Saka VH/M

[nanoman88]

Is it possible to play saka with campaign difficult on vh as soon as the campaign starts the only city you have is losing 4500 a turn. So I thought i'd disband troops to make money and I find out I have only 2 horse archers. Does anyone have some tips i'm totally stumped on how to get of the ground with them. also the closest city has a garrison which bigger than all the troops and generals I have combined. I think it is impossible to play with them.

[Griever14206]

You definetly start out with more than two units of horse archers. In the west of your capital you have a small stack of a Noble Cav unit, as well as 2 horse archers, a foot archer and a general. To the south of them is a similar stack, and to the east of them is another general with a single horse archer unit.

Move all these stacks on the settlement of Bin-Kath, southeast of your lone city. You should be able to take it with the lone force near the town. After capturing Bin-Kath I like to move on to Gava Saka, north of Bin-Kath and west of your capital (Chighu I believe) or south of your capital to Kophen (bit hard to get to with the mountains, but its a nice city.) After that you'll probably end up at war with Baktria or Parthia, which is what makes this campaign so hard. I got stuck there as I was expanding south the Baktrians attacked all 3 of my walless nomad towns in one turn and took them, leaving me with just Kophen (undersiege) and Takashila. I was then of course, forced to quit.

The Saka are a tough campaign to play as, so I suggest bumping the difficulty down to hard or even medium (not sure how much that will help). The Saka however, are probably the most interesting faction in the game, since, once you occupy some Baktrian towns, they go from a totally normadic army to a Hellenic Phanlanx/Heavy Calvary army supplemented by your original nomads. Good luck.

[Thaatu]

The way I did it was first I took Bin-kath, left a lone unit there as garrison and moved all the troops I had to Gava-Saka. I spent all my starting money on building and recruitment in the first turn. After I took Gava-Saka I moved on to Gava-Alanna and finally Gava-Mazskata. At that point my income finally got on the positive side, and I had only my faction leader, another FM and a single HA unit left in my army. Plus I was 47k in debt, so all I could do was wait. I managed to raid Kiat, with a little help from my spy, which gave me 10k. After about 25 turns my budget was green. I had a little fright when a Parthian half-stack was closing in on Gava-Mazskata, but with my brave raiders I lured them away from the city, until I could recruit more HA. When I could, I destroyed the enemy army.

After that I waited until I had 10k, and then I recruited an army in Ghighu. With that army I took Sulek and discovered there were mines there so my financial problems were solved. Now the game is somewhere around 220bc. My only enemy is and has been Parthia. Bactria is my loyal trade partner.

Here's a question: Does Sulek have mines as default or were they built by the "eleutheroi"?

[nanoman88]

Yeah I guess I have to abandon my saka campaign, but I want to play as some indo greeks so bad. I guess its time to try baktria and arche selucos

[keravnos]

Saka was never meant to be easy, but in the future it will be a bit easier. Oh and "becoming IndoSaka" aka getting the reforms, will be MUCH more rewarding.

So far as IndoGreeks are concerned, well, they are getting better as well.

[Redmeth]

Don't forget about the Sauromatae, although after I'm done with my campaign I doubt I'll play them again but still every faction should get some love.

[Griever14206]

Exactly, maybe I should become the spokes-person for the steppe factions. I just wanna take the time to say how well I think the steppe factions have been created, I love the fact that they have their own system of "government", it almost feels like a totally different game.