Ivar the Boner
Arcane
Update 19 - Fields of Hayasdan (Beautiful Blob Betrayed By Baktrian Bastards)
Ipsos is our only "heartland" province in asia minor and only pleace where we can train our faction units. Unfortunately it's populated only by three families and one dog. I lowered taxes so those bastards would breed faster (dog can go to hell though) but it's not enough. We will train shitty units in Ankyra and then disband them in Ipsos basically resetlling population. It's quite costly but we have to do it (we need some base of operation to fight Epeiros).
Sarpedon is marching to Kyrene because it's one of provinces we must control to meet victory conditions. Unfortunately, taking Kyrene will make us border Carthage, and last thing we need is more fucking imperialistic neigbours.
Zadrakata surrendered without a fight and it's going to get it's ass enslaved because population is unhappy.
It was only matter of time. Finally, Baktria attacked us. Rebelion was not enough and Baktrian "king" want to expand his "kingdom" borders... O tempora, o mores!
WAAAAAGH!!
I decided not to mess with independent cities in the north and go straight for Hayasdan/Armenia (they are also guys who rebelled against Basileus and we need to destroy they to meet victory conditions). I disbanded our Hellenic Medium Cav because they made complete fools of themselves while we were field testing them during battle with sand niggers. Now we have only prodromoi (who also made fools of themselves but we need SOME cav ffs) in Hegemonides army.
Damn, there is Thessalian cav to recruit here (as pseudo mercenaries) they are sweet but they cost so much... and we have other shit to do with our shekel. Maybe next time.
Baktrian SATRAP (King my ass, you should be my bitch!) is sieging us with one unit of pandotapoi phalangitai, I decided to sally forth and bitchslap them.
Baktrian native phalanx looks pretty much like ours, but they don't have this sweet ass symbol on their shields...
... Actually, do you guys know what this symbol supposed to be? I always wondered what the hell it is, but to this day, I still don't know.
We shouted few instults and Baktrians decided to go just go away.
I put my army on river crossing, waiting for reinforcements because I was sure that even AI is not retaded enough to attack army on river crossing... but no, it is retarded enough to do it.
Fair enough.
Have fun guys.
Stabity-stabity-stab.
Well, quite stubborn people, dem parthians. But so silly, oh so silly...
Those guys are not cataphracts, they are "just" armored horse archers but I hate them anyway and concentrated my efforts on killing them.
And my hatred made me reckless and fucked up our formation a bit but we are still fine.
Their general either wanted to save horse archers or was simply stupid and charged into thick of it. We poked him with extreme prejudice and his death resulted in mass rout... rout in OUR direction, so their army got annihilated.
You are running wrong way!
That's parthian general revenge from the grave, our reinforcements got ambushed.
And that's how ambush looks like in this game. Your unit start surrounded by enemy and are in "column" formation.
We quickly tell them to regroup.
And they managed to do it fast enough, well done.
Unfortunately ambushers have one unit of horse archers so they will just shoot us till they are out of arrerz.
They finally charged but then just retreated and left the field, I didn't know that "Eleutheroi" (rebels) armies can retreat so I'm quite surprised.
Well, we "won".
But our eastern army will be reinforced by less troops than they hoped.
Epeirotes signed peace with S.P.Q.R... and they still own southern Italy, that's... unexpected.
Reinforcements arrived and our eastern army is getting ready to poke the heart of Parthian kingdom.
S.P.Q.R are finally doing something in Gaul. They just made Aedui their protectorate (vasall, basically) and that's bad news for Arverni and all Free People Living in a Free State (tm).
First free city here that decided to fight for it's independence.
But it won't save them from being sold into slavery (They were quite happy but I'm not taking any chances).
Now it's time to put Armenia back in line (Historically it was actually Armenia that destroyed remnants of Arche Seleukeia invading Coele-Syria - last bastion of Seleucid king).
WAAAAGH!!
Ha! Armenian bastards attacked Hegemonides from behind hoping to lift the siege. They don't know that one does not simply outmanauver best infantry in the known world!
Be defualt we are facing stack that attacked us but Armavir garrison is much scarier army and will be behind us, so we have to turn around.
We redeployed, leaving Armavir garrison enough room to organize their line (we could just rush them as they enter the field but that's too cheesy).
Skirmishers, welcome Armenian "king's" forces...
They also have some nice stuff behind us, we will have to watch out.
Skirmishers, fall back. Rest of you get ready!
I see you there! don't try anything funny.
We have random shit being trown in our general direction while Armenian infantry do pretty good job at not being completely slaughtered by our Pezhetairoi.
