks. Recruitment seems to depend a little on what faction you are playing. Some seem to be able to recruit more galatian units than others. Don't know if it's a feature or a bug. Most of the Galatians I faced have been mercs recruited in the general area of Ancyra.

[JeffSteel]

I fought the Galatikoi Tindanotae, the Galatian version of the nude, mad drugged up barbarians with mostly slinger armies. The key is in flanking. Even against phalangites the armor bonuses from the front are simply overpowering. You need height or mobility. Easiest way to kill elite units with slingers is to leave one or two firing at them, make sure to disable skirmish mode. Then disable skirmish mode from the rest and have them flank on both sides. The elites will charge those units with disabled skirmish modes. Once your flanking slingers are on both sides and to the back of the charging elites, reactivate skirmish mode for your bait and watch the crossfire oblitirate the enemy. Works for Argyraspidai, Thorakitai Argyraspidai, Galatikoi Tindanotae, Hypaspistai, Hetaroi, Hellenikon Katapractoi etc. etc.

edit. Forgot to mention. Allways focus your fire on a single enemy unit. Minimum of four slingers per enemy unit, not counting whoever you got as bait. The Celtic Slingers are even better than the eastern ones due to their freakishly long range and almost inexhaustable supply of ammo.

Very true, even elite units will just melt away under flanking fire from slingers with decent experiance. My three units of triple silver cheveron slingers will kill 10-20 men per volley in elite units such as Carthiginian Elite African Infantry and Sacred band, and even those Galatian wild men after getting rid of their extra HP. They will also decimate ANY calvary short of cataphracts, and hurt cataphracts fairly well, so make sure to build up their experiance (which should be easy considering how many they can kill). No unit is invincible, its simply a matter of knowing their weaknesses and exploiting them.

(By the way, I'm assuming that anyone can recruit those Galatian Wild Men if they build a type 4 government in Ankyra and leveling up the regional barracks enough. Is this assumption correct?)

[antisocialmunky]

I fought the Galatikoi Tindanotae, the Galatian version of the nude, mad drugged up barbarians with mostly slinger armies. The key is in flanking. Even against phalangites the armor bonuses from the front are simply overpowering. You need height or mobility. Easiest way to kill elite units with slingers is to leave one or two firing at them, make sure to disable skirmish mode. Then disable skirmish mode from the rest and have them flank on both sides. The elites will charge those units with disabled skirmish modes. Once your flanking slingers are on both sides and to the back of the charging elites, reactivate skirmish mode for your bait and watch the crossfire oblitirate the enemy. Works for Argyraspidai, Thorakitai Argyraspidai, Galatikoi Tindanotae, Hypaspistai, Hetaroi, Hellenikon Katapractoi etc. etc.

edit. Forgot to mention. Allways focus your fire on a single enemy unit. Minimum of four slingers per enemy unit, not counting whoever you got as bait. The Celtic Slingers are even better than the eastern ones due to their freakishly long range and almost inexhaustable supply of ammo.

That is quite effective even against the uber tank type guys as you mentioned. My personal tactic is to get slingers on opposite sides of a unit by using one slinger as bait and having one eventually slip behind it. That way, whichever way it turns it won't be able to respond effectively.

I should have mentioned my post to say that I was fighting three armies of naked fanatics at a river for fun. So, yeah if you outnumber them with slingers, you will win.