My atropatene campaign experience

[Nordling]

Hey all,

Hope you all have a nice day despite it being a monday...

I want to share with you my ongoing atropatene campaign experience - and what a ride it has been so far!

Some background first: I'm playing a heavily modified DeI with following submods:
12TPY, alternative economy, cultural tensio, PIGS fron Jake and age of hellenism from Seleukos as well as some other graphic ones. If you're playing 12 TPY you can quite reliably max out your agents and generals so I'm playing hard/hard difficulty.

So basic info about the campaign so far:
At the beginning, especially with AE, you are desperate for cash and can't even field a decent full stack with your starting 3 cities. That's why you have to be creative. I strengthened my northern border by going for a fortified settlement type as well as barracks providing additional garrison. I expected armenia or kartli to attack me early on, especially on hard difficulty. Persian seleucid vassals can't declare war since they are satrapies and seleucids get into so many wars early on that they don't really want to start another one on a different frontier so I believed that one was covered. I was very lucky as very soon my northern neighbours were at each others' throats early on and so I was feeling safe on that side. I consolidated my positions, moved my capital to the province capital (faction capital trait boosts 1st and 2nd pop classes growth quite signficantly), made a decent-ish stack and waited for inevitable to happen. The vassals soon rebelled and whole eastern part of the map started to resemble classic western cliche of "this town aint big enough for two of us". I saw a window of opportunity and took the fourth settlement that I was lacking to complete the province. Luckily, it swapped hands in previous turn, from parthava to persia. That allowed to erase a depleted persian stack, secure friendly relations with parthava and was the first step toward recreating ancient median empire. So many birds with one stone...

After a depleting war with persia i finally managed to conquer the whole persia province (i believe that is the name?). The war was harsh and i often found myself stretched to the limits with little income to make use of. Just so you understand the situation - i did not even recruit a single agent up to this point! Conquest of persia further strengthened my relations with selleucids who decided that i was finally worthy of a trade agreement and non-aggression pact! I sat back for a second and replenished my depleted and war-weary troops. I did not have much time for recuperation though as maurya started knocking at my doors! Thankfully, they were at war with parthia as well so i did not have to face their whole might. And that saved my skin since i was at 1.5 stack and mauryans had 4! After a lot of campaigning along persian gulf coastline i finally was able to push those expansionist mauryans out of persia for good. Parthia really was fond of me at that point as i butchered all captives and spared neither women nor children, enslaving or killing all mauryans that dared settle in lands that rightfully belong to medes! At that point i had a bit of breathing room which i desperately needed! I began conversion of settlements and tearing down hindu temples, replacing them with those dedicated to zoroaster. I also started to trade with desert tribes of arabia and ethiopia, allowing me to fill my coffers - just what i needed to finance my war effort. At that point i remodelled my 2 armies to be able to face parni tribes. While parthava was quite small and limited to their starting 3 settlements, parthians managed to conquer all land west of my lands which meant that baktrian kingdom lasted a bit shorter than it was meant to be. Oh well.

Even though parthavans were quite small in terms of land, they still had strong amries based on cataphracts. Even more, they started to mobilise their soldiers along our shared border. I could not let this go on. I ended the only remaining treaty between us, the military access (those parni dogs broke the other ones) and with raids into their territory i lured parthavns into ambush which severely weakened their military power. After a few decisive victories I was able to secure their lands, leaving only parthia in my way eastward. I started to hastily strengthen the newly created border with parthian empire as they managed to beat all their opposition and were looking at my land with greed in their eyes. Two mighty empires of the east were bound to plunge into conflict that would shape the history of middle east...

I hoped that you liked my short story Managing diplomacy with seleucids, parthava and parthia while under a constant threat from intially persia and then maurya was extremely challenging and satisfying! Im currently building up my forces but parthians will be the first to strike, im certain of that. They already broke all the treaties and are massing their stacks along the borders. Once i deal with parthia there is the mighty seleucid empire to my west with their heavy cataphracts, thorakitai and elephants. The romans are aslo starting to expand into anatolia and are already at war with ptolemies... That will be interesting!

