The Seleucid Empire [Archive]

kataphraktoi

09-29-2004, 19:22

As the Seleucids you are precariously placed in the middle of potential factions who are enemies; specifically:

- Armenian
- Parthia
- Ptolemiads
- Greek city states
- Pontus

From the start you might find its gonna be intense. It certainly kept me occupied for 5 days playing till 3am since Friday.

There are two weapons at your disposal to survive and conquer your enemies:

- Obviously your army
- Wealth

Situated along valuable trade routes, wealth pours into Seleucid coffers like streams of gold, but be warned - wealth makes for unwarranted attention at the same to your neighbours.

Recommended composition of early Seleucid armies:
5-6 militia hoplite/phalanx or levy pikemen infantry units to form a wall of steel.
4 - 6 militia cavalry/light cavalry to harass and protect flanks
4-5 units of archers
2-3 units of peltasts

Until you are able to train scythed chariots or elephants to protect your flanks this is possibly the best defense for your flanks. In battles against the AI, the AI always tried to smashed into rear with its cavalry. So a combination of javelin and arrows to ward them off will protect your phalanx from nasty surprises.

This combination helped me in the earlier stages of the campaign since the enemies you will be facing mainly consist of medium-infantry with nimble javelin cavalry and a few units fo archers.

Since its most likely that you'll be fighting on all fronts you'll need to fight when necessary and bribe when necessary. Bribing is expensive, but it will save your men from overstretching themselves fighting everyone! With wealthy provinces, bribing is a luxury. It is also a great way to ward of large armies sieging your cities, it will take 6 turns or so for your enemy to rebuild that army - good breathing space to build your own.

Provinces that need to be given constant attention are:
Syria (Antioch) - capital and vulnerable to sudden thrusts from the Ptolemids
Ciliicia (Tarsus) - link between Sardis and Antioch, vital to trade and strategic province to cut off invading armies towards Antioch.
Assyria (Hatra) - links west with east halves of empire and vulnerable to Armenian incursions.

Priority must be given to conquering Egypt, once you sow the Ptolemids up, you can concentrate on the northern frontier with peace of mind. Add to that, Egypt is naturally wealthy and well defended by distance from Carthage.
Be careful, you may catch the plague as my soldiers did - plus they spread the plague to other areas of my empire.

Chariot archers will be a headache against your flanks.

Parthia will be the second major enemy after the Ptolemids, their easy access to Babylonia (Seluecia) will prove to be an annoyance almost every year. To incapacitate them, simply drive straight to their heartland in Media and capture their capital of Arsakia. It will cripple them and isolate their provinces from each other.

Bribing their armies early will bring you Cataphracts, a good decisive arm in the earlier period of the campaign. They rely mainly on masses of medium infantry with horse archers and archers.

As for Pontus and Armenia, they rely on masses of eastern infantry and hillmen with a smattering of javelin cavalry, archers and the odd horse archer or two.

Greek city states rely heavily on armoured hoplites, a combination of your onw pikemen/archers and light cavalry to attack from rear will take care of them.

If your gonna build a fleet, build fast and focus on it or don't build at all. I lost so many ships because everyone ganged up on me and smashed my navy to pieces.
If possible conquer Cyprus early, it is rich, wealthy and superbly placed to build ships and trade. If you are going to build a navy, better to train them within close proximity to each other - namely in the province sof Cilicia, Syria and if possible - after capturing the provinces of Cyprus and Phoenicia - train naval fleets there. Concentrating in that region will allow you to raise a sizeable fleet fast.

In my campaign, I did the usual thing and built a few early economic structures in all provinces before deciding which ones to focus my economic activity on. Syria, Coele Syria and Assyria will be the economic powerhouses of your empire earlier on. Give particular economic attention to them because they will pay for your bribes!

They will be a few brigand, bandit armies in your provinces - defeat them early to gain command bonsuses for your commanders. Good way to practice and gain experience for your future conquering generals.

Chimpyang

10-04-2004, 19:43

One thing about the Egyptians - They have lots of Archers, so be prepared, you wont have anything in their range so either bring lots of Militia Cavalry and be prepared to lose quite a few men + horses along the way, or bribe a few archers of your own.

There is a perfect spot in Middle Egypt where you can draw the Egyptian armies towards you across a bridge. This is what i did on my short campaign.

1. I dragged all my troops and started seiging the closest Egyptian City. They put up some resistance but i polished them off quickly, In my other provinces I started training Militia Pikemen where i could and peasents where I couldn't.

2. I went straight for Jerusalem, bringing up my peasents behind me as garrison. Taking Jerusalem quickly is essential as the Egyptians have no city (to my knowledge) that is close to it.

3. By now you should have sustained quite abit of damage, rest for a short time but be ready to press on, your troops from otehr proinces shouldn't be far behind you. Trek through to middle Egypt. The aim here is to cause attrition damage to the Egyptian armies by fighting lots of battle against their small armies. All this time you should be slowly building up a force to support this.

4. Build a couple of ships to help your armies cut a corner (well sort of) and when you're done building up another medium-ish force send it off to support the first one. When you merge them togeather try and siege Alexandria. Watch out for the Egyptian Navy though, they are quite strong for such a early time.

5. The Pontians and the Armenians should be making moveds now. This is where you slow them down by offering peasent armies to block their path. You should have enough men to break any of their sieges. I had the Armenians try to capture the same city 5 times, each time failing completley.

6. When you have broken Alexandria try and finish off the Egyptian quickly so you can concentrate on the other Factions. But by now you should ahve quite a income from which to base your attacks from.

That all worked for me in a medium/medium game.

lars573

10-05-2004, 16:00

Also as the Seleucids you should capture the rebel town just to your south in western asia minor as it has a wonder. And the proximity to one of your cities means bribery is a good alternative to a siege, as you can march a group of militia hoplites into the town in one turn after you buy it. I believe that the Seleucids get access to the hephestus temple line as well. This temple gives armour/weapon and troop experience bonuses, you should build this temple in any city you want to use as a military production city. Also move to occupy Palmyra ASAP as it gives ready access to your heart lands. Not to mention that it's one more province that the egyptians won't have. Take Pheonetia and Judea as quickly as possible they are both potential money makers, but do take cyprus first. Another thing you have to be aware of is that the Egyptians move to take the 2 arabian desert provinces early on, in the frist 30 turns at least. This ins't so much a problem as it is a pain in the ass because the arab cities are not overly wealth and have slow population growth but it means that a trickle of troops coming in to harass your cities. My advise sack them, that is conquer, exterminate the populace, destroy every building your can, turn the taxes to very high and leave.

DojoRat

10-05-2004, 21:07

The Seleucid do have it tough. To add to the above I like to hire Mercs for the initial push into Egypt. I leave the Eastern Inf (or whatever they're called)alone but hire camel units and Greeks when I can. I keep a diplomat around Babylon and bribe any small group of Parthians I see. It might cost more over time but if they show up with a large army led by a faction leader, money won't help you. I also make lots of diplomats to spread all over the world selling alliances, trade rights, maps, etc, to keep the cash flowing.

Death or Glory

10-06-2004, 12:08

You may be surrounded, but you can lessen the burden by sending your diplomat up in norther Asia Minor to contact Pontus as soon as possible. They will accept an alliance no problem, and give you their world map to boot. That gives you free reign from Antioch all the way to Byzantium (the Greeks cannot put up much of a fight).

I've never tried allying with Armenia or Parthia, since their incursions into my empire have been half-hearted at best, so I've never seen them as much of a threat.

And Egypt should be your first target, as others have stated. You don't want them to become the superpower they become if you play as one of the Roman houses and aren't around to keep them in check.

Krusader

10-06-2004, 13:24

I played the Seleucids on medium, and in first two turns I built Traders and Mines. And I let the AI handle taxes, otherwise I controlled the rest. Wealth poured into my coffers, and I used money on Antioch, Seleucia and Sardis and made these my troop training cities, and some turns later I spent cash on "economy buildings". Egyptians attacked early, but I had a sizeable army to defend myself, and I hired mercenaries. I launched a quick attack on Sidon and though losing lots of men, I conquered it. The Egyptians sent an army to relive the siege, and the besieged army sallied forth.

Build Traders and mines and roads in the beginning, and you got enough cash to flow in for you to build better troop training facilities and hire mercenaries should the need arise.

DojoRat

10-07-2004, 16:35

Two more items.

Build forts in the mountain passes leading to Tarsus and Antioch to cover your back as you drive on the Nile. The Greeks or Pontus or both will come for you and you'll need time to gather a northern field army to repel them.

Also build an agora or whatever building that creates assassins when you get a chance. You want to kill off thoses diplomats that bribe your troops racing from one hot spot to another. And if they survive a high level killer can really come in handy.

Lord_Winter

10-07-2004, 19:31

Not having read all above I just want to add a few short tips...

Strike the Egyptian provinces Sidon and Jerusalem before you do anything else after that the Egyptians will be severly crippled...acomplishing this is easy your treasury will be overflowing in the begining and spend that money on basic troops and bribing. In my campaing I probably bought 75% of the egyptian army or more...

After egyptian crippling go on the defensive is my tip and take over Palmyra, Bostra, Petra och Dumatha one an all lightly defended...

Also try taking Harlicarnassos beneath your turkish province since it is a okey money producer and controlls a wonder. Also If you have it then none else have. A small force and a diplomat should have no problem to buy the defencive force and just move in...

Magraev

10-12-2004, 07:35

I've had a nice easy game so far (med/med). I agree with the others that Egypt has to go - the sooner the better. This gave some hairy moments early on, and I actually lost Seleucus himself to an egyptian chariot archer charge. Halicarnassus is easily bribed early on too without creating an extra front to defend, since it's behind your lines.

Keep some diplomats on your borders to maintain the peace. Two of my family-members are from my allies Parthia and Armenia, I simply bribe anybody looking threatening. It's nice to be the richest faction on the board. This works nicely for rebels too. And remember some of the nicest mercs in the game can be bought around Tarsus (cretans and rhodeans).

My army and navy is quite small, but that makes no difference as long as I have 300k in the bank (at around 240 bc).

I've just built my first silver shield pikeman, and I'm completing the building for war-elefants atm. I'm looking forward to the silver shield legionnaires. The Seleucids have the most varied unit-roster of any faction.

Edit: It's tempting to build scythed chariots but I really wouldn't recommend it. They can and will run amok and rout quickly, and besides they are one of few units who cause casualties just by moving through a friendly unit! Even elephants just push people over.

Lord_Winter

10-12-2004, 16:25

Wanted too add a little more as my second campaign (v.hard/v.hard)with this exellent fraction (quickly becoming my fav) is going towards its conclusion.

On very hard chariots are death...beating them especially in cities will take 10 times their number in good troops if you do not have a lot of archers...so get archers if you want to fight the egyptians....

Also do not hord money...you can always earn more. Send hordes of diplomats over the map and if you have a strong fraction on one of your borders dont just bribe what seems treatning....bribe cities (when it will do good) small forces etc...(i usually spend all my surplus money on this) then give away cities which are hard to hold to your allies...also weakening the romans in this fashion can be very effective...

If your allies are in war with a nation you do not what to fight (THE ROMANS maybe) then support them with money...bribe their enemies...this is a very efficient way to hamper a specific nations progress. One I used on the greeks who where being overthrown by the brutii. In a few turns and about 100k later the greeks where repelling the brutii without my support and the brutii where had gone from most powerful to somewhere in the low bottom of the scale...roman power in the east was dead in its tracks...

Rosacrux redux

10-12-2004, 17:20

I want to add my vote for the Seleucids as an extremely fun to play faction. Just finished my first S. campaign (medium, medium) and it was extremely enjoyable. The S. have an extremely varied troop roster and in the late stages of the games their armies are virtually unstopablle. You have to go there, though, and in order to do that you have to repel the early agressors (Egypt, Parthia and the Greek city states attacked me in the first 4 rounds). Did for some exciting fighting, but when the dust settled, the Parthians were reduced to one province, the Greeks were out of game (thanks to the Brutii in the west, while I snatched Anatolia and Rhodes) and the Egyptians went down the drain (after a number of extremely frustrating battles - frustrating not because they were tough but because I had to face the uber-annoying Pharaonic unit lineup :furious3: ).

The key to the early survival for the S. is money. They are the richest faction all around, so if you put this money to good use, they cannot be stopped. Just create a few (or more...) diplomats and start bribing everything that moves (in the early stages... later on you can bribe unmovable objects like... cities ~D too).

If you survive the early onslaught and manage to leash the Egyptians, you can't lose. The Romans shall start coming hard on you, but once you have the wealth of the Seleucids and the Ptolemeans (and the superb S. units) nothing can stop you.

I am starting a Greek campaign at Hard/Hard and I'll let you know about my progress in the relevant thread.

DojoRat

10-12-2004, 21:33

My campaign (hard/hard) has reached the mid-game. Egypt, Pontus, and Armenia have been absorbed and the Parthians banished to the steppes. Rhodes is still Greek but not for long.

After that it's Macedonia/Greece and on to the boot of Italy. I may wait a bit and beat down the Roman Navy while Macedonia expands into Thrace and away from the choice Greek cities but it should only be a matter of time and logistics.

To turn the guide around so to speak, my biggest error was the failure to put leaders in all three Egyptian cities asap. I exterminated my way down the Nile but left only one leader in Memphis as I turned back to deal with the Armenians and Pontus. I thought putting the people to the sword would give me plenty of time but very quickly these cities were over populated and rebellious. I should have either shuttled the one leader around or brought down other family from less important cities.

Other than some late night auto resolves things went well. If a knock-down drag-out bar fight can be said to go well.

Lord_Winter

10-13-2004, 07:13

Easy solution to the problem with to few leaders in egypt is buy the egyptian....

I have done so on medium and v.hard without problem...

Lazul

10-27-2004, 12:10

Mr Frost

11-01-2004, 15:09

The trick when playing as Seluc, is not to rely totaly on your own soldiers but save up some money, and hire a "MISTY LIGHTS 120 load" of mercs.

A good tactic with a combined force of seluc soldiers and merc is:

In center you place 4 pike units, behind them archers.
On each flank you place a bout 2-3 Eastern mercs. Now thats a good wall.
For cav i suggest Arabs and Beduins Camels, very effective when fighting in the desert atleast.
Anyway, dont underestimate the power of mercs. I hade about 2 full armies of only mercs that Totaly crushed both the Parthians and the Armenians while my own troops took care of the Pontus and holding back all the suciadal Egyptians.
:charge:

I have a very spiffing 20+ unit army of Mercenary Sythian Horse Archers and Sarmatian Mercenaries built eagerly over the years with which I have suitably punished the foolish agression from the Sythians {I took their Eastern City and was pleased to note it produces +3 experience troops ~:) } and will eventually conquer the steppes with such Mercenaries .

The Selucids have the greatest potential for power in the game ; they are like the Medieval Germans if they were based in the Middle East - Gothic Swiss Armoured Pike Pavise Arbalaster toting armies raised with near unlimited cashflow ~D

Tritio

11-06-2004, 04:45

I started a short campaign recently, and finished it (one of the few that I did), here are my observations.

Finances

The biggest earners in the world are the Greeks, Egyptians, aaaaand... the Seleucids. Here, your cash flow is great, you'd probably start off with ~10k, and when focusing on economic development and expansion (building farms, ports, traders in your cities and nipping rebel provinces) you can probably net in ~20k profit, even with big armies composed of mercenaries. However, one thing prevents you from exploiting your wealth fully...

Population

With the exception of your capital, Antioch, most of your other provinces do not hit the 'safe' 6k population limit anytime soon, even with slave influx from your conquests. Why 6k? because at that point, assuming 1.5% pop growth, you will have a growth rate of 90 per turn. Just enough to keep hiring the smaller units, like your militia hoplites, but not enough for levy pikemen (120 men on large unit sizes). Yes, your growth rate is often higher than 1.5%, but precision aside, most of your provinces only have 1-2k pop. These are your 'lower level cities', and you will accumulate plenty of these as you conquer rebel cities. Firstly, they cannot be developed very far (mostly you'd have to wait some time before you can even build a port!), and you can't use your fabulous piles of gold to raise troops from them.

The solution: development and slavery

With your cash flow, you will be able to build structures in your cities every turn, hire units from your bigger cities, and still have leftovers. So, in the beginning, focus on farms and trading buildings! (Trading buildings, such as market, trader, give 0.5% pop growth) I remember that the first structures I constructed in my first turn were all farms, where they could be built.
Second, slavery, keep enslaving captured enemy cities! You badly need the population, and while I couldn't bother to manage my governers (to control which cities got the slaves), it still helped me immensely.
I remember Bostra (the western edge of Arabia) was a tiny city with under 1k pop, I left a governer there and forgot about him, and as I conquered the Egyptian cities, Bostra grew to a large town of ~5k pop! I had to handle much unrest along the way, but it was interesting to watch...

HOWEVER...
The way to transform your money into military might is through:

Mercenaries!!!

Although some players have expressed their view that they seldom use mercs, I consider them vital in my playstyle. Especially vital as the Seleucids! Firstly, because of the aforementioned pop shortage, raising native armies would grind your cities down into the sands. Mercs allow convenient conversion of cash into men, and men back into cash (not so quickly, but through upkeep reduction) as you see fit. The mercs you get are not bad too. Around the eastern mediterannean, Numidian mercs, Eastern infantry (horrible... they flee at the sight of their shadows), Libyan mercs, etc. While these may not sound great, your real merc hiring grounds are in Asia Minor! There, you can get the best of the best: Cretans, Rhodians, Merc Hoplites, and Peltasts. And they often spawn 4 at a time. Which makes control of Asia Minor vital to you... There are 2 rebel provinces there, make it a priority to get them! They are much better than those desert provinces in the wastes. Through my mad conquests (I am highly expansionist), I grew to love mercs, Often, the bulk of my army would consist of them.

Remember, the Might of the Seleucids, their diverse and powerful units, only come in the late game.

Egyptians

As I was playing the short campaign, my objectives were to bust these guys out of the game. Their weaknesses:

Provinces

They start with 5. Although all are capable of building good units, and they have good growth, and pop to start with, Sidon and Jerusalem can easily be taken early, leaving them with their core production cities on the Nile. The trick to killing the Egyptians is to do it Early !!! The moment your Empire learns to walk, start shoving your mercs into their face!

Then, their weakness becomes evident: They are unable to express their wealth. Why? They only have 3 cities, thus their max production is 3 units/turn. Mercs? Yes, but they only appear so often. When you reign from Asia Minor to the Wastes of Arabia (or just Bostra), your recruiting grounds would be far greater then them, and your cities will be so much further and safer from your battleground, usually between Bostra and the Nile (and the narrow strip of land there).
Even if you are unable to raise troops and get them to the fight (it's a long walk), you, as a player, can still express your wealth better through bribery! Bribe anything that moves, and caries a yellow flag. You might consider bribing things that can't move, and flies a yellow flag too. Bribe their diplomats to ensure they can't be counterbribed. In this way, even if they hire mercs, it's no problem, mercs are cheap, and so are their troops!
I bribed everything that bothered me as the Seleucids, rebels, rivals (to stop the Armenians/ Pontics/Parthians from attacking me), and later I bribed the 2 rebel towns in Asia Minor too! :dizzy2: Needen't bother to go through the trouble of a fight, then.
Cheers for bribery! I absolutely love it. Makes me feel like a rich bugger ~:cheers:

Other nations

Pah, they are easily settled down with a lump of gold. Whenever you see a large army flying foreign colours, just send a diplomat there to settle them down. If there are family members, just try anyway, since your rivals (Armenians/Pontics/Parthians) are fairly small, losing a family member would set them back some. You'd be surprised at the price people ask for to settle down as farmers...

Anyway, while you settle the Egyptians, keep your back clear with Alliances. Gift "Attack faction: Rebels" to them several times (you'd have plenty of opportunities), and they'll likely settle down. Once, myself being allied with all 3 neighbours (no, the Egyptians are not my neighbours), Parthia decided to betray me, and seiged my eastern city. Foolishly, they allied themselves to the Armenians on the same turn. They reverted back to neutral on that turn, their army lifting the seige. The next turn, my diplomat arrived, and no more army. A few turns later, they accepted an alliance again! With two way military access! What was their king smoking?! :dizzy2:

Anyway, just suppress their ambitions with lots of bribery. If they only have tiny armies, then they won't attack you. Simple.

So, anyway, those are my observations, although they turned out a lot longer than I expected, I hope they were helpful! ~D

SwordsMaster

11-07-2004, 14:16

just an observation:
Eastern mercs being as bad as they are, thy bring humangous numbers (120?)
SO.....use them to absorb charges. Chariots, elephants (if you are ever to face them), heavy cavalry, etc.... Besides, they are good to pin troops for your pikes/hoplites because they are slow.

Just my 2 cent

Fridge

11-10-2004, 13:26

I'm also loving the Seleucids, though on v.hard (battle) and hard (campaign), it's a struggle, and I'm on to my third attempt...

But one thing I found out is that though the S. have great units, it takes ages to get your cities up to the point where they can recruit them - except scythed chariots, which only needs a blacksmith, and as they don't take many men (60, compared to 160 for pikemen etc), they don't hurt city expansion too much.

Now they're useless in cities, and a liability in alarge battle as they'll run amok easily (especially on the higher difficulty level) and, if they get in amongst your lines, can do more damage to your own army than just about anything the enemy can throw at you.

However... I had an army of about 6 or 7 scythed chariots, with a general to keep at the back to stop them routing, and just sent them out in to the field to mop up any small armies wandering around my lands, and nothing could stand in their way. Just send them all into the attack straight away and they'll wipe out pretty much anything. They absolutely trerrify enemy units, causing much routing, they're not very vulnerable to missile fire, and they're very quick. Also, if they rout, they tend to run amok and carry on killing the enemy (you don't have any infantry or cav units for them to hurt).

Not so good on spearman - which is a problem in that area, but can often beat a phalanx just by scaring them, they're very spread out so tend to surround anyone they attack in a whirlwind of scythed death. Mmmm....

And, and this is pretty obvious, but recruit every unit of cretan archers you can find in Asia Minor - they are awesome (they start with a missile attack of 10 compared ot 7 for normal archers), and I love the accent of the bloke who says 'Cereashan arshers' every time you select them...

Oh, and a quick question - someone mentioned above that bribing the Parthians means you get to keep their cataphracts. Now, I know that you get to keep units if you can build that unit yourself, but does that apply if you can potentially build the unit but not actually build them, ie, could the Seleucids bribe cataphracts even if they haven't yet built the buildings that can make them?

Rosacrux redux

11-10-2004, 13:59

Oh, and a quick question - someone mentioned above that bribing the Parthians means you get to keep their cataphracts. Now, I know that you get to keep units if you can build that unit yourself, but does that apply if you can potentially build the unit but not actually build them, ie, could the Seleucids bribe cataphracts even if they haven't yet built the buildings that can make them?

Absolutely yes. In both my succesful Seleucids campaings (first on M/M second on VH/VH) I bribed the starting Parthian cataphracts to join me and they joined alright. Seems that the potential is that counts, not the actual ability ~;)

Es Arkajae

11-10-2004, 18:17

The Seleucids are very easy (on medium difficulty anyway, 'hard' difficulty just adds stats to enemy units afterall), I reccommend making alliances with all your neighbours Greece, Pontus, Armenia, and Parthia make one with Egypt too if you like but they'll almost certainly break it a few turns later in any case.

I'm not sure about exactly what effect an alliance has and how less likely it makes a nation to attack one but I know that I was not attacked by my other neighbours until I already had the Egyptians on the ropes which was a real benefit. Out of my other neighbours the only one that gave me any real trouble was Pontus.

Ionia is capable of defending itself (with a general to hire mercs), you needn't even bother building too many military buildings there as long as you have money you can bribe enemy armies or hire mercenaries in the area which can give you units as varied as barbarian cavalry, Thracian mercenaries, Cretan archers, mercenary hoplites and Rhodian slingers, i.e. all you need for a good combined arms army. Cilicia is easily protected by building a fortress blocking the pass and sticking some militia there, the computer AI is seemingly loathe to attack forts and does so only rarely I've seen and if he does a diplomat will usually take care of the problem. You may want to hire some Cretan archers and then send them to Antioch to join the army you will inevitably be sending to conquer Egypt, they will come in especially useful in sieges of non-stone walled cities where they can clear the enemy out of the way of breaches by shooting over the wall.

