Sauromatae help

[Redmeth]

If anyone has played a successful campaign with them, please give a few hints, on how to start and how to have any hope of getting out of debt? If I disband the troops I don't see how to build up my economy, if I'm agressive all I conquer is poor settlements should i go for the Crimea? Any ideas?
I love slaughtering hoplites or spearmen with my horse archers...

[the_handsome_viking]

If anyone has played a successful campaign with them, please give a few hints, on how to start and how to have any hope of getting out of debt? If I disband the troops I don't see how to build up my economy, if I'm agressive all I conquer is poor settlements should i go for the Crimea? Any ideas?
I love slaughtering hoplites or spearmen with my horse archers...

The strength of this faction is undoubtably in its mobility which gives you room for down right trickery and sleaket tactics.

For example, I once played the Sauromatae just because I felt like giving a nomadic faction a go, and ended up just sending an army to the budding states like the Armenians just so that I could wickedly slaughter their armies, capture their one city and basically laugh at the fact that I had wiped out a faction before they even got a chance to get their feet on the ground.

I had fought a number of fairly big armies before this and had loads and loads of success by using fairly basic steppe tactics and dividing my army into three groups which would basically surround the enemy and sort of induce the effect where the army basically didn't know which part of the army to run at because as soon as it turned its back to one section of the army, their backs got hedgehogged. Sort of like how back in highschool you would steal a fat kids lunchbox or bag and throw it to your friends and make the fat kid run all over the place trying to get it back.

A good way to get money? simple bullying tactics, if you build your economies in your states then sooner or later you will get more money, its just a question of aquiring the money for funding the setup of infrastructure.

With a faction like the Sauromatae what you could attempt to a high degree of success is basically holding captured cities for ransom(the ai usually does pay, I do this all the time to the Romans) or you can simply kill a few of a factions armies and then basically ask them to give you a large sum of money, quite often the AI will literally beg you not to attack them (the Romans do this to me a lot too).

In conclusion to be a steppe warrior is to be a nasty bully to the rest of the world. Go forth and bully.

[Elminster12]

I also recommend going for low-hanging fruit. Gelonus, Gava-Thissakata, and Gava-Yabgu. The latter has mines, so you may want to settle it to milk it for all the money you can get. Prepare to fight the Parthians for Gava-Aursa, but remember....there is no single city that is worth great sacrifices. None of them are big or particularly prosperous....none are worth a lot of blood. Eventually, I'd say get after the Greek cities on the coast and then play around harassing the Armenians, Seleukids, and Parthians. Spread west and fool around with Slavic spearmen and drive the Sweboz mad(silly Germans! you can't conquer Mother Russia!) Or go east. Really...you can do a lot with them, the trouble is getting them started and adapting to NOT valuing cities much(seriously, down the road, the only steppe cities that'll matter economically would be Gava-Yabgu and Uspe...)

[Spoofa]

for ANY faction, the key to a great economy is infrastructure, this rings true in the real world and in the RTW world. When i started a campaign as carthage i knew i was going to be into huge debt, so with my starting money i upgraded ports and such to gain income, disbanded one of my fleets and lo and behold, after the ports were finished creating i started getting a profit rather then debt, after a few turns i got enough to build roads, traders etc. Just focus on things such as this, Sorry if there is a huge difference in economics for steppe factions, since i have never played one, just thought i would throw my $.02 cents in there.

[the_handsome_viking]

for ANY faction, the key to a great economy is infrastructure, this rings true in the real world and in the RTW world. When i started a campaign as carthage i knew i was going to be into huge debt, so with my starting money i upgraded ports and such to gain income, disbanded one of my fleets and lo and behold, after the ports were finished creating i started getting a profit rather then debt, after a few turns i got enough to build roads, traders etc. Just focus on things such as this, Sorry if there is a huge difference in economics for steppe factions, since i have never played one, just thought i would throw my $.02 cents in there.

OH and resources, don't forget resources, if you can find some good mining settlements rape them to shreds.

[KARTLOS]

i would just like to add my two cents. the sauromatae seem to be incrediblly difficult.
i realised that my steppe cities were essentially worthless, so none are garrisoned by more than one unit. i created two "armies" one two take the crimea and one to take on the armenians.
militarily i am doing well, im bleeding the armenians with repeated attack and withdrawl. and i would expect to eventually be able to conquer their two city empire.
i have one city in the crimea and am just about to take the second.
there are alot of rebel armies around, some with similar unit composition to your own (horse archers) which makes things harder, but i have managed to smash them so far.
the problem is i am about 20000 in debt! and losing money every turn. after i took the city in the crimea i think i got around 800 - not enough to help my mounting debt, the city itself brings in about 40 a turn at the moment as i dont have the troops to give it an garrison other than one general.
i think i will eventually try and get to the romans or greek/successor states but that will take me a considerable amount of time if only because of the distance. i would imagine my debt would have doubled by then.

seiges tend to take me a long time, i only have one unit of footsoldiers (archers) so i dont force seiges, but park out side until the defenders are forced to try and fight me. this is because i am worried my horse archers will suffer much greater casualties if they try to enter a city.