My general thoughts on atropatene roster:
I used them a bit like a year ago and proposed some changes to their roster so they would be more viable. Their elite infantry was upgraded from 200 units to 300 as well as their pop classes were changed from 1st class to 2nd. Also, their elite archers received strongest bows. I never got to play them much after those changes but i gotta say that they are most welcome! You really get to experience that mass infantry style of persian armies. Mostly lightly armoured and carrying bows or javelins, the sheer amount of missile barrage allowed to beat superior opposition a couple of times (most importantly, two handed mauryans never really reached my lines ). I went for general traits & army traditions that boosted performance of my archers which worked out very well. While initially i employed peseant axemen line to absorb first wave of enemies i later on changes them for elite persian spearmen or hoplites as well as indo-hellenic theurophoroi. All of these work really well in conjuction with elite persian archers who always brought such a hugh value to the battle. Most improtantly though, sparabara is the best and most cost-efficient unit of the game. Sporting 5 bow ammunition and 300 men, they bring 1500 arrows to the field as well as expert charge defence and staying power. Needless to say, they are an irreplaceable part of my army composition. While i tend to use those elite ones in my two full field stacks, those basic ones are a must in my 3 half stacks. The missile superiority allowed me to repeatedly push forward despite facing stronger opposition as the enemy forces always reached my lines very depleted and i was able to make short work of any remaining troops with my lancers.

Buildings:
After playing almost exclussively hellenic factions, i was immediately amazed by how many different buidlings boost 1st class pop growth. Particularly, satrap's palace is the greatest one providing PO, conversion, banditry reducement, some income and 1st class pop. Those palaces, coupled with some other temples or libraries allowed me to incorporate much more noble units into my armies. For example, my royal army has 4 noble elite archers, 2 noble elite spear-bowmen, 1 elite javcav and ofc noble lancers as bodyguards, bringing us to 7 noble units in a 20 unit stack. Really, really fun.

Some criticism:
While i really like the unique feel of the faction and super satisfying synergy between different units available, i feel that they are subpar to their eastern nemesis, the parthians. Bear with me here, I do not think that it is because persians are weak. It's just that parthians are too damn strong! I inspected their roster and found no real weaknesses. They get absolutely amazing cavalry with cataphracts, armored HA, light HA, strong melee cav options; amazing archers with access to best type of bow as well as heavy archer variation; and one of the best hoplites, if not the best hoplites of the game! Their late hoplites sport 70 armor with other stats being on par or slightly stronger than those of hellenic factions. I find that to be a bit of an overkill, considering that parthians were not really known to be expert infrantrymen - or am i wrong? Iirc, it was the sassanids who revived heavy infantry regiments? Maybe i'm wrong so i'm open for a debate on this


I hope you all had some fun reading this and i'm waiting for your comments, criticism or whatever you would like to post
Cheers!

[Jake Armitage]

That's a great report Nordling!
It was cool to read it.
Sadly I have never played with eastern factions so I can't really say anything here.
My fault.

[H-Khan]

Here's few my findings;

Cavalry is expensive.. the footarcher way early on saves lots of cash, never had money probs thereafter. Mediterranean is where the money is.. so initial key was to get port there.. either Phasis or Trapezous. But I ended up being in war with Bosphorous and some Germanic tribe there.. so I didn't really got to make up that many traderoutes there early on ( didn't even need that income it seems! and saved the fleet costs ). Usually I try take out Armenia first. Those later Nakhars are real pain in their armor. This time Kartli attacked them 1st tho, so I just ended up waiting and building up.. then took out their weakened armies. Seleucids and their satrapies were friendly mostly.. but when Baktria ended up in Parthia I had to open up front there too. Those phalanxes go down fast with way more mobile sparabaras pulling back and firing away. Things just started heating up with Rome and after initial clashes I've started modifying my army composition bit.. will have to see if it's better. Not too bad exchange ratios yet tho and they've started to pay less interest to me already ( lost like 6 legions or so ). They did hit the usual imperial reforms of 220BC so I'm expecting to see bit more armor soon

[Garbad]

Sparabara are god units. I like them so much I always make Media into a satrap so I can recruit them.

[Furgon]

Well, Parthians sure got their cav strong, but AI can't properly use those anyway, least I never seen it. If anything, a cavalry-heavy army is weaker than a balanced one, because it is immensely vulnerable to missile fire (f/e, I used to annihilate horse archer stacks with 6 foot archer units in earlier mod versions). And when you have hordes of sparabara, what is there to fear at all?
Actually, in my Baktria campaign, I moved sparabara recruitment to t3 town and elite sparabara to satrap's, because those eastern guys were insane.

[H-Khan]

Oh yeah.. couple points that came in mind;

- I didn't need any barracks early on! You can recruit basic sparabara and archers + slingers w/o 'em. Was only later when I got Parthia and made it into my military province. So I conquerred Armenia and Pontic coast w/o any recruiting facilities. Interestingly the later elite archers have almost equal melee skills to sparabara ( and same armor, but often superior morale due being more experienced ) so I've used them later as flankers when out of ammo.