Chariots are indeed a pain in the arse but nothing that a good phalanx even of levy pikemen can't fix if they meet them head on and you should only have to face an Egyptian army in the field a few times at most, the rest of the time it will be in sieges where the enemy can't get behind you.

Levy pikemen will be your main troops for the conquest of Asia, build around six or even eight of them for each army (if you can get better pikemen then great, but levy pikemen will do just remember that they're very vulnerable to missile fire), add a couple units of militia cavalry, add a couple units of Rhodian slingers or Cretan archers and at least one unit of elephants (to use as a battering ram on wooden walls/gates without having to wait to build equipment). Add also some fodder troops such as a couple of militia hoplite units or some of the otherwise useless Eastern infantry mercs for ...well ...fodder which you will occasionaly find useful.

With these armies you will quickly conquer all of Asia.

First step is Sidon and Jersusalem, you should take these places as soon as war is declared even if the army I mentioned above isn't ready, use militia hoplites and whatever you have at hand including mercs if neccessary, bribe any enemy you can, bribing a leaderless enemy army can strangely save you a lot of money ultimately but more importantly time.

The idea is to blitzkrieg your way through enemy cities, when you conquer a city (especially an Egyptian one) exterminate its population, if the temple there maintains happiness better than one of yours would then leave it for now, you can tear it down and put up your own a bit later when you have a few units of militia hoplites in the city and your army is already gone on to the next city or two.

Once you conquer a city (always assaulting on the first turn with your elephants if the walls are wooden), go to the retrain section and 'top up' as many troops as you can in one turn replacing your losses and maybe adding some better troops in one turn if the infrastructure allows for it. If your losses aren't that bad and you still have some good movement points left then then don't even wait for that, buy some local mercs to leave behind or leave behind your remaining fodder troops or one unit of your regular troops that you can probably do without to join you later to keep the city behind you pacified and then move on. Each turn you save means an extra unit that an enemy city can't produce.

I built four armies over time in my conquest of Asia, only two of which got much use, one for Egypt, two for the north, and one for the East (which I only used to conquer Susa)

You border provinces should be Libya and Cyrenaica (the Numidians will attack you so do it first) with your by now likely outdated Egypt army parked in a fort on the border with Tripolitania in case the Scipii who will most likely own it try anything funny, your only other land border should be with Scythia in the north where four well placed border forts with four militia units can seal it.

The Parthians will probably still exist in Tribus Sakae which will be annoying as you will probably have to build a strong Caspian navy to get to the bastards if you can't get an access agreement with the Scythians but if you can land one of your original armies there and sack and leave the city all the more kudos to you in getting rid of a minor annoyance.

You should own Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete so by this point you will have enough provinces so that a war against the Roman factions will take you over the fifty province requirement. So sit back and build up your navy and three or four or more Uber Armies of Doom with the better units you will now have at your disposal and when you're ready strike at the Romans (and probably the Macedonians).

I would strongly reccommend loading your armies onto fleets and then simultaneously landing them where you want them to go overseas in the same turn, before you declare war on the Romans, this avoids the embarrassing problem of having an enemy fleet intercept yours and prevent a landing..

In the tradition of blitzkrieg the first thing the Romans should know about war with you is when your armies all come knocking at the gates of Lepcis Magna, Tarentum, Syracuse and whatever most important city they have in Greece all in the same turn.

Well thats enough of me probably talking out of my arse for now, hope it helps, certainly did my false sense of modesty no harm:p

Fridge

11-10-2004, 18:48

Es Arkajae

11-11-2004, 20:57

It's not the battle difficulty that's a problem, it's the campaign! I tried a v.hard/v.hard game and within the first four turns the Pontics had bribed Tarsus (despite our 'alliance'), and the Egyptians, Parthians and Armenians had all declared war - the Greek cities weren't far behind...

Tried again on hard campaign difficulty, and I'm still fighting a war on three fronts, and just waiting for the Pontics to come after Tarsus...

Alliances are only good for dragging other nations into your wars through sneaky actions in any case, like I said I have no idea what effect they actually have on the liklihood of ones enemies to attack but I'd wager its not much.

But good point on the diplomats, that was something I didn't take into account when making my comment, the AI does indeed get more sneaky with agents on higher levels, something to look out for.

The answer though is speed, no matter how smart the enemy AI is it can still only produce one unit per city, per turn.

In fact the blitzkrieg tactics are so damned effective that I've stopped using them for some games, my enemies never even get to build their higher end units and the games end too quickly with too few battles. Takes alot of the fun out of it really. Something to take into account if you're in the game for lots of fun. ~:)

Maltz

11-12-2004, 07:08

I only played the Selucid for 3 turns, just offering a small tip.

I already grabbed the Egyptian town Sidon & the Parthia town (Susa?) just adjacent to the hanging garden.

You can hold your army in Selucia for the first turn, train a diplomat there, then on the 2nd turn sending the diplomat out to bribe whatever that comes out of the Parthia town, then the town is left defenseless.

Now is the time to send out your governer. He has some movement retinue so he can siege the Parthia town in the same turn he departs from Selucia. Great stuff! So I could take the town on turn 3.

Egyptians will also send out captain lead armies available for bribe. Selucid is so rich, so you can probably bribe them all in no time. (I haven't really played it so I am just guessing.)

Then with your starting army and mercenaries, perhaps you can quickly conquer a series of Egyptian towns there. After playing all the poor clans of Numida, Dacia and Spanish I found Selucid such a huge blessing. ~D

Fridge

11-15-2004, 18:29

One little tip - and I expect this applies to any of the Greeks, or indeed, anyone with access to phalanxes (phalanges? never sure) - actually, scratch that, it's not a tip, it's a cheat.

But, if you're under siege in a town with wooden walls, and line deploy your phalanx/ges as close to the wall as you can get them (right click and drag), their spears go through the wall and actually engage the enemy troops manning the ram. You'll only kill them slowly, but the upshot is they never actually get to do any damage to your walls, and you don't take any casualties.

You've got to watch for the phalanx shuffle, I tend to arrange mine in a rank four deep with the right hand flank just in front of the spot they're going to ram, but you might need a couple of spares to fill the gap once your first phalanx has shuffled all the way over.

Yeah, it's a cheat. And yeah, I feel guilty, but well, y'know...

T.N.T. Toulouse

11-24-2004, 20:45

Do the Seleucids have the same culture as the Greeks, i.e. do the Greek cities' temples cause a culture penalty?

Watchman

11-24-2004, 21:36

I think they're in the same lump. Or at least when I walked over that little Greek City in western Asia Minor (Pergamum) after it tried a Very Stupid Thing, namely sent an all-hoplite army against the pile of Cretans and Rhodesians I'd accumulated in Sardis, there wasn't the least bit of culture penalty visible.

snuggins

11-28-2004, 00:28

Pikemen are without a doubt the best infrantry in the game. They will help by protecting prized missile units. In this topic I will give you a full lo-down on the greek based civilisations and all who use the pikemen.

Ok check this

.= Archers
-=Cavalry
|=Infrantry

|||| .... ||||

---- ----

This is almost what the default formation looks like when you first enter the game.

But here's one I suggest:

|| |||||| ||
---- .... ----

Now that is a good formation. The cavalry are far behind to counter flanks the pikemen on the sides are facing the flank and the archers are in a safe area. There you can advance in a in a orgonised way. Here's another good one:

||||||
---- || ....|| ----
Like that the army can pierce through the line and split them in to two!

Campaign Moves

Greek Cities: Conquer any rebel state near your territories. Then head up north for Macedon and elimnate them. Then go west taking over north Italy and head for Rome. In that time you can hit them before the Post Mairus starts.
Macedon: Do the same as greeks but the opposite.
Sellucids: This time do a double campaign, send one army east to aniahlate Parthia, send a second west for Turkey and the the other south for Egypt.
Egypt: This one is harder your squished in a narrow gap between Numidia and Sellucid Empire. Again do double campaign to capture the west. There is a small territory. Near you which links to the main coast capture that to head for Greece for a alliance, they will help you with the Sellucid kingdom and Pontus invasion.

Cadwallon

11-30-2004, 06:55

I’ve been playing the Seleucids for some time now, and I’m now in a knock down drag out fight with the Romans – after defeating army after army in Greece, they’ve just now retaken Athens (Only because it was late at night, and I couldn’t be bothered doing another siege so auto-resolved!). My biggest problem is transport – the Romans with their Thracian allies (damn them!) completely dominate the sea, and even big fleets of quinqueremes are mobbed as soon as they get within sight of Italia or Siclilia..

I know if I can just get there, that they’ll have stripped Italia bare of armies, and go on conquering with my armoured elephants, silver shield legionaries and companion cavalry to my hearts content. I just can’t get there!! I can’t emphasise enough the importance of building up fleets…

I have however, taken most of the former Carthaginian holdings from the Romans, and even taken the closest city in Sicilia. I knew that the big cities in Sicilia would continue to pump out legionaries till even I broke…

Shottie

11-30-2004, 22:08

I hate the Thracians. Ive been playing SE for a while and I have all of Eygpt and Persia....as I attack Spain (which took over Carthage, i have no idea how) i get attacked by the Thracians....4 HUGE ARMIES!!!!! They took everything from me....AHHH that makes me so mad, but then again...its awesome because the AI comes up with crazy surprises LOL

KyodaiSteeleye

01-05-2005, 20:24

One tip as Seluicids.

If you don't have the money to hire loads of mercenaries in the early game (i didn't, i was too busy building on VH), then you can have real trouble keeping the wolves from the door with only Militia Hoplites and Cavalry, especially when you are struggling to get off the defensive (what with 5 factions attacking you at the same time n'all). However, you do get quite a few family members quite quickly, so instead of using them as governors, mass them all into your main army - in force they are much better than most of the opposition sieging all your towns. If used wisely, you shouldn't lose family members and they'll gain some good experience. Once start getting better troops (levy pikes etc..) you can start retiring them to your main cities.

Dutch_guy

01-27-2005, 18:15

T he hard part of a very hard campain mode playing the seleucid empire is the fact that you will never be at peace.
and also a key part of the campain is destroying Egypt as soon as possible, or else they will become 1 of the superpowers of the world.
I destroyed the egyptians in 10 years, which wasn't even that hard.
they just seem to never stop producing units !
but when you capture Alaxandria you should be fine, and well on the way.
It 's tempting to take those not to well protected rebel city;s but don't concentrate on your enemy's settlements, much more worth the effort.

also build up your forcess in seleucia, the Partians will attack so it's best to attack first ~:)
use your spy to navigate through partian territory, very usefull.

if you are having trouble with pontus or armenia ( which I had ) take over their core city's, helped me destroy pontus, while also creating a good front towards armenia ( whith those 2 settlements , north of tarsus , which are good troop producing settlements when developed ~:handball: )
Destroying Armenia isn.t a must, I let them sign a ceasefire when I destroyed pontus.

by that time, and well before that ,you will be makeing more money that you will be able to spend, The Seleucid empire will be making tons of denarii even in the beginning of the game.

At this time I'm preparing my troops and moving them to deliver a blow to the Brutii, at this time i'm still neutral with them but I will soon declare war, which they will probably lose :charge:

hope you find my ''advice'' helpfull

BalkanTourist

01-27-2005, 19:44

It is true that all the rebel provinces are tempting. I managed to stay out of war with all 5 neighbours and tooks Dumatha, Bostra, Palmyra, Ancyra and Halicarnasus in quick succession. Before I knew it, I had over extended my borders, stretched my armies and with not enough family members it was asking for trouble. While I was doing that, my neighbours were busy on the diplomatic front. Parthia and Egypt allied and Greece, Pontus and Armenia formed the Northern Alliance and all attacked me at the same turn. Greece besieged Sardis, Pontus - Tarsus and Ancyra, Hatra was attacked by Armenia. The Egyptians first attacked Damascus, but the next turn two more huge armies came and besieged Palmyra and Antioch. Parthia besieged Dumatha and Seulecia. Needless to say I lost.

BalkanTourist

02-14-2005, 20:03

It took me awhile to figure out two obvious things: phalanxes should be used for defence and pikemen for offence and never to put any spear/pike unit on the walls. With phalanxes defending a city is so easy. Just camp at the entraces to the city plaza (normally there are 2). I never lost a city even when outnumbered 1:3. I never even used legionaries, but those militia units were great some of them reached 2 or 3 silver chevrons which made them stronger than silver shields (much cheaper upkeep though). I took Armenia, Parthia, Pontus, Egypt and Greece. Had some loyalty problems with the scythian cities to the north. Also I hardly used elephants. And those chariots should not be used at all! They always run amok! For some reason they always choose to come back to my line and the general attracts them like a magnet. Lost 3 generals that way!

RollingWave

02-24-2005, 16:56

I concur, as long as you take some measure to make sure their moral don't go down too soon, milita hoplit is arguablly the best lvl 1 infantry around... and defending (or assaulting) a city street with phalanx is very good

The_Emperor

02-25-2005, 17:59

RollingWave

02-25-2005, 20:08

Currently starting my first Selucid Campaign on H/H...

At start everyone except the Armenians allied with me... my starting leader died of natural causes in the first 3 turn (grrr why alwys happen to me??) and early on rebels poped up left and right... so was basically rebel hunting for a while...

Then I realize the obvious... Alliance aint worth a dime as Pontus Armenia and Egypt hit me all at once... I barely held off Pontus and Armenia with mercenary army (as they were hitting isolated and underdeveloped provinces) and build up a more reliable core army in Antioch to push against the Egyptian.

Somewhat to my luck, after sacking their first city then crushing the counterattack army, the Egyptians acturally agreed to became my protectrate if I give them that city back o_O!!!! obviously 1 city to keep my worest potential enemy off my back is good.

Then amazingly the Greeks hit me with a full stack o_O WTF, then I checked the faction and to even bigger surprise the Greeks are acturally the leading faction o_O, but thx to stupid AI seiging skill I acturally manage to held off the full stack with only 400 men. (the greek family member lead the charge... into 3 stack of hoplits in the city square... needless to say the rest didn't feel like fighting much after that..)

Now with my back secured I'm begining to move against Pontus, I got them down to 1 city now, if i can bring Asia minor under me quickly i should have little trouble in steam rolling those damn Armenians and Pathians (Amusingly Pathia have not attacked me yet.... though we are no longer allied as i broke off with them when they attacked Scythia)

Thoughts so far..... the AI's is retarded in seige assult.... i had one fight where the AI acturally did something smart... rushed my infantry as I tried to move my phalanx outside the walls with a huge number of eastern infantry and managed to overwhelm my phalanx... just when i thought the AI acturally did something I would do he then parked he's whole army outside my walls and let my towers and archers shoot them to hell -.-......

I still dont' get the hang of using scythed chariots.... they seem to run amok or die a lot easier than elephants while they also trample ur own guys easier (as they are faster) why is their defense so low that makes little sense when the rider appears to be fully armored...

Although Milita hoplite/Levy pike and greek archers aren't very spetacular, combined together they still make a extremely solid basic army.. getting archer in most city is a abosalute priority if ur going to survive the defensive phase (and to acturally have something to work with on offense... ur not going anywhere against horse archers without ur own archer however crappy they may be.

Ghostmonkey

02-25-2005, 20:50

Man, as the Selucids all i can say is, I love levy Pikes!!

Levy Pikemen have saved my butt many times. (especially during a city assault)

Plonk a Levy Phalanx in the street, suddently the entire army is held up! (with the exception of quality cavalry like Cataphracts, but you only need an extra unit behind the first to kepe the roadblock in place).

Same thing goes for city assaults too. Just clog up a street or two with pikemen and nothing will stop you. The only problem here is that time constraints may require a more wasteful strategy.

Stlaind

02-25-2005, 23:25

RollingWave

02-28-2005, 11:49

Lol same, i've had my own general died to amok scyth a few time...
But another funny as hell situation was why I besiged Ankora, Pontus had like 800 men, 2 scyth chariot, a general and afew Pontic light cav along with a load of eastern infantry and hill men... i immideatly send my 2 unit of archer along with 1 unit of merc bedoiun camel archer and pelted one scyth chairot with fire arrow... it ran amok after just 2 volly.. as the Pontic army tried to move from the walls back to the town center, it killed more than 60% of their army (the other chaiort unit ran amok too ) and their general.... that's gotta be one of the easiest seige i've ever done.

The_Emperor

02-28-2005, 12:21

I still dont' get the hang of using scythed chariots.... they seem to run amok or die a lot easier than elephants while they also trample ur own guys easier (as they are faster) why is their defense so low that makes little sense when the rider appears to be fully armored...

Do not underestimate those Selucid Scythed Chariots... In my Greek cities campaign I had a lot of trouble when a couple of Scythed Chariots got behind my defensive line and started carving up my missile troops and cavalry. (to make matters worse a unit of Elephants joined in as well)

I was outnumbered 2 to 1 at the start of the battle anyway, and most of both selucid armies were comprised of Militia Hoplites. (compared to my armoured ones)

The first army was easily routed and driven from the field, but the second army arrived too quickly and before I could turn and face them two units of scythed chariots and one unit of elephants got behind my lines... They wiped out all my cav and missile troops and consigned my general to an early grave.

Fortunately they couldn't very well hit my armoured hoplites from the rear because the Ornagers were in the way (even if the crews did get massacred).

My veteran armoured Hoplites did carry the day when a couple of them turned and formed a second front against the enemy.

Needless to say I lost half my army, but when the dust settled I had slain over 2,000 men.

They might not be as powerful as Elephants, but they can sure cause some havoc when used right. Still it was a nice move by the AI.

RollingWave

02-28-2005, 12:47

After using them more, i realize their potential, they are faster than elephants and they will mow the enemy down much faster.. where elephants usually require u to have some calvary back up or a infantry wave support to make the charge really count, the chariots will often destroy the enemy all on it's own, however their tendency to run amok at the slightlest wind still make them quiet problematic... (though i guess due to their speed.. u should just simply put them even farther back in ur line and perform a wide angel flanking manuver.)

mfberg

02-28-2005, 17:10

The best use of scythed chariots is as a mop up unit. Early in the game use them to mop up routers and as a flanking unit. Doing this I got a 7 man unit from no valor to v5 (silver 2) with only 2 deaths. (600+ kills as the army tried to sally)

mfberg

Fisherking

03-01-2005, 16:50

This is the best all-round army in the game, I think. Once you have reached the large city status in a city or two you will become unstoppable with the better armies you can produce. It is mostly a matter of lasting that long.

Your true offensive capabilities come with Cataphracts. They are fully worth the expense & the wait to produce them. All other units from this point on are merely supporting troops. Give them all the experience & armor upgrades you can get & they will truly amaze you. Six to ten Cats are the core to a truly war winning army, just use them in mass. Group them in twos threes or more and attack spears from two directions. Even in city combat they will overpower any adversary with a massed charge of several units. They seldom rout & with eight or more & a few oagers you can take almost any city. A couple or three Armored Elephants are expellant fire support but not front line units so save them for the flanks & rear, especially in cities.

In a Seleucid army about half should be Cats. Infantry is there to protect the Onagers for assaulting cities with stone walls. War Elephants or Armored Elephants are there for braking walls & for fire support. They will shoot over walls while breaking them in fact, but if you find you are loosing Elephants you are using them wrong. A temple of Hephaestus in Antioch is also a good thing as it will give you a nice experaince & armor upgrade for these troops.

I have not played this faction sense the 1.2 patch so I don’t know what may have changed but I know that it is now too expensive to bribe units except in an emergency. I also think that that change has wrongfully changed some things which were common place in ancient wars. Bribes I think should also bring on more of the troops of exotic types into your army….but that belongs elsewhere. LOL

RollingWave

03-09-2005, 07:51

Well I finished it, after conquring Asia minor and then destroying Armenia and pushing Pathia to the other side of the Caspian, I took out Thrace and got the Macedonians to be my protectrate as they were besieged by the Romans. Scythia made a half arse attempt to attack me then also became my protectrate, I pushed the Bruttis out of Solona and Apollonia and then landed another army on Italy to take their home town in quick succesion, then I gave the 2 balkan city to the Macedonians letting them deal with the remaining former brutti rebels wondering around there while I sailed my army to reinforce Italy. and also making landings on Africa and Sicily to take undefended or almost undefended towns. the push north towards Rome was not hard as the Romans wasted their army, the Senate army faced me outside of Rome, but decided to retreat when I already closed on them, need less to say my elephant/catapracts/general/companion/chariots ran most of their infantry down. and Rome fell in a seige that followed, game over. (I had all my borders at home under my protectrate LOL)

Thoughts... pikeman have a lot of problems.... they behave in phalanx even more poorly than normal hoplits / sacred band / egyptian etc...) and their offense capability is very unnoticable when they die so quick..... any time I had serious enemy charging against me my pikeman took rather excess casulties while the kill score is not particularly impressive :/ i think the high men number acturally cause them to function even more oddly in phalanx and thus cuase them to do poorly in general... not to meantion their non existance melee capability means when they go out of phalanx they die even faster (unlike say.. spartan or scared band... they still pretty good even when not fighitng with phalanx working)

katank

03-15-2005, 04:17

With pikes, you really have to do stacking cheese and put something like 4 units inside each other in long thin lines.

This makes the pike forest impenetrable. It's truly cheesy but effective. They rarely break. 3 silvershields inside each other cannot be broken even by urban cohorts.

Conqueror

03-30-2005, 11:29

Here's my take on the early game as Seleucids, based on my ongoing campaign on H/H difficulty:

Parthia can be neutralized suprisingly easy early on. You must keep an eye on Susa, the Parthian city east of Seleucia. Try to infiltrate it with your spy. They start out with an army in there, but often this army will move out to patrol/attack rebels etc. When you see them move, take your troops from Seleucia and move them near the province border, so that they can reach Susa (or retreat back to Seleucia) in 1 turn. If the Parthian army moves far enough that it can't reach Susa in 1 turn, attack the town! If you're lucky, your spy will open the gates and you can assault immediatly. If not, then you'll have 1 turn to build a ram and still can assault before their army gets to the rescue. Note that while the city will be underdefended, it might still have family members in it so be prepared for a tough fight.

You will then have to deal with the parthian starting army as it will attack you probably the next turn. It should be much easier to take them on the city streets when you're defending though, than it would be out in the desert. This early war with Parthia is a bold move and not without considerable risk, but if you manage to take Susa and beat their starting army, it will pay off. In my game which is now past the early stages, I did this pre-emptive strike against the Parthians and haven't heard a thing about them ever since, although we've been formally at war the whole time. They just never recovered from the loss of Susa enough to bolster a competent attack force.

Building stone walls should be a very high priority to most of your nothern and eastern settlements. Although your phalanx units should be kept on the street level, simply having the walls will greatly weaken a besieging army's ability to use missile fire against you. They'd need to either move inside your walls through gates or holes (easy to counter with phalanx) or get some foot archers on top of the walls (you should be able to stop them with mercenary infantry or even hoplites). When protected from missile fire and flanking, pikemen in phalanx formation will be nigh invincible.

You should hire plenty of mercenaries. The best types to hire are missile troops, since the Seleucids don't have any good long range missile units of their own. Cretan archers (available in your starting province Ionia), Bedouin archers (lots of your provinces, like Syria and Babylonia) and Scythian mercenaries (hire them in Cappadocia, the Pontus province right to the north of Cilicia & Assyria, you'll need to move a family member to the border) are very useful additions to the Seleucid's pikemen & cavalry heavy army. Another benefit to mercenaries is that you can raise a large army quickly, which will be needed to handle the greatest problem of early Seleucid games: Egypt.

You will want to take an aggressive stance on Egyptians, don't shy from attacking Sidon and Jerusalem as soon as you're able. But don't stop to catch your breath for long. When I took those cities, the Egyptians started throwing stack after stack of chariots, bowmen, spearmen and desert cavalry at me. So I did the "Scipio thing" and took the fight to their heartlands; I loaded a full stack army to my ships and set sails toward the river Nile. I found that of the 3 big cities there, only Alexandria was properly garrisoned. Thebes only had a family member and 1 unit of slingers, while Memphis had only a family member! So after I stormed Alexandria, the entire river Nile fell to me in a quick succession. This finally brought an end to the Egyptian's ability to muster massive armies quickly, but they were still a threat, so I sent multiple armies to take all of their remaining settlements.

