Nomadic Tribe Campaign Guides

[Omnipotent-Q]

Nomadic Tribe Campaign Guides

Post yours here

At the top of your post (preferably in bold print) Please put the name of the Nomadic Tribe you're playing as. Currently Massagetae, Roxolani, and Scythia are officially playable.

[Eneru112]

I'd like to see some royal scythia guides please.. no idea what to do.

[Elitewolf]

I'd like to see some royal scythia guides please.. no idea what to do.

I've been playing as Massagetae and I can give you some basic tips about nomads. Perhaps it will help you.

-Diplomacy is complicated. Each of the three nomad factions is hated by a culture (Eastern, hellenic or other nomads) I believe scythia is hated by the hellenics? Either way, it's usually enough to lead to rapid declarations of wars, so be careful when scouting nearby land. If scythia is indeed hated by the greeks it might be best to avoid hellenic nations until you have a suitable army.
-diplomacy with sword is also very useful: When besieging a city of fellow nomads it's always worth it to go to the diplomacy screen and to try and get them to join your confederation. At worst it'll save you a battle, at best it'll save you an army and perhaps gain you an army or two. But be careful! I have several mods which buff the AI with food and money, so when I convinced the scythians to join me I then got four provinces, an army and my income and food stock (which were already fragile) faceplanted.

-Armies: Focus on horsemen. Disregard the basic horse archers: Their low armor means that they get slaughtered by other horse archers. Not only that, but horse archers of second tier and above have decent armor, health, attack and damage meaning they can serve as melee cav in a pinch. They are a massive step up and should be used at all times. Build armies of 1/3rd melee cav and 2/3rds horse archers. Dont bother with infantry except at the very start (It sucks) and balistae slow you down too much. Use your horse archers to soften up the enemy, skirt around and hit units from behind (If you flank from two sides, make the cav on the left fire at the enemies on the right and vice versa, bypassing their shields) and use your melee/shock cav to kill their ranged units and charge enemy infantry in the back.
-This point bears repeating: For the first few turns armor is the most important unit stat. This is because your main enemies at first will be/should be nomads, which also focus heavily on archers. Archers are weak against armor.
-cantabrian circle also helps
-maximize your mobility advantage. You will always be outnumbered but you will also always be more maneuverable. Kill enemy cav quickly and enemy infantry will be at your mercy. Do not engage melee infantry until your archers have spent their arrows. Unless a unit is wavering and you have melee cav ready to charge them in the back to shatter the unit.
-your navy will suck. Don't bother with a large navy. A possible use for a navy is raiding or capturing small settlements on the shore.

Building: Try to set up a recruitment province near a sea, focus the rest of your cities on money. It's tough for barbarians to earn a lot of money.

I think that should be enough to get you started. Starting out is hardest. As soon as your fellow nomads are dead and you have a decent army you'll start steamrolling

-expansion: I'd focus on heading west: Gauls and germans are focused on heavy infantry. Gauls especially have lots of swords and little armor. Watch out for the greeks though: Hoplites are extremely durable and will shrug off your arrows and murder you in melee.

[Eneru112]

I've been playing as Massagetae and I can give you some basic tips about nomads...

Thanks, that helped. I'm still getting my *** handed to me by non-nomads, but I did better than last time using your tips. Which of the three nomadic factions do you think has the better advantages?

[Elitewolf]

Thanks, that helped. I'm still getting my *** handed to me by non-nomads, but I did better than last time using your tips. Which of the three nomadic factions do you think has the better advantages?

I'd say either Roxolani or Massagetae. Roxolani is the only one which has melee cav (Melee cav is my favorite type of cav, very versatile. Excellent against enemy cav, if you can get close enough) while Massagetae... well, they have armor. I prefer the massagetae because the high tier archer cav is invulnereable to ranged and quite capable of taking on low/mid-tier sword infantry and can annhilate enemy ranged units with sword or bow. (seriously, try it. They are much better at melee than you'd think thanks to their high attack, damage, armor and health. Keep em away from spears, heavy infantry or medium horses though)

I mainly have problems fighting nomads. My melee cav gets wiped out before I reach the enemy (puny 15 armor for lancers is very bad) fighting easterlings is comperatively simple: Charge ranged units, surround spearmen and keep on hitting them from all sides with arrows. Their main armor value comes from the shield which does not protect all sides. Although I am hampered here by the low armor value of my lancer: eastern javelins tend to take out half my unit before the charge. Steppe lancers are useless.

[AngryTitusPullo]

I have not played any of these tribes yet but I have completed Parthia which I believe similar tactics applied. Forget infantry. Go with all cavalry armies. Wait out siege for walled settlement if the garrison is high.

All cavalry army gives higher mobility. Half missile and half melee.

[6Bagheera9]

I'm getting some good traction as Royal Scythian, here are my observations.

