The Serpent Shield (Getian AAR)

[Morte66]

I am Zalmodegikos, leader of the Getic peoples in Getae proper and king at Buridava. I am sixty years old today, and as I look back on my life it seems I have been a poor chief. I rule but one province of the many Getic tribes, we are at war with the great might of Macedon though we share no border with them, my treasure chest is bleeding, and the barracks have burned down. It is time to make amends, and leave a sound kingdom for my son Oroles.

I have marshalled the army.

A Getae AAR
So, let’s have go at an AAR. I was tempted to play the Getae because it seems they have:
- A fairly balanced roster, including some unusual units, which could be fully rounded out by local conquests. It’s not that high-tech, but it’s good value. It’s described here.
- Room to expand, followed by challenging (Macedon, Rome) but not insane (Seleucia) natural enemies.
- A good variety of military opposition (Greek phalanxes, Roman heavy infantry, steppe heavy cavalry and horse archers).
- A potentially viable economy, with mines and land trade routes and a chunk of the Black Sea trade. It’s not like the Ptolemies, but they could earn enough to be proactive.

Objectives
I’ve never paid much attention to official victory conditions. I just do what I think is right for my people, and play until I think “I’ve got this one in the bag”. My goal for this campaign is to unite Thrace under the Getae and make them mighty and secure. That probably equates to:
- Conquering their region 1 and 2 provinces.
- Building a strong economy.
- Strength on the field and a sound strategic position with good borders.
- Peace with all, if necessary by conquest.

(House) Rules
- Very hard/medium, manage all settlements, large units, unlimited time.
- No reloads, except when I clicked wrong (I am prone to pathing foul-ups on the strategic map).
- Otherwise, it’s win or die. River battles are a fair reward for manoeuvring on the strategic map to earn them.


272BC, Spring, Buridava

There is a hole in my treasure chest, and money is pouring out. It’s pouring into the mouths of a dozen army units who’re standing around doing nothing. I have five thousand mnai and I’m losing three and a half per season. I have to either disband this army and leave this one province to Oroles, or conquer new lands before the moneylenders come knocking.

Well, there are rich mines to the north near Sarmiszegethusa in the mountain bastion of Getia Koile. I’ll take Oroles plus two thirds of the army and head north through the pass. The other third is with my younger son Dizo in Mikra Skythia to the east on the Black Sea shore. I have a spy there, one Diales, who seems quite talented. He says five units garrison Kallatis, so I’ve told Dizo to march on it.

I told the young spy to scout westwards between Getia and the Macedonian lands, and not to risk his neck since I can’t replace him. My court diplomat is Tarsa. He has achieved as little in life as me, and seems no smoother than the rug merchant in town, but I have no other diplomats so I send him south. I’m looking for a ceasefire with Macedon, trade with anyone he can find, and alliances with Macedon’s enemies (especially the Koinon Hellenion and the Kingdom of Epeiros).

Before leaving, I must order Buridava. The town is small and undeveloped and the people are not especially fertile. I’ve spent the rest of the treasure chest commissioning a palisade, roads, and hot vapour baths to attract more subjects. I need taxpayers and soldiers, and the chest would have been empty by autumn anyhow. I’ll leave a unit of light skirmishers to guard the place from thieves. They’re cheap, and don’t look much use in a real fight.

To war!

[Morte66]

I’ve started many a faction in RTR and EB to find myself with units of javelin cavalry. I’ve never liked them: they’re rather expensive, they don’t carry enough ammo, and they can’t fight when they run out. I usually disband them, and maybe keep a couple as fast decoys and rout chasers who can also fire a few missiles. When I started up this EB campaign and saw that the family bodyguards were medium cavalry with a missile attack of 5, I felt a sinking feeling. It was Pontos all over again, with the deeply ordinary javelin cavalry bodyguards. Then I realised they’re horse archers… Oh man, this is going to be fun. I wonder if they’re the westernmost horse archers in EB?