What followed was lots of manouvering around the strategy map. Their strong armies would attack my invading armies, but I kept retreating and outright refused to give them fight in the desert. I had multiple armies approaching their towns from different directions, and while one of my armies was chased by the egyptian full stack, another one would attack the town and take it. They would then try to retake their cities but I was able to defend them as their chariots lost most of their mobility in the streets. In one of these many siege battles they had many bowmen and skirmishers, but used them to handle the battering rams, so I sent my militia cavalry out through side gates and charged the bowmen when they were packed into nice squares and busy operating the rams. I lost some militia cavalry to their chariots but eliminated so many bowmen and skirmishers that it was worth it. Without their missile troops they were helpless against my pikemen in the streets.

Eventually they lost every last one of their cities and were done as a faction. Now some decades later, there's still an old rebel general wandering the desert who is a very bitter man ~D

So the key to victory for me was to outmanouvre the enemy on the strategy map, always fight in cities and fight defensively when ever possible. I decided to be defensive against Pontus and Armenia, letting them attack Sardis, Tarsus and Hatra, always sallying out the first turn and driving them away. That way I didn't lose income to sieges and more importantly, my mercenary units didn't suffer from the reduction that sieges cause. The way to beat a sally battle against these factions was to put Cretan archer on my walls, sending skirmishing cavalry out through side gates and harass the enemy to chase them to the range of the cretans (or even better, all the way to the range of my wall towers). Eventually they'd got enough of it and begun to retreat at which point all of my cavalry led by my generals would sally out and kill as many of them as possible. The first stacks they sent were tough to beat, but after that they started using increasing numbers of eastern infantry so things became rather easy to me. They kept on sending a new force almost every turn, so they started running out of money and their populations started to suffer.

In my game I own the entire south-eastern corner of the map, from river Nile to Susa to Pergamum and have taken Rhodes, Kydonia, Sparta and Corinth. Pontus and Armenia are still attacking me almost every turn with about as much success as every turn before. I wanted to teach Pontics a lesson so I sent a small army to attack Nicomedia while it was left undefended. The town only had wooden walls and small population so I didn't even try to keep it, instead I gave it as a gift to Thrace. Now the Pontics lost a settlement and can't get it back without starting a war with Thrace ~:cool: I am in no hurry to end this admittedly tiresome war (unless they come begging for peace, and beg properly) for I am now having much more fun with my invasion army in Greece, the situation there has turned into a huge confusing Romans vs Macedon vs Greeks vs Seleucids struggle, with two Roman factions involved.

cunobelinus

03-30-2005, 20:41

i found secluid quite hard because they are surrounded try and make as many allies as possible and try and build traders roads and ports in ever town or city
.dont attack people till you think ur strong enough block egypts path by armys and make forts round there entrances to ur provinces .egypt are not easy to beat but as secluid empior has the best of all troops u have a big chance dont go fro greece or parthia to begin with make allies with them always arminea are week if u hit them early so u can go for them i have won a short campaign with these but have not yet completed a long campaign .have fun. :duel: ~:)

Fisherking

04-01-2005, 01:55

Okay, I went back & played them again. I won’t discuss the strategy of when to take what but I will say that no one has a chance against these guys. The Cats are the most devastating units in the game. They can take on almost anything & very seldom brake. Armor upgrades do play a role in it all but they are crushing to just about anything. You just have to use them in mass. In the game last night I was sending 4 untried Cataphracts to reinforce a city threatened by the Romans. During the AIs turn I was attacked three times. Now there were only four units with no experience and only the first armor & weapons upgrades game play was M/M. The first army was just short of 800 men vs. my 209, I destroyed it totally & lost 13 men. The second army was over 850 with a family member in command. I let them chase me around until I got a good shot at the general, when I did I took it even though I got a couple of the formations pined for a time. After killing him the rest broke easy enough but I lost quite a few horsemen, around 70 I think. Then to my horror I was attacked again by a stack of around 590 with a strong general. I put the remaining force in kind of a box formation & charged, because of his Onagers… I cut through the Roman infantry & engaged their general. Needless to say he died & everyone was disheartened. I ran around the field braking any remaining units & moping up. When it was all over I still had 104 men left. They had only gained 5 chevrons between them all. Each had one & one had two. The second battle I did end when the enemy was all in retreat & didn’t peruse the last man, but just the same those 200 Cataphracts had defeated 10 times their number with about 50% losses.

I have watched a couple of times in horror when I saw them accidentally charge into the front of pikes & hoplites but the spear units brake like any other unit so long as there is a second Cataphract behind the first. My battle formations with them are usually an inverted wedge or a deep narrow formation abreast. If they are too spread out they loose their momentum quickly. With 8 or more units of them & 2 or 3 Onagers there is not a city that can’t be felled but as the Onagers are so slow, when ever I can, I assault a unit outside the city to draw the garrison in and then totally annulate the entire force, there by giving me the city anyway. I have not seen that the Camel Cataphracts are any better than the horsemen (Parthian) but if cost is the issue & you can build them, then Companion Cavalry makes an excellent second rank where they don’t take as many casualties. Elephants are nice toys and my help in taking town with wooden walls but generally much too expensive. Only one or two are necessary. I have taken cities outnumbered three to one with just the Onagers & Cats. If the garrison isn’t large enough, don’t worry, I sack all roman cities anyway just to quell rebellious tendencies.

Happy hunting! ~:cheers:

Oh, well they will brake if left to stand against spears so keep them moving ~D

Catullus

04-01-2005, 16:31

My Asia Minor now has the richest collection of bone idle peasants "dispersed to the fields" thanks to my willingness to bribe rather than battle (especially on hard/hard at 3 in the morning). I'd quite like these lazy bastards to fight for me instead.

Now, I understand that if you bribe a unit you can't build (or can never build in the future) then it disperses rather than joins. But this doesn't seem to work with the Pontic or Armenian troops which seem pretty similar to the Seleuicid lot (presumably the Egyptians and their various weird troops are a lost cause?) Any ideas? Does one "un-buildable" unit in the stack stop you bribing any of it to come over to you?

Dutch_guy

04-01-2005, 17:20

no catallus, it happens that you can sometimes bribe let's say 3 troops ( total of 7troops in the stack you wish to bribe ) and 4 will join your stack, if you can train them, that is.

Atreides

04-07-2005, 09:14

(M/M) The Seleucids have an very interesting line of Pro’s and cones.

Strong (pro);
- They are very, very rich.
- Wonder o Wonders (you start with 2, expansion with two others is very soon possible, the other 3 are aviable in the midgame).
- A strong start, mid en end game army.
- Your main foe’s have very vulnerable armies in the starting phase (except Egypt).
- Mercenaries. Since you fight in such a wide area you can use PLENTY of them and a quick war with descent/excellent units. Those units are also very adapted to the local warfare.

Weak (poor)
- 5 Enemies in the long run. Likely you will engage them early on.
- Egypt. Egypt is very rich, good one of the best armies, and no foe but you…..
- Your empire is not really ‘one’ you got 4 area’s that you should protect.

I said that you got 4 area’s. These are:
- West: Sardis.
- Central: Tarsu, Antioch and Damascus.
- North: Hatra
- East: Selucia

You have In each era likely an ‘own’ enemy:
West: Geek city states and likely Pontus.
Central: Egypt (and maybe Pontus).
North: Armenia
East: Parthia

Your main strategy consist of:
- Build, build build. Since you got a lot of money. Concentrate on the empire’s main things and their strategic area. Build a lot of troops and military.
- Make friends (alliance), generate time until the attack.
- Mercenaries. Money is your friend so use the troops for expansion and fighting.
- Strike hard, leave the fallen. This sometimes annoying quote of the game is in this game very very true. I other words: strike the main cities if possible.
- General: YOU SHOULD play al your battles yourself. Until you come into a face where you’re the grand superpower.

The 5 surrounding fractions al ask for an specific army strategy:
- Greek city states should be counter with the mercs. The great Cresian archers and … slingers. The merc hoplite is awesome in the starting stage.
- Pontus. Your normal army is fine.
- Parthia. Slingers/Peltasts/Bowman. Lots of cav or better chariots. And of course pikes to hold the line. Parthia units are not really impressive when they have to break any line on offence.
- Armenia. Normal army is fine here. Only cav (especially the desert merc cav) is very useful here.
- Egypte. Very very annoying faction. They got very strong armies so bring the best. Against chariots use a combo of shooting/throwing and peltasts and pike’s. The Peltasts got a bonus against those annoying chariots.

Well, what did I do (en recommend you!)

Initial fase. Build. In the WEST take the rebel settlement Halicarnassus ASP. Use mercs (the great available mercs here) for this. After this expansion retain ect. I shipped my troops (bought more mercs) to Rodus. After capturering Rodus send your troops ASP to Pergamum. Well if you succeed the 3 very hard battles you made an great Eastern empire. The Greek city states will be lost likely or are stuck in Sparta. While you have no less than 3 wonders. And more over 3 very rich cities and one rich city.

Centre. Build to your own mind. Make sure you can build Elephants ASP. Troop building is a property. War with the strong Egyptians is coming your way. When you see the Egyptians attempting to attack you: STRIKE first. E.G. take Sidon. This will hurt their ability to make war strongly, afterwards on to Jerusalem.

North. Minimize your attention to Hatra. Build strongly but this settlement is here to ‘hold’ the line. The Armenians are going to attack here. Lucky there lack numerous and good troops.

East. Try to take the Dumatha rebel town with mainly mercs, in this avoiding that it becomes a Parthia settlement, maximize growth here. The annoying Parhians are heading your way. Buid lots of chariots and any unit that can shoot/throw or sling. Make sure you win the defence game first and strike to their city Susa. This will cripple their economy. When secured here you can attack Arsakia and finaly Phraaspa. Also build some ships here and take Salamis (on Cyprus) and later Kydonia (on Crete).

So this is initial. Your mid game Probably consist of:
WEST a grand fight with Pontus (which will be heading your way likely) You should take the former rebel town’s (Ancyra and Nicomedia) and then finishing their core cities.

North. Your battling still the annoying Armenians. You could finish them with an large strike.

East. Your bussy capering the two towns. If possible finish the Parthia’s of. Still this isn’t obligated.

So after finishing (most) of your enemies. You should have killed Pontus, Armenia and Egypte. Likely the greek city states are gone and Parthia also. You now own (circa) 25 very very rich provinces and SIX wonders. Go trough Africa to Carthage and send an and fleet with army to Sicilia to make war and cripple the Brutti. Taking Greece or Italy head on depends on the situation. Remember to win the game is to take (also) Rome , some war with the Roman empire is necessary.

Ps1: Fleets Should be used intensely or be saved to the end game. I disreccomend focussing on them since you have to use every starting province intensively keeping the enemy of bay.
Ps2: Don’t let the Armenians, Pontus and Parthia life too long. Their techtree is a later stage of the game very good.
Ps3: Forget bribing as an good way to win the game when your playing with 1.2. Only when your reach about 18-25 provinces your rich enough to use this. And only in a way that helps a little.

Dromikaites

04-08-2005, 13:28

It is true the Seleucids have one of the most interesting choice of troops. But elephants, chariots, cataphracts, silver shield pikemen and silver shield legions are not really needed to win an imperial campaign, at least not on M/M. We might want to use these crack troops just for the fun of seeing them in action (being on the giving end of a chariot charge makes me feel good :-))

The Seleucids already have 3 very powerful "weapons" early in the game, before getting access to these super-units:

1. Money
The Seleucids make so much money than they can probably win the campaign without having to fight a single battle. For instance, Halicarnassus can be conquered by bribing the large rebel army outside its walls, which results in keeping the hoplite militia, then bribing the city garrison and moving the newly acquiered hoplites in the city, to prevent revolts. Sidon and Jerusalem fall in a similar way - bribe the rather large Egyptian armies in the area (get one family member in the process) and then bribe the garrisons and move some of our troops in. As a Romanian saying goes, "a golden borer makes holes in any city wall". The same with Pergamum, with the added benefit of keeping the hoplite militia and the family member. I think the ideal Seleucid invasion army is made of a general travelling together with a spy (for avoiding ambushes), an assasin (for added protection) and a diplomat. The diplomat bribes the garrison and the general occupies it with the mercenaries recruited on the spot. I'm currently sending such an army from Antiochia, to invade the British isles. I'll let you know if this really works. If it does, the Senate is in for a big surprise!

2. Temples of Hephestus
They improve the weapons and armor. Combining it with the blacksmit family of buildings results in having troops with extremly good stats very early in the game.

3. Militia cavalry and peltasts
Well, this is like playing a Numidian campaign, but with stronger units (due to the combination temple of Hephestus + blacksmith/armourer/foundry and slightly better stats of the militia cavalry).

The Numidians don't have the money to afford weapon&armour enhancing buildings early on and their starting cities grow too slow. The Seleucids don't have these problems. They control the Hanging Gardens, which means their farms produce lots of food, which helps population grow. They can further boost the population growth by enslaving. Asia Minor is full of cities close to each other, presenting the conqueror/slave trader with plenty of opportunities early on. Since they have the money needed to bribe other factions' family members, Seleucids can have a governor in each of their cities. This means slave convoys will travel to the remotest corner of the empire. And a horde of militia cavalry, crushing one enemy army after another can turn captains into generals as quickly as this happens in the Numidian games (where roughly 20% of the family members I have are brave captains who rose through the ranks).

AntiochusIII

04-08-2005, 23:18

Please note that bribing is no longer a logical option thanks to the sky high (too high :dizzy2: ) bribing cost of Rome 1.2

Nonetheless, your money can be used well on mad building rush and mercenary rush.

Seleucids have access, or soon-to-have-access to the mercenary pools of Syria, Aegean, Thrace, Galatia, Armenia, Persia, Arabia, Cilicia, Egypt...

That means...

Seleucid early game possible access to mercenary units:
-tons of east infantry; Armenian, Syrian, Persian; meat shield, populater (very useful in Asia Minor 500 pop "cities" if you're ready to pay for it).
-barb inf; Galatia; a slightly better counterparts of east inf, with the same purpose - note that Galatian barb inf provides a good unit as it comes with 2 exp
-horse archers/camel archers; Armenian, Syrian, and Arabian; all for the Seleucid rain of death...on Ramses' chariots - note that a bug must be fixed if there will be horse archers in Armenia.
-arab cavalry; Syrian, Arabian; nice light cavalry.
-sarmatian cavalry; Armenian; superb heavy cavalry early game
-barbarian cavalry; Galatian; superb light cavalry - useful to add to the Greek-based merc army in the west.
-peltasts; Thracian, Aegean-ian, Syrian; multi-purpose skirmishers..flank guard, first line, reserve, etc.
-hoplite; Aegean, Thracian; you know what to do with the core of your line...
-cretan archers; Aegean; the finest archer unit available for Greeks and Easterners...
-thracian mercs; Thrace; deadly flanker - perfect for one-two hoplite-thracian
-bastarnae; Thrace; they're just the thracian elite...battles can be won by them.
-elephant mercs; Syria; rare, deadly, cool, superb, war-winning tanks of the ancient world.
-cilician pirates; Cilicia; with that horde formation, they are of little use... nice stats skirmisher though.
-libyan inf; Egypt, Syria?; light, swift, nice skirmishers. No peltasts' standing power but more agile and at least as deadly.
-illyrian; Thrace?; may be they're there or I'm confused, anyway, beefed up peltasts ready for service.
-rhodian slinger; Aegean; another fine ranged unit - they are better against chariot than cretans.

Choose some of them and notice that an all-merc army can be balanced to the finest.

Pool provincial cities:
Syria - Antioch, Hatra, Seleucia, Damascus, Sidon, Jerusalem
Egypt - Alexandria, Memphis, Thebes
Arabia - Palmyra, Bostra, Petra, Dumatha?
Persia - Susa, Arsakia, Phraaspa?
Galatia - Ancyra
Cilicia - Tarsus, Salamis
Aegean - Sardis, Halicarnassus, Rhodes, Pergamum, Kydonia
Thrace - Nicomedia, Byzantium, Tylis, and another Thracian city on the border of Scythia
Armenia - Artaxarta, Sinope, Mazaka, Kotais

The steppes aren't far away either, just land on Chersonesus (Bosporus) and take it if the Scythian didn't. The various Greek pools on the Balkans are also pretty near, so as the Libyan pool.

So use your money on mercs!

RollingWave

04-09-2005, 06:09

My analysis on Selucid's enemies (really by the time you kill them you are invincible the rest aren't a problem at all)

Pathia: an overrated enemy, unless they kill the Armenian or make serious advance against you, they will be so dirt poor after a few turns they'll never be able to mount anything serious against you as long as you keep a realatively strong garrison in Selucia.

Armenia: they are richer than the Pathian so they will come after you, Hatra will face quiet a fight, but on the bright side, as long as you mass milita hoplits they'll have a very hard time winning in a seige unless they manage to obtain their lvl 3/4 infantreis, even worse if u manage to get a stone wall up.

Greeks: they are generally not a big threat, however they are also rich bastards so you'll be surprised what they can pop up with someimes (they can hire tons of merc and bang on you too.) on the bright side their lands are VERY worth taking. which includes the magical statue of Rhodes.

Egypt: your number 1 problem. they are rich, they are powerful, they have matching troops to ur own. and they will come after you ASAP. you will need to deal with them fast, it may be a good idea to seek diplomatic solutions such as protectrate to seek a fast end though.

Pontus: in many sense they may be a bigger threat then Egypt, they are in the best position to take Asia minor, and they directly threatening two of ur least developed but potentially richest cities (Sardis and Tarsus) the fast high moral javlin calvaries are also a major threat to ur crap armored phalanx and inferior javlin cav. They are also harder to take the fight to unlike Egypt.

Aimar78

04-12-2005, 07:12

I think the biggest problem in the early game is egypt, they are the only faction rich enough to keep sending a steady stream of armies, the other eastern factions can be dealt with rather easily.

Funny thing happened in my current seleucid game, in the first couple of turns i managed to get egypt to give Jeruselam to me in exchange for a map and some regular tribute, needless to say this weakened them considerably and have been easy to deal with, i took sidon as soon as they declared war and now they have to march all the way across the nile to get to me. :)

iostream

04-12-2005, 15:28

I didn't think so, but it is possible to take the city with the mausoleum wonder from the rebels on turn one with only your general and 2 units of milia hoplites against multiple higher quality enemy hoplites, cretan archers, rhodian slingers, and skirmishers.

http://img104.echo.cx/img104/1736/00027fo.th.jpg (http://img104.echo.cx/my.php?image=00027fo.jpg)

When you seige the city on turn one, the rebels will sally forth immediately to crush your pathetic force. They almost certainly would defeat you in an open field, but in this case because they are sallying from a city you have the advantage - if you move fast.
When battle begins, immediately rush all your troops up to the gate, leaving a little space between the gate and your units to allow the enemy to come out one unit at a time. One unit of enemy skirmishers should be in the process of getting out of the gate when your general arrives at a gallop, so immediately rush and route it with your bodyguards before it can form up. Then set one unit of hoplites directly facing the gate, and the other on it's flank but turned inwards towards to gate to form half a cup. That way any unit coming out from the gate will have to face one solid line of spears in front and another on its flank. Place your general to the other side of the cup thus completing the encirclement of the gate. Now the fun part begins - the enemy will stream its units out one after the other, which you can then engage with your hoplites and a little while later charge into the back with your general to route them. Rinse and repeat, and the city is yours!

However, if you are tardy in the begining and allow 2 or more enemy units to form outside the gate, defeat is almost certain as your troops are of lower quality and greatly outnumbered.

Catullus

04-14-2005, 11:06

Right - finished it on H/H and truly knackered in work today!

The Cyprus story is a fine tale of the AI being stupid (or possibly being a very brave and smart gambler)

Act 1 Western Asia secured with big army in Sardis to counter invasions. Slogging up through Pontus. Containing Armenia and Parthia. Loads of trade; loads of dosh.

Meanwhile real fun is going on in Egypt - Alexandria taken and spending ages manoeuvering against their field army - everyone in and out of armed camps etc.

To pile the pressure on, I go for Cyprus. Spy first followed by good sized expeditionary force of mixed inf and peltasts. Somehow spy misses (or AI lands by ship?) a vast army of cav which slams into my beachhead and basically throws it back into the sea...not happy and too many troops committed in northern battles to get another invasion force together any time soon.

Act 2 Siege at Memphis. Egyptian counter attack. Win v cool defensive battle in woods and Memphis falls, shortly followed by Thebes*.

Which just leaves Cyprus to finish off the Egyptians and win. I pretty much have control of the eastern Med by now and the army on Cyprus (as reported by the Spy) has apparently thinned out - presumably because the Egyptians are now seriously short of readies and the computer is cutting back (is this right? does the computer start cutting units if the moolah runs out? Or does it run up overdrafts?).

However, I'm still heavily committed to the North, especially after a very bloody and close (and lucky) win to finish off Pontus, so another invasion is several turns off while I build up or concentrate enough troops. Not least getting a decent general back there for a triumphant last victory (and not one of the beardless princelings hanging around Antioch and the "home counties").

In the meantime, just for the hell of it since I've got a fleet hanging about, I blockade Salamis port.

At the opening of the next turn an Egyptian bireme has turned up off Salamis, and I duly send part of the blockading fleet around to wallop it. On arrival, however, it appears the whole remaining Salamis army is loaded on this one crappy bireme which is duly sent to the bottom in a 3 ship skirmish. End of game...

Now, I would read this in one of 2 ways: either the AI is very, very stupid to concentrate all its remaining forces on one ship with a fleet nearby, OR it has depths of cunning and boldness which are quite scary....

Why, you ask? Because it may have taken the pretty complex strategic decision that Salamis was now indefensible and the only way to stay in the game was to load the remaining army onto a ship and try to grab a new base. A desperate gamble, certainly, but one that you can imagine a human opponent trying as a last throw of the dice. I would have expected the AI to sit there stupidly and wait for the inevitable.

Any other instances of alarming cleverness by the AI? - or did it just do something random and stupid?

*Taking Thebes I finally found a use for those bloody scythed chariots - when attacking a city without walls, stick the nasty dangerous buggers round the opposite side of the city and have them launch an opening strike as you advance the main force from the front. The chariots get miles into the rear of the enemy in the centre of town before they (spectacularly) lose the plot. Within a few seconds most are profoundly dead, taking dozens of enemies with them. If any of the loonies do survive they seem to rout back the way they came - ie away from your own army thereby avoiding the usual "blue on blue" carnage when you use the damned things.

Better tip: don't build them in the first place....

Catullus

04-16-2005, 04:20

:duel: ok got the lot on h/h - parthians back behind caspian; armenia and pontus dead; greeks gone and i picked up rhodes in the wreckage;150k in the bank, ss pikemen queing up to do africa and could probably bash anyone now - any suggestions on who to play next ??

Craterus

04-16-2005, 20:30

Egypt are quite fun..
Or Britannia?
Or another challenge is the Gaul.. or Numidia.

pezhetairoi

04-19-2005, 01:25

Do pontus! ^_^ Let's see how you rule the world with EI :-P

katank

04-19-2005, 01:54

Pontus has nice jav cav in the Pontic cav and Pontic heavy cav line. They also have access to chariots.

Gaul is more fun as you can play around with quickly sacking Rome and also getting forester warbands which are the best missile units around. Fully upgraded from Abnoda temple, weaponsmith, and getting 3xp from Epona temples, they have something like 22 missile attack which can bring down anything. They also can expand fast into Iberia the same time as you attack Rome.

Numidia is best for the blitz fanatic. You must rush to quickly take Carthage and fortify it before the Romans land. You also would want to rush out fom Siwa and take Thebes before it has walls up. Grabbing that helps to cripple the Egyptians and gives you an archer factory.

pezhetairoi

04-20-2005, 01:09

Pontus has chariots? o_O never knew that. Numidia...a strange place. But well, this is the seleucid thread, so let's leave off this discussion or bring it to the colosseum, eh? :)

Ziaelas

05-01-2005, 17:47

Pontus=easy as pie, nice bronze shields, chariot archers, scythed chariots, cappadocian cavalry (like Cataphracts) and good archers.

Seleucid Empire=If you can survive the first onslaught, build up Antioch and Seleucia, and start churning out enormous units. If you can, take Parthia and Armenia while they are weak, Pontus too. Then you can focus your entire military might on Egypt, and you should win. Egypt assassinated my 10 star commander, so I assassinated the assassin, then killed their faction leader and faction heir (in battle at Thebes) then finished them for good.

tibilicus

05-02-2005, 10:38

I found Selucicia rather easy when i played them. Smashed the Delta in about 10/15 years and after that it was plain sailing.

