Sauromatia is a nation based on Herodotus' accounts of the Scythian peoples in The Histories. Here Scythians, Amazons, Sarmatians, and Androphags are described with their strange traditions and unsavory practices, and the book is a splendid source for any modder seeking inspiration for a new nation. Grave goods, archaeological findings, and Osprey military books have given the nation further life. Finally, Witch Kings and elements of the Pythian predecession (serpents, swamps, and hydras) were added to the Androphags to make the nation more sinister and Dominion-esque. -Illwinter

Sauromatia is a nation of nomadic warrior tribes ruled by women. Men and women fight side by side and all prominent tribes are ruled by warrior queens. This is a legacy of the Sauromatians merging with the Amazon tribes in times past. The Amazons leaders were not accepted, because they were not warriors, but they influenced the Sauromatians, and women warriors gained power and prestige. Only the tribe of the Androphags has totally rejected the notion of female leadership. The Androphags are ruled by ancient Witch Kings who introduced cannibalism and man flaying to the Sauromatians. The Androphags also use hydras from the Marshes of Pythia in warfare.

Sauromatia is a nation of cavalry. Its incredibly-good early-game troops are offset by its incredibly-weird Magic paths and nonexistent infantry. There is no cheap filler in Sauromatia: your core playstyle will revolve around doomstacks of a few dozen horseys (more over time), quickly sweeping over poorly-defended provinces, dine-n'-dashing off the pillaged wealth, and rushing the heck back to lose as few horseys as possible. Your life revolves around the horse. Other than that, Soothsayers (the 90% that have 1) can sustain their Communion Master Enaries or their (much more expensive) Sabbath Master Witch Kings, and Hydras are always an option for the memes.

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Swamps of Pythia	The Bitter Stream	The Enchanted Isle	The Great Cauldron
Enables recruitment of Hydra Tamer, Hydra, and Hydra Hatchling	Enables recruitment of Oiorpata. Generates 13 per turn.	Generates 1 per turn.	Enables recruitment of Manflayer, Witch King, Androphag, and Androphag Archer Generates 2 per turn.

Sauromatia favors cavalry and archers; their line infantry are unexceptional.

Get magic tattoos: most units have which give bonus combat speed and defense skill in addition to invulnerability on already tough and fast units. Your foot troops and most of your sacred lizard riders get the which grants better MR.

Excellent national heroes; Kirke is a healer (healer 4 disease healer 4 with Worthy Heroes) with air and 2. Delgnat is your best water mage and also gives you air access. Skogu is a giant blood/death mage, saving you empowers to get into higher blood.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Kirke - Pharmakeia Hero turn arrival Limit: (10)	2244 29 Sacred Glamour Resist Poison (7) Supply Bonus (40) Stealthy (65) Healer (1) Female
	Delgnat - Partholonian Sorceress Hero turn arrival Limit: (10)	324 23 Resist Fire (-5) Resist Cold (15) Resist Shock (5) Resist Poison (25) Supply Bonus (10) Homesick (20%) Iron Vulnerability (1) Immortal Undead Glamour Sacred Poor Amphibian Inanimate Spell-Singer Need-Not-Eat Female
	Skögu - Man Eater Hero turn arrival Limit: (5)	413 21 Sacred Resist Poison (15) Fear (14) Magic Snake Tattoo (2) Swamp Survival Swimming Supply Bonus (10) Mounted	dec

Sauromatia has national access (discounting 10% randoms) to 11242. With boosters up to Construction 6, they can reach 21362. You will generally empower Blood anyway; this allows you to forge Armor of Twisting Thorns and from there a Moonvine Bracelet, getting you to 5. This is enough to summon a Faery Queen giving you air access.

Death 6 is enough to cast nearly anything other than Tartarian Gate off of your national recruits, which makes Sauromatia one of the strongest Death nations in the game.

Limited Earth access can be had through Spectral Mages, but in general Earth, Fire, and (until Conjuration 8) Air access will come through your pretender or indies. One of the Heliophagi (summonable at Blood 8) has 4, breaking you into Fire fully.

• Call Ancestor: Conj 1, 1. ( Ancestral Spiritx1) This gives your Spirit Guides something to do. It's not a very *strong* something, though.
• Wrath of the Ancestors: Conj 7, 1 1. ( Ancestral Spiritx20+[2/lv]). Improved Call Ancestor, giving you a large pile of Ancestral Spirits for a death gem. Against things without AoE (and especially without magic weapons) this can be a good tarpit. Memeblesses like Death Explosion or weapons can be funny on these, but this is more of a meme than a gamewinning move.

• Daughter of Typhon: 5 2 Conj 9 for 30. ( Hydra - Daughter of Typhon). Gives you a big immortal hydra. At Conjuration 9, though, this is more of a meme than a national centerpiece.
  

• Awaken Tattoos: 1 1 Ench 3. This is a remarkably useful buff castable by any Warrior Sorceress, boosting your troops' MR or Defense and giving them Invulnerability 10. Your Cataphracts have Defense 20 (counting shield parry) with this active, and the Invulnerability makes them quite resilient to nonmagical attacks.
  

Sauromatia is a nation with diverse combat magic, with Soothsayers, Enaries, Witch Kings, and Warrior Sorceresses all playing different roles. They are a nation with strong communions, which deserve their own section.

As a communion nation with access to all sorcery paths, you have access to a lot of powerful battlefield buffs: Mass Protection, Relief, Mass Regeneration, Antimagic, Light of the Northern Star, Will of the Fates, and even Darkness and Rigor Mortis when appropriate.

