What would an authentic Bosphoran Kingdom army look like?

[rotten]

Too many heavy archers imo. Effective, yes, they will own almost every low level unit in the game, but not authentic. If we're going only for effective, then you don't need anything other than heavy foot archers (for cities), horse archers, mounted skirmishers and heavy cavalry, really.

Toxotai are unarmored, so are all other low grade foot archers, but, apart from their historicity, I take them because they win arrow duels vs all basic horse archers (on account of having more firepower and range - this might not be true for any unit without composite bows, though), because they're dirt cheap and if used correctly and in enough numbers their fire power is devastating. I once stopped a heavy seleukid phalanx and peltast army cold, and slaughtered them with an archer and horse archer only army. Most horse archer types aren't that well armored either and you have hoplitai, thureoporoi/thorakitai and heavy cavalry for that.

As for hippeis, they are inferior indeed, but if you want a local-dominated army you might as well play Sauromatae to begin with. The greeks would be a little too proud to let that army fight for them (and a little too afraid it might betray them, which it would) and if they got to the point of fielding heavy cavalry they would have some greek medium cavalry as well (and prodromoi are unavailable). A lot of people, myself included, complain that the AI's armies, apart from being misused, are poorly composed. Well, if we always use only the most effective units (which is not historical), that is exactly what will happen. Using hippeis is like a pre-Marian Roman player using the checkerboard formation instead of better tactics. It worked well enough irl (or not? they did change it after all) but the game engine doesn't work that way. Also, Roman equites, I'm told, are bad; but people still take them if they want to be historically correct, otherwise why not just take the better mercenaries available around them?

Anyway, it'd be almost impossible to fully agree on this; I'm aware that my model is severely lacking in javelin troops for example.

Maybe like this:
2 FM or 1 FM 1 heavy cavalry
1 Hippeis (or an extra horse archer or hippokontistai unit if you really mean to ditch them)
1 Scythian horse archers, or any simple horse archer
1 Hippokontistai
1 Bosphoran heavy archers
1 toxotai
1 local foot archers
1 peltastai
3 hoplitai (or mix them with pezhetairoi if you can get those as well)
2 thureophoroi into thorakitai

The benefit of this army is that it is not a gimmick army, and it won't autowin against any remotely reasonable composition without skill. Your spear line is good, but not really to the standards of other greek armies; your missile firepower is good, but not as good as what the nomads and armenians will have in a 14-stack. You'd have to really mix things up and use your diverse units together well to get the better of an even battle.