bactria tips?

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

Baktria is a curious mix of Hellenic, Indo-Hellenic and Iranian fighting styles, with some nomadic flavour thrown in for spice.

Basically, you can get some good Eastern Slingers and Archers for your army. They're among the best foot archers in the game, and they're cheap and versatile. Pantodapoi suck, but you can build them abundantly as garrissons, while the Pantodapoi Phalangitai will be the rock and backbone of your army.

Against nomadic foes, lots of Archer-Spearmen and Slingers, backed by a few Phalangitai and Medium Cavalry, will do the job against those pesky Horse Archers as long as you keep your archers safe from the enemy heavy cavalry. But then, the enemy cavalry will have to face your wall of pikes, first.

Against Diadochoi and later Western Greek foes, lots of cheap Pantodapoi Phalangitai, with Iranian Medium Cavalry and deadly missile troops will do the job very well. The Pezhetairoi will be the elite, holding the center of your pike line, followed by the Native Phalanxes and the auxiliary hellenic infantry and Iranian light infantry to harass enemies from the flank.

And you have another big bonus: heavily armoured Baktrian horse archers. You can stage ambushes and disrupt enemy Diadochoi armies with them, and still have another powerful unit to counter Nomadic threats from the North.

[paullus]

for storytelling quality, remember that at game start you are still subservient to the Seleukids. your concern is about the incursions of nomads to your north, but as long as they aren't too troublesome, you can begin looking toward independence, and also toward india. the mauryans have authority over many greek settlers in the indos valley and in the lands south of baktria...at some point, those hellenes might be liberated. besides, while there are the thousand cities of baktria, there are great riches on the might indos.

EDIT: militarily you've got some great units. early game you should, if you want to be realistic, shy away from extensive use of any nice, non-hellenic units. you should have a core of pezhetairoi and klerouchoi phalangitai, some hellenic horsemen, and a scattering of non-hellenic skirmishers. as your kingdom becomes more established, go ahead and recruit some of those higher quality non-hellenic units, and start developing your own elites and non-pike units, thureophoroi, agema, etc. the pheraspides-type developed quickly and naturally in baktria, because of the sheer numbers of mountain-top forts in the area.

[Bootsiuv]

Another good idea, speaking from experience, is to treat type IV govs as independent kingdom (much easier with puppet rulers now), and they're rulers have a degree of autonomy. It makes for some interesting reading when Diodotus has to worry about his own puppet rulers. Just a suggestion.

[Thaatu]

...and as a mountainous inland empire, it's economy is based heavily on mining. Hindu Kush is your key to riches.