Help with Baktria

[raenor]

Hey all.

Could anyone give me some pointers to starting a Baktria campaign? I've really wanted to start a campaign of Baktria as I've been interested in them for a long time (I've researched them for several school/uni projects) And their unit line up and position is very different from most other Hellen factions.

I find them the hardest of the factions that I have played. I keep repeatedly get raped by AS/Pahlava by 240BC, Pahlava is easy to keep at bay once you have stone walls but makes you keep larger garrisons while AS will bring elite troops up against your crappy Eastern regional troops you have cos its too expensive to keep Thorakitai around at most I can have one unit of Thorakitai and one or two Theuropodoi.

I also find that the Baktrian Bodyguard just doesnt cut it against the AS' Bodyguard

So any pointers? Should I try and tribute to AS to keep them off my back while I conquer the Indus?

Oh and is it even worth it to start a new campaign close to EB 1.0? Will I get a chance to get through most of the campaign or is EB 1.0 within a week or two away?

*Hmm wonders if the great and merciful EB gods will answer that one"

Anyways if anyone could give me some pointers on how to get a stable Baktrian kingdom going that would be great.

Thanks heaps.

Rae

[Spoofa]

Aha, one of my favorite campaigns I've played, bactria.


Well, first off theres a field army to your east that is on the border of your province of Bactria and a Rebel town, take it with that army, give AS a 100 per turn tribune and turn as many towns taxes to as high as u can, also make paved roads in bactria and basically, for the first turn try to build as many farm/road improvements as you can.

get trade rights with the saka, since they will prly go for the settlement directly north of your east northern most province.


After u take the province your seiging, and setup the gov, make a road, after that I think I was slowly getting profit and I sent part of that army to Baktria to defend the western border. After I had built a smallish army I started taking the provinces to the west of India, since I didnt have the manpower or ability to spend a large time in India due to the AS attacks after about 10 years.

[raenor]

I started a new campaign last night. Its going better than usual.

I've taken Kophen, Takashila (sp) and the province south of that.

Pahlava has left me alone though AS has seiged Baktra twice unsuccessfully losing FMs each time hehe. It seems that the AI will ceasefire with you until you start taking their settlements, so each time AS seiges me and loses I get trade rights back.

Im building another army to take the southern most Indus province then I will start to make inroads into AS.

Thanks for the reply

Rae.

[PriestLizard]

Hi there. I'm in a similar situation. I started a baktrian campaign on VH/M (campaign map VH, battles M) difficulty and its really not going well. :P

I think my start was OK , buildings roads and economy stuff (carawan scouts) while taking Kophen and Gava-xxx (forgott the exact name) with my army and some mercenaries.

I wonder though how you'd manage to get Taksishila?? That town has almost 900 soldiers with a 6-star general. I didnt even dare to advance them with my small army from the start.

Anyway I also found myself in war with all three neighbouring factions. Things went quite good, I even managed to conquer pahlavas capital Nisa. Then I made a mistake though and allowed it to rebel back to Pahlava... which resulted in a full stack of elite golden chevron units for Pahlava..... that very stack then conquered Marakanda and Baktra (while I still had to defend attacks from AS and Saka). Shortly after that I lost Kophen to AS too.

Down to only two settlements (Gava-xxx and Alexandria-Eschate) I had the awesome idea of performing a desperate attack von Taksishila with about 700 men. My plan was to establish a new kingdom there on the eastern side of the Hindu Kush and hopefully leave my enemies behind.

What happened? I couldnt win the fight. I didnt have enough infantry to win the battle on the walls... to make it perfect, my three surviving family members were chased down by AS troops near Kophen. Now almost all my family is dead (Basileus Theodotos is still alive, and his youngest brother Patroklos too) and only two cities left. I dont know how long I can survive... I'd like to stay in the game for some more time to see whats going on on the world map (this is my first EB campaign).

After this I'll probably play another faction with a more easy start, where you have at least enough economical power to actually do something. With Baktria, you have very less money at the beginning and thats the thing which makes it much more difficult... I guess... (along with the diplomatic challenge of course).

EDIT: Link to a small report@twcenter: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showp...&postcount=140

Bye ~

[raenor]

Well in my latest Baktria campaign its going very well. Tho on H/M seeing as my earlier VH/M attempts the AI was really too aggressive early on for me to survive.

First I took Kophen and started 100mnai/turn tribute to AS to try and keep on off my backs while I started a money making empire. Build roads etc. Then the best thing I found is to save up for Mines in as many provinces as you can, all your starting ones can have mines so can Kophen. Baktra already has mines made so thats all good.

After that (AS still letft me alone) I found it important to build Stone walls in Baktria and Marakanda (They are the cities where you will be attacked) And also to be able to recruit Persian Archers and Eastern Slingers in each of those cities (They rape most armies before they reach the walls)

Then I started building up a small army of 4-5 phalanxes, 2 skirmisher units, a good young general and 3-5 archer/slinger units. Usually the cheapest of the lot for all of them and I took them to Takashila. When I laid seige I built no seige weapons and just waited the 8 turns or so for them to sally out (You may get lucky and they may just surrender) By this time the army in there was reduced by maybe half and its very easy to beat them. Also as most of their units are low armored your archers can rip through them. Save your skirmishers for the elephants and its easy to win there.

