A problem with Saka

[Veris]

Hello due to a seemingly impassable ctd I've given up on my Romani campaign in 213 for awhile and started as the Saka. However, I've encountered some problems with them and I wonder how easy they are to mod. Any assistance is quite appreciated! I frankly don't mind if it makes it easier for me since I already give the A.I double the script money and give a select few factions several hundred thousand and orders to attack their closest neighbors to speed up their progress. Also for reference I am using MAA's ever so helpful citymod and jarado's very useful force diplomacy mod. I have changed the descr_strat file to eliminate rebel/pirate spawn since they slow and bore up the game

1) The distance penalties are absurd. The lowest one in my whole empire is 15% from Chighu to Sulek and it doesn't take very long for them to get up to 80%. Is this something hardcoded? How would I go about adding in positive bonuses if it is? It makes it much more difficult to keep provinces in good shape and is compounded by the income issues so garrisons are much harder to keep, which leads to...

2) The steppe income is horrible. I suppose this reflects the actual historical scenario but it's still annoying to deal with the fact that I have 8 territories (most are reasonably built up with pastoralism) yet cannot afford even 1 full field army of a mix of basic steppe horse archers+Saka infantry archers with absolutely 0 garrison troops. I've seen some posts that said that this was being worked on for the newest build, but is there any way I could mod this mid-campaign other than using add_money at regular times based on my guesswork? I don't expect to be building up millions like I do with Rome or Macedonia but being able to support more than half an army to defend a vast frontier would be nice. It's not been easy

3) General question: If I give up a settlement and the enemy takes it, then I take it back again in the next few turns with a fight, are there unrest penalties that result from this? Is there any way to negate that? Given that I have to defend a ridiculously large frontier with maybe 3-4 Generals, 5 Horse archers, and 5 footmen, my current strategy has been to just let the enemy advance too far and shorten my supply lines and them massacre them, then retake what they grabbed. But this might be counterproductive because I'm forced to use more troops to keep order afterwards. I'm not too sure at this point how that really works.

4) The Arche Seleucia is already tearing it up in the majority of .8+ builds and beyond and without any rebel spawns, which are supposed to be their bane they only do it faster. Considering I already fought a 40 year war with them having 45-50 provinces as Macedonia I have no desire to have them reach such power and face their endless hordes again. In my Romani I tried to give my allies and the AS's lesser bordering countries (Bactria, Saba, Pontus, and Hayasdan) hefty amounts of funds with an incentive to attack the white giant and even resorted to bribing many of their cities and donating them to my allies. When this didn't work I hired a mercenary army and went on a rampage throughout Syria into Arabia, taking 4 cities and giving them to Pontus. Even after bribing about 10 different cities and diverting over 1mil in funds, the AS was still able to invade the homeland of the Ptolemies, where they were eventually stopped. I have already made their script money 1/3 of the other provinces but I don't know if this is enough. It just seems their surrounding powers won't attack them until it's too late and the Ptolemies and themselves bite the dust. Here is a campaign map of my Rome game 4 years before the ctd:



If it is possible to incite other factions to be more aggressive I would love to learn how to do this, because I would like to be able to face stronger+more aggressive opponents since my Macedonian campaign was far too easy despite every neighbor at war with me the entire game. This would also curb AS expansion, since then their surrounding small nations could maybe topple or slow the mighty juggernaut. The attack faction demand in diplomacy just doesn't work I've found.

[Ludens]

1) Distance-to-capitol penalties are hard-coded, unfortunatly.
2) No idea, I've never played a steppe faction. Perhaps regular raids would increase funds?
3) Yes, although sometimes a settlement seems to have permanent unrest. A governor with unrest-reducing traits can help here, if you have one.
4) Not really, as far as I know. There is very little that can be done about strategic A.I. behaviour.

[Foot]

Don't take foot troops with you, they slow your armies down. Just take a force of HAs backed by your general and a couple of other heavy/med cav and attack swiftly and silently. The slow moving armies of the greeks won't have a chance. And pillage and burn your way to power and wealth.

Foot

[vonsch]

Don't feel the need to hold every region either, or even most. Keep some good ones, but stay as mobile as you can. You just need to conquer, not hold. I use foot troops only for garrisons. And mostly those are just there to bleed the attacker when they come to retake the region.