[EB AAR] Pontos Rising

[Stingray970]

Awesome AAR! I actually tried EB for about half an hour and decided I didn't like it, now I want to try it again ( and hopefully manage to do something useful )

+rep when I can

[Radzeer]

Great updates and pictures! The last picture of the Syrian war with the corpses and the soldiers in the background is particularly powerful.
Now that Pontos is a world power, what comes next?

[Agent007]

Very nice AAR with the mod which always has "that" special place in my heart...
I'm currently playing a SPQR campaign, expanding historically (but with not too much fuss about giving money to the other factions via console, or massively bribing, as i saw in some other roman AAR's - just the necessary "keeping the balance"), taking my time, as i like to do with every faction, in fact. I want to take that campaign right untill the end and the formation of the Empire, & maybe doing an AAR about it, afterwards.
Yours is certainly an inspiring one . Congrats! And please continue.

[Populus Romanus]

Great AAR!

[FriendlyFire]

Thanks for all the positive feedback Stingray970, if you're just starting EB I strongly recommend doing a search for the EB blitz guide - that can get you through the tense early years of a campaign when it looks like survival is impossible.

Not quite sure where to go next. One more update tonight, then I'll catch up on Sunday, and then I think I'll be in a position where I can ask people for opinions about where to go.

[FriendlyFire]

Chapter 20: The Gauls of the Nile

While the new king Hystaspis Kianos was campaigning against the Ptolemaioi in Syria, he sent word to Arses Kianos in the south. Arses and his Gallo-Thracian army still held the great cities of Alexandreia and Memphis that they had taken from the Ptolemaioi, and after several years had now begun to train some of the local people to fight for Pontos. Meanwhile, the Ptolemaioi still had only weak garrisons in their surrounding heartlands, and were sending almost all of their resources towards the fighting in Syria. Hystaspis therefore sent word that Arses was to take his army on a march of conquest around the Nile delta, to never allow the Gauls to settle in one place, and to use whatever loyal troops he could raise from Alexandreia and Memphis to garrison captured towns and cities.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Arses wasted no time, first marching his troops west along the coastal road towards the town of Paratonion in 224 BC. The Ptolemaioi sent an army into the desert to intercept, but lacking cavalry of their own they were chased from the field by Thracian and Gallic horsemen, and the town fell soon afterwards.

With his western flank now secure, and adequate garrisons in Paratonion, Alexandreia and Memphis, Arses now began the long march of the Gauls up the Nile. The first Ptolemaioi city in their way was Diospolis-Megale. Most of the garrison came out to challenge the Gauls and were soundly defeated - the survivors fled back to the city, but now had too few men to adequately defend its large perimeter. Pontic engineers created siege towers to allow the Gauls to scale the high walls, and the city fell in 222 BC.

From there Arses marched his Gauls southwest, towards Pselkis, and then northwest, towards Hibis. Pselkis fell in 220 BC, weakly defended by a small garrison, in a city square so large that Arses could conduct a set-piece charge to break their final resistance. Neighboring Hibis, although a smaller town, swiftly levied more troops to defend itself, and was the scene of bitter fighting on the walls before its capture in 219 BC.

Arses Kianos left both Pselkis and Hibis under the control of allied client rulers, local strong-men who could be counted on to obey the wishes of Pontos. Under the previous king this would have been unheard-of, for he would have demanded a relative by blood or marriage in charge of every province of the kingdom. But Arses was now so far from the homelands of Pontos that it would take years for such a man to even reach him, let alone learn enough about the local population to rule them.

Finally, in 216 BC, Arses took his army on a forced-march across the desert wastes. His remaining Gallic veterans had now been fighting the Ptolemaioi for almost 20 years, and Arses himself was no longer a young prince needing to prove himself, but an accomplished general who his men trusted implicitly. They besieged the desert town of Ammonion, quickly battered down its crude wooden walls, and flooded in. There were to be no finessed tactics here - Arses had promised the Gauls that this was the last battle, and they fought with the vigor of young men. The levies that the Ptolemaioi had raised to defend the town stood no chance against such an attack, and the great oracle of Zeus-Ammon was now part of the Pontic kingdom.

The world in 216 BC:

[Molina]

This is a great AAR, I have taken inspiration from (*ahem* copied) a few ideas from it, especially concerning editing battle screenshots.

Another thing I'm going to copy next is putting the text above the screenshots, not below. Makes a lot more sense.

[Populus Romanus]

You should probably take Halikarnassos. AMAZING AAR Friendly Fire, truly awe inspiring!

[samurai89]

This is a magnificent AAR, well done on the great work!

[Stingray970]

Taking the world by surprise... Literally.

I hate how the AI either leaves an entire army of troops in a city, or only one or two units, there never seems to be a balance. It's either ridiculously hard or ridiculously easy.

