Scythia Vs Parthia

[EyebrowsMulligan]

I've read a lot of recent posts about how powerful the Scythians are (indeed, in my own campaign they have annihilated Thrace and Macedon and cut a swath through the Germans), so it was with some trepidation that my armies lined up to face them following their (unprovoked) declaration of war.

And what a walkover they were! An army containing only 4 missile units (although they were Syrian archers - but with no experience) annihilated two full-stack Scythian armies (which attacked independently of each other) with minimal losses in return. By contrast their archers had immense difficulty inflicting noteable casualties on my phalangites and thorakitai - ultimately their noble cav/cataphracts plunged into the phalanx/spear wall and were decimated.

My reason for mentioning any of this is that after being taken in by the hype I'd read I was expecting some kind of 'Parthia-plus', and I've had many very bloody battles against the Parthians. I honestly don't think that the Scythians match up to the Parthians (primarily because the Eastern heavy cav are so damn dangerous) and was wondering if anyone else who has fought against Parthia shared my view.

[Hippias]

Odd to the point of strangeness - I wouldn't have thought that one Parthian unit type would make that much difference to facing the two armies?

Check Page 2 of the AAR thread for the 'Sons of Targitaus' to see how a player controlled scythian army can wipe out several roman legions whilst suffering only a slight bruise to one horse.....

[Kara Kolyo]

I too think that Parthia is more dangerous than Scythia in general. The thing is what faction you control. In my last game with Thrace, the scythians were held off with enormous loses for me due to the lack of armored units and long range archers. I agree though the eastern heavy cavalry for Parthia with 2 chevrons is extremely dangerous in the first years of a campaign.

[chazap]

I mostly play as the Greeks, Carthage, or Rome and thus have only face the Scythuians....but the Scythians i face always have 2 to 3 bronze chevrons or higher...some as high as gold chevrons....i'm not saying i can't beat them, but even when i win it usually is an all out battle to the end... http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=130971 you dont need to, but if you take a quick look at my AAR the battle against the Scythians were i had Syrian Archers made my victories run smooth....but the ones were i lacked Syrian archers or elephants usually spelled defeat...or Pyrric victories.....Scythia is tough in my games....and if Parthia if tougher, i don't want any part of that........

Eyebrows, do me a favor and post an SS of what a Scythian or Parthian army looks like.. i want to see what you are facing...

[EyebrowsMulligan]

Eyebrows, do me a favor and post an SS of what a Scythian or Parthian army looks like.. i want to see what you are facing...

Should be able to post something later this afternoon after I finish work.

I had another horrible fight against the Parthians last night which I took some screenies of - both armies roughly equal manpower (around 2500 each) but they were mainly heavy cav. I had 4 x Syrian archers and about 5-6 Median cav as well as the usual smattering of foot. By the time I'd expended most of my ammo I'd killed around 40+% of their army for no loss yet the 'power gauge' still indicated 'the balance of forces is evenly matched'. After I'd run out of ammo the dreaded heavy cav sauntered up to my force and proceeded to rain javelins down on my lines, inflicting horrendous losses. I ended up losing about 40% of my army for 70% of theirs in return.

This fight reinforced my view that the Parthians are more dangerous than the Scythians - it's all about the heavy cav.

[EyebrowsMulligan]

Eyebrows, do me a favor and post an SS of what a Scythian or Parthian army looks like.. i want to see what you are facing...

I didn't start this thread with the intention of it turning into a "nerf this, nerf that" debate, I was simply wondering if anyone shared my view that the Parthians are tougher than the Scythians. I actually like the challenge that I'm being given, it's forcing me to try different things to find a truly effective counter to this foe.

[lankylars]

@ Eyebrows

It looks to me like you should take your infantry off defensive stance and put them in loose formation, since they're not fighting other soldiers but merely distracting horse archers.

[Spartan Guard Itachi]

could it be adjusted so horse archers count more to filling up a banner or the military statistic??

i mean my miltary graph is near the bottom when i play as a[rthia depsite having hordes pf parthian cavalry, it seems odd to rte them accordingly when they slaughter most things.

[Unknown Soldier]

Slingers is what you need to lure the heavy cav onto your pikes

stretch em acorss your pikes (that is actually so the pikes protrude through the slingers unit) set em on no skirmish but space out. then use a second unit on skirmish to lure the HC towards the pikes.

AP attribute will kill the HC and they will charge the slingers and die on the ends of your pikes you will still take casualties, though maybe not as many.

[EyebrowsMulligan]

That sounds like some sage advice, unknown. I have found slingers to be very effective against them in the past, it's just a shame that as my borders have expanded (at the expense of Armenia) some armies tailored to fighting different opposition and therefore lacking slingers have started to find themselves in the firing line! I guess a reorganisation of forces is in order - and some speedy recruitment of slingers!

[RedFox]

IMHO the whole idea of HA armies vanquishing full legionary stacks is just silly and in real life pretty damn impossible.
Even in Carrhae the Parthians would employ tactics to disrupt the formations and make their arrows effective against the disorganized troops. Without specific tactics and of course heavily armoured cavalry, HA factions stand little chance against the enemy.

