Slitherine

The Elephant Victory 273 BC

Here is another of my new scenarios that you can download from the games "Download Community scenarios" button, on the Epic Battles or campaign screens.

It is Antiochus I battle against the Galatian invasion in 273 BC. It is only playable from the Seleucid side, and it is quite hard. I have given the player extra units at lower difficulty levels. This is a difficult scenario, so you may have to use the lower levels to get a win.

1) I have made some major adjustments to elephants in this scenario;

a) their effect on the Galatians was very great, so I have increased the disorder on cavalry to Severe when next to an elephant unit. Adjacent friendly cavalry units are slightly disordered.

b) also the RBS mod for increased elephant effect (as used in the stock Bagradas scenario) is used. This means that all units in impact with an elephant unit have a minus 100 POA penalty. I have withdrawn the 100 POA penalty for units in melee though.

c) I have made a design decision that the elephant model actually represents 4 elephants with 4 drivers, 12 fighting crew and 16 supporting infantry. The displayed value of 32 actually refers to the total number of men. The Unitsize remains at 400, the standard game value, so this change has no real effect on play.

d) When an elephant unit routs, all friendly units within 3 squares suffer a cohesion test.

e) I have reduced elephant experience and elan levels to 25, from 100.

2) There are some new textures for Seleucid units in this battle: Argyraspides, Agema and Companion cavalry.

3) I have created a new Greek Light Javelin Horse unit, by using the Grk_Arm_Cav figure and modifying the textures. Thanks to Little Big Men Studios for the new shield designs.

Out of idle curiosity what sources did you use for the Seleukid army composition (allowing that not that much is known)?

nikgaukroger wrote:Out of idle curiosity what sources did you use for the Seleukid army composition (allowing that not that much is known)?

I had originally designed the scenario with the Seleucid army much different, as the original sources indicate that the army was "lightly armed". To give the Seleucids any chance in the scenario I had to give them a big numerical superiority, which goes against what the sources say. But then I discovered this article here;

http://www.c3iopscenter.com/currentops/ ... ictory.pdf

It theorises that Antiochus responded to the Galatian threat at short notice and had no time to mobilise his full army. It reckons that he marched against the Galatians with just his standing army, the Argyraspides, and the Agema and Companion cavalry. Which seems a reasonable proposition, the numbers would be about right too. These units can hardly be described as lightly armed though, which is a bit of a hole in the theory.

Anyway I decided to go with it, as it resulted in a better balanced scenario.

Paul59 wrote:

nikgaukroger wrote:Out of idle curiosity what sources did you use for the Seleukid army composition (allowing that not that much is known)?

I had originally designed the scenario with the Seleucid army much different, as the original sources indicate that the army was "lightly armed". To give the Seleucids any chance in the scenario I had to give them a big numerical superiority, which goes against what the sources say. But then I discovered this article here;

http://www.c3iopscenter.com/currentops/ ... ictory.pdf

It theorises that Antiochus responded to the Galatian threat at short notice and had no time to mobilise his full army. It reckons that he marched against the Galatians with just his standing army, the Argyraspides, and the Agema and Companion cavalry. Which seems a reasonable proposition, the numbers would be about right too. These units can hardly be described as lightly armed though, which is a bit of a hole in the theory.

Anyway I decided to go with it, as it resulted in a better balanced scenario.

A plausible idea IMO, but as you say it does run into the "lightly armed" issue