Scythia (I hope this is a good spot)

[Double X]

Scythia are painful to fight, espicially in XGM. They come in massive numbers and cavalry are quite difficult to completely defeat, even with phalanxes and hoplites. I am the bosporan kingdom as a provincial campaign (271 BC) and have kept a half stack of skirmishers/militia hoplites/cavalry a little in the north once Scythia decided to declare war on me. I have only maintained a small but decent army up north because it seems to be very unprofitable and tiresome to eradicate Scythia, plus the culture difference and capital distance would have towns rebelling often. I have taken the rebel barbarian camp closest to my two starting cities, and Olbia as well.

So, I allied with Thrace, Macedon, and Rome, and attacked Pontus and the Eastern Kingdoms, while keeping an uneasy peace with Armenia and Selucids. I have taken Sinope and the two Pontus towns and will probably need more troops to combat Selucids who will eventually attack me. Anyways...

Scythia is a huge pain in my side and I have given them money for a ceasefire, but lo and behold they just lay siege to my two outermost settlements and it takes too much time/money to get rid of them.

What do I do to beat Sciythia? How do you control this beast, because even though I combat them with spearmen, their horse archers always cause me massive losses and I cannot do anything about it.

BTW, I play Very Hard campaign difficulty/Hard battle difficulty with AI bonuses on. Though, I am getting better on the battle field so when I start another empire I may increase to Very Hard. Who knows, I feel like such a
'noob' (I hate the word though, you sound like a dicknose if you say it in real life) compared to you guys with huge empires.

Sorry if this was a long read

Double X

[Balikedes]

You don't sound like such a noob to me, playing on VH/H is pretty tough, especially with AI bonuses on.
Trying to keep a peace with them won't work, can you build forts at the passes over rivers near your borders?
If I remember, elephants and Median horse archers are the most effective against Scythia. Haven't fought them in quite a while though...but I think I remember a thread about this around somewhere...searching.

Found! In the guides section: Scythians

[Double X]

Thanks! By Median Cavalry I assume you mean cavalry with lances and such? I don't think I am able to make Elephant due to the spot of the map I am in but I will look around.

[Balikedes]

The Medians are an AOR unit found in and around Antioch towards Seleucia and somewhat North and South of the land in between.
You can build a navy with around 8 ships and an expendable general to head over there and hire some mercenaries...or go south from Sinope till you get to the area.
Median Cavalry are really good horse archers.

[DimeBagHo]

One approach to dealing with anoying neighbours is to take the settlements on your borders and create a buffer state by giving them to someone who would be easier to deal with (like say Armenia, or the Independent Gauls). You will probably wind up at war with them as well, but smacking them down should be a lot easier.

[Scutarii]

Median Cavalry are trainable in Ekbatana (Ecbatana), province named Media. Extremely useful against enemy HA's due to good melee and long range missiles.

My advice: start again on Medium campaign difficulty and autoresolve.

More serious, basically you need to beeline their capital and whether some siege defences (keep lage spear garrisons, maybe a half stack should do, then just mass in centre). Hold Campus Roxolani at all costs it has their monument and is the key to their 4 chevroned HA's they can pump out.

[decimator22]

Scythia are painful to fight, espicially in XGM. They come in massive numbers and cavalry are quite difficult to completely defeat, even with phalanxes and hoplites. I am the bosporan kingdom as a provincial campaign (271 BC) and have kept a half stack of skirmishers/militia hoplites/cavalry a little in the north once Scythia decided to declare war on me. I have only maintained a small but decent army up north because it seems to be very unprofitable and tiresome to eradicate Scythia, plus the culture difference and capital distance would have towns rebelling often. I have taken the rebel barbarian camp closest to my two starting cities, and Olbia as well.

So, I allied with Thrace, Macedon, and Rome, and attacked Pontus and the Eastern Kingdoms, while keeping an uneasy peace with Armenia and Selucids. I have taken Sinope and the two Pontus towns and will probably need more troops to combat Selucids who will eventually attack me. Anyways...

Scythia is a huge pain in my side and I have given them money for a ceasefire, but lo and behold they just lay siege to my two outermost settlements and it takes too much time/money to get rid of them.

What do I do to beat Sciythia? How do you control this beast, because even though I combat them with spearmen, their horse archers always cause me massive losses and I cannot do anything about it.

BTW, I play Very Hard campaign difficulty/Hard battle difficulty with AI bonuses on. Though, I am getting better on the battle field so when I start another empire I may increase to Very Hard. Who knows, I feel like such a
'noob' (I hate the word though, you sound like a dicknose if you say it in real life) compared to you guys with huge empires.