272BC, Autumn, at Sarmiszegethusa

I reached Sarmiszegethusa in late summer and laid siege, then made the assault in autumn. It was straightforward, beating five garrison units with an army of ten including phalanxes and missile specialists. The archers and slingers advanced in loose order to neutralise the slingers inside, firing over the low palisade to either kill them or drive them away. It didn’t work out, they took shelter under the shadow of the palisade instead. But then the skirmishers moved in to pelt them with javelins as the ram hit the gate. I got skirmishers in to rush the slingers and a couple of light phalanxes to hold the entry, and then brought the army inside.

After that we gave the defenders a choice: charge our phalanxes to be pinned then flanked by our Drapani shock infantry with the murderous two-handed falx, or sit and take missile fire from all directions. It seems their opinions were divided, but neither approach met with success.

I have no money, though the debts are growing much slower with the income from the mines and the taxes from the new town. I hear Dizo has reached Kallatis and laid siege. The diplomat Tarsa may have little grace or influence, but he has a certain low cunning. He ignored all the great leaders and skilled negotiators of Macedon, and signed a ceasefire with a humble captain who was easily gulled. We have trade rights too. Tarsa didn’t show them our maps, but he has a travelled around to find their cities.

Diales the spy reports reasonable pickings to the south, and he has swung north past Singidunum to explore my western flank. The richer southern Eleutheroi would give me a land frontier with Macedon, so I’ll leave them alone for now. Instead I’m heading northeast to the pass out of Getia Koile. I’ll help Dizo at Kallatis if he needs it and march on Olbia in Skythia if he doesn’t.

Skythia! It’s a name to conjure with. I heard tales of the old Skythians as a child at the bard’s knee. I expect we learned horse archery from the Skythians. I should love to conquer it; that would make something of my life. With any luck, it would also get me another place to recruit horse archers, which are not so easily raised in Thrace. And, hope of hopes, I might build heavy cavalry there one day. We Getai can raise fine light lancers, though I have none right now, but heavy lance cavalry would be an extra dimension to our warfare.

271BC, Thrace

Dizo took Kallatis well enough. He did better than me with half the troops – the Hellenes inside ran around like headless chickens instead of taking shelter from his slingers. He left a garrison and has come north to join me. I spent the year marching, and so did Dizo. We end the year just short of the Skythian border, and winter in our own lands with good supplies. I now have the whole host of Getia with me, barring three garrison units.

Tarsa exchanged trade rights with some minor leader of the Koinon and gave them our maps in exchange for an alliance, then went around locating their cities. Then he did the same in Epeiros. Diales has flitted past Singidunum, Ak-Ink, and Lucarottea on our western borders. None seem especially large, developed, fertile, or rich so they’re lesser priorities. They’re peopled by Celts, with some Gauls and Illyrians it seems. But he did spy mines off to the northwest in Lugouw. He’s coming east now, to check out the home of the Basternae – the other great warriors I yearn to conquer – and assist me by the Black Sea.

A diplomat came from the Romani. He was quite the smoothest, most mannered man I’ve ever met. My bard is a groaning bear beside him. It’s a good job I actually wanted to give him trade rights, because I doubt I could have refused otherwise. My own diplomat has explored Epeiros a little and moved to Italia to see whom we’re trading with. He reports huge armies of heavy troops all over the south; many bigger than my entire military appear to be just troop contingents going off to sieges. We’re well out of that. He saw the Romani besiege a town in northern Italia; they’re very organised and efficient. I must conquer a nation, and build it to stand against them all. Or Oroles must do it after me.

At the turn of the year I heard that the Romani, who are at war with Epeiros, have made an alliance with Macedon. This is not good news.

270BC, Winter

Oh, what a year.

In spring I crossed into Skythia. There was a substantial garrison in Olbia, nine units about half cavalry, and a field army of five more with horse archers and heavy cavalry patrolling to the west. It was clear that the recruiting should be good here, if I could take the town with my three chiefs and eleven other units (mainly light infantry). Obviously I wanted to avoid the field army and besiege the town, where my phalanxes would slaughter the cavalry in a street fight. So I feinted at the field army who withdrew in the face of twice their numbers, then dashed for the town and laid siege.

