Pontus - ideas for improvements

[Zarax]

Since there have been few threads citing that Pontus is underpowered and excessively difficult in the hands of the player this thread will try to address the issues by analizing the historical roster of the faction and how to improve the faction performance by implementing it in a better way.

Actual roster:

- Sparabara
- Hillmen
- eastern heavy inf
- pontic light cav
- eastern heavy cav
- phalangites
- cappadocian cavalry
- bronze shields
- eastern legionaries (post marian)

Pontus has also easy access to local units, adding

Greek:

- peltasts
- thurephoroi
- hoplites

Celtic:

- spear warband
- galatian cavalry
- galatian swordsmen
- galatian heavy cavalry

Let's compare it to the EB roster:
In addition to what is available in XGM pontus gets:

- heavy bodyguards, both early and late
- levy phalanx
- persian long range archers
- greek and eastern medium/heavy cav
- armenian thorakitai-like infantry
- celtic gaesatae-like infantry

So, what can be done to improve Pontus?

What I propose is:

- lessened cultural penalties for greek and celtic settlements (can be done with happiness bonus through barracks or colonies with proper AOR)

- adding some extra units for their roster (Armenia would benefit from it too) like:
- levy phalangites
- eastern thorakitai (eastern heavy inf with thureos and javelins, can be used for armenia too)
- lonchoporoi (aka greek medium/heavy cav, most hellenistic nations would get it too)
- persian foot archers (unarmoured, long range archers, armenia can use them as well)

[CaesarVincens]

Well, a lack of archers doesn't help against all their phalanx-heavy neighbors, even with their ranged cavalry.
I don't know if it historical to give them access to Thracian AoR units; can't one recruit Thracian AoR at Nicomedia? (Not as Pontus though.) That might help as well.

[Kara Kolyo]

I have tried Pontus couple of times on med difficulty and although challenging, it's not impossible. As already has been said you need to capture couple of cities early on and when TSE attacks a fast rush towards Antioch is all what is need to have nice campaign. If a faction needs improvement it's Armenia. IMO Pontus has one of the bigest and most diverse rosters atm.

[Zarax]

Armenia could benefit of some roster improvements too.
As they shared many units historically it wouldn't be a problem to make some more units available for both...
BTW, I will update the first post as ideas pop up.

[Syrian Archer]

It wouldn't be so hard if Egypt and TSE actually fought each other.

[Da Erobara]

You have a good point there Zarax, and good ideas too. Nearly every faction has gotten a huge wagon-load of love from the XGM team, only Pontus and Armenia are nearly unchanged. But I think that we should not only add new units to the roster, but also revamp the current one to make it much more historical. Afaik, the whole current Pontic cavalry section is ahistoric fantasy. Kappadocian cavalry were no cataphracts, and those javelin cavalrymen (both heavy and light) I have never heard of in EB or any source about them. It may that I am mistaken, though.

[Zarax]

You have a good point there Zarax, and good ideas too. Nearly every faction has gotten a huge wagon-load of love from the XGM team, only Pontus and Armenia are nearly unchanged. But I think that we should not only add new units to the roster, but also revamp the current one to make it much more historical. Afaik, the whole current Pontic cavalry section is ahistoric fantasy. Kappadocian cavalry were no cataphracts, and those javelin cavalrymen (both heavy and light) I have never heard of in EB or any source about them. It may that I am mistaken, though.

Pontic light cavalry is not that ahistorical, hippakontistai are in EB roster for Pontus.
Cappadocians could be toned down to historical level and the elite would be replaced by kinsmen.
Pontic heavies are on the other side a bit outdated but still not too bad.
To replace them you would need something like lonchophoroi but it would be an AOR unit...

Anyway, I'm open to all kinds of proposals, hoping that DBH will agree to some

[Da Erobara]

Oh my, I was mistaken about the Pontic light cavalry. Their eastern design kept me from thinking about hte Hippakontistai. But I think that replacing the Pontic light with the greek skirmisher cavalry is better than the current situtation.
Btw, what "elite" do you mean to be replaced by kinsmen?

[Suppanut]

In Ethnic traits Project's module, pontus would also possible to get family members with all possible cultures through adopt and marriage(Anatolian for western, Persian and Armenian for eastern, Celt for Barbarian). I think these would help pontus position in long run.

[Zarax]

There were eastern hippakontistai too, they are in EB but can't remember the name.
Kinsmen in EB are eastern heavy cavalry, pretty much the precursor to kataphracts.
By replacing I mean to put kappadocians to the medium/heavy cav role (lvl 2/3) while kinsmen would be the truly elite cavalry, pretty much where the actual kappadocians are.

[Da Erobara]

I knew what kinsmen are, but not what unit you planned to replace them with. Thanks for the information

[Barry]

By capturing Ancyra the barbarian units which you can then recuit really help.

[Scutarii]

Pontus could definitely use a roster change, they're basically the vanilla roster all over again (although with the AOR and their fun and challenging postion its still awesome playing as them. I think they could definitely use Levy Phalangites (they have normal ones, why not levy's?), to hold the line, as they have nothing to do that really. I like the rest of Zarax's ideas as well.

Also, I didn't see it in the original post, but Pontus does get Eastern Archers in their lineup.

[Da Erobara]

Perhaps their Bronze Shields could also be nerfed to a historical level. They weren't quite the elites they are in XGM, they merely were standard phalangites with slightly better armour and equipment.

[Randal]

i actually think pontus is pretty good the way they are. in pretty much all my campaigns they stick around long enough to give me a decent fight.

[Unknown Soldier]

My Current Pontus Campaign is going well Antioch fell last night - defended by a single unit of silver shields and a general vs my main army - a spy opened the gates!

Main army 6 pike ordinary, 6 pontic light Cav, 2 pontic heavy Cav, General, 2 Eastern archers, 1 eastern javelinmen, 2 Hillmen.

Fought A battle vs 3 Selucid Armies(including War Elephants in one) killed 99% of them for the loss of about 200 men half of which recovered. I'm going to make this an AAR.