Army behind us is getting close so I send two unit of phalangitai to cover us. This made our left flank a little bit exposed but that's our Argyraspides flank so I have absolutely confidence in them.
Thorakitai! prepare to flank the enemy!
First they shall throw their glorious hellenic javelins and then charge with glorious hellenic fury!
They got butt-charged and we have to send Argyraspides to save their glorious hellenic asses.
Armenians decided to avoid deadly wall of pikes and simply go around our phalanx in the back... sneaky bastards!
Thorakitai are saved but we told them to go being useless elsewhere and let Argyraspides do their job.
Then our rear got completely overrun...
Stop routing! COME BACK YOU COWARDS!
I tried to send Throkitai from right flank to our rear but they got attacked by Armenian noble infantry and we can't move them.
Prodormoi! Follow me, we have to do it ourselves...
Thorakitai on our left flank are not only "occupied" by armenian nobles, they are being fucking slaughtered by them. We had to send some Pezhetairoi to help them.
Meanwhile our archers and skirmishers are in full flight.
And our main phalanx line is getting charged from behind by Armenian royal kinsmen heavy cavalry.
... And our cavalry we send to help, got intercepted by armenians and tastefully raped.
I didn't know they had so many fucking heavy cavalry, man.
... They are everywhere, just... just so many.
Fortunately our Klereouchoi and Pezhatairoi have pretty high morale so they keep fighting.
Armenian cavalry is raping us, but our Argyraspides are completely crushing their infantry.
We managed to encircle one unit of Armenian kinsmen cav and we are not going to let them escape.
Armenian infantry finally broke and we can concentrate on fending off their cavalry attacks.
... And by fending off I mean sending three pahalangitai units to stop one kinsmen heavy cavalry.
But I think they finally have enough.
Why the fuck we even attacked Armenia?
We won, but lost shitton of men, especially since we outnumbered them quite nicely. Hegemonides is far away from Antiocheia so he won't recieve any reinforcements and Armenians are sending more shit here. He's on his own.
Some of our men got healed though... we will put the stuffed bodies of those that didn't on nightwatch to scare off Armenians.
Somehow Hegemonides got "decorated hero" trait for this battle. Whatever.
Pergamon surrendered without a fight and we are going to enslave the shit out of it because it's a huge city and we won't be able to keep them in line if we don't.
We have whole asia minor. Now I want island of Lesbos. Empire needs it for it's... strategic porn industry purposses.
Ipsos is our only "heartland" province in asia minor and only pleace where we can train our faction units. Unfortunately it's populated only by three families and one dog. I lowered taxes so those bastards would breed faster (dog can go to hell though) but it's not enough. We will train shitty units in Ankyra and then disband them in Ipsos basically resetlling population. It's quite costly but we have to do it (we need some base of operation to fight Epeiros).
Sarpedon is marching to Kyrene because it's one of provinces we must control to meet victory conditions. Unfortunately, taking Kyrene will make us border Carthage, and last thing we need is more fucking imperialistic neigbours.
Zadrakata surrendered without a fight and it's going to get it's ass enslaved because population is unhappy.
It was only matter of time. Finally, Baktria attacked us. Rebelion was not enough and Baktrian "king" want to expand his "kingdom" borders... O tempora, o mores!
WAAAAAGH!!
I decided not to mess with independent cities in the north and go straight for Hayasdan/Armenia (they are also guys who rebelled against Basileus and we need to destroy they to meet victory conditions). I disbanded our Hellenic Medium Cav because they made complete fools of themselves while we were field testing them during battle with sand niggers. Now we have only prodromoi (who also made fools of themselves but we need SOME cav ffs) in Hegemonides army.
Damn, there is Thessalian cav to recruit here (as pseudo mercenaries) they are sweet but they cost so much... and we have other shit to do with our shekel. Maybe next time.
Baktrian SATRAP (King my ass, you should be my bitch!) is sieging us with one unit of pandotapoi phalangitai, I decided to sally forth and bitchslap them.
Baktrian native phalanx looks pretty much like ours, but they don't have this sweet ass symbol on their shields...
... Actually, do you guys know what this symbol supposed to be? I always wondered what the hell it is, but to this day, I still don't know.
We shouted few instults and Baktrians decided to go just go away.
I put my army on river crossing, waiting for reinforcements because I was sure that even AI is not retaded enough to attack army on river crossing... but no, it is retarded enough to do it.
Fair enough.
Have fun guys.
Stabity-stabity-stab.
Well, quite stubborn people, dem parthians. But so silly, oh so silly...
Those guys are not cataphracts, they are "just" armored horse archers but I hate them anyway and concentrated my efforts on killing them.