And I was outmanoeuvred! The field army, being pure cavalry, moved faster than I reckoned and hit me from behind. The mixed army came out of town to attack what was now my rear. I was looking at six or seven units of horse archers and two heavy cavalry, from two directions, and no streets to channel them and cover my flanks. I will admit I was tempted to withdraw. That way, I could probably fight the field army and come back later for the town. But I felt the blood pounding in my ears, and a wild savage excitement that has been missing these last twenty years. I could die of old age any day, and I would be lord of Skythia before it happens. So the battle lines were drawn. The numbers were about even, over nine hundred each; but to be an infantry army surrounded by horse archers is a nightmare.

But I did have certain advantages:
- Sheer numbers meant large formations. If I held a spread formation they would not have the range to shoot my units from both sides. I wasn’t surrounded; I just had a circular battlefront.
- With interior lines of communication I could switch units around faster – thus do phalanxes outmanoeuvre cavalry.
- The battlefield was a mix of grassland and light forest. Most of my infantry are experts in forests, and arrows don’t work so well there. Reserves stayed under the trees. So did surprises.
- Their two forces didn’t arrive quite simultaneously. I couldn’t defeat them in detail, but I did take the full brunt of one force before the other.
- I had my share of missiles too: three horse archer bodyguards, two units of foot archers, two of slingers, and a unit of javelin cavalry I’d forgotten.

And so to battle...

I put a ring of missiles around a backbone of phalanxes, all in loose formation. Their field army hit first. The horse archers sat, arrogant in tight order, while I shifted position and targets to catch them from flanks and launched cavalry feints to turn them around and shoot at their backs. I took substantial losses in the missile duel, but they took considerably more. The Skythian noble cavalry set its sights on my archers, but by the time their charge went home it met a phalanx who’d just run like Olympians and reformed as they skidded to a halt. The horses suffered horribly, and then the falx men were around and at their backs. The slaughter was good.

I will never use those cavalry so foolishly when they serve me.

Then the force from town arrived at my “rear”; it was half cavalry with spearmen, skirmishers and a phalanx making the rest. We repeated the missile duel for a while, though honours were now more even since they had the numbers. Then their infantry reached mine, and just at that moment their first horse archer group ran out of arrows and decided to charge. Things got very confused. Very confused indeed. It rained horses instead of arrows.

I’m not completely sure what happened in the next ten minutes. I flung units around, reinforcing my flanks and attacking theirs. In places there were so many dead I could not identify my troops to give orders – I have always had trouble seeing colours, and patterns of dead horses confuse my eyesight. My javelin cavalry just vanished: I had fifty at the start of the battle and none at the end, and I’ve absolutely no idea how they died. It was far too confused for useful archery from a distance, which was good because their new forces were the only ones with ammunition. But in the confusion I managed to control the one crucial thing: the intersection of phalanxes and cavalry. Their cavalry met the sharp end of my phalanxes, and their phalanx headed off into the distance pursuing a unit of my slingers who were out of bullets. I didn’t order that, the captain of the slingers did it himself. If I had a daughter, she’d be married to him by now and he’d be a chief.

I rallied my men continually. Their morale is good and they trust me a lot. So it was the Skythians who started to rout, here and there, and as they thinned I slowly put a proper line back together to fix their remaining units. A third of the falx men still lived, so they swung around this line and their blades drank well again. My chiefs charged their more stubborn units from behind. And we routed all of them, and there was a glorious pursuit, and good slaughter. Then the slingers led their phalanx back to my army to die.

I must apologise to the skirmishers whom I took so lightly earlier. They fought well, flowed swiftly to fill many a gap, killed plenty, and died less than some.

It was a heroic victory. We counted 827 of their bodies on the field, and 451 of ours. Now I am wintering in Olbia, which we took from a few dozen survivors after the battle. Between the (ahem) reduction in army expenses and the income from this fine new port, I am earning almost eighteen hundred mnai per season to tackle the debt of sixteen thousand. What next, I wonder, what next?

