Advice - Sarmatia

[Southern Hunter]

I recently started a game as Sarmatia. I found it impossible to avoid a descent into decadence. I allocated almost all my citizens to culture (leaving just enough to keep the pop stable and slowly build the next thing), but with bad leaders and a little bit of expansion against the dastardly Scythians, I couldn't get myself out of decadence, and eventually civil war / revolt. I am now out the other side, and a stable tribe, but it is really tough to get into the top tier and start becoming glorious in order to become tribal. Any hints, or is this normal?

Should I have ignored culture and started building instead, even building culture buildings? In retrospect, this seems like it might have made more sense, since all my efforts couldn't stop the descent into decadence anyway. May as well have built some things!

ps: What is going on with nomadic herds? They seem to move around?

[Culthrasa]

I played a Scythia campaign myself, and they are in sort of the same mess...
What I did was full out war! Conquer the Sarmatians, thereby getting your objectives which staves off regressing, then focus on building up while letting conquest decadence ebb away...
Getting the Sarmatian Capital aswell as the brown guys (can't remember their name now) does a lot for pop and thereby culture production. Also getting your regions into Provinces halves the decadence...
I think this is why both Sarmatia and Scythia should try conquest.. they are too intertwined to make Provinces...

Also, what i did was give up certain parts of my empire since they weren't helping.. low 1 pop regions you can do without unless they make up a Province you want/need..

Hope it helps!

[loki100]

I did a Sarmatia game and had 2 near death moments.

At the start its hard not to expand due to the inevitable Skythian war and that put me into old. I got out of it by allowing some regions to revolt which reduced the number of poor regions and and my nation size (if the Skythians respawn they don't come back with the feud mechanic so you can usually get peace deals).

My original capital revolted during this as it had all the slaves from the Skythian wars.

The second was even worse, reached glorious tier II and got utterly stuck (this was when the glorious govt age modifier was a very steep cliff). In the end I got out of it by having everyone on culture (I had them starving, buildings falling down) and rather opportunistically grabbing an objective.

So I'd say its normal, in effect its a faction to play if you fancy a rather wild opening/middle game.

Yes the cows move, they will go to a region that is either steppe terrain or steppe cultured, so you can't rely on them. But over time you should have built enough that they will hang around in your territory.

[Southern Hunter]

Yes the cows move, they will go to a region that is either steppe terrain or steppe cultured, so you can't rely on them. But over time you should have built enough that they will hang around in your territory.

Yeah, that was my plan...build enough that I have them most of the time. What a funny and interesting / confusing mechanic.

[Pocus]

When feasible, the plan is to have nations play differently, with specific challenges

[Seamus]

I played a Scythia campaign myself, and they are in sort of the same mess...
What I did was full out war! Conquer the Sarmatians, thereby getting your objectives which staves off regressing, then focus on building up while letting conquest decadence ebb away...
Getting the Sarmatian Capital aswell as the brown guys (can't remember their name now) does a lot for pop and thereby culture production. Also getting your regions into Provinces halves the decadence...
I think this is why both Sarmatia and Scythia should try conquest.. they are too intertwined to make Provinces...

Also, what i did was give up certain parts of my empire since they weren't helping.. low 1 pop regions you can do without unless they make up a Province you want/need..

Hope it helps!

How do you "give up" regions or provinces? Just leave it neglected till it revolts and don't take it back?

[loki100]

thats how I often do it - works well if you are playing in a fluid part of the map with often a lot of indy armies roaming around. So areas like Germany and the Steppes are good candidates.

other tricks are to pillage your own region, for some reason that can really annoy them

[Culthrasa]

I played a Scythia campaign myself, and they are in sort of the same mess...
What I did was full out war! Conquer the Sarmatians, thereby getting your objectives which staves off regressing, then focus on building up while letting conquest decadence ebb away...
Getting the Sarmatian Capital aswell as the brown guys (can't remember their name now) does a lot for pop and thereby culture production. Also getting your regions into Provinces halves the decadence...
I think this is why both Sarmatia and Scythia should try conquest.. they are too intertwined to make Provinces...

Also, what i did was give up certain parts of my empire since they weren't helping.. low 1 pop regions you can do without unless they make up a Province you want/need..

Hope it helps!

How do you "give up" regions or provinces? Just leave it neglected till it revolts and don't take it back?

Mostly yeh, starve them, raid them all that fun .. or when in war don't station troops, that sort of thing.. I also tend to give them away to a friendly neighbor which i use as a buffer state... That way i'm completely save from that axis of attack, no raids and that nation is stronger and better off to keep the wolves at bay