[dezikeizer]

Great update, and considerable progress. You really should take Halikarnassos soon.

[Stingray970]

I have been waiting to say this for a long long time.... PLUS REP!!!!

[Diomede]

The first one feels good, doesn't it?

[Beer Money]

Solid work! Also, nice job on getting to 216 BC with no permanent crashing!

As a seasoned EBer, thats even more impressive!

[Diomede]

Solid work! Also, nice job on getting to 216 BC with no permanent crashing!

As a seasoned EBer, thats even more impressive!

haha.
I wouldn't mind the crashes so much if it weren't for it needing more than five minutes to load every time it happened.
Once I remake the Archaemenid empire as Armenia I'll hopefully have the patience to make my first AAR out of it.

[Molina]

haha.
I wouldn't mind the crashes so much if it weren't for it needing more than five minutes to load every time it happened.
Once I remake the Archaemenid empire as Armenia I'll hopefully have the patience to make my first AAR out of it.

Here's a tip: don't make it interactive.

Unless you have a lot of free time!

[FriendlyFire]

So far (knock on wood) I've never lost an EB campaign to permanent crashes. Repeatable crashes during the AI turn have always been due to a revolting city, and those I can fix by subtracting population from them.

I made the mistake of playing too far without posting during the past week, and now it feels like a chore to go back and remember all the history. So instead I'll just restart tonight from where I was a week ago, and rewrite the history instead of remembering it. MUCH easier I'm also going to give the Roman legions an extra secondary hitpoint, so hopefully Rome will start kicking barbarian butt and grow into a huge and worthy opponent.

Thanks for all the rep and feedback! And yeah, not going interactive in this AAR - your Koinon Hellenon AAR is six different kinds of awesome to read, but ye gods it must take time to organize!

[Populus Romanus]

Good to hear this had not died: I was growing worried!

[FriendlyFire]

Chapter 21: The Two Sons

After the seemingly never-ending battles of the Syrian and Nile wars, the next few years saw relative peace for the kingdom of Pontos. Of course, the Ptolemaioi refused to give up quite so easily, and a few of their armies tried to take back the newly-conquered towns of Palmyra and Paraitonion, but since they sent neither a sufficient quality nor quantity of troops, the result was always the same.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Meanwhile the Pontic economy was booming. Brigands and rebels who had taken advantage of the general unrest to lay ambushes for unwary travellers were wiped out, and at sea a new Pontic navy, equipped with warships from the great harbor of Alexandreia, hunted down and sank the many pirates. The most well-established Pontic towns now had almost everything a man could ask for - and everywhere there were reminders of the source of this great fortune.

With riches always comes jealousy, and of all the lands surrounding Pontos, that of Makedonia proved the most jealous. Makedonia was embroiled in an endless war with Epeiros and the Koinon Hellenon, and although her colonies in western Asia Minor regularly sent manpower to fight in these wars, they couldn't seem to resist also sending small armies to "explore" in nearby Pontic lands. Hystaspis Kianos ordered the local garrisons to be greatly increased, and this show of power deterred the Makedonians from any attack - and thus Pontos and Makedonia remained officially "neutral". The insult, however, would not be easily forgotten.

By 213 BC, Hystaspis Kianos was growing old and grey, but he now had two sons of age. The first-born was Zenon Kianos, the smarter and more likable of the two, but also more full of himself. His younger brother Pharnakes had less natural talent, but made up for it with incessant energy - much like his father.

The other two male members of the Kianos clan with a claim to the throne were more distantly related, and were closer in age to Hystaspis Kianos than to his sons. Arses Kianos had conquered the Nile, and despite his age was still a capable general with an intense loyalty to Hystaspis. At the other end of the family tree, Pharnouchos Kianos had been blessed with skills but not with morals. Although he was undoubtedly a smart and charismatic man, his subjects could not help but notice his "economy with the truth", and the curious way in which he always seemed to grow richer while they grew poorer.

Seeing that his sons needed lands of their own, Hystaspis Kianos therefore decreed the following:
• He would remain in Syria, ruling from Antiocheia, warring with the Ptolemaioi in the east, and seizing what opportunities would present themselves.
• Zenon Kianos, his first-born, was to base his operations in Asia Minor, deterring the Makedonians in the west, and bringing the remaining independent regions under Pontic control.
• Pharnakes Kianos, the second-born and therefore less fortunate, was to carve out a name for himself in the north, across the Pontos Euxine in the lands of the Skythians.
• Arses Kianos of the Nile was to settle his Gauls in the south, ensure that the area was secure, and then return to Asia Minor as a trusted aide to Zenon.
• Pharnouchos Kianos was to govern in the Pontic heartlands, ostensibly as the right and proper place for any Kianos, but really so that a close eye could be kept on him…

As luck would have it, Hystaspis himself was the first to bring an enemy to battle after this decree. In 212 BC, the Ptolemaioi had sent a small army under their faction leader and two other generals to besiege the Seleukid mountain town of Karkathiokerta. Their assault had unexpectedly failed, but the Seleukid garrison had also been shattered. Hystaspis had kept his army nearby, expecting to take the town from the Ptolemaioi before they could secure their conquest, but he had no compunction about taking it from the Seleukids instead.