[Rilder]

Very good aar,


Btw, yes those Komati Skirmishers are a very good unit.

[Pelopidas]

I really love the Komataï...but I can't stand Dacian bodyguards units.

Good AAR, interesting...we shall see what will happen...

[Morte66]

but I can't stand Dacian bodyguards units.

In what sense "can't stand"? You think they're no use? Or you think the bodyguard should be some other unit?

Or did they beat you up some time? ;)

[I "can't stand" Seleucids. Any Seleucids. All Seleucids. I can't stand them because I played Pontos, and spend a couple of decades taking Anatolia off high-tech sarissa pahalanxes run by psycopathic hegemonists. I still twitch at the thought.]

[Morte66]

269BC, Spring, Olbia

This town is wealthy, and growing, and could be a lot wealthier. Also the Skythian Royal Tombs are here – it’s not quite the tomb of Megas Alexandros, but it’s a start. It’s essentially a Hellenic town, the people are not so used to our Getian ways or so happy to see us. It will need courting and more than a token garrison, if I’m not to have streets running with the blood of taxpayers.

Now that I have a port at Olbia, and in two years I’ll have started one at Kallatis, I need trading partners on the Black Sea and the Aegean. When my diplomat has finished his tour of Italia he can go look for them. I think his crucial diplomacy is done for now, I have my two alliances in the south and I can only hope nothing changes with Macedon or Rome for a long time.

Diales spies two cities on the peninsula to the east, Chersonesos and Pantikapaion. They have high walls of stone, which I’d heard of but I’ve never seen. They’re rich targets; but they also armies of fifteen to twenty units each, split between the garrison and the field. And they’re not at all Getian, so even if I had a hope of taking them they’d be hard to hold. I’ll leave them alone for now, and hope they leave me.

I have five or six hundred men with me. I have lost four or five hundred conquering Skythia and two or three hundred before that. I would like to take Gáwjám Bástárnõz, home of the famous warriors, which lies to the west. It holds eight or nine units; Diales says all but two are infantry, and the cavalry are just German light horse with javelins. And, wonder of wonders, it has no walls. There are none at all, not even a palisade. That opens some possibilities… No way could I storm it with the troops I can spare right now, but perhaps a missile army could lure them out and wear them down. It might take a few battles to kill enough for an assault to be viable, but it’s close enough to my borders to re-supply the army between raids. In theory it ought to be possible…

The Chersonesos field army is sitting on their border, pointed my way. Well, I can’t stare at it forever. I’m off to Gáwjám Bástárnõz, with Dizo and two hundred missile infantry. Oroles has a way with people, so he can govern Olbia and keep these Greeks quiet. The phalanxes and skirmishers can hold the town, or the river crossing.

[Morte66]

Very good aar,

Thanks. I realised I'd got the dates a bit wrong -- I missed a year spent marching -- and fixed it up from 271 onwards. Must pay more attention to my notes...

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

Getai are very strong once you manage to have available all the unit roaster. I once managed to defeat a strong Macedonian army in open plain field on hard difficulty level (custom battle) with disproportionate casualties.

[Morte66]

266BC, Winter, Outside Gáwjám Bástárnõz

Well, some theory that proved to be. When I look back to what I wrote two or three years ago I can only laugh.

We marched to Gáwjám Bástárnõz. As Diales said, there were no walls and about ten units inside. So we rolled up, spread out to skirmish, and got ready to pull back the centre and invite their bolder men into a pocket of missile troops. And it went fine for a while, I think we killed a hundred and fifty me for the loss of a handful. Then we were out of ammunition and had to get our infantry out of the battle, and that didn’t work so well at all. They committed their cavalry, who are nothing special but more than a match for slingers, and we had no arrows or weight of horse to throw them back. By the time we were safe in the woods, I’d lost a hundred men. That was almost half my troops for a fifth of theirs.

This would not do.

I merged the survivors of the four infantry units. A full unit of archers went to the Olbia garrison, but the two smartest sergeants went back to Buridava to train new units when the time comes. The slingers I just sent back to their families. There were too few to be effective, and besides I did not want to face those men again.