Viking

05-02-2005, 15:29

Easy, yes. But so funny with cataphracts, legionares and elephants that can be trained all over the world! ~D

Actually TSE is so funny that it might be the second campaign I conclude in the five months I`ve played RTW.

katank

05-03-2005, 03:08

I don't think that waiting for Eggy to grow while you smash your other neighbors is a good idea.

I siege Sidon the very first turn with cav and queue a ram, then follow up with inf to assault. I also move from Damascus towards Jerusalem. You also move the garrison from Sardis to siege Halicarnassus. You can take the rebels when they sally if you use a phalanx box to lock in the gate.

Second turn, I assault Sidon and exterminate. The 2 bowmen and 3 spearmen should have move from Jerusalem towards Sidon. Smash those 4 with your faction leader's army that just captured Sidon, leaving behind a token garrison. Siege Jerusalem. Also queue a bireme to capture Salamis quickly.

By the third turn, you will have taken 3 of the Eggy cities before their reinforcements ever arrive from the Delta.

They would send full stackers at you but those are weakened and you can use the sea lanes to amphibious drop into Alexandria with their armies counter marching on land in vain.

Marquis of Roland

05-03-2005, 05:37

Can't do amphibious on Egypt, they sent a full stack fleet at me on turn 5!

Wow, your rush fast, Katank. Ever kick back and "farm" better quality AI full stacks for fun?

Oh yeah, full stacks so too much on huge, that pisses me off.

What are your opinion of levy pikes, I've heard solid ratings for them but I found that they break rather easily. ~:confused:

Craterus

05-03-2005, 15:52

I don't really rate levies but they can save you in a crisis (early game) .

pezhetairoi

05-04-2005, 01:23

Talking about levies, when I played Macedon, which also has levy pikes, they served my purposes well enough. They rarely broke, often because they had no time to break before I scored victory, and often because of the stupid AI, which much prefers to frontal-charge them. Levy pikes were my backbone for nearly forty turns, actually, and when I ended the campaign due to burnout in the 60th turn standard phalanx pikes only made up about 10% of my total infantry force. Levy pikes are pretty solid, but it your cavalry lets them down, they will let you down.

As with the Marquis of Roland, I am in awe at the speed of katank's katank. I rarely go that quickly at the start unless I'm Julii.

katank

05-05-2005, 00:20

Amphibious is quite possible on Egypt. You have to produce quickly biremes in Antioch. Do need to drop the Salamis garrison before their fleet arrives. This, as you are aware, needs to take place in a very short time frame.

They then tend to clump fleets around Salamis.

Build a port in Jerusalem and wait there. When their navies are far, you can go fairly far. The second turn of sailing allows you to land in the Delta.

I've tried to farm enemies before. They still disappoint. Personally, I have a vendetta against the Eggy since they produce hordes and hordes of their ridiculously overpowered and ahistoric units.

They are too much of a threat to Seleucids to farm em. I'd rather use full Seleucid roster to have nice fight with post marian romans.

As for levy pikes, they are quite solid. As with all phalanxes, shield their flanks and then they are good.

Try putting one unit inside each other makes em practically unbreakable. Remember to stretch them out 2 deep and then stack so you have both 3 units' worth of glittering pike points at each location but also a long frontage to prevent wrap around.

Unfortunately, they aren't that much use early on while fighting the Eggy.

The Eggy forces are fast and mobile. I find pumping out some militia cav to be the best option. Making a few levies is useful but definitely for sieges against Eggy and not field battles where you would rather use your cav to smash and run.

BTW, when I blitz through, I don't have much time to deploy a sizeable levy pike force even against the Eggy. The threat is Kiya's army which is a full stack with the 2 nasty chariot archers.

Getting em to counter march in the stretch between the Suez location and Jerusalem is fun when you do an amphibious drop and sack Alexandria.

pezhetairoi

05-05-2005, 05:21

...Kiya? Who's Kiya? Heh, amphibious on Alexandria is for some strange reason the first thing that pops into any first-time anti-Egypt player. I wonder why. :-) So you're saying you'll rush into Egypt with horsemen and let your pikemen follow if they can run fast enough?

Craterus

05-05-2005, 18:33

Kiya is the Egyptian general who starts with an army outide the delta.

He was my best faction leader ever, EVER!! At least 10 star command (the most possible to show) 6 management and at least 10 influence. Conqueror of all Asia!! He went on to be 89 too and died in Rhodes.

Deus ret.

05-05-2005, 18:55

He was my best faction leader ever, EVER!! At least 10 star command (the most possible to show) 6 management and at least 10 influence. Conqueror of all Asia!! He went on to be 89 too and died in Rhodes.

Want to have an ...awesome faction leader? Play as the greeks and don't conquer Sicily too fast to have some nice battles. After it's conquered, finally build some trade upgrades in Syracuse and the other cities....let him walk around a little to be in town upon completion....and the only flaw he had was that he had only 9 management instead of 10. Sadly, he was assassinated by the Carthagians but still....his memory remains....

Craterus

05-05-2005, 19:48

Sounds good, I would have sent him away from Sicily and off to some major battlefronts, you could do with a commander like that leading your army to victory.

pezhetairoi

05-06-2005, 01:12

Me, I would've had him landing in Africa the turn after I conquered Lilybaeum and turn White Africa into Cream Yellow Africa. Such a wonderful general is too good to be worth leaving in a city. But of course, this comes from the guy who left his Scythian king and army in Campus Getae for seven (7) turns. While the Thracian front stood still.

Marquis of Roland

05-06-2005, 04:59

Best late Seleucid order of battle:

1 General's unit
1 companion cavalry
2 cataphracts
4 cataphract elephants
6 silver shield pikemen
4 silver shield legions
2 cretan archers
= massive, steamrolling lawnmower

Fighting the Brutii with this army is fun, since Romans are infantry-heavy. Plus Brutii have lots of money, so there's no end to the amount of men you can kill (and gain lots and lots of experience, since most of their units are good morale and won't just run off somewhere at the first sign of trouble).

I say bring on a 20-unit army of urban cohorts, I want to test this army on THAT.

pezhetairoi

05-06-2005, 05:14

...that may not be a good idea. somehow I have this feeling it's not going to be a good idea. urban cohorts don't break until they're down to 2 men, you know that don't you?

Marquis of Roland

05-06-2005, 05:43

Yup! It'll be fun! ~:cheers:

Craterus

05-06-2005, 17:22

I've broken an Urban Cohort at 33 men left, but they were the last unit left so that might have been the reason.

katank

05-07-2005, 02:10

Urbans do break. The armoured eles plowing through followed by cata/companion charge is enought o break them.

You really don't need infantry as late seleucids. Load up on armored eles and heavy cav. You will be invincible and can make sure you run down every last enemy router.

RTW cav is really overpowered.

Marquis of Roland

05-07-2005, 05:46

Yea, I have a full stack of armored elephants sitting around for whenever I feel like having fun ~:cheers:

It just doesn't feel right though when you have so many good infantry units and you don't use them.....plus I just love it when over 1400 pikes come down into phalanx formation. It gives me a chill everytime ~D

derF

05-07-2005, 13:41

My (hard) guide notes on the Seleucid Empire:

The Seleucids are in the unfortunate position of being surrounded by factions that for some reason despise you. Soon enough, within approximately 10 turns i was at war with the Armenians, Egyptians, Parthians and Greeks. Theyre attacks were totally unprovoked.

However, i was able to fend them off.

The Seleucids have a pretty strong economy and cheap troops to start off with, so my solution for survival was creating lots of troops to fend of the enemies on all sides of my borders. Howvwer at this point, i was not able to push forward and counter attack. For that, i would need a stronger economy.

So i started the slow process of developing my economy to support offensive armies and this eventually happened after 7 turns. Whats more, the generals that were preoccupied with defending were now military geniouses with 8 stars.

The Egyptians proved the toughest problem mainly because of their chariots and strong economy. Nonetheless i was able to drive south and capture Jerusalem because of my far superior battle tactics.

The Armenians at first proved a tough cookie because they had cataphracts, and i only had Militia Hoplites to deal with them. However, the Amrnians soon sought to peace because they realised they could not conquer me. Preoccupied in other fronts, i put the idea of crushing the Armenian infidels to the back of my mind.

Pontus, sneakily attacked me in Turkey, where i had no troops at the time. I had to quickly build a reactive army and drive them away. They were not easy to deal with.

The Greeks were the latest faction to bakc-stab me. Again, this happened in Turkey with my Turkish army already occupied in crushing Pontus, so i had to create a new army. I made it in time to relieve the city that the greeks were besieging and crushed them.

Now, the main problem is resupply. The economy is pretty strong at the moment, but the problems are retraining my over stretcched and exhausted armies so that they can continue to push as effectively as before. Economical hardship at the beginning of the campaign had caused he Seleucid ecomomy to become largely centralised.

As a result, i was soon having big casualties in battles because there was no supply to a demand of a new soldier type: The Archer.

The Seleucids are not able to create good archers in the game, so the best source is from Cretan Archer mercenaries in Turkey. These are very effective archers, but they lack in availablility.

Try not to over-push your armies and frontiers. The fact that you are surrounded by enemies means that you need to take a cautious and slow advance. Take a good close look at the enemy units you are up against and try to flex your tactics toward beating them as badly as possible. Keeping populations happy is not a big problem at the start. Howveer, i exterminated a few cities because of the extent of treachery that was happening. Soon, thanks to the high number of troops being recruited, the population of the cities will fall, and you will need to resort to slavery to find the troops to recruit for your army.

The ideal early battle winning tactic is to have about 10 units of levy pikemen, stretched nice and wide with 6 pikes thick, 2 general units to pack a good punch, 4 archers of any kind (because youre desperate), 2 sythed chariots, 1 greek cavilry and 1 elephant.

DS_Legionary

05-07-2005, 20:26

My game as the Selcucids, I tried a completely different tactic. I retreated back into Asia Minor, and let all my other provinces rebel or be captured. This kept me from being in a war on all fronts, to having a war with only Pontus on one front. This makes it much easier and Asia Minor, once built up a little, is extremely profitable. Then slowly make your way towards Armenia and Egypt simultaneously. Armenia is usually a pushover as they have few troops, and Egypt really wasn't what I was expecting either, even though they had time to build up. All the Chariots they sent against me were completely massacred by my units of Levy Pikemen with no losses most times, and if there were losses, it was very few. The archers weren't much of a problem either, as once the Chariots were gone my Cavalry could rein free making Egypt pretty much a pushover. Parthia is the faction I had the hardest time with. Those Horse Archers gave me hell, but I eventuall conquered Parthia, and after that I went on to Greece and Africa. By then noone could match my strength and I didn't have to fight battles, and just auto-resolved. It's basically just a race to see how fast you can beat the game by then.

Craterus

05-07-2005, 23:17

Nice tactic, I never abandon provinces though, I just fight on.

Alternatively, you could try and build an army from Sardis that could take Asia Minor. Make sure you get Rhodes, that wonder gets you lots of money.

katank

05-08-2005, 03:08

Really depends. I find it possible to use Sardis garrison to take Halicarnassus right away.

Then, you build from those two locations to slowly take Pergamum and Rhodes.

Plenty of phalanxes can kill Pontus.

Beauty of this is simultaneous war against Egypt, the main threat.

I've only kept defensive against Parthia but you could do after Susa right away if feeling really adventurous.

Marquis of Roland

05-08-2005, 23:00

Sequence of events in my early game:

1. Made alliances with all neighbors
2. 2 turns later Egypt attacks with full stacks(2-3) under Kiya
3. 1 turn later Parthians raid around Seleucia with small bands of cataphracts and eastern infantry.
4. next turn greece starts to bribe cities in Asia Minor. I bribe back.
5. Same turn Armenia sends full stack of hillmen and eastern infantry to siege Hatra.
6. next turn Pontus attacks Tarsus with full stack under 4 star general.
7. Same turn Parthia combines small armies to a half-stack of cataphracts, HA, and eastern infantry and siege Seleucia.
8. next turn greeks lands a half stack of hoplites near Antioch.

If you can just get past these couple of turns alright you're set to systematically wipe out all your neighbors, because by this time if you don't have at least three reliable field armies, you're dead. You could do with two but you will lose 2 or more cities.

Tried to rush the egys but was stopped in Jerusalem, too much rebellion and those damn egyptians send at least one full stack every other turn.

Small bands of egyptians coming out of bostra harass your rear to no end.

It wouldn't hurt to save up to bribe back things, if you don't have 1.2 I guess...

pezhetairoi

05-09-2005, 03:51

I hold with retreating into Asia Minor. It's naturally defensive, and you get the advantage of having plenty of units available within that small area, enough to make a full stack that you can concentrate on one objective. Good tactics.

Tigranes

05-12-2005, 19:35

I just started the S.E. I'm not finding them hard, really (except against Parthian missile cavalry). I took Jeruselem, Sidon, and another Egyptian town, while Parthia took Herat from me. I took that back, and reduced the armies of Parthia greatly.

Against the Egyptians, I have a very easy go of it, most battles never losing more than five percent of my army, with them losing almost all of theirs. I'm allied with Scythia and Pontus right now,though I may extend an offer towards Armenia.

My only really hard enemies, so far, are the Parthians. They overwhelm me with cataphracts, though they aren't much problem (how do cataphracts run faster than podromoia?). The real problem are their missile cavalry, which cut through my infantry like butter. Meh, but they'll be gone soon, anyway. Then, Africa will open up fully, me not having to worry much about my rear.

Mikeus Caesar

05-12-2005, 19:46

I've recently started a Seleucid campaign, after my first one collapsed, and all i can say is before you do anything else, blitz the egyptians. Get to them before they get to strong. If you kill them quickly, then you should be fine.

pezhetairoi

05-13-2005, 01:19

Alright, retreat into Egypt. Very nice. :-D As good as Asia Minor ;-)

crazybastard

05-26-2005, 04:53

How come the Seleucids can have elephants, cataphracts, phlanxes, and legionaries at the same time!? Doesn't this make them overly powerful compare to, say, Parthia (sucky infantry) and Egypt (not much heavy cavalry)?????

AntiochusIII

05-26-2005, 06:27

Unfortunately, they are underpowered!

They almost always die by the time you reach them from... say - Rome.

And they were that diverse in reality - even more. The entire Seleucid empire at its zenith actually covers virtually all of Alexander's Asia - Europe and Africa belonged to rival kingdoms like (Antigonid) Macedon and Ptolemaics.

Edit: Egypt IS overpowered and utterly weird! The Pharoahs' age are long gone and the Ptolemaic ruling dynasty is Macedonian and fights like any other Macedonians. Parthia's sucky infantry is historically realistic and it is actually making the faction unique.

pezhetairoi

05-26-2005, 07:56

Seleukeia ought to at least have better armies or something...there's no point in having such a good array in the game if the AI is going to screw it up so all you face is either Egypt-in-Seleukeia or mere levy pikemen. It's getting boring.

Mikeus Caesar

05-26-2005, 18:18

Or, we could make the Egyptians worse, by making them more realistic. Give them Hellenistic armies, and lower their income. It really is ridiculous.

katank

05-26-2005, 23:59

Yes, the Seleucids have an awesome lineup but only if they survive the Egyptians. However, in the vanilla game, they never do.

I've tried in 1.0 as Romans to send over a diplomat ASAP and bribe away Egyptian stacks. This strategic weakening of Egypt helped ensure that the Seleucids won the conflict.

When I fought Seleucia, the result was simply awesome spammage of pikers, chariots, and eles. Their combo is even crazier than Egypt's.

Marquis of Roland

05-27-2005, 02:34

Thats crazy.

How much money did you end up spending bribing eggys, katank?

Doing it so you can fight S.E. stacks with their lineup definitely gotta be worth it though.

pezhetairoi

05-27-2005, 06:09

I do it in my game by modding the eggy units extensively. For example, horse units are now strictly reduced to 108 apiece on huge. Chariots are given slightly less hitpoints than Britannic equivalents since they were supposed to be really light in the past anyway.

katank

05-29-2005, 18:59

@ Marquis, it was 1.0 so rather cheap. A full captain led stack was about 2-3k. A full FM led stack was about 5-10k.

I could bribe Memphis for 60-70k. I even bribed some cities and gifted them to the S.E.

I was the Scipii and was concentrated in the west though I took Greece as well.

The S.E. owned practically all of the middle east and asia monir when I fought them and were quite powerful.

I saw a few units of silver shield pikers, many phalanx pikers, hordes of chariots, and even war eles! Well worth it.

Ianofsmeg16

06-05-2005, 22:11

i find the seleucids very hard, even on M/M, is there an uber easy way to kick ass with them?

katank

06-06-2005, 01:40

Yes, go after Egypt ASAP. Push them very very hard right away.

Blitz Sidon and Jerusalem in the firsft 3 turns. Read my posts earlier in the thread about detailed opening blitz moves against Egypt.

Once Egypt is destroyed, you will be rolling in dough and things will be quite easy.

katank

06-06-2005, 01:48

To be exact, read posts #67 and 71 in this thread.

Marquis of Roland

06-07-2005, 03:14

To make the early S.E. campaign easier, definitely gotta take out Egypt ASAP, in fact try to do it before Pontus, Armenia, Parthia, Greece, and any other annoying neighbors turn on you (you will probably have 10 turns before this happens?).

I bribed me Parthia's starting cataphracts, they helped out a lot in the early game (think fighting Jedi generals and their katank units in MTW). Get those scythed chariots out ASAP as well. I personally found levy pikemen unwieldy and unreliable sometimes (of course at the time I never played with a phalanx faction before, so the level of crapiness had something to do with my inexperience too). Militia hoplites are trash, never use them.

Towards the end of my S.E. campaign, I have made multi-city exterminations a bi-annual event. I give whoever I'm fighting about ten cities (they're all over 30k pop., some are 40k) as gifts and walk right back in and liquidate everyone. Thanks for the tip, Katank.

Garvanko

06-07-2005, 16:32

i find the seleucids very hard, even on M/M, is there an uber easy way to kick ass with them?
Go for the Wonders early on. You'll rake in the cash, and taking Egypt will be a cakewalk.

I got to 50 in 60 years..

katank

06-07-2005, 18:05

Octopus strategy is very nice. My western army went after Halicarnassus then Athens and is now pushing Macedon and Greece hard, having taken Corinth and sieging Larissa as well as Sparta.

My eastern army took Susa right away and bribed cataphracts have joined it to go after poorly defended Arsakia.

Egypt only has Thebes left which is under siege. The year is 267BC. Careful use of boats is necessary for smashing Egypt and going into Greece.

crazybastard

06-13-2005, 18:14

SE definitely have an advantage on pikemen over Egypt. Phalanx (and even Levy will do) will whoop those numidan and nile spearmen easily. But definitely no Pharoh's guard...I found it out the hard way. (sob) So right now I'm besieging Alexandria w/ my best general meanwhile those stupid Eastern bastards (namely Pontus, Armenia and Parthia) on the back kept besiging my cities and I kept beating them. (line up my pikemen along the wall and poke anything that moves) so after I made myself the Pharaoh I'll sent a liberation army into Perisa and Turkey and slaughter those sorry son-of-a-gun.

katank

06-13-2005, 21:20

You need stacking though or the Egyptian phalanxes will win.

If you play your hand right, you wouldn't even see axemen let alone Pharaoh's guard.

CMcMahon

06-15-2005, 19:54

I managed to take out Egypt on a bridge battle on H/VH in 259BC. They were down to Thebes and Alexandria, with the faction heir on the move with a large army and the faction leader besieged by my tertiary army (mainly militia hoplites and militia cavalry). The turn after I laid siege, though, the big Egyptian army turned away from Memphis (which I presume they were going to lay siege to - and most definitely lose) and attacked my army.

The battle that came up had my men on one side of the Nile, with the enemy armies attacking with one unit of slingers and a lot of chariots.

Of course, the silly Egyptians decide to not wait for the three reinforcing units to arrive with an extra unit of slingers, and charge across the bridge... right into a wall of militia hoplites, pikemen, and a lot of arrows, sling bullets, and spears being hailed down on them. My general and some camels chased down anyone who tried to runaway through my lines.

And, of course, their towns ended up going rebel.

Marquis of Roland

06-16-2005, 00:54

In my own experience, chariots can't cross bridges, they just fall into the water, much to my chagrin using scythed chariots :embarassed:

CMcMahon

06-16-2005, 02:32

Oh trust me, they do.

Right into my spears and pikes.

antisocialmunky

06-16-2005, 03:36

In my own experience, chariots can't cross bridges, they just fall into the water, much to my chagrin using scythed chariots :embarassed:

If I recall correctly, you posted that in your "Playing RTW while drunk" thread.

Deus ret.

06-16-2005, 12:37

In addition, this "falling into the water"-issue has been fixed in v1.2...at least in my experience. However this does not change the fact that chariots become the more useless the less room they have --- as in towns or on bridges.

RollingWave

06-16-2005, 16:48

It is possible to settle for diplomatic solutions, and this is very helpful for factions that are besieged on everyside such as the Selucids.

In my own game, I quickly too Sidon and defeated two counter attacking Egyptian army in heroic victories... and then the Egyptians agree to become my protectrate for Sidon.... and that was the way it remained even till i took Rome and won the game. so I was able to solve the Egyptian nightmare within 10 turns.

This obviously made my Selucid campaign rather easy. The Pathian also allied me until I backstabbed Susa quiet a while later, the Armenians went after me but besides the first few attacks they lost steam quickly.

My only real trouble was holding on to Sardis, EVERYONE attack it. Pontus send 3 huge army against it. just as i thought i finally have a moment of breath the Greeks pop up with a huge hoplite army... in both cases i barely made it thx to mercenary and in one case utterly dumb AI (I beat the first 2 Pontic invansion on the field, the 3rd i had no choice but to hide in the city, luckily the AI's only strategy in seige assult is "ram ur chest against those pointy pikes")

But as i quickly put an end to my Egyptian problems my attention turned north, and my northern expedition went through the mountain passes and took out Pontus, and at long last Sardis is free from isolation.

From then on it was basically a steam roll with me taking Asia minor then Armenia and Pathia, then making Macedon and Scythia my protectrate as well, then going to Italy and ending the game

katank

06-18-2005, 23:58

Interesting. What were the dates for some of the events? Sounds interesting.

Also, was the protectorate thing in 1.2 after reload? I've had great trouble getting other factions to accept unless those conditions hold.

pezhetairoi

07-05-2005, 02:12

It certainly was regrettable that you didn't continue the war against Egypt. Making Egypt your protectorate gives you the risk that they will reinitiate war after strengthening, and it would definitely have been far more profitable to take the wealth of the Ptolemaics for yourself. After all, they are your traditional rivals. Might as well fight to the death, and add *the* richest area on the map to your asset portfolio.

Mikeus Caesar

07-09-2005, 14:39

I just found my old seleucid campaign, and started playing it again. I've finally got a few cities now capable of producing Legionaires (sp?) and Armoured Elephants, and have taken over all of Africa, Asia Minor and the Middle East. I currently have a foothold in mainland Europe with Corduba in Spain, and am about to capture Byzantium as well. I have also established a foothold in Sicily by capturing Syracuse, and have almost captured Lilybaeum (sp?). The tide is gradually turning on the Romans. But, lets forget me and discuss the AI. Well, for one, i didn't succeed in destroying Armenia, so now they're new capital is Chersonesos in the Crimea, and they are waging a bloody war against Scythia and Thrace. The only Roman faction to have got anywhere is the Brutii, who have expanded everywhere in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. As is usal, the Britons have taken over all of Gaul, and the Gauls have been relegated to Spain. This game should be quite fun...

nameless

07-10-2005, 01:27

I started this faction for the first time and I blitzed Egypt as soon as I could so I could take in Alexandria, Memphis, and Thebes. Phalanx are really useful on Bridges ~D I parked near Alexandria and I wasted so many of those armies.

Though I'm annoyed at the Eastern factions in that their all backstabbers even with an alliance.

A problem I've encountered are the Armoured Elephants, their nice but I'm having trouble controlling them. I try to get them to do melee attacks in a fight but they just SIT there and shoot arrows. I try to move them towards the enemy, right click past the enemy but they don't even try meleeing anyone in their range. How do I fix this?

Ianofsmeg16

07-10-2005, 10:45

turn skirmish mode off?
may help

pezhetairoi

07-11-2005, 03:28

Try alt+right clicking. Their melee attack is secondary, not primary. So you have to secondary-attack for the elephants to banzai the enemy's ranks.

Dutch_guy

07-11-2005, 11:19

turn of skirmish mode , then double click behind enemy ranks ( not phalanxes though ! ~;) )
that should do what you want them to do.

