I need advice on Playing Baktria

[Ice]

My new campaign will be Baktria. After my initial Roman campaign I tried a variety of factions, but I found Baktria to look the most promising. I would like to know how to best play this faction.

Also, my two northern settlements have type IV governments even though they are homeland regions. What should be done here?

[bovi]

Don't take this as fact, but I think those other two provinces are also satrapies of Arche Seleukeia, so they have their own rulers. They choose to join you when you break with your master and are therefore allied.

[Ice]

Don't take this as fact, but I think those other two provinces are also satrapies of Arche Seleukeia, so they have their own rulers. They choose to join you when you break with your master and are therefore allied.

Would you recommend I make them my homeland regions?

Come on guys, I'd like some advice before I start. I always here people saying how awesome Baktria is to play. I'm just wondering how I start it up. There are many rebels, and you start with a very small army.

[d'Arthez]

Build mines. They are vital. Kophen is extremely rich in that respect, so definitely take that city - 1800 in basic mine income per turn is just too sweet to ignore.

The two northern provinces don't offer too much in recruitment of factional troops anyway, so leave these governments as they are. The only really useful province in that respect is Baktria. Once you manage to build the MIC up to lvl 4 you have a very decent troop-selection available. Without Baktra all is lost in the early game.

There are two possibilities: either you blitz the Arche or you wait until your economy is more fully developed. That does not mean the Arche will come in and slaughter you, necesarilly. I have had a few games in which I had taken over India and wiped out the Saka before the Arche could be bothered to consider attacking me.

[mlp071]

If you got enough money and time, since you will have better public order then with MiC IV.

Try taking Kophen right away(siege it though), and get ready for possible (very likely)AS attack.Build walls, specially in Baktra, and mines.Although once i didn't take Kophen right away and AS didn't came after me till much later

I never allied with Saka , since that means ceasefire between them and Pahlava/AS.

Usually would leave them fighting over usseless steppes with Pahlava, while i am dealing with AS.

That way they are bussy with each other and tend to leave me alone.When and if AS attacks Pahlava, then you can try alliance with Saka.But not sure if they will go east after Sauros or you afterwards.

If you attack AS before they attack you Pahlava will most likely stay in alliance with you.

Hope this can help...

[Sygrod]

I've run the Baktrian campaign to 196BC and have the following suggestions:

If Arche Seleukeia (AS for short) attack you, you can either put up with their tireless onslaught or get a money limiting mod (which is what I ended up doing).
The AS are relentless and you will be fighting at least a battle per turn on average. It gets tiresome after a while.

When you decide to expand, take one city at a time and concentrate on consolidating it. You have a lot of time to conquer. At 209 I have all but obliterated the AS.

I found Pahlava to be a good ally. They keep AS and Saka busy. What I did was to give 500mnai per turn as a gift. It keeps them happy and they can keep a half decent army.

Concentrate on your economy and build up your army gradually. Get some 3span projectors. They decimate at a good distance. Once I figured out how to use them, the elephants with archers are handy. They make short work of cavalry and disorganised troops, especially in conjunction with generals' mounted guards. Persian archers and eastern slingers are your friends and will reduce enemy formations quite nicely. Make sure they are protected by phalanxes.

Another good resource is the assasin. Train some by killing barbarian captains and use them to sabotage a target city.

[Underhand]

I've played Bactria once before, but I think I could have done better. I'll probably give it another whirl after my current Romani game, and what I intend to try is building nothing but factional MICs in Baktra until I can get bactrioi hippotoxotai, which are practically unbeatable if you know what you're doing with them. Add a unit of elephants to that and you have a fast (though expensive) army that can storm any settlement with wooden walls. And you can take a city with horse archers. I did it plenty of times in my last game with them. It just requires micromanagement and knowing when to run and when to charge. (I got through walls by manning rams with eastern skirmishers.)

Other settlements would focus on building mines. They're more expensive and less profitable than when I last played Bactria, but doubtless still well worth building. Kophen can and should be conquered by the second turn and should be the first place you build a mine in. All you need from the army near it is the family member, the phalanx, the persian archers and the archer-spearmen. Disband everything else and besiege Kophen with what remains. The garrison will sally, but it's mostly garbage. You must rush your troops to the gate and place the pantodapoi phalangitai in front of it to pin the troops coming out. Make sure they are in guard and phalanx modes. Your missile troops should form up to the left of the gate in order to fire into the right side of the mob that will be twisting and writhing against your wall of pikes. Your bodyguard unit should stick close by on the right to charge when doing so could make a unit rout. Do not allow your men to follow routing troops through the gates; if you capture the gates then the foes will stop coming out and you probably won't be able to beat them inside the city. Eventually you'll have killed enough to go in and finish the job, so do so.

You can use cheaper troops than hippotoxotai, for example slingers and some heavier infantry (I had a phalanx-and-archers army that followed my horse archers and dealt with cities I deemed too hard to crack without heavy losses among the latter), but Bactria's rich, and given the size of the provinces in that area I like the idea of a fast army that tends not to lose too many men and thus doesn't need to be retrained often.

[Ice]

Wow, thanks guys. I'll gave it a try. I'll go for the rebel settlements in the east. When should I destroy Saka and Pahlava?

