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.

[Tristuskhan]

One good hint too: don't try to destroy all those damned rebel stacks: since your lands are so poor, the loss of income caused by them is very small. Use your forces to sack rich civilised settlements instead. I realised it too late in my Sauromatian campaign andgot stuck in great debt until 220BCE, having wasted time and men in an endless war against the Sweboz. When I tried to go south, hellenic armies there were almost unbeatable, it was too late. I remember Aorsi riders spending all their arrows shooting at the back of Chaonian Agema and killing only fifteen...

[Redmeth]

The Sarmatians can be great just check out my posts here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...=74123&page=18
The start is very hard though I took Gava-Yugra, Gelonus and Gava-Thissakata then disbanded built whatever infrastructure I could and saved up for mines in Uspe and Yugra. After that I was planning to take Crimeea but thankfully the Hayasdan attacked. I say thankfully because I managed to conquer their 3-4 provinces eliminated them and took over their kick-ass mines after that I went to the east Pahlava was hard to take down (those Grivpanhar are and you have to overwhelm them). After that AS attacked and the only way to beat them is by constantly raiding deep in their territory (Selukeia, Arbela, Antiocheia) destroying their MIC's and slowly taking over and keeping the neighboring settlements.
After holding all the east only then I looked to the west, started fighting the Maks in Asia Minor, I launched some massive invasions led by noble cavalry and with foot troops to hold the cities. Took Pella and raided almost all their cities and Greece and gifted some to KH some to Epeiros (KH was only alive in Rhodos). This really worked great as Greece is a puzzle of KH, Maks and Epirotes.
The Getai wouldn't keep the peace I made with them so I incorporated them too and now I'm preparing to take the last settlements I need to hold from the Romans.
And I plan on meeting my goals of raiding the Celts and Sweboz and Romans with a stack mainly composed of Indian Longbowmen(very good in melee) Dacians and HA. I can't wait to cut up those Germans with my Indians that I bring from the other end of the known world.
Truly a kick-ass campaign.