How do you fight the scythians as a Hellenic faction?

[scubatim84]

So I'm just curious how you guys who play GCS, Macedon, etc. deal with the Scythians since it seems like they mainly just spam missile and skirmisher cavalry in their armies. I've tried doing the same but I don't think GCS cavalry is quite as good. I read somewhere that getting them in urban warfare is the way to go, and that did work fantastic in defending a city, but that makes offense a huge pain in the ass. What kind of army composition do you guys go for when you fight these guys?

[MkdRanger]

urban warfare is best
best in stone walls
they only have spear warband to operate siege eq and they bring little of them

[scubatim84]

Yeah, I noticed that they get the living kicked out of them on the walls. Bleh. I have a feeling this is going to be a very long, protracted fight.

[Apollyon]

It's suicide to attack the Scythians on the open plains without light cavalry. Unfortunately, good light cavalry is not something the greeks were reknowned for.

As stated by the Ranger, catch them in their small cities. They are useless in defence (unless they sally forth).

[Grimbold]

Make a skirmish based army. Slingers, archers and the 2 units of shielded javelins that Greeks have. Next you just push their army into the a corner of the map and crush them

[knguyen_93]

What if they got entirely cataphract and cataphract archer?

[Dog Fart]

Last year a guy was playing as GCS and had Scythia and Parthia dominating the map. So he got the wild idea of spamming full stacks of thorakitai. Yup, 19 units of thorakitai and one general.... a month later he owned the map. Thats one way of doing it.

I normaly make half my stack mobile spear infantry, 5-6 thureos and 4-5 hoplites or thorakitai. The rest of my stack is made of both light and heavy cavalry blended with archers and maybe slingers. Tactics vary on how to beat them soundly but I normally feint a weakness on one flank and lure their heavier cavalry into a charge/their demise and counter attack with a reserve of spearmen of some sort and some cavalry. Often, when the Scythian heavies charge on one flank their light skirmishers are not too far away on that side. So I make an attempt of chasing them with my light cavalry. Don't persue if they run too far though. Once you've elimenated a good portion of their heavy cavalry you're left with the task of chasing down their light cavalry... until you're left with that one unit of horsearchers that just runs around the boundries of the battle map and you send all your units after him, triple the game speed, take a nap, cook dinner, do the laundry, balance the check book, and when you come back your units are still chasing that bastard. God I hate that!

[scubatim84]

Once you've elimenated a good portion of their heavy cavalry you're left with the task of chasing down their light cavalry... until you're left with that one unit of horsearchers that just runs around the boundries of the battle map and you send all your units after him, triple the game speed, take a nap, cook dinner, do the laundry, balance the check book, and when you come back your units are still chasing that bastard. God I hate that!

yeah that's happened to me before once or twice, I hate it when they just run along the edge of the red line but still stay inside the boundaries.

I like the idea of skirmish-based armies...makes sense since in order for them to take shots at my army, they would also be in range of my army to return fire. Spamming thoratikai sounds hilarious...I pretty much never train them anymore though, marines have the same (if not very very slightly better stats iirc) attributes and are far more numerous in where you can train them since you just need a shipyard which most people train asap for the trade benefits.

I wouldn't even feel bad spamming marines for entire armies since that's all they're doing with cavalry. If they start using cataphracts, well marines would work good for that too since they're spearmen, and I could also use a few hoplite or phalanxes to tie them up and then rip them to pieces with marines from the side or archers and slingers in the rear.

[Durnaug]

Last year a guy was playing as GCS and had Scythia and Parthia dominating the map. So he got the wild idea of spamming full stacks of thorakitai. Yup, 19 units of thorakitai and one general.... a month later he owned the map. Thats one way of doing it.

I definitely what to try this is my GCS campaign but anytime I start spamming armies my economy gets screwed up. E.g. I started spamming armies in and around Anatolia to finish off Selucia and Armenia. Suddenly my economy is in minus figures despite looking healthy before that. I ended up having to declare lots of ceasefires and hand over territory to those factions in such a way that they would fight each other.

So how does a human player spam armies like a pooter player? I always find I can only afford one full stack in each theatre. If I create multiply stacks in one theatre then the others are left undefended.

[DimeBagHo]

You can't really spam stacks, unless you use very cheap units. A full stack of Thorakitai will cost 10,000 per turn to maintain. If you start adding more expensive units then that can go up to 15,000, or even more for cavalry stacks.

You also need to be careful about how many units you commit to garrison duty. Even Doryphoroi get expensive if you have enough of them.