[d'Arthez]

That depends on how your game turns out. Sometimes the Pahlava remain allied to you for 40+ years. No need to defeat them then soon. You risk a war with the AS too if you decide to wage war with the Pahlava.

As a small empire it is next to impossible to have a succesful 2 front war, especially with the distances that need to be covered in the area. Saka is a huge pain to wipe out - you will need YEARS to reach Chigu. Better to resort to defense, albeit a solid one with regards to the Saka.

I think Alexandreia-Ariana (south of Baktra) is quite useful for unit-recruitment as well. Be warned, that unit production requires a decent population growth, though.

[Underhand]

Turns out the garrison of Kophen has changed since I last played Bactria. It used to be mostly pantodapoi, but is now a mixture of Persian archers and Indo-hellenic peltasts. Still easily beatable, as a test battle showed. I was dealing with their last unit when my computer crashed and had only lost three phalangites to their four destroyed units.

[Ice]

Turns out the garrison of Kophen has changed since I last played Bactria. It used to be mostly pantodapoi, but is now a mixture of Persian archers and Indo-hellenic peltasts. Still easily beatable, as a test battle showed. I was dealing with their last unit when my computer crashed and had only lost three phalangites to their four destroyed units.

It's still easy. I won the other day simply by sticking my phalanx unit in front of the gate and hitting all the other units with archers.

[Underhand]

Unable to resist the temptation, and quite frankly sick of fighting in the giant forests of northern Europe, I started my own Bactria game. It's now 268ish and I've got three units of Bactrioi hippotoxotai. I'm going to have to make a move on someone soon because they're eating through my treasury. I disbanded everything except the army to attack Kophen (which I disbanded as soon as I controlled the city) and a unit of archer-spearmen to garrison the one settlement I didn't have a family member for. Baktra built barracks non-stop from the second turn, and the other settlements got mines. That done, I lowered taxes to promote population growth and started building more normal stuff. The Seleucids have been remarkably good given my apparent weakness (perhaps because, like them, I'm at war with the Ptolemaoi - is that new? I don't recall it from last time I played), though I've been keeping a close eye on them. I'll pick a fight with them during my next play session, I think, since a showdown is inevitable and I'm spending more than I'm making.

An odd thing I saw was a Ptolemaic diplomat bribing a small Seleucid army near Antiocheia-Margerine. It started an Anabasis and somehow hasn't been crushed yet. I deemed it whimsical enough to assign a spy to follow them.

The Pahlava's Persian archers look like they're wearing yellow hoodies in the little pictures within a stack

[CrownOfSwords]

Expanding immediately int he surrounding areas of rebel towns, dont disband your army just push on with campaigns to conquer new cities. It may take awhile toget out of negative but it will happen. After you have secured the immediate area around your homeland you have three options attack india, attack parthia or attack arche seleukia. I suggest to hold good relations with AS as long as possible. I usually conquer india first or as much as possible before im forced into war with Parthia.

Once you have built your empire up some I divide my forces into two seperate types of armies. One army should consist of your phalanxes are elite agema units. I use these armies for crushing cities and smashing Arche Seleukid armies. The other type is a steppe like army consisting mostly of the backtrian horse archer unit with a few kataphract units these armies are for facing forces in the field they will crush all opposition with ease.

[Dreadking]

I started a Baktria ccampaign as well. Progress is shocking. I captured Kophen and another rebel city but then Eleutheroi armies besieged my one unit garrisons and captured then. I also managed to capture one Indian settlement and a currently beseiging Kophen once again. However, i have built mines in Baktra and my other starting settlements so cashflow is good enough for me to equip one proper army.

Question: Should i build Slingers or archers?

[Ravenic]

Dreadking - I find a bit of both works best.

In General - My most recent Baktrian campaign was very interesting. I never got involved with a war against any other faction, but instead fought a shadow war against Arche Seleukeia, ultilizing assassins and spies to cause unrest and sabotage everything in sight. I was able to slowly aquire eastern posessions in this way, and all-in-all have a successful early campaign. I quit fairly early though, maybe twenty years in. For some reason I just never have fun with Baktria.

[Musopticon?]

Question: Should i build Slingers or archers?

Slingers, because of the AP attribute. They are horse-killers and phalanx-splitters if used right, while archers, especially eastern archers like the awesome Arsthabara light infantry are more of an anti-horse archer measure. Preferably, you should build slingers for armored units and archers for everything else. Both are good, but it is better to have a surplus of slingers since they excel in all ranged tasks while archers have only the bonus of fire arrows. It's generally a good idea to have Arsthabara as cannon fodder however, since their double-aspect of being both spearmen and archers lends to a wealth of strategies and relatively large unit size and cheap cost make them the perfect auxiliary.

Heh, one of the reasons I changed over from a raving Armeno-Iberian RTR strategist to a EB-nooblet, was the Arsthabara.

[Dreadking]

Alright, thanks guys. I've actually recaptured my two town and my income has risen to the level where i've produced 1 full stack army besieging a Sleecid large town, another half army besieging another. I'll push as far as Persepolis before capturing the Indian provinces i think. At the moment my campaign against the Seleucids is excellent. I've actually used 3-4 archer units to fire attack enemies and slingers to pund them. Most of my armies are now slingers/archers with 2 generals and 3 phalanx units. The phalanx are only there to ward off cavalry charges on my archers/slingers, absord archer fire etc. The bulk of the fighting is done by my ranged units.