Ptolemaic Empire: how can I deal with Seleukeia?

Hey everyone,

I'm a fairly experienced TW player, but I have no experiences with EB. I'm currently playing my first campaign with the Ptolemaic Empire and my problem is that it turned into really boring grinding against Seleukeia.

I enjoyed the early part of my campaign a lot, I started with expanding to the north. Seleukeia still has Side, but other than that I took all its western cities. My northernmost city is Karkathiokerta and my easternmost city is Susa. When I reached their borders, Pontos and Hayasdan allied with Seleukeia against me and they attacked me, so now I am fighting Pontos in the East, Hayasdan in the North and Seleukeia in the East and North.

Pontos and Hayasdan are fairly realistic, they harass me with smaller groups and I'm strungling against them because most of my army is in the East. However, Seleukeia is a joke. I have to fight a battle every turn at Susa and about every third turn at Babylon against at least 1/2 stacks and often full stacks. I win every time because of the VERY experienced troops I have there, but it is getting really boring. I assume the AI cheating because it doesn't matter how much territory it loses, it still has enough money to throw these troops at me.

How do you break such a deadlock in EB?

Normally, when I reach this point I can either build up my economy to a point where I can support enough stacks to go around the deadlock and attack other cities or I bleed them dry in military victories. However, I can't do either in EB. Military victories obviously don't affect the AI and I can't build anything because everything is so expensive and I use all my money on troops to fight on three fronts.

I tried ceasefire (by offering trade rights and Susa), did not work. Pahlava and Baktria do not attack Seleukeia (which doesn't really make any sense because but whatever), so it doesn't have to fight on multiple fronts.

I play my campaign on M/M.

Hello aljaskuszobab, welcome to EB and to the .Org ~:wave: .

The EB A.I. receives financial support to ensure that it doesn't bankrupt itself. I believe the number of cities determines the amount of financial support, so if the Seleucids still have ten or so, they get a very big bonus to spend on units.

Unfortunately, the diplomatic A.I. of R:TW is stupid and fundamentally broken, and there's nothing EB can do about that. If you are playing at M campaign difficulty, it should be more manageable, but don't expect sensible diplomacy. Diplomatic relations automatically deteriorate when no positive interaction takes place, so the A.I. starts to hate you even when you do nothing (I find a regular, token tribute of 100 mnai can counteract this somewhat, but that still won't protect against stupid, opportunistic attacks or rabid hatred because a city revolted to your faction). The A.I. is also programmed to spare factions that are at war with the player, hence Baktria and the Parthians won't attack the Seleucids.

When it comes to diplomacy in EB or vanilla R:TW, you're always on your own.

In your case, I guess the best solution would be to reduce the number of threats/fronts on which you are fighting. Could you withdraw to one or two choke-points that you can defend with a single, strong stack? From that position, try launching a lighting campaign to eliminate Pontus and or the Hai. This will give you the breathing space you need to take on the Seleucids. Note that the objective of the campaign is neutralization, not conquest. If you can't spare the troops to garrison Pontus against potential invaders, don't be afraid to give it up. As I said, the A.I. won't leave you alone, even when it makes no sense for them to do so. So you should only have borders that you can defend strongly.

Let me know how it turns out.
:bow:

Thanks for the advice, but I think I have to accept that I won't win this campaign! I tried retreating and creating bottlenecks, but two rebellions created two more fronts (against Makedonia and the brown faction, its name escapes me), so I decided to abandon the campaign.

That said, I find the mod amazing, so I started a new one with Baktria.

the new campaign wont be any easyer and the brown faction are the arabs with saba

You have problems with the Grey Death and choose to play as Baktria ;) ? Brave.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aljaskuszobab

Thanks for the advice, but I think I have to accept that I won't win this campaign! I tried retreating and creating bottlenecks, but two rebellions created two more fronts (against Makedonia and the brown faction, its name escapes me), so I decided to abandon the campaign.

That said, I find the mod amazing, so I started a new one with Baktria.

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I would suggest you to try and sneak an army into Seleucid territory somehow, take a few of their best cities and demolish everything inside. That should give you some reprieve, but I suppose tedium cannot be defeated that easily. Good luck in your next campaign!

What I typically prefer to do is sneak a family member by ship into the steppes and recruit stacks of horsearcher mercs, because they absolutely rip Seleukid infantry stacks to pieces, and have the mobility to kill further and more efficiently per turn than an infantry stack. They could either open a new front up north against Hayasdan or Pontos, and slash a wide swath across the Caucasus to take the heat off you, or you can ship them back to be with the rest of your armies and send them to break through at Susa or Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia has far better terrain for HA encirclement battles though).