Light Horse Archers (LHA): Cheap and very effective against anything that can't shoot back or run them down. Cantabrian circle helps dodge missiles but ultimately focused fire (even slingers) melts LHA, the only reliable way to keep them alive in missile duel is by having another armored unit draw fire and then send in the LHA from the flanks or rear. If you can dispose of the enemy missile units, LHA are just as good as more expensive HA and don't become obsolete. Arrows do good damage, but don't have great armor penetration. Make sure to shoot at well armored units from the rear and flanks to get around their shields, very heavily armored units might not be worth the ammo if their are more lightly armored targets around.

Armored Horse Archers (AHA): The major difference is that these guys have armor, its not a lot but enough to greatly reduce the damage from arrows. Combined with their superior melee stats, AHA will handily beat light archers unless they are greatly outnumbered. Use them to draw fire away from your LHA so that the latter can help them. Be aware that javelins are still lethal and slingers will gradually beat them down if not dealt with. AHA cost about twice as much as LHA, so don't expect to be able to fill out a full stack with them.

Horse Skirmishers (HS): Cheap, fast, and fragile counter to heavily armored units that arrow fire bounces off of. Hold these guys in reserve and send them in to finish off isolated heavy units. Missile fire of any kind will tear them apart and they will die just as quickly in melee. HS need careful management to be of any use and it is thus impractical to field many of them unless you're fighting solely heavy infantry. Even if that is the case, you will probably want to only engage with a few of them at a time to maintain good control

Royal Horse Skirmishers (RHS): A very unique missile unit that has excellent melee stats and decent armor. Extremely flexible in being able switch between peppering heavy units with javelins and riding down light units seamlessly. About four times as expensive as their barely comparable light counterparts.

Armored Stepp Lancers (ASL): Good shock cavalry with decent melee stats, trample, a bit of armor, and bonus vs. other cavalry. Use them sweep away enemy cavalry so that your missile units can shoot in peace and then redeploy them for the coup de gras. Cost about as much as AHA, so you can afford a few of them.

Royal Scythian Horse (RSH): Solid heavy cavalry with good but not extreme armor. I've only had access to them as bodyguards so far. They are hampered by a lack of special abilities like trample or wedge.

Young Axes (YA): Very cheap, lightly armored, but rather good in melee given their minimal cost. They are also the only infantry available that's not tied to a garrison. Their morale is somewhat low, but if you can keep them from being spooked they will hack through spearmen, missile troops, and other light melee troops quite nicely. Missile fire, cavalry charges, and heavy melee units will tear them apart pretty quickly, but they are so cheap loosing a mess of them isn't a big deal as long as you win the battle. They are essential if you want to assault a capital (use a lot of them) or need a fixing force so that your cavalry can get right to business rather than dancing around a lot.

[lawandorder82]

Do these fractions get sword infatry.

[14182]

Do these fractions get sword infatry.

Young Axes is the only recruitable foot unit/infantry for the Nomads in vanilla.

[Jay the Byzantine]

Ok, I started out as Massagetae and I'm pulling out my hair in frustration. Since I'm quite new to TW(this is my 2nd GC), I need some pointers on starting out. By turn 27 Baktria has full size 20 unit armies and I still have around 10-11 units in mine. Starting as Massagetae, is it better to take your alliy's walled settlement and expand Noth and East or expans south into the Sucessors and Hellenics and Easterns? Seems going West is best since Barbarians are quite sword reliant. Any advice on which settlements to take in the first few turns would be well appreciated.

[RollingWave]

Depends a little on the setting, yes some Hellenic civ will just randomly declare war on you but most of them are way too far to actually attack you and the only one that starts anywhere near you start out in good relationship with you (though one of your sub objective is to attack them and strategically speaking you probably need to eventually anyway.)

Strategically your goal should be to first unite your home province, one of the faction starts out really weak and at war with multiple party and right next door , so that's easy picking as long as you time it right.

The other 2 is a bit more tricky as one is very peaceful with everyone and the other one is prone to being taken out before you could reach them.

But general suggestion is to consolidate home province, then attack your friend on the northern black sea coast, you now have 2 whole province and a relatively secured position.

My personal note on the initial phase is to make good use of rivers, the provinces look very open and vulnerable but it is actually protected by a lot of rivers, the small town of Olbia (usually the first you take) especially is extremely easy to defend as a stack on the nearest river in defensive mode will allow the garrison army to help as well. making it virtually impossible to be taken out unless hit with something close to two full stack. even a complete rookie should be able to win most even odds / slightly negative odds river crossing battle with ease.

Army wise, I actually think Scythia should still rush Ballista like other factions, at least have one army with it. it helps A TON in taking settlements because otherwise your all horse army will have to sit out almost every other settlement. also, as noted, you do have a lot of rivers to defend, and you will need to fight plenty of defensive battles.

Economically Scythia is pretty screwed, until you take the second province there is no resource to trade, on the plus side you should almost never run out of food.

[Foot Companion]

Can you hire any merc heavy infantry?