:balloon2:

nameless

07-11-2005, 18:53

~:confused: Elephants have skirmish mode? How come I never noticed that?

When I right click on the enemies the icon changes to sword, which I assume is melee, when I tried to do the alternate click it changed to arrows which I did not want.

xemitg

07-11-2005, 20:32

its really more of making them run over people then as that crazy balloon guy said. I don't believe there is a button.

pezhetairoi

07-12-2005, 01:01

interesting... it seems to me that all this doesn't seem to occur for me? I mean, I tried out a custom 15 armoureds against 20 spartans battle the other day, and the attacks worked pretty well except for the elephants' tendency not to go straight for the spartans but at an oblique angle... I even won it handsdown...

Franconicus

07-12-2005, 08:13

Viking

07-12-2005, 17:23

I try to get them to do melee attacks in a fight but they just SIT there and shoot arrows. I try to move them towards the enemy, right click past the enemy but they don't even try meleeing anyone in their range. How do I fix this?

Don`t click behind the enemy, click at directly at it!

Their melee attack is secondary, not primary. So you have to secondary-attack for the elephants to banzai the enemy's ranks.

Actually it`s the oher way round ~:)

Elephants have skirmish mode? How come I never noticed that?

They don`t, that`s why ~;)

nameless

07-12-2005, 21:16

Has anyone ever tried to be defensive against Egypt in the beginning? Going first for Asia Minor should boost your economy and fighting Egypt in the midgame could be more fun.
This is my master plan:
Fortify Damascus and Antioch. Take Susa and built fortresses along the northern frontier. Attack Pontus. Take Helicarnasus and Rhodes. Take Pergamun and Byzantium and Salamis.
Then make money, raise a fleet and two invasion armies. Make a feint attack on Sidon and Jerusalem with your 1st army. Then make a landing at Alexandria. Block the bridges and go for Memphis. Once Memphis is yours take Thebes and Alexandria and start to attack Jerusalem with your first army.

If this plan works the Egyptians will have a lot of troops but I could take their hoe towns without fighting them and then fight on the battle field of my choice.

Or you could bull doze your way into taking Crete and Salamis, both are islands and have very light garrisons. Usually when I attack Salamis they have 1 or 2 troops there, if you do it fast enough you can take the city before the Egyptians send in a relief army. Islands make alot of money once the ports are in ~;)

Though taking Egypt does generate alot of money but I guess Asia Minor is just as good, I'll have to try it out.

Don`t click behind the enemy, click at directly at it!

Yeah, found that out to. In battles I use Armoured Elephants to guard my Phalanx's flanks.

------------------------------- PhalnxPhalnxPhalnxPhalnx
------------------------------- ArcherArcherArcherArcher
------------------------------------OnagerOnager

-----------------------Elephant---------------------------Elephant

CataphractCataphract
LightCalvaryLightCalvary
CompanionCompanion
ScytheScythe
General

I have my Onagers just dish out some long range damage as well as taking out any enemy artillery. It was fun because there were a couple times in the first heat of the battle my Onager actually got a direct hit on a general and killed him ~D

Archers give support fire for the Phalnx which are basically invincible against anything at the front.

Whenever a flanking unit closes in on my main battle group I right click my elephants to bull doze into the attacker. This usually works and they start trampling and starting whacking that trunk of theirs into the enemy. This is where the problem starts, sometimes the elephants will stop attacking and just let the archers shoot. Elephants are deadly because even when their not moving, their trunks and tusks can take out several guys at once. In this case, the elephants just SIT there and do NOTHING. :furious3: It's annoying because when their not attacking then that's when they start falling like flies.

My Calvary wings are usually far away from the battle group and I charge them in attacking enemy artilleries which then charge straight into the enemy's rear, not many troops can withstand my wing. The Cataphracts have a powerful charge with their armor and can rip through anything, light calvary can catch up with anything fast, companions provide a tough backbone, and the Scythe chariots are 10x more deadly against calvary than against infantry since their always moving so they fall like flies.

If I was able to fix my elephant problem then my army would be doing alot better than it is now, it's working for me but it can be better.

pezhetairoi

07-13-2005, 01:14

But charging scythes and cav together kinda detracts from the overall effectiveness of both charging separately doesn't it? The problem with chariots is that they are so large they get into the way of practically everything and anything, and those scythes... are there chariot FFs if they charge among enemy cav?

nameless

07-13-2005, 05:50

That's why it's set up that way ~;) When charging the Calvary usually blows through the enemy and the Scythe chariots mop up anyone left behind in the chaos.

I always strive for total destruction ~D

Though the group formation keeps them in line so the calvary always hits first with the chariots the last ones to arrive. I'll try to get screenshots.

And there aren't any scythe FFs from what I've seen.

Franconicus

07-19-2005, 13:01

I tried to be defensive against Egypt in the beginning while taking Asia Minor.
There are the results so far:
Western Front
I hired mercs and took Helicarnassos, Ancyra, Sinope and Mazaka. Now I go for Nicomedia to beat the last Pontus army there. First try is a bad disaster. I had 3 merc hoplites, 2 barb inf, 1 barb cav, 1 falx, two crete archers and one pelteast as well as one FM. The enemy had twice as much men. They had the king with another FM, Samarthian cav, half unit pelteasts. Rest was desert inf.
I formed a square with my cav and archers inside. Phalanx depth was 4-6 rows. I hoped to destroy their cav with my phalanx and then chase them with my cav.
They attack with desert inf first. Then the two FM charges. My phalanx gets shaken. I send falx and FM and lead the barb cav in their rear. Sarmathian attack two. My FM gets panic and runs. Rest of the army follows. Heavy losses.
I will return and then take the town. Pergamum wil be next.

Eastern Front:
I try flexible response. First I take Susa. I built an all infantry army there. I have no FM here, so I cannot hire mercs. I go north to take Arsak. Now I refill and increase the army and then I will try to march to Kotgis. If I succeed the northern front will be secured.

Southern Front:
Egypt has been allied but now it changed his mind. It goes for Antioch and Damascus. I have an army walking round their back. Last turn I attacked their army at Antioch with an all cav army (8 jav, 2 Greek cav, 1 FM, 1 chariot). Their army was twice as big. Some desert cav , some pelteasts and rest Numidian Inf. I had some hard time with their cav but once it was destructed the rest was easy. Total victory. I will soon be able to send troops from the other fronts. Then I will strike back!

Ocean:
My fleet is wiped out and I do not have the money to build a new one.

Garvanko

07-19-2005, 13:29

Ocean:
My fleet is wiped out and I do not have the money to build a new one.
Fleets should be confined to ports until the middle game. The AI seems to have the edge in this area in the early stages.

bubbanator

07-19-2005, 23:14

Egypt's navy is massive, usually the largest in the world during every part of the game. It is an incredibly difficult task to defeat the egyptian navy (not impossible, but very difficult). I found that the safest and most cost effective way to transport troops by sea as Selucids is to just build one large navy of 10 or so triremes and load up your troops. They usualy won't mess with you.

If you really want to control the high seas though, your best option is to take the fight to the land and take over all of their port cities. This is no easy task, but it is far more effective.

pezhetairoi

07-20-2005, 00:13

Sardis is the only major city you can use to build a navy, and even then not always, because you need Sardis to project power into Asia Minor. Antioch should never be touched, I think I don't need to say. Why an all infantry army in Susa, Franc? I thought it should be rather the other way around.

Franconicus

07-20-2005, 06:49

You are right. Problem is that Antioch has immidiate access to cav production. Javelins at once, Greek cav and eles soon. So I keep on producing cav here. I have an all cav army with 1200 men. Last night I fought two battles in one turn with two Egyptian armies. Twice my size each. I killed more than 4,000 and lost about 400 in total. This should give them something to think about.
In Susa you have access to pikes. I upgraded it. Now I can produce advanced pikemen and archers. What can I say. They wirk well. I defeated an Parthian army last night and now Phraaspa is almost undefended. :charge:

pezhetairoi

07-20-2005, 06:55

How in the world did you defeat a Parthian army with pikes and archers? Did they send Eastern Infantry at you, or did they have HA? If they had HA I am amazed at your skill.

Franconicus

07-20-2005, 09:16

Well in fact it was not a big thing. They usually have lots of eastern infantry, some hillmen and FM's guard. Also some cataphracts. HA were rare.
I took Susa as soon as the defending army was gone to figth rebels. Then I defeated the backcoming army.
After that I sent an army north. My army was only spears and javelins. After the first battle I had a new General. Eastern inf is no problem The catas always rush into my pikes. ~:cool:

My craziest battle was when the Armenian sallied a town. They had only one eastern inf and a FM and I had two pikes and two javelin. I sallied. I managed to kill the inf and made the cav route ~:cool:

pezhetairoi

07-22-2005, 09:36

aah I see... if you beat HA I would kowtow to you.

Emit_Flesti

07-22-2005, 18:32

After two successful Roman full imperial campaigns (my first was Brutii, second Julii, on M/M), i decided to look for a challenge with the SE. So, this was what happened.
- I tried to hold on to everything i got, building roads/trade/temple of haephestus on my central cities (antioch to seleucia). The army is very small and totally amateurish so i decided to try to divide the empire into central, eastern and - you gessed it - western army regions. At first, each one had only one stack with hoplite militia, mil cav, some peltasts (maybe).
- Where available, i hired cretan archers, better cavalry (bedouin, arabian) ASAP. The eastern army is confined to seleucia. Western goes immediately into action, to take those rebel cities in asia minor. Central army is building up and upgrading as possible. Meanwhile, my diplomat and spy travel south, to the inevitable Egypt.
- 3rd step (they all take more than one turn, of course), my central army begins to push into rebel territory in the south. The idea is to build another, more powerful army (levy pikemen are SO much better than mil hop) in Antioch (Tarsus is set to build ships by now) to attack Tyre and Jerusalem while I cut off those bloody reenforcements coming from Egypt after capturing and enslaving rebels in the south.
- Parthia, Armenia and Pontus were under control at this stage. They were wandering around, but as the money started coming in, i bribed anything in sight. Got a cataphract unit ~D which was nice. The west is already secure, except for a small rebel town in central Asia Minor.
- Tyre and Jerusamlem were no prob. In my efforts to push south, i actually lost and retook tyre. Pretty stupid move on my part, but it was a bit late at night :P Following my strategy, i cut off the counter attacking egyptians at the sinai and win a clear victory. Actually, it was a bit scary because early in the game the seleucids do not have much in terms of cavalry. And those chariots are hell.. 2 militia cav routed before success.
- All quiet in the east. In the west, made a move against the rebel town. Naked fanatics!! My FM died almost immediately after a flank charge. Anyway, got the town, close victory. Some turns afterward, the following FM died in a similar approach. I have to point out that mil hop are not enough to stop NF. My attack was too hesitant, but i learned a good lesson about phalanx battle.
South: bribed an egyptian FM, later used to rule Alexandria, did the bridge thing with one of the armies and cleaned up with some bribing. The second central army took Alexandria, the first one took Memphis and Thebes. A third was ready to an amphibious strike at Salamis (edit: Cyprus), which had gone rebel by now.
(General siege tactics for wood-walled cities: 3 battering rams, for flanking, with peltast fire to soften defenses before barging in :)
- On the next turn, two unprovoked but welcome attacks from the greek cities in the west and from parthia. Time for my eastern army to go into action. I bribed a big captain-led parthian army outside seleucia and took susa, then moved north. Bribed an armenian FM (trying to bring my treasure under 50000) and got three (one 4 star gold chevron general, a good administrator and a common chap) and a spy (!!). The first one was ideal to lead my second east army northeast from antioch into the heart of parthia. Meanwhile, a lesser general whith a lot of eastern infantry and desert mercs attacked the southern parthian town. In the west, had 2 battles with the greeks: 1 in the woods, 4 greek mil hop vs. 3 sel mil hop+2 peasants. Enveloped them and won a crushing victory. The second one was on the bridge. I screwed up and put a single unit at the bridge end, instead of further back. Really stupid, lost a lot of men but won.
- Took the last greek city in asia minor. Then went island-hopping with my cyprus army: Rhodes and Crete fell quickly. Further south, started my campaign against the numidians and got all the way to Lepcis Magna with my two veteran armies from the egyptian campaign. Up north, Parthia was a different story. I spotted a huge FM-led parthian army, but had no more MPs on my westernmost eastern army. The other was besieging the eastern town, which had a full stack garrison. Next thing I know, both armies attacked me. It was something like 3000 men (including cataphracts and HA, but mostly eastern inf, fortunately) versus 1200. Won an heroic (i think) victory and a plague sticken town :furious3: after successfully holding off a hill against two cataphract units, 6 HA (they got too close and I got to them with my cats and general) and a LOT of infantry. At the end, the hill was pink and half of my men were dead. Lesson: balance your armies properly. The other eastern army was more successful, and took the other town (500 men garrison) by fending off the HA with the sarmatian mercs.
- West again: after capturing Lepcis Magna and sallying to crush a numidian counter attack, I took my new faction leader (the previous died with the plague), by ship, to mainland Greece, where i was waging war on the cities with my two archer-rich western armies. I had already taken Sparta, so I sent the second western army to Thermon and waited for the end of the sieges of Athens and Corinth, which were Macedonian. The Greeks won so I went for both. Corinth was easy. Thermon took a bit of a battle, fending off reinforcements coming from the hills (archers and slingers OWN those phalanxes!). Athens is now rebel, after my landing. My Leader's army attacked a FM Greek full stack. So, 1 general, 3 Mil Cav, 3 Mil Hop, 4 Levy Pikes, 2 Phalanx Pikes, 1 chariot, 1 bedouin archers and some peltasts took out the remnants of the greek army and conquered the city of Athena.
- I am now preparing the push into sicily and Italy in the west, but I am worried: how will my phalanxes and hoplites fare against the romans, esp. in wall sieges?? I seem to be a long way from silver shields, and eles are not much good in cities. Anyway, I'll try make them sally by attacking armies in the same tile as the city.
-In the east, it's time to go for armenia and pontus. In Africa, I'll try to make peace with the numidians, ally with the carthaginians to push the scipii into the med.

Sorry for the long boring post. I do hope you enjoy the story :bow:

bubbanator

07-23-2005, 05:42

Deus ret.

07-23-2005, 14:11

Yep. With Seleucids vs. walls, you're screwed if you try to scale them instead of bringing them down.

@bubbanator,
Royal pikemen are a Macedonian unit, and I'm not sure about silver shield pikemen having the same acceptable secondary attack.

anyway, if you've already reached Huge city level, bring in silver shield legionnaires. Those should put up a fair fight against most units, including Romans, on the wall; provided you keep up a stream of units up the siege tower, that is. With a decent commander, the wall is basically yours.

Emit_Flesti

07-23-2005, 22:58

Nice post.

About the comment about taking walls, try to avoid it. With the Selucids, you can make some sap points, send in your best phalanxes stacked on top of each other with archers behind them to pepper the enemy. After you have a foothold in the city, take your cats and just run over anyone in the streets. Try to avoid using seige towers unless you are sending a few groups of Royal Pikemen up (they have a very good secondary attack) otherwise, your phalanxes will get slaughtered by the Romans on the walls.

Thanks for the comments! That's right. There is no point in storming the walls with a phalanx faction - by the way, there were no royal pikes in the SE unit roster?! . No way you can slug it out with a legion.

Just finished the campaign as the seleucids; here are the latest news:
- I left Macedon alone and, like I said, tried to do some alliances with Rome's neighbours. Ended up allied with Macedon, Carthage, Gauls and Germans, gave them all my excess money (about 100k to each). At home, bribed some rebels that kept popping up. My bribing schemes in Armenia, Pontus an Numidia gave me a LOT of FM, so I ended up with 30+ FMs and babies, weddings and new suitors for the girls every single turn. Got a few decent general, which I used to replace my dead leaders and generals.
- Sued for peace with Parthia. They were confined to the Northeasternmost region in the map, and no menace to my power. On the sea, I had several huge fleets on the east, and began to send them to the central med,where the fate of the known world was to be decided.
- Rome finally declared war on me. The Scipii sent an army from Thapsus into my domains, but i soon bribed them and conquered Thapsus and Carthage. I did not attack in any of the instances. In Thapsus there was a huge battle, which my FL won heroically almost exclusively by a massive right flank maneuver by cavalry. The desperate AI even charged my phalanxes a few times, head on. In Carthage the same thing happened while i was laying siege, but this time it was a reinforced sally. They came from behind me with cavalry, but i got there on time and routed them with a trident attack (1 cav in front and one on each side). So, I managed to avoid the dreaded sieges. My cities were a bit underdeveloped, because I exterminated to speed things up. Revolt control was a real issue in the west. Peasants are no real solution, because you really need to pump out new units in the new cities, usually more developed (Carthage was my first city with silver shield leggionaires recruiting ability). Numidia would not make peace, so I invaded them to avoid getting those pesky petty invasions and sieges. One does get bored of bribing.
- On the other side of the med, things went well. After capturing Athens, the drive into Brutii territory was no walk in the park. The AI armies had a lot of skirmishers and missile infantry (up to 75% of at least 4 of the 5 stacks I faced in Appolonia and the other Adriatic city, so one has to move forward to avoid just standing there getting shot to hell (archer auxilia have a lot of ammo and get their kicks off targeting silver shield pikes! I lost half of my very first unit because of that, and there was nothing I could do before my flanking greek cavalry was in place). I also use 4-5 archer units, so their leggionaires are cut to half before even getting near; my learning of mil cav use also served me well, as one can use them first to skirmish and to charge afterwards :)
- Had 3 armies in greece. Two were supposed to conquer the adriatic and one to hop into Italy. They did. The first city I took from the Brutii only had wooden walls,so did my regular 3 rams assault. After the brunt of the Brutii had bitten the dust in the western Balkans, I got jammed with low public order and had to leave one army there. Another army was being built in the pelloponesus and Athens, rallied in thermon to help in the Italy invasion. I can't stress the importance of slaughtering everyone at this stage. Other than that, and you cannot keep going at all. Even doing that, i found myself too worried about low order to push forward, esp in the big ex-roman cities.
- In the east, some uneventful battles in the pontic/armenian campaign gave me complete control of that side of the black sea. Up north, bribed a scithyan city, just for kicks, and somehow managed to control it after a second bribe, because by then i had built some pikemen to calm the populace :)
- By now, I had cataphracts available, so I built a new army with a fresh leader and shipped it all the way to italy. The hop into sicily was very simple. I just approached and besieged, and then I would be attacked by a relieving force. Of course, I had to do some mop-up inside the walls, but the story ended with rebels in Lilibaeum.
- The siege of Rome was a very fun and eventful battle. With some 1000 men, I faced one full stack of SPQR forces and an attacking small Jullii cavalry force. The Julii were easy, but those SPQR archers and skirmishers took their toll. I ended up with some 5 or 6 flank cavalry charges by 2 Cataphracts and 3 militia/greek cavalry, as my last resource after my own archers and skirmishers had run out of ammo. My infantry lines were somewhat disorganized after the brunt of the roman infantry and cavalry attacked (that's where all the ammo went...). They just kept going until there were only 5-10 men left in a cohort! o_O Pulled myself together, got the skirmishers into the sap points, sent the remaining cavalry directly to the city center, destroying the remains of some 10 roman units, and then successfully held the plaza with the cav against some stray cavalry. Rome was MINE! Mwaahahah! Note: do not attack sallying armies until they are out the towers' range. Even if you are outnumbered,as I was, it's easier to take them out with a solid line, ranged infantry (as many as possible) and strong glorious death-defying scary flank and rear cavalry charges.
- By now, this was getting boring. To wrap things up, i'll just tell you about my final battle, against the Jullii. AGAIN, while I was sieging Arretium, I was attacked by a ridiculous relieving force. I guess the AI intended to make to full-stack army in the city count. I guess you all noticed this, but it really is incredibly strange how the AI spams the armies with light auxiliae and archer auxiliae. So, this time I got a VERY nice spot between two woods. Streched my silver shield and phalanx pikemen from one to other. Hid my 2 silver chevroned 2 mil cav in the woods on the right, 3 Greek cav in the left woods. 3 units of peltasts in front of the lines, 2 cretan archer behind, together with the general and 2 onagers. Trashed the arrow-fodder relieving force (auxilia and light auxilia) with missiles and an all out charge from my left flank cavalry (AH! No one expects the Greek cavalry. Our chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and Fear! LOL) THEN the main force attacked through the right -hand woods. Again, most of my losses were archer-related, because somehow thoses guys can jus park in the woods and shoot through all the branches and leaves (ridiculous, really). Anyway, I used my mil cav hidden there to ambush the 4 or 5 early legionary cohorts (they were early in the attack ;) When they got to the open space, they were all in a bundle on top of each other, so I opened missile fire again. I could see that more or less all the onager boulders would smash right into the middle of the *ahem* formation, and they would just stand there. Ordered the phalnxes forward a little, to lock them. My right consisted now in a sucessful cav charge that instantly disrupted those annoying archer. Suddenly, all those leggionaires (cut down to some 30 men each) turn left, facing that part of the battle, so i just charged my 3 greeks cav and depleted skirmishers into them from behind, instarouting them with barely any losses when they turned, THEN got hit again from behind by my glorious mil cav.
-My overall conclusion: i used to my best abilities some tactics from the ancient greeks and macedonians that have been discussed in the relevant threads. Kept an intact reinforced wall of spears as long as i could. I always had one unit in reserve to use in tight situations. Hired a lot of mercs to make up for unbalances and to adapt to the region i was invading. I used skirmishers in front of the hoplites, to help softening the enemy, retreating to a more or less safe side position to form a kind of \____/ (they would be the \ / and the phalanxes the _ _ ) and charging the enemy from behind when they make contact with the spears. Cav is all important. The hammer to solve most battles with. Archers are essential for extra range. Elephants are great against Roman legions and basically any heavy infantry, provided you use more than one unit so that they will divide enemy arrow fire. Chariots... good for cleaning up, but I'm still NOT convinced of its worth. Too small units, too quick to rout, and not as effective as, say, 2 units of greek or mil cav, for that matter. Reminds me of Egyptian chariots in Civ3 - while being OK as early cav unit, they are just not effective enough to make a difference against good defence. Running amok makes them a plain liability in decisive battles. Cataphracts are simply fabulous, the tanks of ancient times, great to explore those flanks and cracks in the enemy lines. Unfortunately, I did not get around to use my silver shield leggionaires or companion cavalry in campaign. Tried them in a custom battle and they seemed at least as good as roman legionnaires and heavy cavalry
This was by far my favourite campaign yet. Thanks for your comments

bubbanator

07-23-2005, 23:02

@bubbanator,
Royal pikemen are a Macedonian unit, and I'm not sure about silver shield pikemen having the same acceptable secondary attack.

ya, sorry about that :bow:

pezhetairoi

07-25-2005, 03:42

Gorsnak

07-25-2005, 08:40

Re: Taking walls with Seleucid troops

1) Just don't do it. Starve them out. Use sap points. Pikemen are extremely good on the ground in street fighting, so keep them on the ground.

However, there may be occasions where leaving the walls to the enemy is extremely undesirable. Perhaps you can't afford to leave the towers in the enemy's hands because the city layout forces you to walk around the perimeter for some distance? Onagers can take out towers fairly easily to solve this, but perhaps that's not an option. So, let's assume that for whatever reason you have to take the walls with pikemen. We'll further assume that you don't have Silver Shield Legions, as they can go toe to toe with pretty much anyone.

2) Have lots of troops. Use mercs. Most mercs suck fighting on walls too, but you won't care as much when they die.

3) Don't use levy pikemen. On top of having crap stats, they have poor morale and will break/fight to the death before they accomplish anything. The phalanx pikemen at least have enough armor that they don't die immediately.

4) Roll your tower up to the walls far away from the defenses around the gate. This lets you get multiple units up without being harrassed.

5) Get a unit of archers up there. Have them shoot over your pikemen's heads. You'll likely take a bit of friendly fire, but it works quite well, and the enemy troops break much more quickly. Cretan mercs are the way to go because they can hang back further allowing you to have multiple units of pikemen between the archers and the enemy.

6) Don't let your troops break. Even if you have reinforcements right behind them, pull the front line unit back once they're wavering. If they break and the second unit is right in their midst, the second unit takes a morale hit too. Have the first unit run around and take the towers in the other direction or something, but don't let them rout.

