few questions about parthia and scythia

[gingerbill]

1) after some tips on how to fight scythia as armenia . At the moment i'm building armies with lots of cavalry to counter them . Just wondering if there's another unit or tactic that works well against them.

2) i've never played a provincial campaign before , i notice you can play as parthia or scythia . Are the provincial campaigns the same as grand campaign but units been altered? Is it worth playing the scythia or parthia provincial campaign? Do they have a decent unit roster and plenty of buildings in there settlements? Is it easy or challenging campaign?

i'm using XGM 5.8.13 .

[DimeBagHo]

There are various tactics that work. Forcing bridge battles and using lots of Kardakes Spearmen works well. Kardakes Spearmen plus archers or slingers also works well. With cavalry you will often be at a disadvantage because the AI horse factions get larger units.

The Horse faction provincial campaign is almost exactly the same as the main campaign, except that the horse factions get a smaller unit size, and the area between the western and eastern steppes has been changed so that the AI can find its way across.

You can see the unit selection in custom battle mode.

Once you learn how to use horse archers, the horse faction campaigns are pretty easy.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Um...I don't want to derail the thread, let me know if this is irrelevant, but I was also wondering about something regarding Parthia and Scythia. Not how to fight them, I beat them easily enough(horse archers seem always annoying to fight), but rather how to stop them from destroying everyone else in the campaign map.

As you may have seen from my post in the other thread, my current campaign was pretty much ruined by them. Scythia crushed Germania, Thrace, Greece and Macedon, while Parthia destroyed the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Empire in short order. (yes, Parthians have taken Alexandria. While my very successful Roman faction has only taken part of Spain and Greece.... Not bad for a bunch of nomads from the steppes, eh?)

Any advice for how to modify text files such as the EDU to keep these guys on the steppes where they belong?

Can I salvage my current campaign somehow with console commands? Is there a console command for transferring settlements from one faction to another? That might enable me to put these regions back to their proper owners.

[gingerbill]

i think i will give up on armenia , i really think something needs to change with this . Try fighting scythia who attack with 3 full stacks of 20 horse archers every turn , its impossible . Don't know what size of army that would represent in real life but it's silly . And the fact they are all powerful horse archers that are such a pain to fight . Seluicid's are tough and have lots of army's but they represent a challenge , scythia is just nonsense , and both at once is even worse .

how did these guys not conquer the entire world in real life if they are that powerful?

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

how did these guys not conquer the entire world in real life if they are that powerful?

Of course in real life there were WAY less of them relative to the other factions than there are in the game. In the game, the small villages can be hugely profitable and allow them to train these massive horse archer armies that they then use to starve out very large settlements defended by the AI (which deals with horse archers extremely badly because they are so powerful in auto resolve). Then they have tons of bases in which to recruit limitless more horse archers very quickly.

Just goes to show that a small balance oversight like that can end up ruining the game for a lot of people.

They tried attacking Macedon once and were soundly defeated, and that basically was the end of their aggression on any Western power as far as I know. They were defeated by other steppe tribes after that.

[Anakarsis]

Take your best foot archers and your best phalanxes. Put the archers in lose formation but one unit close to another. Then surround the archers with your phalanxes and just wait for the steppe raiders to come to die.

[gingerbill]

Take your best foot archers and your best phalanxes. Put the archers in lose formation but one unit close to another. Then surround the archers with your phalanxes and just wait for the steppe raiders to come to die.

no . As armenia your best troops are not that good , hillmen are my main infantry and my archers are crap . Plus i cant see how that would work , remember they have 20 units of 70 HA , and several stacks like that . they cut me to pieces in seconds .

I would not win an archery duel with them and a unit of my infantry last around 5 seconds under fire . If i sit in formation they sit there firing arrows and they have alot more and better archers than me.

[aznflea]

these factions are stupidly unbalanced and overpowered.

go to the edu files and look up barbarian general scythia. go to the upkeep part and change the value to around 20 000. that should stop them expanding.

do the same for parthia. i think they have differently named generals like the scythians.

PS. i know this isnt really 'fair' but having stupidly rich horsies with seemingly endless supply of money and arrows rampage throughout the map is not fun and i play for fun.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Hahah that's almost exactly what I did aznflea. I just increased the price and recruiting time of all of their units hugely. I had to start a new campaign though, in the old one they had so many standing forces that even with no money they wouldn't go away.

Not only are tens of thousands of horse archers invading the world not fun, but it's not even close to historically accurate. These aren't Mongols or even Huns, they're tribes with a few gold pieces.

Speaking of Scythians, whose idea was it to give them onagers? It's almost as if someone wanted them to take over the world in campaigns on purpose, why would they give any barbarian faction onagers haha.

