I figured out what the fuck is with this "slain by sabeans". I screwed up reinstallation of EB. I installed EB 1.1 and then forget to install 1.2 patch. Loaded campaign and finished turn to see if script is working. There were no client rulers in 1.1 so all allied generals we recruited got their traits fucked up. It's nothing game breaking and our family members are fine so client rulers can be zombies if they want to.
We did Sarmatians huge favor, basically giving them two cities. They repay us attacking our Thorakitai army coming back from Gava-Roxolana.
Our brave soldiers are tired and hungry (bullshit larping, they are fine) but they can't surrender, there is no escape from nomads in the steppes (bullshit larping, we could retreat easily and avoid this battle).
We deployd in our "THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE WOODS ON OUR FLANKS, MOVE ALONG" formation to avoid getting flanked by horse archers.
This is our first engagement with sarmatians, but they are like other nomads (execept the fact that they are white) and we are fucking experts at fighting nomads by now.
Keep facing them to minimize casualties from arrows, shoot armoured shit with sligners and unarmoured shit with archers and all will be fine.
Oh, and try to look as scary as possible.
Ha, dem sarmatians fall into our Argyraspides trap in the woods.
It "revelead" them for other units but whatever. There is no fucking chance they can punch through their armor with arrows.
They have some proto-potatoes. I think those guys scares the shit out of other units.
Yeah, they do. Early slavs were cannibals and that's apparently makes people nervous.
Eat this you fuckers!
Sarmatian cav is dead and infantry is routing. We are free to use our Prodromoi to kill foot-archers. We could do this earlier but I absolutely don't trust Prodromoi and I was afraid of them getting killed.
Go back to your precious eastern europe!
Southern Italy calmed down a little bit so we put our freedom fighters in Messana to supress revolt.
Our puppet king of Sparte started his agoge training. I hope he won't fuck up because that would be embarrasing.
Also, our Basileus believes he is divine and he's intolerant of other gods.
It is time to take revenage for all those client rulers slained by Sabeans (and Homna is one of our victory conditions anyway).
Ok, Vigiles may be shit... but they are fucking Imperial reform unit. Cheating bastards! no matter, Imperial cohorts, pretorian guards... we will crush them all as soon as we bring real fucking army here.
We don't need Kotais but it's in caucasus and that's our sphere of influence. And we have to punish sarmatians for sending cannibals at us.
We are constantly fighting with romans but they can't bring big enough army to beat us and we can't score crushing enough victory to even think about taking any of their cities. Fortunately we calmed Messana and we can continue kicking Epeirotes out of sicily.
We had only phalangitai and archers, absolutely no mobile support so we were easiest army to flank ever. But epeirotes decided to just charge straight into our wall of pikes and they died.
And now they can start thinking about changing their name to Illyria.
Romans may have great military machine but we will overcome their numbers with our cunning brutality and brutal cunnigness.
Ok, it's time to show this cunningness because we have shitton of romans here.
Fortunately for us, they have mostly iberian spearmen and vigiles here. Vigiles are almost half-decent light infantry that could hold the line quite well with constant moral support from general. But they don't have general so those guys will fucking run, oh they will.
Romans had good idea but fucked it up like only romans can do. Sending light infantry at us was actually good thing because terrain here sucks and heavies can't do much. But they forgot to send any general or at least first cohort so their infantry routes upon contact with us.
Forest battles are nothing more than sum of many duels, and they lost each and every one.
Now the "Helenos ad portas!" will be new phrase for romans to make practical jokes to town watch.
Kalinikos kicked the bucket.
Now Diogenetes is Basileus. So yeah romans, we have Basileus here, he don't have army but he's here, so beware.
We had to put whole army in Pella because they were raging after death of Basileus, they are still raging but I think they will calm down in turn or two. Also, I started "cultural revolution" destroying every non-eastern-greek building in empire because culture penalties to happiness are pissing me off.
Senate and People of Rome decided to send another guy named Manius at us. They even gave him army!
It's a half-decent army, fortunately mr Manius the Sequel is terrible commander.
Flat, open terrain. Now being brutally cunning won't help us, we have to be cunnigly brutal.
I decided to send our cavalry to flank enemy and hopefully lure some of their units away from our infantry.
And we lured mr Manius himself!
He's ex-Manius.
Legionnaries noticed that their general is complete idiot and decided to take matters in their own hands.
He is dead idiot now.
Now it's time to abuse weakness of roman chess-board formation.
Chessboard works fine if you fight heavy infantry and have some support on your flank, they didn't have it and got surrounded and killed.
The daaay is ooouuurssss!
We let three romans live and tell senate to stop sending guys named Manius at us.