Nabatean Campaign Start Question

[Geffalrus]

Honest question. Why is the Nabatean campaign situation set up the way it is? By which I mean, why is the player saddled with a fairly large negative income and surrounded by either A) the appropriately powerful Hellenistic kingdoms or B) Arabian rebels with incredibly powerful stacks of horse archers and lancers? What exactly is the intended path the player is supposed to take in that situation?

Sure, I can fight a fairly frustrating series of battles against the neighboring Arab horse archer stacks before moving on to assault a fortified town with my depleted forces. Or I can disband all my expensive cavalry and slowly build up my one settlement and wait a long time until I can build that army again due to the MTW2 replenishment mechanic. But are those really the only options?

The thing that's really annoying is that the Rebel stacks make profitable raiding impossible because a small raid force will be immediately attacked and forced to run before anything can be earned. At least with the Areuakoi, there was one neighbor who could conceivably be raided for a profit because that one did not have a roaming army.

I am not overly experienced with the nuances of EB2, so any helpful suggestions for how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

[Rad]

Well, most factions start out like that - with incoming debt and surrounded by enemies. I am not a fan of that (I am annoyed by the debt part), but the start is what it is, and the mid-late game is worth bearing through it.

If you want a faction with a more rational start (i.e. no debt), go with Rome or Carthage.

If you're intent on playing another faction, you can do one of the following 3 things when starting a new campaign:

1. Disband and turtle up. Never tried this one, actually. I play on VH/VH, so there's a chance that a roaming army will besiege me in such a weakened state, and that would be the end of the campaign.
2. Spend your initial funds on building cost effective infastructure (farms, temples, port garrisons etc). Use your initial army to conquer and expand as much as you can. Works decently with medium sized factions.
3. Spend everything you have on extra troops, take what you can before you run out of gas (i.e. armies). This one is best for small factions.
Try not to turn the game into an early Blitz - fighting the AI is much more enjoyable in the Middle-Late game.

[Jurand of Cracow]

If you want a faction with a more rational start (i.e. no debt), go with Rome or Carthage.

Hayastan is a good one as well. I'm not sure (I've played it in EB1 ;-), but I'd also think Ptolemies are also a good one to start with.

[Rad]

Oh yeah, forgot about Hayastan. Baktria isn't bad. I think they start with a negative income, but can recover quite quickly.
The Ptolemies start in debt, though.

[YourMadDoc]

When I was playing as Nabateans, 3 of my raiding armies rebelled with all my horse-archers and then killed every footsoldier I had left in my main army during first few turns. In time I was able to pay for another army Saba and Ptolemaioi captured independent provinces around my capital so I had to cross the desert and expand into provinces around Persian Gulf to get some money. It was a messy start, but fun.

Cant, you raid on that giant uncontrollable territory? It seems safe.

[Colos1987]

Use your starting armies to pick off the rovers in your starting province, preferably luring them out and taking care of them one by one. This will eliminate devastation and also lessens your army cost.

Send out all your FMs to raid. If the FM is useless, him rebelling will means one less of a problem (FMs do have upkeep). If you are afraid of them rebelling, put two FMs together. They might still revolt, but chances are lower.

Dont put additional units to the raiding party. If the FM does rebel, he takes those units away. Killing a single rebel FM is always easier than killing a minor stack of units.

Raid near your border. That way the raiding party will less likely be attacked, and even if they are attacked, just withdraw or autoresolve to a defeat. The worst thing that could happen is the FM retreats to Rekem.

In the meantime, use the remainder of your units to besiege either Dedan or Bostra. Build confideracy there. It provides 4 free upkeep slots. Disband everything except for 8 units of currently top tier units that can have free upkeep. Disperse those units among your (for now) two settlements - you have virtually no army cost now.

You should start earning money now. Note that the more confideracies you have, the more free upkeep you get, to a point where you can support an entire stack for free. The downside is, that every conf building decreases the authority of the FL.

Next step is to get the reform

Hope this helped.

Colos

[Geffalrus]

@Colos: Thanks! That actually is some very helpful advice.

[Moros]

I always go for Bostra first, then Dedan. As the ptolemaioi or seleukids are often quick to grab it, while Dedan is safe for a pretty long period. This way you'll have more settlements before you go to war.

[Geffalrus]

The raiding is still not working very well for me. The only thing that allowed me to really settle down and raid a region was to first defeat the large roaming cavalry army.....and maybe that should be the plan going forward anyway. Still, it was definitely impossible for me to raid rebel territory because the roaming stack for that region attacked immediately. And then the single FM would retreat about 2 inches, get attacked again, then have to fight and lose and retreat. Which was fine, except that now the FM has gained a negative trait.

Further attempts at raiding resulted in 2 of 4 FM go rebel.

After taking Dedan, I'm now stuck with a beat up army, a still negative income, and almost no extra FM for raiding.

Don't seem to have the hang of it yet. My Saba campaign is going fantastic, for what it's worth. Those guys know how to earn money!

[YourMadDoc]

In my opinion, Nabatu and Pontos have one of hardest starting conditions so you should be prepared to suffer at the start. God bless infinite war between Seleukea and Ptolemaioi. Weakling as Nabatu would be very close to the top of Seleukids expansion list if they were at peace. Even if Nabatu is allied with Ptolemaioi it would add one more thing to worry about.

[nvm]

Considering Nabatu is a horde faction, would it be possible to keep playing and just migrate somewhere else if you lose your last city? That's how horde factions worked in RTW, although it might be different for the player in M2TW...

[YourMadDoc]

I did that several times with Lugiones during one campaign after all my provinces rebelled so I think you can do it with Nabatu too.

[Kull]

Considering Nabatu is a horde faction, would it be possible to keep playing and just migrate somewhere else if you lose your last city? That's how horde factions worked in RTW, although it might be different for the player in M2TW...

It definitely works. I've done that as Sweboz, and Nabatea should be no different.

[myarta]

Geffalrus, do you have two or three cities now? Keep your best free upkeep units occupying all 8 or 12 slots of free spaces in those cities to keep your army costs low. Then surge them forward maybe with a couple cheap levies to try to defeat a rover, then pull back to nearly free army upkeep again by putting them back into those free upkeep slots. That is your sanctuary for now and it models a short raiding season then return to homelands which I think is interesting. That's basically what Colos mentioned but if you are still having upkeep problems it is probably your army costs and the free slots really need to be taken advantage of.