Soothsayers are cheap and cheerful 1 mages. They can serve as cheap point-buffers for Luck, Body Ethereal, and Cheat Fate, can cast Paralyze or Mind Burn with Light of the Northern Star active, or can cast massed Soul Slay or Enslave Mind as part of a communion. They are natural communion slaves, but you should take extreme care using them as slaves to Witch Kings or Enaries, whose off-path casting risks burning them out.

Enaries are versatile. They can cast Horde of Skeletons a few times on their own, but they come into their own in communions, either on their own or with Soothsayers, where they can cast impressive amounts of high-level death magic.

Witch Kings are your centerpiece cap-only mages. All are at least 3, with some reaching 4, and so can cast all but the most powerful Death spells. They can skellispam, cast multiple Shadow Blasts, or put up Darkness and Rigor Mortis to support a major skellispam army. All of them are communion-capable, but they don't always *need* a communion since their base death path is so high.

Those that roll 2 are your highest communionable nature mages. They can cast big nature buffs, although if you have a decently large communion, giving a Thistle Mace to an Enarie and letting him do it can save your Witch Kings for other jobs. They can cast Wooden Warriors and Mass Protection without a communion when needed.

Those that roll 1 are not terribly stand-out. However, they are your only access to water in communions, so if you need big water spells, this is your only national source.

Finally those that roll 2 can enter sabbaths without falling asleep immediately outside of magic scales, giving you faster access to big blood buffs like Rush of Strength more readily, or cast spells like Life for a Life.

Warrior Sorceresses have four main roles. The first two are straightforward: as the only priest you'll recruit in large numbers, they will be blessing sacreds. The randoms can enter a sabbath and cast Divine Blessing. Additionally they are your only commander who can cast Awaken Tattoos.

The third role is as straightforward battle casters. They are your only non-cap sources of 2 (useful for Wooden Warriors and other nature buffs, particularly with a Thistle Mace) and (useful for Mossbody and sometimes for Frozen Heart).

Their fourth role is as light thugs. They combine useful buffing paths, particularly those that roll water, with high base stats and mobility. Alone or in combination, they can buff each other or other thugs and make an outsized impact on the battlefield with basic gear, whether that is chopping up PD as raiders or as high-impact army thugs with Quickness/Quicken Self, Mossbody, Protection, Elemental Fortitude, Awaken Tattoos, or whatever other buffs are useful in the situation – plus Body Ethereal and Luck from the Soothsayers. Those that roll are most useful in this role.

Sauromatia is a premiere communion nation.

The simplest communions you can make are pure Soothsayer communions casting mass Soul Slay or Enslave Mind. The masters in such a communion can have a lot more impact with Eye of the Void and/or Spell Focus.

Adding Enaries as masters to this sort of communion can be dangerous, since they tend to cast Horde of Skeletons offscript, fatiguing the slaves quickly. But a few Enaries as masters can add buffs like Personal Regeneration, Elemental Fortitude, Twist Fate, Personal Luck, and Invulnerability. If you want mostly astral magic, don't hesitate to have Enaries as slaves to Soothsayers. It is not the most efficient use of Enaries, but it allows them to contribute to a Soul Slay communion without going off script and burning it out.

Enarie-centric communions (with Enaries as both masters and slaves) can be effective too, of course. These can generate a frightening amount of Horde of Skeletons, which can destroy armies not prepared for it.

It is always helpful to have at least one Witch King or Warrior Sorceress join a communion as a master. They can then cast Reinvigoration to clear slaves' fatigue, which can greatly extend a communion's endurance.

Sauromatia is one of the few nations that has recruitable 4 access. This allows them to cast big late-game spells like Manifestation, Well of Misery, Lichcraft, and Summon Wraith Lord without pretender help.

The have access to lower-level Death spells as well; they can get good use out of Pale Riders, Summon Spectre (which can get you earth access), and even occasionally Behemoth. They can cast Summon Mound Fiend, but generally do not need even more death mages.

Sauromatia has excellent expansion with either scales troops and lightly blessed Oiorpata, supplemented by foreignrec Lancers, or with heavier blesses on Oiorpata. Can build forts without labs and start making Soothsayers, giving an early research push. Good early targets are Alt 4 for Luck and Body Ethereal and Enchantment 3 for Awaken Tattoos, followed by Enchantment 5 for Horde of Skeletons.

Sauromatia is a premier communion skellispam nation and can dominate midgame battles with Horde of Skeletons, Relief, and Rigor Mortis. They have access to Foul Vapors and large communions with Soul Slay. Enchantment 5 is a significant powerspike for them; in some cases, so are Thaum 5 (Soul Slay) and Thaum 6 (Enslave Mind).

Sauromatia has access to lategame death summons like Wraith Lord and Lich, along with Well of Misery, without pretender help. They are not a prime blood nation like Mictlan, but they can establish a decent blood economy and access things like Vampire Counts with Curse of Blood and blood uniques if need be.

Their early and midgame strength allows them to take good scales, giving them more toys and research in the late game.

Breaking into air and earth is a necessary step which a pretender can help greatly with. Otherwise your route to Air is through your national heroes or Faery Queens, and you will have to get Earth from indies or from 1/4 of Spectral Mages.

As a human communion nation of nonsacred mages, they are *intensely* vulnerable to battlefield and stack wipes like Murdering Winter and Fire Storm. You will have to play carefully around these spells in the lategame.

If you start with Alt 1 expanding with 4-5 Oiorpata and a Warrior Sorceress doing Barkskin Blessing attack closest with the Oiorpata on guard commander will kill most EA indies, but watch out for archers/lizards. For this reason combining Dom 6 with Magic 3 can be very powerful on Sauromatia as it allows you to recruit one expansion party per turn starting very early.

National overview by LucidTactics

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia