Best way to play as Getai?

[Ignopotens]

I've been playing this mod for a little while, and I started a game as the Getai last night. While I like what their armies are capable of, I go into debt immeadiately from the cost of my army. Is there a useful way to avoid this, aside from just disbanding most of my forces?

I managed to take a couple independant cities pretty quickly, but that doesn't seem to help. Should I be attacking the Greeks instead?

[goolasso]

I've been playing this mod for a little while, and I started a game as the Getai last night. While I like what their armies are capable of, I go into debt immeadiately from the cost of my army. Is there a useful way to avoid this, aside from just disbanding most of my forces?

I managed to take a couple independant cities pretty quickly, but that doesn't seem to help. Should I be attacking the Greeks instead?

You should attack the mak immediately or disband and improve infrastructures to build a stronger army. The mak will get busy by hellenon and you should be able to defeat them soon... ...

[Ignopotens]

good to know, I'll try that, thanks

[LorDBulA]

I think You are starting good.
Classic EB recipe works very well with Getai (since they dont have immediate enemies).
Capture few rebels settlements with starting army. Disband army. Get out of the dept. Develop settlements a little and built more balanced army that Your treasury can handle.
Have fun. Getai is great to play.

[mlp071]

Get 4 towns surounding your starting one :Singidunum, Naissos, Kallatis and Sarmiszgethusa.Thats 2 mines , 1 port and 1 recruitment center.You will be in -20000 + by then though.

Disband any units you don't need , build economy....After while Epyros will go after Singidunum and Makedon after Naissos , but you will have plenty of time to
get prepared by then.

Then take Tyllis and Serdike if they are available...

[Sdragon]

Can't remember which but one of the provinces you start next to has mines, make it your first target even though it isn't quite the closest.

[Michaelis]

Here's what worked for me:

1. Spend all the starting money on construction (palisade, roads) and new units (queue them up).

2. Capture every independent city you can until you run out of soldiers. Immediately hike taxes in every newly captured city as high as you can without killing population growth or causing revolt. Do not EVER exterminate cities - you're killing your tax base if you do. Remember that every new citizen of your growing empire means more tax money! Make a point to construct buildings that boost population growth, too.

3. Sign peace treaties and trade agreements with everyone you can. They'll attack you later anyway, but in the meantime you want to make as much money as possible and capture as many Eleutheroi cities as possible without getting into a war with another faction. One exception: Byzantion. Pontus will declare war on you when you attack it, but in both of my Getai games they agreed to peace immediately afterwards (I had my diplomat ready and waiting). Byzantion is nice, good trade income and you'll get some cool new units.

You should be out of debt sometime in 270 BC, and it should never get worse than around 12,000 mnai (VH/M). By around 260 BC, you should have an empire stretching from Bosphorus to the Alps. Sarmiszegethusa is a jewel - rich, big city with good unit mix. Move your capital there to minimise the distance-from-capital penalties.

You should be able to complete the campaign goals around 250 BC if all goes well.

[LorDBulA]

You should be able to complete the campaign goals around 250 BC if all goes well.

Lol. If You blitz then Yes. But I dont recommend this type of playing, its just not fun. You loose a lot.
When I played Getai last time (0.74 VH/H ) I ended it about 220BC because of CTD and by that time I had Hellicarnassos and Ipsos only. Romans just kicked me out of my homeland
The whole game was a blast.

[bovi]

I think you're wrong, I've seen no change in tax income from a 400 people village to a huge city. You can see this easily when playing with huge unit size, if you queue up 10 units you spend 2000 people and it never changes.

[LordCurlyton]

I'm on the "don't exterminate side" as I'm damn sure that more peeps = more taxes. Sorry bovi, but I must disagree. I'll get around to actually checking sometime as well. Also, I must add that more peeps = closer to city upgrade and easier to queue up units due to spare bodies.

[paullus]

Lordbula, I feel like I remember that campaign. Were you posting recaps of action in the AI expansion thread or something?

Let me begin by saying that I love to hear that people are playing the Getai and enjoying them. You'll be pleased then to hear that there are some new units and other things in store for the Getai in the next build, only some of which have been previewed.

It is possible to blitz with the Getai and get most of your conditions met within 15-20 years, but remember that, while the Getai controlled a total of 4 provinces not long before 272, they don't regain a unified territory that large for more than 100 years, as best we can tell. Now, that doesn't mean you can't blitz, go for it, it is kinda fun. But my most satisfying Getai campaign saw me with about 5 core provinces in 250, and then playing the Epeirotes and Maks off each other (Getic raiding armies are a lot of fun) until Pontos invaded Europe.

Anyway, I guess your question was primarily about the start. If you take 1 of the 3 provinces easily reached from your starting position (Kallatis, Naissos, and Sarmiszegethusa), and then disband most of your troops, you can be in the black pretty quickly. Taking 2 does it a little faster than that even.

[Redmeth]

I keep waiting and telling myself that when 1.0 hits I'll play the best Getai campaign ever, but I want to be sure that all the features, units and great stuff are in to enhance the joy.
Good things come to those who wait...
P.S.: Please tell me it's true!!!

[bovi]

Hehe, I'm on the "don't exterminate side" because I don't like the action of exterminating, but that's just my qualms .

Anyway, I took a simple experiment, and started a seleucid game. I found out I was wrong: Karmana with 580 people yields 320 mnai at low tax rate. Reducing to 400 means it's reduced to 262, so that's a large impact. Interestingly, at 18522 the yield is 836 and at 19490 it's 848. That miniscule change is probably why I've thought it didn't matter before.