After that get another good general and do the same thing to Opiani (sp) the province to the south. You should then be set. Building mines and economy buildings everywhere.

So far in my game im making 10k-15k a turn (Depending on whether im at war with AS or not) I have left Gava-hXXX alone as I just dont want to fight those HA yet, they hurt. AS goes to war with me every few turns but I can defeat them then get a ceasefire.

Also once you start making money save up for big mines and place them somewhere and also get better MICs in Baktria and maybe Marakanda for better Phalanxes etc.

Anyways good luck, and Baktria is a fairly hard campaign to start with. I started with Mak and they were pretty easy.

[PriestLizard]

Hi again. I continued to play my campaign, even though I'm still struggling to survive. By now I have lost all my former provinces to Pahlava. They are really going strong and I hope they will start a war with AS soon! The Saka are almost destroyed.

I still have Gava-xxx, and I regained Kophen from the AS. I finally took Takashila too... so I'm planning to move my kingdom to the east into India. Maybe I can survive there... :)

My family was almost decimated too. The kingdom is now in sogdian hands, as the offspring from a sogdian betrohed husband is the Basileus. Thats quite an interesting RPG situation.

Before I closed the game in my last session, I looked at the world map with fog turned off. Sadly I saw a parthian army marching to Gava-xxx (I wont be able to hold the city...) and a small army of AS marching to Kophen. It will be a tough challenge to survive this.

My longterm goal is to rebuild my kingdom in India and somehow get back into the game...hmmm...we will see.
--------------------------------
Anyway I thought about my mistakes during the beginning and I guess my problem was that during the war with Pahlava, I made some minor mistakes which resulted in a major problem in the end.

When playing as a weaker faction with many possible enemies arround you, its probably better to strengthen your economy first, try to keep peace and then go offensive later. Seems to me that rushing is a bad idea..

[SpawnOfEbil]

I'm playing M/M (I'm not hardcore enough to try anything more difficult) and so far I'm actually finding Baktria quite easy. I took Kophen first, and then, seeing that I was either going to attack or be attacked by AS, I went and too Alexandreia-Ariana, consolidated, and went on to take Prophthasia and Alexandropolis (although the AS didn't want to go easy on Alexandropolis). After that, I've just taken Opiana, so that should give me some nice Indo-Greek units. I'm planning on taking either Taksashila or Patala next, consolidate in India, then go after Pahlava and the AS.

So far Pahlava hasn't attacked me yet, although they have just sent a small force into my lands which I should be easily able to take care of. Those treacherous Easterns won't get away with this!

[Chronos]

I’ve been playing EB v1.0 Baktria since V1.0 came out…This have been “The Best” Game I have played to date!!
I’m playing VH/M and it has been hard going…
I now control all the way from the Indies to the whole of the Babylon platau as far as The Antioch Mountains (without owning Antioch or Palestine). My whole boarder runs along Pahlavan territory and no clashes yet, thank the gods…

I find them the hardest of the factions that I have played. I keep repeatedly get raped by AS/Pahlava by 240BC, Pahlava is easy to keep at bay once you have stone walls but makes you keep larger garrisons while AS will bring elite troops up against your crappy Eastern regional troops you have cos its too expensive to keep Thorakitai around at most I can have one unit of Thorakitai and one or two Theuropodoi.

It’s now 105BC and I haven’t had a military encounter with Pahlava yet…how did I do that?

First, this is in Heign site, I didn’t do it on purpose …

I stared by spending everything on military and attacked Rebel cities, killing everyone to keep the place submitted and money for more military units…
I sent an emissary to Saka Rauka first and made alliances with them…My emissary then went to Pahlava but they remained neutral with trade rights…My emissary did all he could to forge alliances everywhere…
I hung in there and remained at peace until Seleukia attacked me…my war started with them around the same time as Pahlava attacked Saka Rauka (my allies).
I couldn’t back Saka Rauka up against Pahlava because of my war with The Seleukid, so I left them to it and Pahlava destroyed Saka Rauka (my allies) while I helplessly stood by and did nothing…. In return, Pahlava has left me alone and I intend to keep it that way , because my hands have been full through every round this game has dealt up to me…I love this shit

[Elminster12]

As a general rule, rushing is a bad idea, unless you meet two conditions:
1)You have only one enemy in your immediate vicinity
2)You have an easy way to defend yourself from counters
Baktria doesn't meet either condition(in my experience, the Arverni, Aedui, and Pontos do)

The trick is to try and keep Parthia and the Seleukids off your back early and strengthen your economy, and hopefully your defenses. The Parthians and Saka, being primarily nomadic(as long as they don't get your land ) will have great difficulties taking cities with stone walls.