That left me wondering what to do with Dizo and myself. It struck me that our horse archer bodyguards had managed both parts of “hit and run” without problems, and the Basternae had still not built a palisade. It’s not like we had any expenditure to oversee elsewhere, nor could we spare infantry for sieges on all those other towns with walls. We might as well stay here and keep raiding Gáwjám Bástárnõz. So we did, for two and half years. Every season except winter we would ride up, lure out the boldest troops (who usually had the least armour), and shoot them up from both sides. Then we’d ride off leaving about a hundred dead for little or no loss. I must have done this ten times, and this winter I feel the town is finally in my grasp. I will have it in spring, and I will be fulfilled.

Let me think what else has happened…

Oroles’ son Koson came of age. He’s a doer, not a thinker or a talker, so he rode out to join me. The lad can fight. Happy is the man who can shoot a hundred famous warriors every season, with a fine son and grandson for company!

My agents have been busy. The diplomat Tarsa explored Italia and Sicilia. The Romans have all Italia bar a town called Taras, held by Epeiros. He agreed trade rights with some unpronounceable merchants from Africa, which may be useful one day. Then he headed for Anatolia to loop around the Black Sea coast. I got trade rights with Pontos (two ports) and a race of heavily armoured mountain goats called the Hai who have taken Kotais. Olbia is now trading with Sinope. Most of the coast is held by no nation, so it’s not open for organized trade. Perhaps later…

He also made an alliance with the mighty Arche Seleukeia, which is allied with Macedon, which might make Macedon a little friendlier. He’s heading for the Sauromatae now, since it seems I share a short border with them at the far Skythian frontier.

Diales slunk off east, to go round the other way and collect information of direct military use.

About a year ago the money finally started flowing into my treasure chest instead of the moneylenders’. I can start building governments, and roads. Olbia I left to govern themselves in their own way for now. They understand cavalry recruitment better than us; once they’ve got that in hand Oroles may wish to integrate them more. The Getian provinces – Sarmiszegethusa and Kallatis – will have full Getian institutions. Things are now settled enough in Olbia for Oroles to leave if he drops the taxes, so he’s bringing me some infantry. The Chersonesos army has sat on its border this whole time, causing a little unrest in Olbia. Somebody will have to take that land one day, and better us than the Sauromatae or the bold King of Pontos.

I await Spring, when Gáwjám Bástárnõz should be mine.

[Morte66]

I found myself wondering whether my strange serial horse archer raid on the Basternae was an exploit. It seems to me that it only worked because they had no walls, and that it would work in reality on a town with no walls. If there's anything dodgy about it, it's that the AI didn't build a palisade after the first few raids. But as the EB website says, I have brains and the AI has money. If I don't get to do serial raids on unwalled towns, they shouldn't get a garrison of nine units in a town that can support two or three.

[Morte66]

265BC, First Day of Spring, Inside Gáwjám Bástárnõz

Dizo son of Zalmodegikos, to King Oroles near Olbia:

My father the king is dead. Long live King Oroles!

I would like to say that father died in battle, as we shot the last of the chieftain’s javelin cavalry then charged in to finish them. But it is not so, he died in the winter in his sickbed and your Koson barely survived the same illness. We took the town, my nephew and I, only a month after father died. I’ve had his body frozen in ice – we found a Skythian who knew how from their steppe tombs – and I’ll return it to the royal tombs at Buridava.

Your son is recovered.

I send you this our father’s journal, my king. It contains plans and insight that may interest you. Know that we have barely managed to quell unrest in the town with our small numbers. I was of a mind to put Gáwjám Bástárnõz to the sword in my grief, but our father wanted to build and recruit here. So, I can hold it but I will need to stay here for a few months.

I am at your command.

[Ower]

nice AAR.

[Pelopidas]

By " can't stand " I mean that I think they stink, the Dacian bodyguards... :p
Perhaps they are just not in my way of arfare, I don't know.