Emit_Flesti

07-25-2005, 12:17

my gods ermit, very verbose... o_O But very informative nevertheless. As Macedon I didn't really care, I just sent my phalanxes up anyway... a lot of wall battles were actually militia hoplites and phalanx pikemen against hastati/principes/the like. Losses were heavy, but they can be taken down. You just need enough to gain control of the gate. But that's only if you're an impatient commander like me :/

Sorry about that, everyone. Actually, I had a lot more to say, but tried to be as acceptably prolix as possible :bow:

I ended up fighting very few siege battles, like I wrote, because the enemy kept attacking me while I was sieging and I got the cities without the trouble. I'm only impatient in sieges during the early game, when I really need the money.

@Gorsnak: Thanks for the tips. I think sap points are the way to go, provided you study the street plan carefully enough to go quickly fron the entry points to the town center. The starve-them-out plan is also good. I used it to good effect, see above.
Archers are almost as essential to your success with the SE as cavalry. I agree - cretan archers are the best.

pezhetairoi

07-26-2005, 01:36

It helps in assaults (because I'm not the kind to sit and wait) to study the city plan then move your entire operation to the sector where the plan most suits you, like Alexander did at Halikarnassos, because the AI doesn't always give your army the best assault point. E.g. I was given a segment of wall at Patavium where there was a tower along every unit of wall, and I had to move my operations to the opposite side where there was mysteriously 3 units of wall withou towers. That was where I made my breach. For Seleucids this is even more important since you have to contend with much more powerful towers...

Emit_Flesti

07-27-2005, 11:53

I was given a segment of wall at Patavium where there was a tower along every unit of wall, and I had to move my operations to the opposite side where there was mysteriously 3 units of wall withou towers. That was where I made my breach. For Seleucids this is even more important since you have to contend with much more powerful towers...

Yes, it does happen a lot. I have the same problem in some sieges, but solve it by re-positioning the army and siege weapons during deployment. Usually there are some sections of the walls with barely any defenses, which anyone using phalanx should take advantage of. Makes life a little simpler.

Deus ret.

07-27-2005, 13:09

how the hell do you manage to study the city map? When I assault a town, all I get is brief overview before the perspective zooms down to your troops (and henceforth is more or less restricted to your deployment area), allowing maybe guesses about the best deployment spot ....

is there a way to access the city map of an enemy settlement?

pezhetairoi

07-28-2005, 00:53

Well, I'm sorta...cheating. I don't play with restricted camera, so I get the full overview. :-\ The way I see it is that if you restrict camera, the only way to try to get a clearer view is through multiple rams and units being dispersed around the walls to scout them out during deployment phase. Otherwise you'll have to use cavalry once the battle starts.

Franconicus

07-28-2005, 07:02

Well, I'm sorta...cheating. I don't play with restricted camera, so I get the full overview.
:no:

bubbanator

07-28-2005, 15:11

I never really thought of it as cheating...

...well that is probably 'cause I use it too.

I wouldn't use it but I send my troops out to flank the enemy and I send my cavalry behind. With restricted camera, I can't "get" to my cavalry unless I double click on the unit card and all...

That coupled with the fact that I am a lazy slob (and that clicking wastes time that I could be charging into the rear of the enemy :charge:

pezhetairoi

07-29-2005, 01:40

yeah, that too. :) Sorry that you disapprove, Frank... :( I shall restrict camera from now on...

Franconicus

08-04-2005, 08:11

If you read the posts here you can read that you cannot win if you do not attack Egypt at once. I tried - you can! It is not even that hard. I played very hard / medium.
First of all I made alliances with Egypt, Greece and others. They did not take long, but who cares? Gave me some extra money. If you have money left build some nice units and conquer Parthia and Armenia. The sooner the better.
Take Susa. Send a spy there, and place your army at the border. Wait until the enemy goes chasing some rebels and then attack the town immediatelly. When the enemy comes back you have retrained your army and some new units. Kill his field army. After that Parthia is no problem anymore. And Susa is a nice town to produce infantry and money.
On the other side buy mercs and take Helicarnasos. Then march into the heart of Pontus. Do not bother with rebel towns. You need a strong city, take Mazaka and Sinope. Then finish with Pontus and turn to Greek Cities.
At your southern front, fortify Damascus and Antioch. You can build militia cav at Antioch at once. Soon you will be able to build Greek cav. and elephants. So put strong garrisons at both towns and build an all cav field army. If Egypt lays siege on your towns you can attack their rear whenever you want to. Egypt will bring a lot of big armies, but they are not very good. With your cav army kill their cav first. Chariots are not that good if you pepper them first and then attack from all sides. Then kill their archers. They are really strong. Rest is easy. The Egyptian spear units are not very good. Let javelins rain on them and when they give up their formation kill them.
You can win two battles a turn with your field army. Then retrain them. After a couple of years Egypt will not be able to send new armies while you have a very experienced field army and strong garrisons. Now it is time to take all Egyptian cities in Asia. They are not well defended. Once you have them, they bring lots of money and new troops.
Right now I have two armies at the Sinai ready to invade Egypt. My northern army is ready to take the last Armenian town. (I trapped an Armenian army in a valley. It has four FMs. Their capitol is defended by their king and one EI ~;) )
Pontus is gone. Just took Pergamon and will soon take the last two Greek towns in Asia.
See you in Egypt
:egypt:

bubbanator

08-04-2005, 16:18

Yes, an all cavalry field army is very effective. You can also hire many horse and camle mercs in that area too. Be sure to send a young family member who hasn't been corrupted yet have him fight. Your army will get a ton of experience and your general will get many benifical traits. In fact my general became so good that I decided to set him as my faction heir. He had 10 command 10 influence and zero management. Perfect.

Though I must say that I did not do any of this in my Selucid campign. This was all done in my Brutii campaign where I was killing the Selucids who I had previously saved from the Egyptians...

Deus ret.

08-05-2005, 12:52

All-cavalry armies are by far the best choice for vanilla RTW in most circumstances. They are way too powerful. I switched tot RTR 6.0 two days ago and was relieved to see that it's not that favorable any more due to being nigh impossible to pay for such an army which wouldn't be as effective anyway because of their reduced numbers (40/48 instead of 54 on large).

Taurus1

08-13-2005, 11:00

Hello,
I am new to the org and my favourite faction is the Seleucids so I will give my strategies for them here. No doubt these strategies have been discussed before but I will give what I use. I have completed a long campaign of the Seleucid Empire (battle difficulty - medium, campaign difficulty - hard). I enjoy using them so here is what I do usually: ~:)

When the campaign first begins the first trick (even though the Seleucids have a nice money situation) is to get gain a steady income. Build roads and traders and sell map information for more money and trade-rights too. I will not explain the full process as this has been probably expalianed elswhere.

After you have set up your economy you want to concentrate on your military but with one eye always on your financial side. ~;) . First off you need to eliminate Egypt by immidietly taking Sidon, Jerusalem etc. I made alliances with Armenia and the Greeks and was also at war with Parthia. It is also a good idea to take the rebel provinces below and to the right of Damascus.
Once you have gained a foothold in Egypt you can perform an amphibious assault and take Alexandria, Memphis, and Thebes. This should cripple Egypt allowing you to concentrate on owning all of Asia with a destinct ease with the lack of any real power as Egypt.

I know this may not be the typical strategy from then on but I travelled into Numidia conquering it and also Carthage (if any are left thanks to the Romans). Then of course it is the Romans that are your biggest problem, but with the right army compisition and the correct tactics this shouldn't prove to be too difficult.

Here is my anti-rome strategy:

5 Cataphracts, 6 Silver Shield Pikemen, 5 archers, 2 legionarries. < Ideal Numbers.

Arrange them like this:

P = Pikemen
C = Cataphracts
A = Archers
L = Legions

AAAAA
PPPPPP
L L
CCCCC

Once the might of Rome has fallen then conquering the rest of the world should be easy. I hope this strategy helps people and forgive me if this has all been said before, lol. Thankyou ~:grouphug:

Deus ret.

08-13-2005, 18:25

Welcome to the org, Taurus! ~:cheers:

Indeed starting strategies for the SE all seem rather similar (except for Franconius', see his post). Nevertheless I found your approach rather interesting because with the SE I always had so many wars to fight on all fronts at once that when I finally had some space to breathe the game was basically won.

Focussing expansion consciously in one direction after eliminating Egypt was made impossible for me because the Parthians, Armenians and Pontics were attacking me relentlessly....especially Pontus had too strong a position to be left alone in the North, and when Asia Minor was finally conquered, Greeks, Macedons and Thracians, soon joined and replaced by the Brutii, made it impossible to turn away from there without leaving massed troops in the area (which could also be used for further conquest into Greece) to counter invasions.

Thus, when I had fought all wars that were brought upon me, there was not much left to do before conquering Rome. How did you keep these nuisances away, thereby allowing for a more strategic expansion?

Taurus1

08-13-2005, 18:40

Thankyou for the welcome Deus ret. ~:)

What you say about fighting on all fronts is true and it was with me for the most part but I was able to concentrate in one direction becuase of a nice helping Parthia despite being my enemies they were keeping Armenia at bay. Armenia in turn was acting more like a buffer faction from Scythia and Parthia and was keeping them both occupied which left me to concentrate on my own conquering. ~:)
Although Pontus was repeatingly attacking me they just kept sieiging my cities and assaulting them which was easy to defend against with just a few pikemen at the gate of my cities.

With Asia Minor all in its own war lol I just had to conquer Numidia and Carthage as stated in my previous post. I could have just helped in the war of Asia Minor and eliminated them all but I thought it would be a far interesting campaign if I travelled South-West.

Spain had already been near enough crushed by the Julii and Gaul aswell so like you by the time I got to Rome the campaign was basically over.

Thankyou Deus ret. :bow:

Legend5000

08-14-2005, 15:09

The Seleucids may look like they have it tough in the beginning, but if you know what you're doing, this campaign is pretty easy. It's because they have two major advantages:

- A great starting location with lots of wonders and money-making provinces
- A supremely powerful and diverse army including Pikemen, Legionnaries, Cataphracts, and Elephants + powerful mercenaries close by (Cretan Archers, Sarmatian Mercenaries, Bedouin Archers)

You should first ally with Greece, Pontus, and Armenia (and get map information from them. Then, you should take those rebel provinces close by. Thirdly, you should attack Egypt, and QUICK!!! (Egypt has wonderful moneymaking provinces and if you let it expand, it will be virtually unbeatable later) Luckily, there are some bridges you can guard there where you can massacre them. After they're weakened a bit, you can then take those provinces (don't forget the island). Afterwards, Parthia and Greece will likely try to invade, but compared to Egypt, they're a walk in the park (however, be wary of letting Greece become too strong because Armoured Hoplites can be a pain). You should also bribe the Parthian army with the Cataphracts (he he, I love using the enemy's own units against them!). Take care of them, and then invade Pontus and Armenia. If possible, try to siege both of Armenia's provinces in one turn to neutralise Armenia quickly.

After that, the campaign is a walk in the park! You're rich and have enough money to bribe people left and right! You can now do what you want. Do you want to invade Scythia, or take over the Balkans? It's up to you!

Taurus1

08-15-2005, 07:51

Very nice strategy Legend5000, I forgot to put in the info about the decent array of mercenaries you can recruit. Good call. ~:cheers:

pezhetairoi

08-16-2005, 01:14

It's a nice strategy, but it's the micromanagement of the war in Egypt that will take up most of your time. The campaign may actually stretch on longer than it appears unless you manage to attract all armies to your bridge, which does not appear likely.

Alexanderofmacedon

09-04-2005, 20:11

I personally think this faction is the easiest to play. It has the best unit variety (in my mind) and the amount of money and cities you start with are good. I

Craterus

09-04-2005, 20:19

Unfortunately, you could be enemies with (from the start):

Egypt, Pontus, Armenia, Parthia and the Greeks.

Of course, once you're on your way, and have eliminated some of the above factions, then the campaign becomes a cakewalk, but most campaigns do after 30 provinces.

Alexanderofmacedon

09-04-2005, 20:24

As Seleucid though, you have a powerful cavalry to match the powerful middle east cavalry...(Pontus, Scythia)

Rilder

10-30-2005, 16:04

sorry about reviving this old old topic... but the seclucids are awesome settlement defenders so just putting a meager hoplite militia garison , maby some archers but not needed will reflect even the largest armies what i did is just souped up my garisons pretty heavy while i had my main armies taking egypt and stuff and i never had a problem with losing settlements... usualy they were all busy trying to take sardis which had a pretty good hoplite militia garison since all they could train was hoplite militia and i... all the piles of dead eastern infantry and calvary... even the pontus scythed chariots couldnt do high damage since if they managed to break a phalanx there was another behind it... the only time my settlement was "truely" threatened was when pontus sent phalanx pikemen into my weaker defended settlement and there longer spears posed a problem but i laid a trap using a unit of peasants coming from behind and they had to rise there spears and i my hoplites came in and took care of them

GreatEmperor

10-31-2005, 08:21

That's a good strategy but you can also disable Phalanx mode, then engage the enemy and when fighting them, enable phalanx mode again this will cause a huge amount of casualities on the enemy although I don't know how.

Rilder

11-02-2005, 08:47

Nah i never did that, seems to much like cheating :P, i've never disabled phalanx in my units unless i was trying to rush them into settlements and stuff or remaking the phalanx since alot of the times when trying to manuever them some of there men get seperated

GreatEmperor

11-06-2005, 09:59

In my campaign I saw something wierd; the Scipii landed in Greece and took Corinth, is that normal in a Seleucid campaign?

pezhetairoi

11-07-2005, 08:00

It's normal everywhere. I've seen Julii in Corinth, I've seen Scipii in Narbo Martius and Patavium, I've seen Brutii in Carthage...

Garvanko

11-07-2005, 11:18

The problem is, they usually walk all the way round the map, rather than invade by sea. Especially true with the Scipii.

Craterus

11-07-2005, 17:22

The problem is, they usually walk all the way round the map, rather than invade by sea. Especially true with the Scipii.

They've got a long walk to Carthage then... :charge:

Trithemius

11-08-2005, 01:28

They've got a long walk to Carthage then... :charge:

Maybe their doctors think they need to walk to avoid heart-related health problems? ~D

King Macedon

11-15-2005, 09:13

With the seleucids, I send one army to a quick strike on the parthians. With luck, my spy opened the gates to me!
I send two diplomats to Egypt for bribering their leaders, diplomats and cites.
I also send one diplomat to bribe the town of Halicarnassus. This city will be my operation base against the greek cites later.

After 8 turns I had taken over the southen part of Partia (not that in Kazakstan) and egypt has fallen. Now the armenians send a army of horse archers to raid my citys. This is not a great trouble because even my milita hoplites coud easaly crush them. Now I will send my armies towards Armenia and Pontus. I think a temporary aliance with the greeks will strenghen my position so I allied with them in turn 12. Their spartan hoplites helpt me a loot. The downside was that I was forced to partrice Pontus!

GreatEmperor

11-15-2005, 10:03

You really shouldn't trust the Greek because everytime I ally with them they betray me and attack me while I'm busy.
Pontus are really annoying with their Chariot Archers and Pontic Heavy Cavalry but in my campaign I got lucky and their last city revolted resulting in destroyal of their faction.

King Macedon

11-15-2005, 10:11

Yes. It was sweet to wipe out the Pontus. I dont now where I should expand next, maby finish the Partians in Kazakstan or crusch the greeks and Macedonians (with maby means war with the Brutii) or I could invade Numida and Chartage.

GreatEmperor

11-15-2005, 13:32

War with Brutii is only a small problem because they only have Hastati in the beginning but you should watch out for the armored hoplites and Spartan Hoplites of the Greek, but with some cataphracts that shouldn't be a too big problem

pezhetairoi

11-18-2005, 06:37

King Macedon

11-18-2005, 08:56

[QUOTE=King Macedon]Now the armenians send a army of horse archers to raid my citys. This is not a great trouble because even my milita hoplites coud easaly crush them. [\QUOTE]

Are you absolutely sure? Hmm. Your hoplites must be ironskinned, and very very fast runners. And they must have very good aim with their throwing spears too. :-P Then they will bludgeon the horse archers to death with their shields when they catch up to them.
Yes I'am sure. My milita hoplites crushed them instantly. Well, the may have som experience.

Unfortunately i tryed to mix with the codes and play as the rebels (slave). Now I can youst play as brutii, macedon and greek cites! Well, I have to reinstal it.

pezhetairoi

11-25-2005, 06:30

I'm curious... how did your militia hoplites catch the HA?

GreatEmperor

11-29-2005, 19:55

They must've been good runners than :P
It's hard enough for normal cavalry to catch Horse Archers, not to think of Militia Hoplites.

Patricius

11-30-2005, 02:53

The option of bribery is now completely lost. A major element of strategy for this faction therefore lost.

Going on the offensive seems the only option. Susa of the Parthians, as well as anything Egyptian, become targets. Once Susa is taken, the Parthian are distant and neutralised for a while. The Greeks tend to rebuild the faction if they lose their Greek cities by taking them. Absorbing the rebels in Asia Minor is important Hatra can be a problem. It can be an early target of an enemy and is not really capable of defending itself. Putting anything from mercs to whatever I can spare from other cities is something I do also. Losing it cuts the faction in two and both attacking Parthia early and raising anything other than a defensive garrison for Seleucia is a strain. Still the wealth of this faction means that the situation is not irretrievable if mistakes are made.

GreatEmperor

11-30-2005, 08:18

Just put lots of Militia Hoplites in that town because they've got better defenses than those levy pikemen.
I defeated a full stack Pontus army with 12 units militia hoplites in phalanx mode :)

Patricius

12-02-2005, 15:44

Going on the offensive early is key. I attacked Sidon on the first turn. Playing on large or huge unit sizes means you will need the reserves of manpower Egypt can provide. Egyptian cities, as you all know, have a huge growth rate. Cities nearby under their control also benefit from their grain imports. Controlling huge sized Egyptian cities is sheer misery. Even if a player takes control of the various sentiment improving wonders, keep peace in Egypt can be impossible. The manpower Egypt can muster later in the game is formidable. I was able to take Susa in the second turn because for whatever reason Parthia took all its troops out of the city and trekked south. One thing I notice is that eastern infantry do better than they should in autoresolve.

Martes Martes

12-14-2005, 14:32

Hello everyone.

I'm newly registered to the Guild, and so as yet do not have sufficient user privileges to start a new thread. This being the most relevant to the query that I joined to have answered, I thought I'd make my first post here. Perhaps a moderator would be so kind as to copy and paste this into a new thread on the Colosseum?

My problem isn't playing the Seleucids, it's fighting them as Carthage (v. 1.3, VH/VH). I don't have the opportunity to play that often, and I'm stubborn and don't like to give up a campaign and start a new one. This explains why this is only my second ever game despite the fact that I've been playing RTW for over a year.

Here's my situation:

It's 114BC. I own all of North Africa except for the Nile Valley and Libya (the zone where Siwa is), although this changes every few years. The Egyptians were wiped out years ago by the Seleucids and Carthage. For a while I help the Nile Valley, at which point the Seleucids turned on me and we've been at war ever since. As regards the Romans, I took all of Sicily and Sardiia some time ago, and wiped out the Scipii. Their last general was assassinated in the Balearic Islands, which has been a rebel province ever since. Towards my Eastern frontier, I hold Cyrene and Kydonia (Crete) as a naval base and occasional source of mercenary archers and hoplites. The Romans aren't a problem as my fleets control the Western Maediterranean and sink any fleets that they launch with the armies that they carry. I also blockade all Brutii and Julii ports, so the Roman threat is contained.

Here's the problem: I've been fighting the same war, and indeed arguably the same battle, for a hundred years or so... Siwa has been besieged, stormed, taken, rebesieged, retaken about a dozen times. The Seleucids have marched out of Egypt and annihilated my armies in the desert, only to annihilated in turn by the counter attack and driven back into Egypt. At sea, my fleets push them back, destroy their ships, until periodically a massive naval counter attack all but wipes out my fleets, so I can't blockade their ports. Since I have to throw all my troops at the Seleucids, I can't expand into Italy, Spain, or even the Balearic Islands.

The tactical problem is armoured war elephants of which they have a seemingly unending supply. Every Seleucid stack has at least three or four armoured war elephant units. These pretty much systematically scare off all my soldiers. Every time, they get stronger. Sometimes, I can wipe out a stack or two by trapping them between two of mine, but eventually the Seleucid numbers will wear these forces down, and I'm back where I started.

The Romans, I can handle without any trouble. But what to do against the damned hordes of armoured war elephants? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Franconicus

12-14-2005, 15:05

Martes, I never had this problem, but this is what I would do:
Stay defensive in Egypt. Built forts, have a mobiule army to destroy them in the desert ...
Make a landing at Antioch. This is usually their center of power. Make sure your army is strong enough, has some onagers, ballists ... and you have enough money and FMs to bribe reenforcements. This should brake their back bone.

Another alternative is to concentrate on Rome. Once you have Italy you have more money and excellent troops. The go for Antioch.

Kralizec

12-14-2005, 15:57

Hire as many Cretan archers as you can, and if you have the time to spare upgrade them with armour and weapon upgrades.
What you do to scare off elephants is put those Cretans behind a wall of phalanxes (your own troops or those mercenary hoplites) and put on "flaming arrow"
Target a single unit of elephants at a time. (Beware though that there is a bug, if you have those archers put together in a group, they won't respond if you order that group to fire at a particular target)
The objective is not necessarily to kill those elephants, but to make them run amok. Flaming arrows do that superbly.

Kickius Buttius

12-14-2005, 16:31

I also would recommend fire arrows on a tactical level.

On a strategic level, I can't emphasize enough the importance of bribing armies. If you have the money, a simple bribe eliminates an entire enemy stack without any losses of your own. Bribe two or three large armies, and it will be some time before they can build up an invasion force again. At that point, advance and take the battle to them. If you take a city that you don't think you will be able to hold, destroy all the buildings the turn before you are attacked. They'll have trouble building up good units if you use this "raid and destroy" method against several of their cities near Siwa.

Generally the Seleucids are pretty rich, so you don't want to get in a bribe contest with them, just use bribes at a key point. Diplomats can win you the war if used properly.

If you don't have money, then I would recommend going for Rhodes straight away. If you already have Kydonia then it should be easy to build an army and you can invade in one turn to avoid losing the army when the fleet is attacked. Rhodes provides so much money (40% bonus to naval trade income) that it is a must have. From Rhodes, it is again a one turn invasion (no risk of sinking at sea) to Halicanarsus (spelling?). Then you can take the fight to the Seleucids through the back door. I would do this even if Rhodes and Halicinarsus are owned by factions with whom you are not at war. You need the alternative invasion route at all costs.

If you continue to be stuck going back and forth over Siwa, you are letting the Seleucids pick the battlefield and you will never win that way.

gardibolt

12-14-2005, 21:02

But he said he's playing 1.3; bribing a full stack that has armored elephants (and presumably a general or two) has to be insanely expensive unless you're still playing 1.0. Maybe once he's taken Rome and all of Greece, but it's not a realistic expectation without that.

Martes Martes

12-15-2005, 00:49

Thanks everyone for helping me out.

The bribing option is indeed unrealistic. I'm using up all my money at every turn to keep up the war effort, and build up my cities. However invading Hallicarnassus via Rhodes is a workable plan. Rhodes is currently rebel held. I did try and invade it once, but didn't know what awaited me, which was a full stack of good troops. That didn't work...

However, now I know what I'm up against, I can probably deal with it, although the lack of capability to produce onagers in Kydonia will slow matters down.

No matter. You're right, I need a second front so that the Seleucids cannot concentrate all their forces in the Lybian desert. I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks!

Kickius Buttius

12-15-2005, 15:20

Hmm....I play 1.3 on h/h and I have no problem bribing large stacks. I am generally able to maintain a treasury of around 90,000 denarii, and have gotten as high as 500,000.

I have also bribed cities in addition to full stack armies, although they generally can't be held unless you have an army nearby that you can move in (if not, you can destroy all the buildings and let it rebel- do this to enough of a faction's cities and they are toast).

I find a full stack army can run up anywhere from 2,000 to 8,500 denarii.

If you have less money than that in general, you might want to take a look at your finances. You should be able to make far mor money than you are.

A few things I do (some of which you probably know):

1) Never garrison a city with more than the minimum number of peasants needed to prevent revolt. The only exception (yes, I know, "never" technically can't have an exception) is one or two front-line cities (Siwa, in your case)

2) Build forts that are within four turns march of several cities. Garrison with a full stack army. That army is the relief force if any of those cities are attacked. Note that you do not need to even have a relief force for cities far from the front or the sea.

