Saka Rauka impossible

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I think you mean VH/M, yes?

Otherwise, it would be M campaign and VH battle difficulty.

You know, every time I write difficulty settings, I think about what order it should be in, and every time I write it in the wrong order.

[bovi]

Maybe you should stop thinking

[GodEmperorLeto]

There's a lot of good advice here, but you also should remember that the best way to fight is to use both the steppe and your cavalry archers to your greatest advantage.

Sending small armies into Baktria, fighting pitched field battles, and then retreating once all your arrows are gone will create some pretty depressed leaders but result in gradual victory. Just make sure that you fight these field battles with captains not family members/generals.

Baktria has lots of foot-soldiers compared to Parthia, so they should definitely be a high-priority target. Don't hesitate to harass their armies. They don't retrain their forces, ever, so a unit that is weakened stays weakened (unless it's a family member).

This strategy requires you to retreat from a lot of pitched field battles, but over a long period of time, it works out. And remember, raiding is your friend later on. Building big stacks of mostly horse archers and then sending them on long trips to sack major cities can pay dividends over long periods of time.

Once, playing the Sauromatae, I captured Seleukia. I razed it for the cash, and then destroyed every single building there. When I left, it was basically little more than a minor village that revolted against me when my army left, but I didn't want it anymore anyway. What I wanted was the cash I got from it. The Seleukids could never really destroy this army, anyway. It moved to fast and I surrounded it with spies and small stacks of scouting parties that slowed down and weakened most attempts at counterattack. That and they were heavily engaged against the Hayasdan and Ptolemaioi when I led my Great Raid into the heart of Mesopotamia.

Patience is key to peoples like the Saka Rauka and Sauromatae. But have a definite program and goals in mind. Don't worry about conquest and empire building. Think like a steppe nomad. Cities aren't where you want to live, they are where you want to get plunder. It is more cost-effective to capture a city and ravage it for everything it is worth before leaving then having to invest in it's defense.

[Thaatu]

Personally, I waited until 210 BCE before I started actually occupying Bactrian territory.

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

The problem with Saka and Sauromatae are not the armies themselfes wich are composed of powerfull units, but the distances and poverty... even with full cavalry armies, it takes many turns to journey from one settlement to another, debt is going to be very great. Also, starting provinces are very, very poor. Not to mention that making a siege is very hard when you have no infantry in the begining.

I guess that their starting armies should have lower upkeep, this would be historically accurate. It would be then almost like a hord in BI