[Pharnakes]

So its a logorthmic function then. Wonder why CA did it that way, prehaps to represent that the larger the population is the harder it is to keep track of them all, and make sure thay pay their taxes. Thought the Romans seemed to manage fine...

[Watchman]

You could also reason it's partly taken up by the running costs of adminstering and policing such large populations. Point of diminishing returns as it were.

[LordCurlyton]

Maybe it was a simple gameplay issue as they realized that its much easier for the human to manage the economy and get giant cities quickly. If they let you have a linear scale or such then you'd be able to steamroll even easier than it can already be.
EDIT: On the subject of exterminating I have no qualms. As I understand it that seemed to be a common action in days of yore. I only don't when its not logical too (too small or same culture) but otherwise don't sweat it too much.

[Michaelis]

What's with the Atomic Gamer page coming up when you click the Post A Reply button?

Anyway, I also had the impression - though I'm by no means sure - that trade income increases when the city grows, too.

Can't wait to play the Getai again with the new changes - hopefully the CTDs will be gone. I got one just as I was laying siege to Rome. Frustrating. Didn't have time to try the temp fixes yet, but I think I'll just start a new game anyway. I like to start with just a single province and then just beat up on everyone. Ahistorical, I know, but such fun.

[paullus]

as long as people are talking about the getai, what sort of armies do you find yourself using?

When I'm playing with the getai, and I don't get a lot of time to play lately, but in my biggest campaign I had two field armies. One was more hellenized, with a large shieldwall phalanx (I try not to think of the stratiotai as in actual phalanxes, its more like a shieldwall, but that's the best way for the engine to portray them) and some komatai, agrianai, and a good cav arm.

My other army was more traditionally Getic. Many komatai and komatai hippeis, which were used to break apart enemy formations through ambushes and misdirection, eventually leading a tired enemy into the a nice core of drapanai lying in wait for their exhausted foes. Ripping apart the flower of the Makedonian army in that manner was one of the best battles I've fought in EB. What sort of armies do you use? Do you recruit lots of regionals, or stick to factional units? Do you skirmish and ambush or go for a straight fight?

[Michaelis]

I make sure I've got lots of ranged-attack units (archers, slingers). It's cheating in a way, because they're waaay overpowered. Light infantry in general is overpowered, while light cavalry is nerfed. Historically, light cavalry was the weapon of choice against light infantry, but in EB light infantry just chews it up and spits it out. I almost never recruit any cavalry - it's so expensive to maintain, and all I need is one-two units per army for pursuit once the battle's won (I always try to kill off all the retreating troops, no victory is complete without successful pursuit of withdrawing enemy units). And in most factions, Getai included, the general's unit is cavalry, so that takes care of that.

Anyway, to elaborate on the usefulness of archers: say you got an archer unit with a couple of chevrons. They're gonna get quite a few enemy troops with the arrows, and then they can be used to fight hand-to-hand with great success. They're fast, so if you set them to skirmish they'll run pursuing enemy units ragged. Then it's time to charge - archers have an improbably hefty charge bonus, and the enemy will be more tired than they are (which makes a significant difference). Lots of time, the pursuing unit just panics right away.

In my Getai and Sweboz campaigns, I could win any battle with two kinds of units: spearmen and archers/slingers. Sweboz skirmishers, these are lethal too - they can take out anything. Getai skirmishers are weaker, you have to make sure they have a few chevrons before you send them to beat up on triarii ;-).

I seriously think the combat values need to be looked at. One thought I had so far was to give all cavalry 2 hit points - one for the horse, one for the rider - to begin with. I'll post more on the subject when I know the game better.

I'm not posting any more today, I had too much beer and I'm starting to babble.

[Ignopotens]

so far in my campaign I've done alright I guess, I took Byzantion without much trouble, and made peace with Pontus after the declared war

got AS to pay me a bunch of mnai to ally with them, then they suddenly broke off the alliance, but didn't attack me

now I'm at war with the Maks, I keep fighting off their armies without much trouble, so I sent a decent force to attack them, and stumbled across a Mak army in ambush, I won the battle but it took a lot out of my army, so I pulled back, I'm rebuilding atm

my armies mainly use a small spear force, only 1-2 units, with 3-4 units of drapanai, 2-3 light cav, 2-3 slingers, 2 skirmishers, and 1 archer

mainly what I do is use the spears to hold the line in front of the slingers, use the light cav to harass and pursue, and maybe charge if really necessary, the skirmishers to hit their heavy infantry before being used as light infantry on the flanks, but the Drapanai are what win the battles for me, they can pretty well handle the hoplites on equal terms head-on, and they'll tear any unit up from the flanks or rear, which is where I always try to hit em, only trick is to keep em clear of the ranged units, usually my light cav do alright at that

[CrownOfSwords]

Getai is a really easy campaign to play. Immediately go after the many rebel settlements surrounding you especially the ones along the adriatic coast they all have mines and give off a lot of income. I found myself using two different types of armies although the second cant come around till much later. I would have a strictly cavalry army of mostly horse archers some tarabostnes not many though. Then I would have a second kind of army with the phalanx units with falxmen as flankers and their skirmishers in bulk as well they are great all round troops. Use the cavalry army to destroy enemy armies in the field, while the other army to capture cities. I really enjoyed the Getai campaign it was tough taking on the Greeks! then later the Romans who were slaughtered in my forests and high hills. Great faction though.