3) Forget about a navy. I almost never have one at all. It's is an unnecessary expense and adds up quickly. Your diplomats and relief force will stop any invasions.

4) Have a diplomat within four turns march of every city.

5) Get your family members out of the cities. By this point late in the game, they usually just cost you money due to corruption. Go to each city and pull the governor out just enough that you can march him back if need be. See how it affects each city's finances.

6) Think of each area with cities within a four turn march of each other as one province. Only one city in each province should have military buildings of any kind.

7) Move your population around to reduce squalor in big cities and raise the population (and tax income) of smaller ones. Do this by building peasants in the cities with squalor problems and the disbanding them in the smaller cities.

8) Always take Rhodes. The 40% naval trade income is vital.

9) When you have done all the above and have a decent financial base, you can pretty much exterminate all cities you take after that. This gives you large short term cash for bribing or hiring quick all-merc armies, and you can restock the population using the peasant movement trick.

You may already be doing all that, but it seems strange to me that you don't have more money. I have won short campaign game on h/h almost all through bribing.

Martes Martes

12-15-2005, 17:07

I find a navy to be absolutely essential. Apart from the obvious transport benefits (it really takes quite a long time to march from Carthage to Alexandria, especially if lumbered down with onagers), it's necessary to intercept naval invasion forces, force blockades and blockade the enemy. Currently, I hold Sicily and Sardinia, and blockade the Romans. This means that all my land armies can fight the Seleucids, while the navy prevents the Romans from ever making a crossing into the two aforementioned islands and Africa. Without a navy, there would be no means of recruiting the Cretan archers. But the defensive shield that a navy provides is essential. Navies can also rescue armies that run into a spot of bother in the Lybian desert.

As for my finances, I must confess to not paying all that much attention. I spend as much as possible every turn on buildings and units, and make sure to build markets, bazaars, etc, not just military improvements. But I generate between 12,000 and 4,000 denarii a turn depending on circumstances, never any more. I admit I could probably be doing rather better.

Kickius Buttius

12-15-2005, 18:51

I will have to try a game with more of a naval presence. I haven't really needed one in any of my games thus far, but maybe I have been missing some advantages, as you point out.

I will give a navy more of a try.

Martes Martes

12-15-2005, 19:02

There's also of course the fact that I'm playing Carthage which was primarily a naval power. So somehow it just wouldn't be right to neglect that aspect. But anyway you couldn't. The Romans would just pile armies onto the African coast, you'd never make any headway.

Kickius Buttius

12-16-2005, 15:50

I suppose this belongs in the Carthage forum, but I wanted to let you know that I started a game as Carthage with the intention of taking your advice and making extensive use of naval power. I think I had dismissed naval action int he past because I hate autoresolving, but clearly you are right with repect to Carthage. Sea power makes defending the initial Roman onslaught far easier.

Thanks for the tip! I have wanted to play Carthage, but it has been the one faction that has been difficult for me to play. I apparently think in terms of finances and land campaigns.

Kickius Buttius

12-20-2005, 21:48

Martes, you are in fact a genius. I have stuck with my Carthage game and am having a much easier time of things by keeping the Romans stuck in Italy via naval power. I have every port of theirs blockaded and have closed off the Adriatic. I fight seven or eight naval battles per turn, but have been able to sink every fleet I see carrying an army. Land advancement is much slower than I am used to due to the emphasis on a navy.

Thanks for the tip.

Quicci

12-28-2005, 11:01

Hi All,

I have recently installed RTW: BI and with updates from there the original game gets more challenging and more fun. I started a new game with Seleucids, naturally...

No more sallying out several times per turn!

Huge amounts of money needed to bribe even small brigand armies!

AI opponents more aggresive! (even though after a year of playing RTW on singleplayer VH/VH they are all llamas...)

Try it again on a slightly more difficult setting with BI :surrender:

dkdnt

01-18-2006, 21:17

seleukid empire is probably most atractive for full scale game, kind i like, to play.
this is for few reasons. improvements you can build is first, all things romans can build you also can, except arena and highways, but you have odeon instead, and later when you confront with romans, their settlements will have arena and highways in most cases.
second reason is financial, becouse seleukids holds more than money making east cost, and when you conquer salamis, money will just keep on coming(until i start invasion on west this is my capital.
third reason is army you can make, cuz there is so many different kind of troops that anyone is to be satisfide. powerfull phalanx(they have very long spears so can beat even spartan hoplites), powerfull horse units, even legionares, not to mention elephants, cuz they are more than tanks in wwII.
phalanx pikemans i use to defend cities, cuz there is nothing that can pas them by, even urban cohort is weak for them, especially cuz i dislike making huge armies, so my troops are usually very expirienced, +4 is some minimum for hot spot cities.
and last thing about seleukid empire is +3 to armour and weapons they can get, if u combine heaphestus large temple and foundry.

but this is all things u need to fight for, becouse every freaking fraction thet have border with you will start war, and most powerfull of them is egypt. my strategy for this is defensive in few turns(although i take salamis), and i leave others to have some regions that just can not defens in begining like hatra, seleucia and sardis. i know you will say "what a hell, there is two wonders there?", well i know, but after succesfull defending of antioch, tarsus, and damaskus, i start blietz krieg against egypt(in few turns i take sidon, jerusalim and alexandria) befgore that engaging some of their armies far from the inavded regons,with some mercs. when egypt is reliefed of this regions, they become very weak, cuz, they have no more money to suport huge armies of best troops and they start to defend themself. in meantime i get oportuniti to recruit katafrakts, and that is moment when my victory is almost certian, becouse in combination of phalanx and katafrakts my armies are inevitable. i rarely use archers, only in defending cities, but only create front with phalanx and than use heqavy cavalry to flank enemy, also good strategy is to seek out for generals and kill them, after this victory in battle is only matter of patiance and fast cavalry.

Gaius Magnus

01-27-2006, 19:00

The very first thing you should do is to hire every mercenary on the Anatolian peninsula and immediately take Pergamum before Greece knows what hit them. They will most likely respond by asking for a ceasefire. Make them pay you a goodly sum of denarii for the honor of your granting them a ceasefire.

Move all of your armies in the Eastern Mediterranean provinces down to strike at Egypt before they have a chance to mobilize a huge army. Take Sidon and Jerusalem outright and hire any mercs that you can find.

Turn Antioch into a major troop production center and build the temples to Haphaestus for all of the great bonuses. At first though, build up your roads and trade buildings. This will start the money flowing. You will probably have one of your Eastern cities besieged by either Armenia or Parthia. This is not a huge setback, your main goal is to take care of Greece and especially Egypt at the beginning. You can respond in a couple turns to the siege of your Eastern cities if you gather the troops from Seleucia and hire any mercs in the area. Have this army centrally located between Hatra and Seleucia to enable a swift response to these incursions.

In the early game you should use your ability to pump out Militia Hoplites to your advantage. Overrun the Greek hoplites and Egyptian spearmen with overwhelming force. You should move on Nicomedia and Halicarnasus ASAP. Halicarnassus is easy to bribe. Around 12,000 denarii and she is yours with no loss of troops. You should not for any reason relent in your destruction of Egypt. Give them a chance to recouperate and you will be dealing with swarms of their armies in short order.

In every province that you do not plan on using for a recruiting center, you should be building the temples to Asklepios, there is a nice trade bonus waiting at the end of this series of temples that will assist you in your inevitable clash with the Brutii and their substantial trade bonuses.

Your main objective in the early game should be to wipe the Egyptians off of the face of the Earth and to assume control over the vast wealth that flows through the Nile Delta region. This combined with the rich trade routes in your home provinces are the foundation of your world empire. With these riches you will exterminate any and every obstacle to your domination.

Seleuzkrieg!

Mithras

01-29-2006, 12:28

Their is something of a discussion amoung my freinds about the Seleucid military I was hoping you could present some insight into it: Is the Seleucid army superior to the Roman army?

Craterus

01-29-2006, 14:07

Monarch

01-29-2006, 15:46

I've playing my very first campaign with the hard campaign/medium battles difficulty. I'm having a blast.

Armenians, Parthians, Greeks, Egytians and Pontics attack you early. The Pontics managedto take one city from me, unfortunately cutting my empire in half. However once I've kicked the various small egyptian armies out of my lands I'm going to take it back. Money for me is extremely tight, mainly because merceneries are swelling my ranks. My aim is to try and quiten the northen borders and then go after egypt.

Ludens

01-29-2006, 20:24

In the late game, they do.

Seleucids have elephants and cataphracts and companions so they defintely outclass them in cavalry. They're equal in artillery. Infantry wise, they have SS pikemen and SS legionaries. The pikemen are an advantage over the Romans because the Romans don't have spearmen or pikemen. But I think the legionaries are slightly inferior to the best Rome has to offer.
I am not so sure about that. Late Romans get Praetorian cavalry, the best cavalry unit in the game, and archer auxila, which are good against phalanxes and elephants. If the Romans can take care of the elephants and disrupt the phalanx line, they win. If the Seleucid command can disrupt Roman cavalry with his elephants and take the legionares head on with his phalanxes, he wins.

Craterus

01-29-2006, 22:40

Late Romans get Praetorian cavalry, the best cavalry unit in the game,

I'd prefer Cataphracts any day of the week. :yes:

Monarch

01-31-2006, 22:47

In a pbem game I'm playing the years 260-250bc with the Seleucids, hard campaign/medium battles. very fun. One particular point: Hold hatra, in my game its been under Armenian siege basically every turn, if they take that they can sprintgobard off of it into your empire. I'm currently working on taking out egypt, i've taken two of their provinces so far, but they have so many armies floating around I dont think i'll get it done before my turn in the pbem is up.

BHCWarman88

02-03-2006, 02:18

Monarch

02-05-2006, 22:34

Here is a Army that really PWNTS

4 Silver Shiled Spearmen
4 Phalanx Spearmen
4 Silver Shiled Legions
3 Cats
2 Chartios
3 Eles (Armounded,of course!!)

I use it on RTW MP all the time. I fought over 100+ online with it. it 79-29..
Yeah, but as with most mp armies, that's hard to raise in an imperial campaign. Seleucid strong units appear mostly at the end of the tech tree, so you wont be getting that army for quite a while in a campaign :)

My armies in my campaign are a mix of

2x peltasts/archers
1-3 elephants depending on circumstances
A few units of levy pikeman
A unit or two of militia pikemen
3+ phalanx spearmen
Some merceneries, thracian/bastarnae/barbarian
A couple of chariots
General

I'm only about 20 years in.

Napoleon Blownapart

02-06-2006, 02:36

BHCWarman88

02-06-2006, 05:36

my Selecius army on MP is now 88-29, I going to make it 100-?? before I retire from RTW/BI next month....

Monarch

02-07-2006, 16:44

Oy, I've just reached the point of my Seleucid campaign where I'm about to enter the middle game. Egypt and Pontus are in ruins, Parthia's harmless and Armenia's being easily stomped by one of my armies. Once their dead and I've taken Crete and Rhodes, I'll stop for a while and build up. Hopefully by then the Brutii will have a strong enough military to give me a good fight!:charge:

I have to say this guide helped me immensly. I probably would have never made it this far without it, and have learned a lot.

And just a tip to other newbies like me: Never underestimate your phalanxes, especially militia hoplites! They can easily hold their own against most low infantry. And they eat Egyptian Chariot generals for breakfast. Even Faction Leaders with 100+ bodyguards!

Just wondering your exact year and starting difficulty?

Anyway, Seleucids continue to be an interesting camaign.

Brutii will now be even tougher for me because Thrace are their protectorate, the first time I've seen on made. However, more interestingly Dacia where also the Brutii's protectorate however the Brutii, for no known reason, sieged a Dacian city.

Chimp

02-12-2006, 18:59

In spite of all the advice in this thread, I found it really frustrating to get a decent game going, so here's an ultra-brief guide for those of you who can't rout 4 Nubian spearmen on a crammed city-street with half a unit of peltasts or whip up a million denari in 5 turns or less.

This is for hard/hard, v1.5, short campaign.

First we divvy up the empire so that we can deal with the events in manageable chunks without overcommitting our meager resources.

In the West, line up 4 militia hoplites, head out of the city and buy all the mercenaries you can afford and waltz down to Halicarnassus. Once that's secured, head to Ancyra and snatch that one-horse town as well. Buy more mercenaries regularly, and keep in mind that slingers suck ass in city streets. Once you can build the level III hoplites, build up an invasive force to take out Mazaka and the rest of the Pontic cities. I don't recommend antagonizing the Greeks until after you've dealt with Pontus.

In the East we need to deal with Parthia sooner rather than later. Buy mercenaries and wait until a force of 2 horse archers and 2 slingers head south towards Dumatha. Once they're past the bridge, rush to Susa. The 4 units will be back, but if you simply can't handle them, reload and auto-resolve. This will cripple Parthia, and you now have peace until you're financially ready to build a small army to take out both Parthia and Armenia. Right now, you need the dough on other fronts.

Now for the center. Immediately send you diplomat north and sue for an alliance with Pontus. Then send him south again. You'll need him to bribe off trouble-makers soon enough.

Don't waste your dough on buying off rebels as it's simply not worth it in the beginning. Instead, buy 3 blacksmiths and crank out 6 Scythed Chariots and sweep the territory with them instead. Nothing can stand up to them.

The family member in Antioch needs to hire mercenaries and send them to Hatra ASAP. Do send at least 2 units of whatever you can spare as well, and that'll be enough to ward off the Armenian incursion. If you can't handle it, simply auto-resolve and you'll win. It's either that or you go on the defensive for a looong time, so swallow you pride.

That's for the province. In Damascus, build up militia hoplites and buy some mercenaries and head for Palmyra. 8 units should be enough. Once Palmyra has been pacified send the mercs on to Hatra.

And now for the main event. On the first turn, build a bireme in Antioch, and take 2 militia hoplites and whatever else you can spare and head for Salamis on the 2nd turn. Buy mercenaries if you can find any. Build more militia hoplites in Antioch.

After that, head back to the mainland and Sidon. In my game there were 4 Nubians guarding the city. Then head to Jerusalem. Once she has fallen, you should be well on your way to having a reasonably solid empire. I took Memphis and Thebes before going for Alexandria because it had the plague, and by the time I had taken the other two, the plague was gone. After that I wiped out Pontus and Greece with the western army, and Parthia and Armenia with the eastern group.

All of the above happens more or less simultaneously of course. If at any point you feel that you're sailing in denari and can't build any more, build up a navy, but it's a luxury.

As far as army composition goes, the beginning game is simply the Greek Cities revisited with a truckload of mercenaries tossed in.

My armies were a motley crew of every unit I could hire save Eastern Infantry which blows.

The scream team is simply 10 hoplites and 10 militia cavalry in the very earliest game, but the more archers you put in the easier sieges will get. My tactic is ludicrously simple: put hoppies out of phalanx and off guard-mode, then zoom across the battlefield to get into melee range before going into phalanx, with the militia cavalry just behind them. They toss javelins, or go into hammer-and-anvil at the first opportunity like Greek Cavalry. 5 of them can take out a chariot unit easily, whether scythed or archer.

Once you got the East secured, you can build up a real Seleucid force instead of this cheap-ass Greek army knock-off.

BHCWarman88

02-14-2006, 22:23

Yeah, Try to get Eles Fast,so you can take their armies out..

dkdnt

02-15-2006, 03:04

seleukid uber army

6 silvershield pikemans
4 kataphrakts
4 companions
4 silver shield legionares
1 armoured elephants (i dont use them, but they are good)
1 general

seleukid early army

6 levy pikemans
2 chariots
4 greek cavalry
2 militia cavalry
2-4 archers
1-2 pelitas
2 generals(or one)
1 elephants

medium seleukid army

6 phalanx pikemans
4 kataphrakts
1 general
1 chariots
1 militia cavalry
2 archers
1 war elephants
4 greek cavalry

this is selection of army based on campaing play, so i presume they all have adequate armour and weapon upgrades, and xp related to stage of game. for example levy pikemans should have high xp in medium army, and archers too.

first army is uber army in entire game, there is only few situations i can imagine to have this army and to lose. u can notice it is quite compact, only few tipes of units and no archers. basicly i use pikemans to engage main enemy force, legionares to weaken them with pilums and then to strike them from side. katafrakts are used to break wings of their front, fasster companions to sneak from behind and strike from back, or to clear roaming enemy units and formations. and general in teh end to chase routing mry and slay them all, together withe companions, butr they are usually tired so can only get few kills. isnce i dont play with armored elephants, i dont have xp in teir use, but i supose u can use them same as kataphrakts, or to devastate entire line with flank strike.

second army is the early one. i call it like this becouse it is one u can create in begining, just need city with more than 6000people(if u cant wait for antioch to grow, just take sidon). with this army it is somehow different type of play. there is lot of missile units, and this is so, becouse u dont have good melee unit in game, so best way to fight is to use skirmishers. chariots i use to frighten enemy weak infantry and to flank them, when they are engaded with levies. militia cavalry are used same as companions in uber army. sneak behind enemy lines and than kill them from back(much more effective than from head). and finaly, combinatioon of greek cavalry and general is most efective in slaughtering alone troops, and cuz their speed routing one. i found that the are not so good in flanking, becouse they dont have weight and force like kataphrakst to literary break enemies. they just stuck in their flank and start to fight, instead of pushing them on spears or to rout.

medium army is one i use most of the time. not so expansive, and more than effective even against late roman armies. pikemans aggain create front, in this case high xp chariots, archers, militia cavalry and greek one, are used for pure killing. to win with as less loses as possible. katafrakts are used as they should be, to create steel strike on enemy wings, twist it and in combination with long spears of pikemans kill everything between. u can combine more, with exluding skirmishers and adding more pikemans(preferably high xp levies) to create stronger battle line, with only one side-effect duration of battle. generals in all situations should be use to slaughter routing enemy, or to strike in kay moment and win battle.

BHCWarman88

02-15-2006, 04:22

hmmmm, I'll try that out m8

Braden

03-01-2006, 14:59

I started a Seleucid campaign last night, first time with them but I’ve campaigned with Greece and Carthage previously so I thought everything would be ok (knowing the best way to use Phalanx units etc).

However, I’m happy to say that I’m struggling to put down small invasions and rebel stacks all over the place! At first all was wonderful, large basic income then the Greeks, Pontus and Parthians offered me Trade deals and the income nearly doubled so I decided to plough this money into building a campaign winning economy and weapon upgrading buildings (temples, smithies etc)…..all was wonderful until….

…The Egyptians approached me and asked me to become their Protectorate, we negotiated, and they started to offer stupid amounts of cash to sweeten the deal but, doubting how beneficial such a deal would be to me I refused. Then they invaded, then Pontus invaded, and Armenia and Parthia! All within two turns of each other. The Parthians took Seleucia from me killing two family members in the process using their Katatanks before I could get my army into the area.

The story so far has been:

Seleucia is sieged I move my army across and beat the Parthians back. The Pontus’s (or is it Ponti?) siege Hatra or the Armenians do the same, so I move my army across to get them…all the while the Egyptians fight a too and fro battle for Antioch which now has FOUR family members there, because they can’t get a gap between siege, breaking siege and being besieged again to get the hell away from there!

I have not hired many mercs yet. My family member at Sardis died in an early battle against the Rebels – curse it! I didn’t feel like buying them off. It’s MY money!!! Rebel scum can’t have it (changed my tune since). So haven’t had the chance to hire the quality mercs in that region. I’m not a player who hires mercs in general and only then usually for “dangerous duties” such as being the first through a wall breach etc. Again, I may have to adjust that dramatically.

Anyway, I don’t remember Militia Hoplites having such a large allergic reaction to missiles before…..they drop like flies. Incidentally the flies appear to be doing rather well. So, I’ve been stuck with Militia hoplites up until two turns ago when I could produce Levy Pikemen at Antioch, which coincided with the Egyptians besieging the place as well….curse them!

I haven’t struck out against the Egyptians yet and have made the mistake of taking Dumatha….which I have decided I will now strip and leave, its too small and too far away (and holds 4 militia hoplites and 2 militia cav units currently).

So, any tips not covered here? Well, first one is read the tips here BEFORE you start playing the Seleucids! I didn’t and it’s all a bit hard, but then again it’s also lots of fun (a bit like a WRE BI game).

Next, sieges:

Militia Hoplites have a higher defence when compared to the Levy Pikemen. Now the Pikemens’ extra 40 men counts for a lot….in an open field battle, as it means they can sustain more casualties and still be an effective Phalanx unit but for sieges use Militia. The narrower front you’ll use means that their lack of numbers doesn’t count against them and their higher defence means they won’t be pushed back as much or die as fast as the Levy’s. I’ve had to use militia in the main but at Antioch I had both and noticed how much more effective the militia were. I had a militia unit holding my gates and the Egyptians charged two chariot units strait at them, they held for barely a casualty and utterly destroyed the chariots (who hardly got past the first row of men!).

Sieges – Breaches:

Also at Antioch. The Egyptians made 5 rams and took out plenty of wall. Luckily I had 4 faction members there (with their cavalry units obviously). I didn’t have enough infantry to seal the breaches they would make sooooo….I decided to be more aggressive. As soon as a breach was made I charged a family member or two through and into the numidian spear unit holding the ram…..they were still holding the ram or reforming in every case. This resulted in a rout every time with no loss to my unit/s.

So, remember it takes you several long seconds to “Drop” a ram and move into formation when you besiege a place. It’s the same for the AI, take advantage of that.

I’m currently not having that much problem dealing with the enemy troops. The Egyptians use a similar mix to me so that’s ok (they have a few more missile troops but I just make sure I bring more men to the party) but the Parthians are using quite a few units of horse archers and as I don’t have archers myself yet they’re a real pain to deal with – sure I can utterly destroy all his infantry and catch and kill his generals unit or heavy horse (Catatanks) but I have nothing to deal with those HA at the moment. I’ve beaten them obviously but its been a matter of chasing them with Peasants until they get tired then chasing them down to an engagement with militia cavalry and holding them until I can get a hoplite unit there to actually KILL them! Bah!.....just you wait until I’ve got archers damn you…

dkdnt

03-02-2006, 08:24

one thing u forget about militia and levy pikemans.
although first have higher defense they are, by my opinion ofcourse, less effective then levies. mostly becouse levies have very long spears, so they keep enemy at distance, while militia hoplites have tendency to break own formation, becouse fightning enemy is too close, and they cant stop too many of them.

put levy on the gate, and see what happens to chariots, they just stop and die, becouse they can not pass spears, and break into your formation.

just becouse of this i use levies instead of militia hoplites, and offcourse +40 soldiers is more then good thing.

one more tip. to stop pontic ivade tarsus organize small defensive army with lot of phalanx and skirmishers and i think it would be enough just one cavalry unit(family member, try to put heir or leader becouse they have more soldiers). build fort in passage north of tarsus and keep invading pontic armies at distance from one of your most important trade city. they dont have very good ofensive armie, eastern infantry and hillmens, who just cannot with long spears at fort breaks. cavalry unit use just for slaugter routing enemy, you can kill many pontic rooters, and gain extra xp.

also take salamis, egiptians have some tendency not to defend it well, just some nubians as i recall. and blietz krieg aggainst sidon, jerusalem and alexandria should silence them down, before they get uber amries.

Braden

03-02-2006, 11:01

Thanks for the advice. Should get some game time tonight, and I plan the following:

Pull out of Dumatha completely and level the buildings as the population is too low, it’s too far away and it’s taking up 6 military units.

Break the siege at Antioch (again). Then sneak out two family members out the back door. I know Antioch will hold with around 6-8 Phalanx units & some Skirmishers.

Family members: march them West to collect as many Mercs as they can. One member to either help bribe or just take Halicarnassus the other to place Watch towers and forts to guard against Pontus and then try to take any rebel cities that are still free. After that he can return to Antioch.