- Elite sparabara.. I before this point I have usually used pair of these at end of the main line for bit extra boost against cav charges. But now with their movement being so much slower I just can't find reason to use 'em anymore. Satraps guards are faster and carry more ammo. I do plan making one army with siege engines tho. Elite sparabara would do then.

[H-Khan]

I did try bit duel on quick battle.. sparabara vs elite sparabara while the gens duelled each other. Well on elite sparabara gen was little closer maybe, said general close by couple times. But wasn't expecting the results. Both fired all arrows at eachother.. 3 sparabara died, none from the elites. Well melee ensued.. the more numerous sparabara managed to kill 30 elites and suffered like 90 casualties before they fled. Guess the elites still have their uses

[Kanan Azeri]

Oh yeah.. couple points that came in mind;

- I didn't need any barracks early on! You can recruit basic sparabara and archers + slingers w/o 'em. Was only later when I got Parthia and made it into my military province. So I conquerred Armenia and Pontic coast w/o any recruiting facilities. Interestingly the later elite archers have almost equal melee skills to sparabara ( and same armor, but often superior morale due being more experienced ) so I've used them later as flankers when out of ammo.

- Elite sparabara.. I before this point I have usually used pair of these at end of the main line for bit extra boost against cav charges. But now with their movement being so much slower I just can't find reason to use 'em anymore. Satraps guards are faster and carry more ammo. I do plan making one army with siege engines tho. Elite sparabara would do then.

* In new 1.27B - Sparabara needs first tier barracks, so you can't just spam them as before. They are good defensive units, up to mid-game.
* I think lack of offensive and really good defensive units are slowing down steam rolling now. It would be better to add some heavy armored infantry to their native roster

[RollingWave]

Median's general thoughts.

Roster: they have no special units (elephants / chariots / dogs / sneak attackers / beserkers etc.) so it's all straight units, their infantry is decent but probably among the weakest of none nomadic factions (but better than Partians.), they have one of the strongest cavalry roster (but super expensive.) and they have probably the best foot archer unit in the game full stop.

Infantry: they have a fairly unique and diverse infantry roster, most notably the Elite Sparabara, who's like a theuros spearman that shoot arrows instead of throw javelin, they're very VERY useful against Parthian or other nomadic rosters that mass missile cavalries, but for a high middle tier unit they're really poor as a melee unit against infantry, the only good news is that being decently armored spears even if they can't win fights they usually don't lose them very quickly either.

They have a pike unit but it's unarmored, it's kidna useful very early game against Armenian / Caucasians though, then they have a few interesting unit, a large heavy armored large unit spear (but no javelin no formation.) and a heavy melee infantry who's stats look good but in practice seem to do much worse. then there's a very cool looking archer / lancer type of a unit called satrap guards, but they're pretty crappy in practice IMHO. they also have a generic hoplite but a bit more expensive.

Their noble archers is just ridiculous, it's basically Syrian + Crete archers in one, with Syrian range but also higher fire rate and good melee stats, they totally wreck units, the only problem is you need T1 populations so it's hard to go overboard, but even their commoners archer is slightly bigger in unit with good stats.

Their cavalry roster is very strong across the board, their T2 javelin has really good stats, basically better versions of Taratine cavalries, (and they can upgrade into horse archer versions later on.) like the Partians they're basically the best non-Nomadic cavalry factions around.

In general your problem is that the infantry line is iffy, this is where you probably need to use a lot of mercanies / AOR units to try to buff it, early on your infantry should be mainly Sparabara / Elite Sparabara and just try to shoot opponents to death, but as there is less and less light units running around and more heavy infantry you need to sub these guys out more, the Elite Sparabara unlike Thureos shield is smaller in unit size too, You're just not going to win on the infantry line against comparable opponents, the goal there is to just stay solid long enough for your archer and cavalry to win the day.

typical 20 unit for me late game.

1 general (I usually use the javelin one.)
2 ballista
3 noble archers
4 cavalry (usually 2 Deqan and 2 Aswara in the end)
1 Elephant (if you can find the mercenary)
8~9 infantry (if I have to use my own units I'd go for 2 Apple Bearer on the flank and 7~8 Elite Sparabara or Dalaymi infantry depending on what I'm going up against, but this is where I usually try to find AOR/ merc to help.)

I may sup 1 infantry or archer for baggage train / scorpion depend on the situation. while noble is better the population constraint is real for them, hard to get too many units of those out at the end of the day.