Hystaspis sent his veteran axemen to the walls first, where they encountered almost no opposition. This pattern was to be repeated several times during the following battle, where the overwhelming force of an experienced Pontic army swept all before it. Had the Seleukid garrison not lost so many men fighting off the Ptolemaioi, they might have had a chance, but as it was the battle was less of a contest and more of a massacre.

After the battle, all of the Pontic troops agreed that the bravest of their opponents by far was the captain of the garrison, who had seen his few remaining phalangites slaughtered around him by javelins and arrows, his own archers chopped down by axemen, and his cavalry cut down by Hystaspis and his bodyguards. Nonetheless the captain stood his ground on the square as the final survivor, and was only brought down by a full charge of thureophoroi.

The following year, as Hystaspis oversaw the integration of Karkathiokerta into the Pontic economy, he received word from first-born son Zenon Kianos in Asia Minor. Zenon had assembled a small force of local troops, sufficient to besiege the coastal town of Halikarnassos and bring its Trmmli people into the Pontic kingdom, for if they did not yield to Pontos then it was inevitable that they would eventually fall to Makedonia. The Trmmli had other ideas, and a relief force attacked Zenon, seeking to lift the siege and bringing out the town garrison in support.

Zenon had chosen his battleground well, and based his position around a rocky outcropping. On the top of this he placed his archers, and to one side he placed his phalanx. The archers tormented the enemy and forced them to attack, but in the absence of a commanding general they did so in a great mass of hoplites, Karian swordsmen, and simple levies.

With the enemy all pressing up against the phalanx, and one flank easily protected, Zenon reported that it had been a simple matter for his bodyguard to turn the opposite flank, sending the enemy force fleeing in a rout. Indeed, he boasted to his father that the hardest part of the battle had been running down sufficient of the enemy to prevent them from re-garrisoning the town. This being accomplished, Zenon Kianos was now "Nikesas Halikarnassou", conqueror of the town of Halikarnassos and its historic mausoleum, a title which pleased him greatly.

It was two more years before young Pharnakes Kianos matched the accomplishments of his elder brother, but in 209 BC the welcome news finally reached his father in Antiocheia. Pharnakes reported that he had sailed across the Pontos Euxine to liberate the Hellenes of Chersonesos from the barbarian tribe of Tauri, who were still independent of the surrounding Sauromatae kingdom. To do this he had recruited great numbers of troops from neighboring Pantikapaion, but unlike his brother he had not bothered with a large assortment of troop types. In Pharnakes's army, you were either a hoplite, or an archer, for he expected to fight against a great mass of horse-archers. When he landed by ship, however, he found that most of these horse-archers were away to the north, and unlike at Halikarnassos, the rebels in the field chose not to support their besieged brethren. Despite sending half of his troops back to Pantikapaion, Pharnakes still assaulted the walls with a powerful, brute-force army.

The heavy armor of the hoplites enabled them to withstand arrow fire from the towers, reaching the walls almost unscathed and then moving along them to capture the gates. Walking along the top of the walls, their armor also protected them from the arrows and javelins shot at them from Tauri troops in the streets below.

Behind the hoplites, the real killers of the battle climbed the ladders and took their position on the walls. These were Scythian archers, well-trained and able to rain a deadly fire on cavalry milling in the streets. Since these had expended all their missiles fruitlessly against the armored hoplites, they now had no way to fight back against the Scythians.

With a measured march through the city streets, the hoplites crushed all those who the Scythians arrows had not yet found, and by the time they approached the town square, it was obvious that the battle was as good as over, and Chersonesos was shortly to be part of the Pontic kingdom.

[FriendlyFire]

The world in 209 BC:

The Lusos have swept over Gaul like a great tidal wave, reducing the Aedui and Arverni to just a single region each. The Romans have been spared only because they were the first to ally with the Lusos, and have been left fighting the Sweboz and central European rebels. In Hellas, the Epeirotes still hold out in the old Makedonian capital, and the Koinon Hellenon and Getai have both rebounded. In the east, the Arche Seleukeia are fighting the Ptolemaioi and Saba, while still having enough forces left over to crush Pahlava, and leaving Baktria and Saka to fight a bitter little war of their own.

A close-up of the Mediterranean and Black Sea:

Note how I'm still insulated from Rome (by chance), Carthage (by planning), and Arche Seleukeia (mostly by planning). The top four powers are Rome, Pontos, Arche Seleukeia, and Lusotanna.