Help with Baktria

[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.
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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.