Egypt: Is it really that bad to allow Egypt to become a “super power”? I’d personally prefer to more-or-less let them advance so that I’ve got some truly hard and epic battles ahead of me. I should have Phalanx Pikemen available to me in the next 8-10 turns from Antioch so as long as I keep Egypt away from Antioch I can start kicking a decent army out from there and set the picture for some really huge, hard, epic battles in Judaea and the surrounding regions.

dkdnt

03-02-2006, 12:40

about egypt.
well ofcourse it is not that bad to leave them be, but with seleukids, this is realy hard, becouse they try to destroy you, and while armenia, pontic and partian armies are no match for seleukids, egiptian can realy early create good armies. with nile spearmans and pharaon bowman. not to menttion that AI cheats with creating just too much of egiptian troops.

usualy i break them realy fast, sometimes even before recruiting katapfraktoria, and after that just let them hold some minor cities in arabia(such as dumatha and petra) with trade rights and some maney just to make things clear.

well, about epic battles, egyptians are no match for seleukids, in late game, even with their uberarmy, but gues who is? romans ofcourse. and u will have lot of difficuties with them, mostly becouse of distance and transport of troops, it takes lot timeand concentration to create graduated armies. cohorts are realy tough, and could be chalenge, so you can easily crush egypt and prepare high xp armies for real fight on the west, first greece, and second, rome itself. after that, i find little satisfaction in playing, perhps just to conquer entire map, but that is just boring, and realy boring on vh/vh where u must pay attention to every single detail.

Braden

03-02-2006, 14:08

Avicenna

03-02-2006, 17:26

I'm going to leave Egypt for now and weather whatever they send at me. Yes, it'll be hard going but more interesting early on AND will help to train up some troops for when I meet a Romano faction.

I just like making it hard for myself I guess.....
Even at the beginning Egypt sends massive hordes against you to take your lands... If you let them gain more and more power I hate to say it but unless you're on medium or below you're just going to be target practice for the Egyptian archers.

Pontifex Rex

03-02-2006, 17:30

I just like making it hard for myself I guess.....

Give 'em heck, Braden!!! The only thing worse than an Alexander wannabe is an Egyptian Alexander wannabee. :charge:

Braden

03-02-2006, 17:51

Yes! I shall spank them when and where I feel it requires it….and not too early. I’m well aware of the dangers and I also know I’m going to suffer when they get archers (and their uber-archers – Pharaoh’s Bowmen). I like struggling and I enjoy loosing just as much as crushing my enemies utterly…..(must be why I’ve got a cupboard full of whips, chains and rubber hoods…lol).

I may bottle it and start taking them down soon, but my plan above stands for tonight certainly with one minor modification. I’ve realised I can’t allow Egypt to keep besieging Antioch every other turn otherwise I’ll never build any advanced buildings there.

That means I’ll have to keep meeting them in the field just outside….which will be “fun” seeing as I really don’t have an army to do it yet (I’ve got 2 Levy Pikemen units to my name at the moment the rest are Milita, and no archers yet either, just skirmishers).

Don’t worry I’ll let you know what happens.

Pontifex Rex

03-02-2006, 19:30

Don’t worry I’ll let you know what happens.

If you can, send a leader via boat to Stygian territory and have him recruit all the Horse Archers and Sarmatians (heavy Cav) you can hire. With about 4 Horse Archers you have a definite edge over the Egyptians even after they get archers.

Bonne chance!!!

Braden

03-06-2006, 10:46

Right, plan enacted and it’s making for an interesting and hard game. I broke the siege at Antioch first obviously, and pushed the Egyptians back South and into Sidon with the small army I had from Antioch (4 x militia hoplites, 3 x levy, 3 x Phalanx pikemen, 1 x merc Peltasts, 2 x Greek Cav + General). They haven’t hit me with a force of equal size yet in one go – most battles consist of fighting multiple smaller armies. So I’ve captured Sidon.

Garrisons in Hatra and Seleucia continue to hold off multiple incursions from the Armenians and Pathia. Where they are besieged I just sally now and either rout the enemy or just do enough damage and retreat back into the city.

I finally took Halicarnassus after about the 5th or 6th attempt! They refused bribes and after so many losses with Auto-Calc I decided to manually fight the battle just to see what the hell was causing me to loose so many times……my forces only consisted of Militia Hoplites but these are now 2 chevron units and I outnumber the enemy 2:1.

Turns out they had two Hoplite units and a Creshian (sp) archer unit AND Rhodian Slingers. I fought the battle and although I had units rout, re-group etc and although I lost a good portion of men I finally won the day by outflanking the sallying enemy and attacking the archers and slingers in the flank with one militia hoplite unit. By the time the enemies own Hoplite unit (the one that remained) had finished with my other units, I had broken both the boys from Crete and the Rhodians with time to turn back on the remaining Hoplite and with a rallying unit of Militia behind it…….the town was mine.

Pontus was becoming a pain and my two Generals I slipped out of Antioch were tasked with dealing with this threat. They took 2 x levy units with them from Antioch and picking up 4 x militia hoplites from Tarsus along the way they gathered some Merc units around them. I was a bit upset to see that there wasn’t many available. I did get – 2 x Creshian archers, 1 x Thracian, 1 x barbarian and 1 x Merc hoplite. So with this small force we ventured out to take Ancyra, a weak target. The plan was to take it and strip it.

I fought several battles against Pontus forces, some where we were outnumbered and after all this I’d lost one of the Generals (they were the only cavalry I had – although the remaining one has a Silver chevron now, from nothing before), the merc units were utterly devastated and I had to let all but the archers go, the levy’s were also decimated so had to be merged. On the upside the campaign had cost Pontus 4 Family members AND their Faction Leader and at least I could retrain the Militia at Ancyra. Ancyra it turns out is a decent money earner so I didn’t level it in the end. Income is always important.

However, at this time the Greeks decided to attack me. They besieged Sardis and have several smallish armies between Ancyra and Sardis so my General can’t get through to relieve the siege, nor it seems, are there any more Mercs to be had in the region!

Back in the East, the Egyptians approached me asking for Sidon back, oh and you’ll be our protectorate, that’s ok isn’t it? The diplomat was sent back in various pieces…

So they besieged Damascus. I moved my army from Sidon South and then East to face them – taking on and destroying two smaller armies along the way as well as picking up some Merc fodder (Eastern Mercs, Arab Cav & Bedouin archers). I broke the siege.

The cities I hold are (and a basic status of each):

Antioch (under no immediate threat anymore)
Tarsus (just broke a Pontus siege)
Hatra (just broke an Armenian siege)
Seleucia (besieged by the Egyptians of all people. Have just sallied though to buy some time)
Sidon (vulnerable but no Egyptian force on the horizon)
Damascus (just broke Egyptian siege)
Halicarnassus (recruiting militia hoplites)
Sardis (besieged by the Greeks)
Ancyra (trying to rebuild the army there but Pontus forces very near)

Ok, I’ve found that the Egyptians have Nile Spearmen who beat my Militia with ease. They also have access to Bowmen. There is nothing that Pathia, Armenia or Pontus can field that I can’t deal with as long as I am not too outnumbered. The Greeks are a real big problem now though. Having entered at this point they are fielding armies of Hoplites which utterly spank virtually anything I can field in the region. I will have to play some very careful Sallying battles at Sardis, I cannot hope to win them but I must ensure a draw each time and keep doing this until some relief can arrive.

On the upside I can produce Phalanx pikemen & Cavalry (and basic Elephants) from Antioch (will have archers in the next turn) & Chariots from Sidon (not very reliable but fast and excellent at flanking and attacking archers etc).

Bribing isn’t being as successful as I’d hoped. I’m actually not getting much more than a 6k profit each turn and the enemies around me appear a bit greedy. They’re just not taking bribes (even rebels are getting harder to shift now). The main thing hitting my income is that I’m surrounded by enemies utterly now, my diplomats are busy trying to bribe rather than travel far and wide and get trade agreements – this much change!

Next phase:

I plan to use the Army (well part of it) near Damascus to move into and take Palmyra, which is held by Egypt. Then to reform it and move it South to take Jerusalem and effectively hemming Egypt in.

I plan to start ignoring bribery for a time. It’s a total drain on my funds when it does go through and it’s not succeeding often enough. The diplomats will be better used to travel far and wide looking for trade and alliances.

The small force from Tarsus will move West, pick up some mercs if possible and try to get through the small blocks of Greek and Pontus forces dotted about. This will be supported by the force from Ancyra – Ancyra will be levelled and left, as was Dumatha at the start of this last phase.

Sardis’s Militia will have to Sally at least once and NOT loose. There is no support for them, no cavalry, no ranged help, no General to lead them. I will send what Militia I can spare from Halicarnassus to support the attack – these do not need to win, and I consider them “spare”.

Hatra and Seleucia will continue to resist any enemies they encounter. Seleucia will have to continue to sally and drain the stronger Egyptian force they are besieged by. Potentially Hatra could send a relief but only if they get a window themselves to do this.

During this time I will train a decent army in Antioch consisting of Phalanx Pikemen, Greek Cavarly, Chariots & archers. This army will move West to crush ANY opposition it meets, with particular attention to Pontus. It will also gather some Merc’s along the way to use in the sieges.

Helpful advice is needed though as things are certainly hard and I feel like I’m just about keeping my head above water.

dkdnt

03-06-2006, 18:12

i have only one advice for u.

take jerusalem and salamis as fast as u can.

jerusalem should be well builded, perhaps with 12000+ palace(cant remember name), and possible kataphrakts to train. and by doing this u will weaken efypt, who will have only two nice regions, alexandria and memphis.

salamis u must take cuz it enhance trade to all east coast cities, and profit from town itself is realy good, and egypt is defending it with some nubians. all other forces they move to the sidon, and near regions. but u must be carefull, if u dont have good navy, just transport some troops from tarsus and antioch(look to have one ciclician pirates, and levies, with one general, becouse egypt dont have mixed force, and u can deal with it, with small but well leaded army). in other cases, transport troops and seek for egiptian ships transporting troops, and destroy them, or just banish them so they cannot suport defens of salamis).

in this early phase of the game i concentrate my expanding on easts coast, taking huge egiptian cites. i just dont care, for sardis seleucia and hatra, they drive just too many force to be defended. i leave sardis and try to take halicarnas and rhodos, becouse both are good for defending, with some navy, and spearmans defending ear bridges.
when i create good base of regions such as tarsus, salamis, Antioch, sidon, damaskus,jerusalim and i chase alone egiptian troops, and strike on alexandria and memphis, and in asia minor on sardis(if i lose them as it is usual) and pergaam. other small cities will fall anyway when my economy and militaru force is strong driven from base pool...

Braden

03-07-2006, 09:27

Great, an addition to my plan then is to make a small force in Antioch and move them onto Cyprus. My original plan to move my main army South to take Jerusalem also seems sound.

Right. I’ll play the campaign through and report back later unless I have any questions or need further advice.

dkdnt

03-07-2006, 09:52

if u take jerusalem, u will probably be able to train Katafrakts there very soon. this is your main bonus against egyptians, u can chase their field armies one by one, and clean them from regions near jerusalem. and after further breach to alexandria and memphis(although, only one of this cities is enough to break them) they will be no threat to any man with half brain.

and one advice, dont train armoured elephants, they are just stupid, and i hate them, very much.

Watchman

03-07-2006, 22:15

What's so stupid about them ?

dkdnt

03-08-2006, 02:30

well, i started battle with thracians few nights ago. and i had "medium army" mixed with two silvershield legionares and one armoured elephant,cuz they just annoy me(thracians) and i have decided to finish with them.

i beat them in few large battles before, and they were weak(although, they were weak enough to beat them with one army).

but, stupid elephants in that final battle(they were without loses, 36 men), start to go insane, and rushed over my legionares and phalanx. thracians didnt have any unit that could frighten them, only their number was huge. they inflicted batlle with two full stack armies, and about 800men in third (pikemans, and some falxmens).
i won battle, mostly by katafrakts. but i lost meny legionares that i couldnt retrain in near cities. stupid elephants.

Watchman

03-08-2006, 10:22

"The problem, private, is always between the ears."
- military maxim

Don't tell me it came as a surprise hefalumps go berserk every now and then. Hit them enough with stuff, and they tend to go bonkers. It's one of their lovely traits. Scythed chariots do that too.

Braden

03-08-2006, 12:30

Scythed Chariots I’ve found are a good counter to Heavy Chariots. I have a unit of 2 x Chevron Scythed Chariots and they take on and beat the Egyptian Heavy Chariots. However I do use them in conjunction with Horse archers (who attach the Chariots first – don’t do a lot of damage but distract them), and a normal cavalry unit. I distract the Heavy Chariots with the HA’s, flank charge them with a wide formation of Scythed Chariots and finally charge in with normal cavalry. The combination of taking casualties from arrows (though small) + more casualties from the Scythed Chariots + being outnumbered 2:1 (due to the arrival of my normal cavalry) makes them rout instantly. This use also means my chariots are away from my front line, being useful AND accompanied by units that can get out of the way should they run-amuck Scythed Chariots don’t seem to do as well against any infantry, even skirmish troops as its too easy for them to get bogged down and they need to keep moving to have their high attack count. I use them almost exclusively against Cavalry and other Chariots as they can catch both with ease and temple bonus’s really count as well.

My campaign:

After several Heroic wins last night and after following advice here it seems like I have breathing room now.

I took Jerusalem with my main army, beating back several smaller Egyptian armies, the Egyptians were not helped by the fact that the Jerusalem Garrison never turned up for a battle outside the city! As expected it has been developed towards Cavalry but not advanced enough to make Kat’s. Although in 3 more turns I can retrain my Pikemen there.

I am besieging Salamis with a small army (1 x General, 2 x Pikemen & 1 x Cavalry + 1 x Cillian Pirates).

My General in Ancyra used what small force he had plus a few Merc units to beat back two Pontus armies whilst being utterly outnumbered, he then met the Greeks in the field and did the same whilst again being outnumbered. On his return to Ancyra he again met another Pontus army and again outnumbered 2:1 beat them although I nearly lost him.

I have moved a new general with a couple of Phalanx units to the bridge between Cappadocia and Cilicia where he held the bridge against one Pontus attack. This now defends my Northern border.

Hatra’s General had a Heroic victory against Armenia in the defence of the city and is now sending some aid towards Seleucia.

Seleucia is still under siege by the Egyptians. I will have to sally potentially before re-enforcements arrive from Hatra.

I have moved a small force from Damascus to besiege Palmyra which is held by the Egyptians.

With the Greeks beaten back, Pontus’s forces short route cut off and the Egyptians being pushed back to their heartlands I feel I have room to grow now. The only downside is Seleucia whom I hope can hold out. If not, it shall be re-captured, there is no General there so I loose a city not a family member should it fall.

I plan to not be aggressive against Egypt currently. Should they come against me I will take on their armies, if they besiege Jerusalem I’ll take and flatten one of there cities in revenge. Apart from that I want to concentrate on putting an end to Pontus, Armenia and Parthia. Also I want to re-build peace with Greece, since I’ve put paid to their invading armies they should like the idea at the moment. BTW Macedonia fell last night, I guess the Brutii or even perhaps the Greeks finally finished the faction off. From a Role Play factor this means that Peace between the Seleucids and Greeks is even more important as the common culture fights against joint foes (also means I could feed Greece money).

Avicenna

03-08-2006, 17:14

Use your elephants as support for your troops: shooting arrows, and attacking the flank after your troops engage the enemy.

dkdnt

03-09-2006, 00:16

i know how to use elephants, although i dont use them frequently. that is why they are stupid(or that is why i said so). there was no reason for berserking, they were on good distance from bloodbath, and they gone insane just few seconds before steel of kats. crushed on thracians flanks. but bloody elephants rushed over my legionares and pikemans, and iflicted casuaties to them, since only few thracians troop left.

Alexanderofmacedon

03-12-2006, 16:29

I usually use elephants to go screw up ranks and then charge my infantry at the enemy...

Then pull back your elephants to harass the enemy with arrow fire or keep running through enemy units.

In my experience it has worked quite well

Goalie

03-21-2006, 02:08

I only use elephants as a last resort with the Seleucids. They are just too messy to deal with. Especially in campaign because if the run amok I dont want to kill them cause they cost too much. They can also mess up your phalanx. They arent very consistant.

dkdnt

03-21-2006, 08:21

exactly, what i thought.

and one thing more, aggainst them is bloody kataphrakts.

ouh my god i just love them. they are not too expansive, they are not too slow, they dont go amok...and u can recrutit them relativly early. but, boy how they blow from flanks, i enjoy in watching it.

seleukids are realy greatist faction in the game. good infantry, and uber cavalry choice are just what i need to play, and to creat my armies (as u can see from my earlier posts).
skirmishers are not soo good, but in most cases they do their job. and is there better way of defending town when u r outnumbered but to use phalanx to hold line and any missile unit to run hell on engaded enemy? i think not. especially when your phalanx are silvershield pikemans, this guys can kill entire army, with less then 5% of own losses.

i didnt play quite long, and started campaign on vh-vh last night. just to clear some thing in my life, and to realx by beating hordes of egyptians and other infantile faction. hehehehehehehe

see u when rome falls...

Kagemusha

03-21-2006, 14:55

I usually use Elephants like tanks In attack i deploy them in a double line in the front of my army and smash them through the enemy main line and continue their attack on the cavalry and General behind the the main line.My infantry follows behind the elephants and engages the disrupted enemy formations if i need My cavalry hits both the flanks of the enemy infantry line and cavalry and missile units and picks of the routers.When i see the enemy braking i just run my Elephants forward so they dont kill my own men when the chase starts.That also keeps the enemy from turning around becouse they are afraid of the Dumbos.Then when i see they have done their job i just order them to stop.:2thumbsup:

Nebuchadnezzar

03-23-2006, 09:09

I agree that the Seleucids have the best unit selection later in game but also have it rather tough at the start being surrounded by enemies and only the militia hoplite as it main starting unit. On VH/VH expect Egypt, Pontus, Armenia, Parthia and Greek Cities to attack within the first moves, so strike first!

I didn't bother about alliances or rebels towns for the start. Instead I took my faction leader and all he could muster and headed for Sidon. Take your nearby Diplomat to negotiate traderights with Egypt and ask 1500 dinari. They will agree. On turn two besige it. It only contains a small force and easily taken on turn 3. Retrain and recruit what you can and on turn four head for Jerusalem. At this point hope your faction leader doesn't die of old age. After taking Jerusalem Egypt shouldn't be a problem for a while. I chose to enslave to help my under-developed towns grow a little quicker. During these first moves I used any new family members to build a fort in the pass NW of Tarsus. This is where Pontus normally like to attack from. Hatra also gets repeatedly attacked very early by Armenia and with all my resources already stretched to deal with Egypt and Pontus I chose to keep my forces to 3x militia hoplites + militia cavalry + general (if available). The strategy was that with a small force Armenia would choose to assault the town rather than starve it. Besides, this early in the game there is no relief force possible and fighting horse archers with hoplites isn't much fun. Instead 3x hoplites just on the very edge of the town square right next to the road that leads from the gate should do the job perfectly. Armenia is so persistant that my hoplites soon had silver chevrons.
Seleucia should also deal with Susa as soon as its force leaves to take the rebel town of Dumatha. If you don't you will soon have to deal with a very large force of horse archers coming down from the mountains.
Finally, Sardis should be built up to produce a few cavalry units and attack the rebel town of Helicarnasus and then on to Crete. By now Greek Cities will be at war with either Macedon or Scipii so attack Pergamun. Besides they probably would have declared war on you by then. Your borders are now mostly secure and free to take the rebel areas and expand in any direction you wish. I tend to leave Egypt the three main cities and watch until Memphis has the largest temple of Horus built. It will upgrade all units (except missile troops) to gold and thats when I want it. For me its onto Sicily.

BHCWarman88

04-23-2006, 03:16

Well,this is my MP Army,but it could Work for SP if you able to use it :-) :-)

4 Sliver Shield Pikemen
4 Phalanx Pikemen
4 Silver Shield Legioneares
3 Cataphacts
2 Chariots
3 Elephants

I never sucessfully manage to make that army on SP,but I will :-) :-)

Seamus Fermanagh

04-23-2006, 20:37

On SP, at least at the H or VH settings (and their attendant morale bonuses for the AI) you'll need to replace one of the Cavalry with a General or suffer from morale "overset" against too many of the AI armies.

Why no missile? Seluky missile troops are pretty basic, but they're still of use?

Craterus

04-23-2006, 20:47

IIRC on MP, TSE have access to Cretans. Why aren't you using them?! I'd get rid of some of 1 Ele's and 1 Cata's for 2 Cretan units.

BHCWarman88

04-26-2006, 02:49

that my 149-66 Army, I don't use Archers often on RTW unless I got to, on BI though, I use 4 archers units for my other Death Army, 2 Archers,1 Slinger,1 Javlin....

BHCWarman88

04-30-2006, 04:22

I apodted my Sassdian Army on BI now

now I jsut got to Train my Seleciud Amry (I mean Retruict) on RTW SP..

Seamus Fermanagh

05-01-2006, 01:03

[read in Shatneresque]

Caffeine levels...too...high. Must...tone down...enthusi...asm.

AwesomeArcher

05-15-2006, 04:46

I love the selucids they are a great all around faction. I love the cataphracts and companions. The Silver shield pikeman and legions make a great team. Elephants are also good too. Although they do need some better archers, but if you want a little edge like i do, make silver arrowed archers to help you out a little bit.

Piko

05-17-2006, 18:32

Has anyone here played RTRPE? The Seleucids are overpowered A LOT in that version...

Avicenna

05-18-2006, 17:50

Well, they were supposed to be very powerful.

BHCWarman88

05-24-2006, 03:04

RTRPE?? never heard of it..

Simmons

05-24-2006, 05:18

RTRPE?? never heard of it..
Rome Total Realism - Platinum Edition

BHCWarman88

05-24-2006, 23:25

Oh Ok

Lorenzo_H

05-26-2006, 09:24

The Selucids rock don't they? Brilliant starting positions, good variety of troops (Scythed chariots and elephants? Legionaries? I'm in...) and alround decent selection of everything. I think I will play these guys next.

Viriatus

05-26-2006, 19:20

Good afternonn, good morning or good night to all of you, according to the time zone you're living... I start to beg you sorry about my english and to thank you for your patience.

I've played seleucia for a short campaign in medium/medium and i won...Here is what i've done:

The Seleucids are very rich and have a well balanced military power (if you don't piss of parthia until the right time...) You start with a very extensive Empire where the cities mainly those in the east (Hatra and Seleucia) are separated from the main core.What you need to do in the first place is too get some money, wish is an easy task for the seleucid...You can read general frogbeastegg manual and do what she advises to get some money.

No you got money. Use it during some turns to garrison your city with militia hoplites. Meanwhile you got to face some problems...Hatra, Seleucia and Sardis. These settlements need to evolve military to get auto-suficiency...You well need to have in each one a Stable and Barracks until you can use at least, levy pikemen and greek cavalry or schited chariots.In Hatra and Seleucia i find important to build archery ranges for archers...In sardis you have the cretan archers. This is what you have to do to put them military independent.

Now let's talk about WAR!When you get a fine garrison to Tarsus, do the effort to build a little army and move in the direction of sardis and build a fort to defend your most important economical city from Pontus. Let's conquer some settlements now... Conquer Halicarnasus ASAP and Palmyra. Do not worry about the other arabian provinces. You deal with them latter. Create another army and move it to the mountain to a central place from Damascus, Antioch and Palmyra. This army will help you to cut the constant Egyptian attacks...Armenia is problably now running for hatra (They always are)... Do not worry about it... They won't do nothing important if you have a nice garrison in the city. Let them attack...Only sally out the fort in the last turn before the city falls or if the city is facing a revolution. Do everything you can to keep hatra!If you lose hatra you will problably loose seleucia too...If it happens, now big deal, cause you are looking to the mediterranian... Now your big problem!Egyptians. They are realy annoying and are always pestering you...Got to teach them a lesson. Build a Navy, cause you are going to hit them where the sun doesn't shine!Alexandria, Memphis, and Thebes. Create a well ballanced army, get your best attaking general and your best spy, clear the way with your ships, and invade Alexandria. If you conquer the city, exterminate the populace, destroy everything you can, especially military buildings. After all you hate them! Retrain your troops if possible before you move to the next city. Send your spy before you, for he can manage to open the gates, and easy the invasion. Continue destroying every thing you can in egyptian settlements, and move to Jerusalem, this time to stay (After all your migthy general needs a reward don't you think?). Start training an army similar to this one but this time you are coming to stay and not to slain every one...Bring forth garrisons to defend youself from surprise attacks when you conquer the city's...Do not worry about culture penalty...When you enter memphis to stay the remaining Egyptians will bow to you! Meanwhile, train a little army to invade cyprus... And then you have won the short campaign...If you want revenge from Armenia, Pontus and Parthia, do the same thing to those factions.

Alea jacta est.