Thrace

[ben331]

I am about to start a campaign as Thrace. I've never played as them before. I have only ever played as:

Julii - first campaign, won long victory conditions, have not yet had civil war. Year is 15BC and I own Gaul, spain, Britannia, Germania, a sliver of land where modern Poland is which connects my empire to Scythia, and I own basically what is modern Russia and have just begun an invasion down the caucasus into Asia minor where the egyptians and Greek cities are fighting for control.

Greek Cities - year is 160BC, won long victory conditions, conquered Rome defeated Brutii and such. Own Greece, Cyrenacia, and lands up to Aquincum and Campus Getae. Scythians and Britons have empires from there onwards and both are my protectorates.

Both of those were vanilla. I currently have a Mundus magnus mod campaign as Julii in which I have conquered Gaul and have too much money to make it any fun. I am training dozens of full stacks of Triarii and still have an income of 15k+ per turn.


So yeah, that's my previous experience. The first two campaigns I started when RTW first came out and I've been playing them on and off for years now. I've done other campaigns but never really got anywhere before getting bored.


Now I want to try Thrace. They seem extremely difficult; they always get defeated early on with me. They don't seem to get any outstanding units. Has anyone else tried a campaign as Thrace before? What do you think of them?

[The Mad Monk]

Own Dacia's territories before they rapidly expand and become a problem. Either you can go strait for them, with their 2 cities or go for Byzantium then come back to them with 4+ cities.

How ever Dacia is numerically Superior armies so you need some very intelligent battle tactics to own those filthy barbarians.

[Njord]

Thrace isn't too difficult, you can push forward early and take the rebel city of Constantinople, and press into the more fertile lands of Macedon from there or push across the sea into Pontus and Rhodes, gaining a few wonders.

Dacians have low armor and almost no cavalry. Your combination of phalanx, archers and militia cavalry make very short work of them.
Scythia can be a problem if you let them grow, generally if you take their city closest to you, you cripple them instantly.

Numidia is a much harder campaign, having to deal with Carthage (who start with elephants and a large cavalry force) from the get go and around ten turns in the Scipii arrive en mass, when all you have is skimirishers, numidian jav cav and either a few archers or desert infantry.

[ben331]

Well things were going very badly at the start. I took Tomi and Byzantium with my two armies outside my capital Seutopolis. (This is vanilla 1.5 with Mundus Magnus mod, which only makes more settlements and a bigger map, I think) but then the Macedonians broke our alliance and besieged Seutopolis. I beat them back, but then the Greeks attacked Byzantium with a huge Hoplite army against which I could do nothing. My economy was too weak and the best units I had were militia hoplites and 2 falxes which I had at the start. I lost Byzantium.

Then Macedon came and attacked my capital again with a full stack - I lost it, leaving me with Tomi. So I began to move northward, taking Olbia and then settlements on the Crimea. I lost Tomi to Macedon soon after. It seemed like there was nothing I could do against them, particularly with only Militia hoplites. Had a civil revolt in Tanais which meant I am now at war with Scythia. Took back the settlement, completely slaughtered them doing the battle personally and got a heroic victory whereas trying auto-resolve, despite odds being 5:2, I lost. That shouldn't happen I though, so I loaded the save and did it personally and only lost 200 men compared to the Scythian's 900. Now I am busy spamming phalanx pikemen. I have an army of them on the bridge south of Olbia guarding against Dacia, but they got an army round the other way to besiege the city. I saved my game on the battle screen, did an auto resolve to take this screenshot and lost . But I am going back to it to do the battle personally.
Next I plan on continuing to take cities around the black sea coast, moving down the east coast into Armenia, then Pontus. The Scipii romans seem to be having a bit of a bug - they have lost Messina on Sicily and instead took Corinth...not sure what's going on. I'm dreading having to fight the Romans as Thrace...especially if there are two of their factions.
Also, the Brutii are always changing their stance toward Macedon. One turn they are at war, then they have ceasefire, then at war...on and on and on.

Whenever odds are 2:1, or 3:2, or 10:7, or 5:3 or even 5:2 with Thrace, I always seem to lose. With Rome or Greece you usually win...it's really annoying, I'm doing all my battles personally and it's taking ages. Plus the economy is so slow I keep ending turns impatiently...

Here is the screenshot of my current situation - note that the dacian army besieging Olbia should not be there, it is only there because I auto-resolved just to take the screenshot and plan on doing the battle personally tomorrow.



PS Happy new year!