How to play Thrace in Rome Total War Remastered ?

[Ravana, Demonking of Lanka]

Hey Guys i wanted to try to play The Thrace in Rome Total War Remastered, but my biggest Problem is the Money and i have no idea how i can have a good start with That Kingdom .... i get less money for just 1 Unit each City or i get into the deficit of money for some reason ... i mean i attacked the Scythians but i cannot increase my money, or even when i build some Building for increasing it ... very frustrated. Can someone give me a good advise for the Thrace ?

[Skatan]

I haven't played Thrace in RTWR yet, so read this and booted one up.

So imp.campaign with Thrace, no mods, VH/VH difficulty.

First turns, send diplomat and squeeze money from Macedon for trade deal and map info. Then attack. I choose thessalonica since they had a starting army roaming around towards byzantium (keep you spy around, always on the look out for their army with the macedon cavalry). I had queued up horse jav cav in tylis. Ports, roads in both cities. Ignore Dacia and Scythia. Kept the starting army from Camp Getae around the top to ward for their attacks. (This one will around turn 7 go down and siege byzantium after I deemed dacia and scythia to be passive enough to dare leave my north front undefended for a few turns)

There was a dance between my south army and macedon, but managed to keep both thessalonica and byzalora under siege while warding of their counter attacks. Took thessalonica on turn 5-6 something (warded of one counterattack with 4 jav cav) like that and at turn 9 I am turning a decent profit while being able to build more units, a phalanx barracks in Thessalonica and are sieging both byzalora and byzantium (rebels). My diplomat has squeezed money from greece and brutii for trade and map info when possible. A second diplomat going the northside towards armenia, parthia, pontus, etc for more trade deals etc.

So in short, don't expand only towards Byzantium (which you can keep for later since they are rebels). Don't expand towards poor peasant cities like dacia or scythia. Go for the fat, juicy targets of Macedon and then Greece. As I always do on VH BAI, I go for the cheapest ranged unit available and mass produce, but on Normal I guess levy hoplites with general cav charges can do the trick vs the better armed macedonic armies. but beware their starting companion cavalry. I kept them dancing by using a few stray units like a bee swarm so that army never reached anything of importance.

Scythia can easily be warded of using the strategic bridge, a few hoplites and archers. Dacia will have to be taken sooner or later I assume. But the money is in the south! perhaps that was your challenge, you didn't go for the richer cities?

Anyways, I wish you luck. If you get an economy up and running, on normal I would recommend just phalanxes and archers to start with using generals as cav. On higer diff I would mass produce jav cav until much later.

Edit: Took a screenshot. The current net round surplus is around 500.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198007290300/screenshots/

[Ravana, Demonking of Lanka]

I will keep that in Mind thanks my friend

[Skatan]

After a few more turns, with byzalora and byzantium taken, the income is comfortably high to take the fight to Scythia and down south into greece.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198007290300/screenshots/

[LuNi]

Just relocate to Asia minor. As Thracians take byzantium and build a navy. Transport yourself into asia minor and destroy pontus and consolidate the area. This works with Dacians as well.

As Dacians this is a bit harder seeing you need to destroy thrace first, but It will make for an easy campaing for sure.

[Ravana, Demonking of Lanka]

Thats a good other point, Thanks LuNi

[TedyBearjr]

The firs thing I do as thrace, dacia, or scythia is destroy the closest neighbor in that area. So as Thrace take the scythia city north then dacia west, followed by south. If Dacia, screw the west and go east to destroy the thracians, take that one city of scythia, then south. All of this means that you try to sue for peace with scythia afterwards and give them random gifts to make sure they don't come back.