[Anakarsis]

Don´t know that. Huns and Sarmatians in BI has no catapults. At least, they should be able to recruit siege weapons only in captured "civilized" territories. It was famous that Trajan´s successful campaigns against the PArthian were to the nomad´s lack of siege equipment needed to re-take the cities that the Romans conquered, when he crafty avoided open battles with their horse armies and go straigth to take their cities.

[Vercingetorix_Defeated]

Exactly, half the advantages civilized factions held over barbarian and more primitive cultures is that they simply didn't have the engineering and siege abilities to take down the defenses of large cities.

Rather than chase horse archers around on the field all day, just march to where they come from and burn it to the ground. They can't run away forever: they have to sleep somewhere

[gaius_caesar]

Rather than chase horse archers around on the field all day, just march to where they come from and burn it to the ground.

Exactly what you should do against HA factions...

[CaesarVincens]

Except when the horse archers besiege you with a full stack of horse archers, and they have no infantry, so they can never assault. Then you slowly starve to death. I've seen that happen with Parthia many times.

[Anakarsis]

Well, the Parthians effectively wiped out the seleucids.

I have readed in virtually ANY source that i managed to get that steppe bows were always more powerful than bows from the southern iranians of the same period.

THe probelm seems to be the power of the BASIC HA. You always compare them with basic units (doryphoroi, hillmen), wich is true since they have those HAs from the start. BUt you are not considering that they have very few upgrades

[Sextus Molestus]

I have only played campaigns as the Greeks and the Romans so far (postponed Greeks early on and currently playing Romans), so I haven't had any experience fighting these factions.

It seems, though, that it's impossible for factions near these to fight them early on, as the HA factions get their most elite troops early on (perhaps I'm wrong but that appears to be the gist of it to me).

However, if you were to ally with them early on, you'd only be supporting their expansion into other lands, which will make them equally difficult to conquer later on. So what's the answer?

If there was any way to do it, perhaps it would be advantageous to get them to go to war against each other (Scythians vs. Parthians). Would they then not cancel each other out? But getting them to go to war...is this an accomplishable task?

[DimeBagHo]

In the main campaign the Scythians and Parthians will seldom go to war because the AI can't figure out how to get from the eastern steppes to the western steppes (that is by design). They might go to war if they both expand towards Mesopotamia.

To beat either faction, all you need is heavy infantry and the right terrain. If you are playing a Hellenistic faction then Thorakitai work especially well. There are other methods that will work, but that one is quite reliable.

[gingerbill]

what are Kardakes Spearmen ? i can only build hillmen and heavy spearmen , both of which get killed by HA's .

Fighting them on a bridge makes sense or in forest , but when they invade your lands and seige cities (which they can never siege as they only have HA's , they just starve the city out) , i cant pick and choose the terrain .

my experience of fighting them is (h/h) if i sit in formation they will out do me in a ranged battle , if i attack i end up chasing them all round the map and slowly die. If i do win then i lose alot of men and they win the war of attrition as they have countless stacks .

I like to think i know what im doing but i just dont get how you can beat them by sitting there and having an archery battle with them . they have 1400 archers in every stack led by a brilliant general , all better than my archers , or at least as good. And this isnt in late game were you can afford lots of stacks and have all your best untis , i can't build cataphract archers yet.

An army of slingers backed up by spearmen can beat 20 units of 70 Ha's in a ranged fight?

[DimeBagHo]

what are Kardakes Spearmen ? i can only build hillmen and heavy spearmen , both of which get killed by HA's .

Kardakes Spearmen = Heavy Spearmen. Though even in open terrain you can sometimes beat a stack of HAs with a stack of Kardakes just by herding them into a corner and forcing them to melee. That's easier if you play with huge unit sizes. Probably wouldn't work on small unit sizes.

Fighting them on a bridge makes sense or in forest , but when they invade your lands and seige cities...

So don't let that happen. The north of Armenia is all mountain passes, rivers, and forests. If you employ good strategy, and build forts in the right places, there is no reason you should ever have to fight the Scythians in open terrain.

An army of slingers backed up by spearmen can beat 20 units of 70 Ha's in a ranged fight?

Quite often. Use the slingers to soak up the arrows and wear down the HAs. Slingers have more ammo, and fire more rounds per volley, so they will give as good as they get. If the HAs attack you engage them with the spearmen and win. If they don't attack you wait until their ammo is spent, then chase them into a corner and win. Again it helps if you have terrain on your side, like a nice hill to shoot down from. Oh, and don't forget to put the slingers in loose formation.

[_Lacedaemonian_]

this is my roman campaign on vh/vh with XGM 5.8.18; as u can see scythia and parthia have formed a tiny alliance...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Balikedes]

Holy crap, I've never seen that many stacks in XGM before. They must be utilizing 70% of the horses on the planet...LOL.