In XGM though, this is highly unbalanced and HA's are pretty much the best thing you can get, but in reality they wouldn't have that many arrows and HA tactics were rather used to luring and eliminating supporting troops - they could not do much damage against heavily armoured infantry with large shields. The main striking force was pretty much heavy cavalry and various steppe infantry types, which were rather used to disrupt the enemy as the horses did the bulk of the killing.

The battle of Carrhae itself somewhat shows the superiority of HA and cavalry (Parthian) tactics, but it still required disruption of the enemy army - horses can't beat a solid wall of steel, but can do that to disorganized mobs very easily...

So to sum up, Scythians shouldn't be that awesome as they are in XGM and Parthians > Scythians. I hope DimeBagHo reads and agrees to some of this - hopefully he will rebalance the stats of the next version, especially the amount of arrows troops carry.

[Zarax]

I disagree on some things.
While HA were not as effective killers as portrayed but they had large amounts of arrows at their disposal.
It's extremely difficult to portray them properly as in reality they would often act as harasser of enemy armies and supplies rather than in the main battle but it's impossible to represent that in the TW engine...

[atraps]

is it just me, or are projectile troops super-effective in XGM (alot more effective then in vanilla)

even though the archer's missile attack has been reduced from vanilla, archers are more effective in XGM then in vanilla

how can this be?

p.s. sorry this is off subject

[DimeBagHo]

Horse Archers: It wasn't just Carrhae. Heavy infantry always had problems dealing with horse archers. Xenophon gives a classic description of the problem, and also explains how the Greeks dealt with the threat; by re-equiping a bunch of men as slingers, and by organizing a cavalry arm.

Similarly, when Seleucid and Roman armies were properly supported by archers and horse archers, they did fine.
But both suffered repeated reverses, or just failed to achieve decisive victory, when they tried to field unsupported heavy infantry against horse archers.

There are some aspects of ranged warfare that are not accurately represented in RTW though. The most important one in this case is that the effectiveness of horse archers should drop off rapidly with range. At 20m a good archer can put an arrow through someone's eye. It won't matter how heavily armoured the target is - if the archer can get up close and take his time to aim then he will kill or maim his target with no more than one or two shots. At 120m, however, a good shield will provide excellent protection, and archers will be mostly ineffective against heavy infantry.

The great advantage of horse archers was that they could get up close to shoot, and then evade pursuit by riding away. Foot archers, of course, had to keep their distance and stay close to supporting infantry.

atraps: It's just you. Ranged units were even more lethal in vanilla, you probably just didn't realize it. Slings and javelins are more effective against armoured units in XGM though.

[DimeBagHo]

BTW, I just now realized that it's possibly to use the "accuracy_vs" settings for projectiles like arrows and bullets. We could make ranged units less effective by making their missiles scatter more.

[atraps]

It's just you.

I suppose
but i wasnt only referring to arrows (i said projectiles)

javelins are really effective in XGM, even against elite heavy infantry (in vanilla, javelins thrown at legionnaires were like sticks, but in XGM they do serious damage) which, in my opinion, shouldnt happen

i think giving all javelins the ap effect is like stealing the pila from the roman legionnaires and giving it to all the cheap javelinmen units in the game

as for the slings im ok with them as their missile attack is lower (or equal) to the max shield defense, which makes them effective only from the back

what do you guys think?:hmmm:

[TM Is Back]

I suppose
but i wasnt only referring to arrows (i said projectiles)

javelins are really effective in XGM, even against elite heavy infantry (in vanilla, javelins thrown at legionnaires were like sticks, but in XGM they do serious damage) which, in my opinion, shouldnt happen

i think giving all javelins the ap effect is like stealing the pila from the roman legionnaires and giving it to all the cheap javelinmen units in the game

as for the slings im ok with them as their missile attack is lower (or equal) to the max shield defense, which makes them effective only from the back

what do you guys think?:hmmm:

I agree. Those javalins realy hurt an army now. Lowering there missile attack is the best thing i suppose.

[DimeBagHo]

atraps: Iphicrates managed to defeat an army of Spartan Hoplites with an army of peltasts armed with javelins.

Greek warfare from the classical period through to the successor states provides numerous examples of light infantry armed with javelins causing serious harm to unsupported heavy infantry.

BTW, javelins were typically thrown with a throwing strap, or string, that allowed them to be hurled with far greater force than one just thrown by hand.

[Hurlbut]

atraps: Iphicrates managed to defeat an army of Spartan Hoplites with an army of peltasts armed with javelins.

Greek warfare from the classical period through to the successor states provides numerous examples of light infantry armed with javelins causing serious harm to unsupported heavy infantry.

BTW, javelins were typically thrown with a throwing strap, or string, that allowed them to be hurled with far greater force than one just thrown by hand.

Yeah, if you wanted to get rid of those pesky javelin skirmishers, respond with archers and cavalry.

[Kara Kolyo]

The thing with javelins in XGM is that they have AP ability, wich they didn't in vanila.