And my hatred made me reckless and fucked up our formation a bit but we are still fine.
Their general either wanted to save horse archers or was simply stupid and charged into thick of it. We poked him with extreme prejudice and his death resulted in mass rout... rout in OUR direction, so their army got annihilated.
You are running wrong way!
That's parthian general revenge from the grave, our reinforcements got ambushed.
And that's how ambush looks like in this game. Your unit start surrounded by enemy and are in "column" formation.
We quickly tell them to regroup.
And they managed to do it fast enough, well done.
Unfortunately ambushers have one unit of horse archers so they will just shoot us till they are out of arrerz.
They finally charged but then just retreated and left the field, I didn't know that "Eleutheroi" (rebels) armies can retreat so I'm quite surprised.
Well, we "won".
But our eastern army will be reinforced by less troops than they hoped.
Epeirotes signed peace with S.P.Q.R... and they still own southern Italy, that's... unexpected.
Reinforcements arrived and our eastern army is getting ready to poke the heart of Parthian kingdom.
S.P.Q.R are finally doing something in Gaul. They just made Aedui their protectorate (vasall, basically) and that's bad news for Arverni and all Free People Living in a Free State (tm).
First free city here that decided to fight for it's independence.
But it won't save them from being sold into slavery (They were quite happy but I'm not taking any chances).
Now it's time to put Armenia back in line (Historically it was actually Armenia that destroyed remnants of Arche Seleukeia invading Coele-Syria - last bastion of Seleucid king).
WAAAAGH!!
Ha! Armenian bastards attacked Hegemonides from behind hoping to lift the siege. They don't know that one does not simply outmanauver best infantry in the known world!
Be defualt we are facing stack that attacked us but Armavir garrison is much scarier army and will be behind us, so we have to turn around.
We redeployed, leaving Armavir garrison enough room to organize their line (we could just rush them as they enter the field but that's too cheesy).
Skirmishers, welcome Armenian "king's" forces...
They also have some nice stuff behind us, we will have to watch out.
Skirmishers, fall back. Rest of you get ready!
I see you there! don't try anything funny.
We have random shit being trown in our general direction while Armenian infantry do pretty good job at not being completely slaughtered by our Pezhetairoi.
Army behind us is getting close so I send two unit of phalangitai to cover us. This made our left flank a little bit exposed but that's our Argyraspides flank so I have absolutely confidence in them.
Thorakitai! prepare to flank the enemy!
First they shall throw their glorious hellenic javelins and then charge with glorious hellenic fury!
They got butt-charged and we have to send Argyraspides to save their glorious hellenic asses.
Armenians decided to avoid deadly wall of pikes and simply go around our phalanx in the back... sneaky bastards!
Thorakitai are saved but we told them to go being useless elsewhere and let Argyraspides do their job.
Then our rear got completely overrun...
Stop routing! COME BACK YOU COWARDS!
I tried to send Throkitai from right flank to our rear but they got attacked by Armenian noble infantry and we can't move them.
Prodormoi! Follow me, we have to do it ourselves...
Thorakitai on our left flank are not only "occupied" by armenian nobles, they are being fucking slaughtered by them. We had to send some Pezhetairoi to help them.
Meanwhile our archers and skirmishers are in full flight.
And our main phalanx line is getting charged from behind by Armenian royal kinsmen heavy cavalry.
... And our cavalry we send to help, got intercepted by armenians and tastefully raped.
I didn't know they had so many fucking heavy cavalry, man.
... They are everywhere, just... just so many.
Fortunately our Klereouchoi and Pezhatairoi have pretty high morale so they keep fighting.
Armenian cavalry is raping us, but our Argyraspides are completely crushing their infantry.
We managed to encircle one unit of Armenian kinsmen cav and we are not going to let them escape.
Armenian infantry finally broke and we can concentrate on fending off their cavalry attacks.
... And by fending off I mean sending three pahalangitai units to stop one kinsmen heavy cavalry.
But I think they finally have enough.
Why the fuck we even attacked Armenia?
We won, but lost shitton of men, especially since we outnumbered them quite nicely. Hegemonides is far away from Antiocheia so he won't recieve any reinforcements and Armenians are sending more shit here. He's on his own.
Some of our men got healed though... we will put the stuffed bodies of those that didn't on nightwatch to scare off Armenians.
Somehow Hegemonides got "decorated hero" trait for this battle. Whatever.
Pergamon surrendered without a fight and we are going to enslave the shit out of it because it's a huge city and we won't be able to keep them in line if we don't.
We have whole asia minor. Now I want island of Lesbos. Empire needs it for it's... strategic porn industry purposses.