Sorry if this was a long read

Double X

I kind of lost my Cyrenian campaign VH/H with roleplaying although it has been one of the best campaigns I've ever had. Made an Ethiopian rebelion hold on etc. Until I lost Cyrene to the Ptolemaics after 5 consecutive +half stack segies. SO I quited as I was roleplaying (Had Cyrpus,Cydonia,Rhodos, Praetorium(sp?)).

Early on if you can give money to the factions fighting scythia and hopefully they will beat her or just kill each other until you are stong and then gooble them.

[Stilgar CG]

I think it's far from being mission impossible to fight Scythians in XGM now.

In Bosporan campaign (and, in any other provincial campaign) one should be fast and "furious". After securing Crimea, build a fort at its entrance. This will stop Scythian raids in Crimea. At the same time, with your home base secure, you could take fight to Steppe. Btw, I managed to silence Scythians pretty soon (first 15-20 turns), but then came Armenians and overwhelmed my Kingdom ... (that was on H/H, 5.7.22)

Edit: Btw, I cannot blame Armenians only for the fall of my Bosporan Kingdom. As it often happened in history, that was a combination of factors. First, Armenians that kept most of my military forces busy for a few "long" turns. Second, loss of two settlements in a single turn (one to Armenians and one to Scythians), which meant that I got broken "overnight" and could not retrain troops. Finally, while fighting Armenians I lost the momentum against Scythians, who managed to recover and came to life again, so war on two fronts with zero cash in bank

[LucretiusTC]

Here is another old thread how to beat those Scythian Horse Archers:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=185681&page=2

Some pictures from my old GCS campaign (H/H) against the Scythians after I had driven them out from Thrace (near Tomi and Buridava): http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/5...ythianscc6.jpg
http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/4...ythianswj9.jpg

I used Greek Hoplites and Thorakitai to protect those Cretan and regular Archers, Rhodian Slingers and Onagers. In some cases I replaced Onagers with Heavy Cavalry. The idea of a square formation is particularly good when you have to meet the Scythians on the open field battle. Then I have to put Thorakitai and Heavy Cavalry in the row behind Hoplites to secure the right and left flanks. Bridge battles can be also very helpful against the Scythians. Those Thracians were quite useful as a buffer state in the northern frontier since I captured their original capital and they lost those AI bonuses.

The original idea of a square formation belongs to Javolenus.

Luc.

[Double X]

Thanks for the awesome responses! So I take it from reading a bunch of old threads and here that I should use Median Cavalry and if unable, try to fight defensive battles?

Also, to the bloke who said to gift buffer states, for some reason countries do not accept buffer states when I was playing. Quite irritating, especially in another campaign when I was Macedon trying to give Carthage some areas in Asia Minor (to combat the Selucids).

[Double X]

Oh and also (sorry if this is slightly off-topic) the settlement Emporion rebelled against Iberia and declared loyalty to me and asked to send military help. Is it even worth it, because they are across the globe so it is hard to achieve non-red population happiness and the settlement is about 1500 in the negatives. Should I even bother?

[DimeBagHo]

Use the 'force diplomacy' script to give away border regions you don't want. See the readme for details about using the script.

Oh and also (sorry if this is slightly off-topic) the settlement Emporion rebelled against Iberia and declared loyalty to me and asked to send military help. Is it even worth it, because they are across the globe so it is hard to achieve non-red population happiness and the settlement is about 1500 in the negatives. Should I even bother?

It would be incredibly hard to hold and develop a settlement that far away. But I would try.

[Webba]

Yeah, then just choose what you want the AI to accept. It's a very handy feature!

[Webba]

In my Bosporan provincial campaign recently I had Massalia rebel to my faction. Since it was at 0% happiness with a half stack and governor I saw no alternative but to use the one turn I held it to build a boat then hand it over to the Gauls, who just happened to be distracting my otherwise very dangerous German neighbour. Really cool when things work out like that.

[Accuser]

if you really hate the scythians, do what I do.use the force diplomacy to make the little %&#%ers give all but their capital to some neighbouring faction. makes the game much more fun to play when the horse factions are out of the game

[Boriak]

I had problems with them too in my Macedonian campaign (actually, I'm having the same problems right now). I built phalanxes, thorakitai, archers. Nothing fancy, just keep going until you drive them to the edge of the map. And don't separate your units. Those horses will annihilate a phalanx unit if it's alone.