[Durnaug]

You can't really spam stacks, unless you use very cheap units. A full stack of Thorakitai will cost 10,000 per turn to maintain. If you start adding more expensive units then that can go up to 15,000, or even more for cavalry stacks.

You also need to be careful about how many units you commit to garrison duty. Even Doryphoroi get expensive if you have enough of them.

That explains why my economy went **** up. Good to know because I thought I was building the wrong economic structures.

Plus time I trimmed some garrisons...

[Elvis]

You can't really spam stacks, unless you use very cheap units.

Does in no way apply to the AI, of course.

[yiplong]

Spamming units is fine as long as you keep on sacking enemy cities. Each large city should bring in some 20k, you can raze buildings to raise more money. After you have take over enough cities the extra income from the newly conquered cities should pay for the units.

[nhinhonhinho]

My options when face cavalry base. From the best to the worse

1.Force and lure them in "urban warfare". Each time you stop build a fort and sit there. They will try to besiege you and you have a urban battle. If not leave your fort and cover in forest. They will take the fort=>you siege it and got the urban warfare too

2.If you play as TSE use Scythed Chariot back by some cavalry. Scythed Chariot is a monsters here and they will crush anything from cataphract to elite phalanx

3.Shoot and pike. Half archer (basic archer is enough) haft phalanx (in late game when they have elite units) or thorakitai (to have more defence and shield early). Shielded your archers and shoot them down

3.Control Syria and Persia then use Eastern cavalry and Median cavalry

4.Use Greek's cavalry again them. I suggest to use Prodromoi and noble (companion) cavalry. Your lost may higher but your economy will bite them

PS:Marine and thorakitai is the same right?

[scubatim84]

My options when face cavalry base. From the best to the worse

1.Force and lure them in "urban warfare". Each time you stop build a fort and sit there. They will try to besiege you and you have a urban battle. If not leave your fort and cover in forest. They will take the fort=>you siege it and got the urban warfare too

2.If you play as TSE use Scythed Chariot back by some cavalry. Scythed Chariot is a monsters here and they will crush anything from cataphract to elite phalanx

3.Shoot and pike. Half archer (basic archer is enough) haft phalanx (in late game when they have elite units) or thorakitai (to have more defence and shield early). Shielded your archers and shoot them down

3.Control Syria and Persia then use Eastern cavalry and Median cavalry

4.Use Greek's cavalry again them. I suggest to use Prodromoi and noble (companion) cavalry. Your lost may higher but your economy will bite them

PS:Marine and thorakitai is the same right?

Sounds good to me. Marine and thorakitai is essentially the same, yes, but I think the marines have slightly better defense.

[DimeBagHo]

Marines and Thorakitai are the same. The only difference is that Marines cost more, and you can recruit them from a shipyard, which means they are easy to recruit in coastal regions.

Personally I like Thorakitai (or Thureophoroi in a pinch) plus slingers for killing HA stacks.

[yiplong]

Scythe's massive HA stacks just kicked my butt in battle. They invaded Thrace with 6-8 massive stacks of mostly HAs, heavy horses and some spearmen. In a few turns half of Thrace had fallen, their forces threatening cities from Byzantium to Pella. Wow, I was shocked and had to end my campaign in Italy hastily to turn my attention to the Scythian hordes.

My initial response was to use an army of onager, archers and hoplites. I had some mild successes initially but eventually they got my army cornered and wiped it out entirely, even killing 3 of my generals. I have access to Syrian archers and Cretan archers, are these any good against them? How about Median HA?

[DimeBagHo]

Median HA are excellent, but you will be outnumbered because your cavalry units will be smaller, and you have to send Medians all the way back to Media to retrain. So it's worth sending any Medians you have but you will have to send something else to form the backbone of your army.

For ranged units, slingers are better than archers because they have more ammo, some shield protection, and they work better against armour. To protect the slingers, send Thorakitai, Marines, or Thureophoroi. Althernatively, just send a mass of Thorakitai and corner the Scythians.

[Megas Antiviros <3 Gaesatae :p]

When I play Macedon I always first attack thrace, illyria and southern Italy and make a lot of thracian cavalry (+/- 16 units) and also some units of tarentine cavalry (+/- 6 units), then I attack scythia and parthia and make a lot of AOR horse archers (+/- 20 units)
(I play on medium -medium with AI bonuses off)

[Grimbold]

Extermaniting the population of a newly conquered city is only good on a short term. The more population a city has, the more workers. The more workers, more production, and thus, income.