Sassanids (BI faction)

[projectmayhem]

ok so i found the sassanids to be really easy compared to the Byzantines after playing both to victory... the ERE/Byzantines can't really stop your heavy cav to save their life... even fulls legions of roman spearmen fall to 3-4 units of any heavy calvary with few of your units lost (especially immortals ofc). basically the strategy is to charge them all at one line or spears and scare them to death with the arrows and the charging and such, they get a lil paniced and when they start to run, all your guys pull out their bows and shoot them in the soft spot in the back where they don't have armor.


that's pretty much it for the battle strat just one more... your spears are better fighters than almost any horde unit (and also have the full 120 unit size), so if you find yourself up against them train lots of levy spearmen (at advanced exp if at all possible).

For the campaign map strat i found the game is almost too easy if you simply aim for antoch early. take it with everything you can, exterminate, and get to work teaching them about heaven and hell (Zoroastrian) with all of your faction leaders and generals (you get at least 5% conversion for every family or general in the region, so send them all to help initialy, then attack from there)

once anitoch likes you enough, set it to be your capitol (VERY IMPORTANT!!) it is not only close enough to keep your homelands happy, it's also now your biggest city, and the ERE was kind enough to build a hipodrome there so you can train all the cav that are so good at killing romans.

from there just fight a long 1 on 1 with the byz/east romans, making trading and map agreements with everyone else, and try not to war anyone but the rebels and the ERE.

To comment on an earlier post of religious troubles its not that hard: take more generals, or the ones with 25%-30% conversion strengths to new cities, and sometimes you need to use the border conversion strat... which is taking cities that border your unruley target, sit your generals with conversion on the edge of that territory, waiting 5-10 turns then attacking it (it will already be mostly your religion.)

i like them and their horsies so much that i am currently working on taking over the world with them. right now i have killed ERE and ERE rebels and own ALL of their homelands. I eliminated the vandals and am fighting a standoff with the WRE and two horde tribes (the yellow ones [name escapes me] and the huns [who are almost dead]) I took carthage and everything south of the Mediterranean, and i have more money than davey crocket. (the ex ERE cities are goldmines, as are your homecities) The entire east med is full of my trade fleets from alexandria to antoch to carthage to constantinople to jerusalem (each netting over 2k/turn)

[samiosumo]

Playing H/M i started by taking Kotais and turning it into my unit centre. With a couple of armies i took antioch and tarsus(very hard to control they keep rioting) Then moved south and took Sidon and Jerusalem. Fully at war with ERE now they started blockading my ports, with 4 ships i won 15 consecutive sea battles and on land was helped by the arrival of ERE rebels, and the Berbers. Got my king in a ship with elephants (from Pharapsha) and full army and took alexandria. The WRE allied with me so ERE was at peace. THEY offered me traade rights and map info then next turn blockaded my port. My 5 star kng was dead in the ground so i changed my heir to my best general. Next turn my king dies so i gather an army and sail across the black sea to constantinople. it was held by rebels i take it and hold it. I take Philedelphea but keep on being attacked from Petra and the ARab inferia.

Next i plan to take Petra and Dumathra, then try to hold Tarsus.

[Revenant69]

Just started playing as the Sassanids (BI v1.6 Hard / Hard) cuz I love playing factions with nice cavalry

My strategy was to do a two pronged assault.
1. Collect all armies from Artaxia, Phraaspa, Artaxarta (you should get almost a full stack) under the command of Melchior, the Eran Spahbod - Commander-in-chief of all Sassanid armies, and take Kotais. You'll have to spend a few years there teaching the Armenians about Zoroastra and pacifying the populace. You can then use this army, if your northern mountainous border is secure that is, to march across the mountains to Sinope and Caesarea.

2. Collect all armies from Ctesiphon, Hatra and in between them and quickly occupy the bridge between Hatra and Antioch. Let the Romans waste their forces in bridge attacks. After you have smashed their stacks in bridge battles you can move your army up to take Antioch. You can then use this army, retrained in Antioch, to take Tarsus and to march south into Judea and Aegyptus.

Sassanids have one enemy - the Eastern Roman Empire, so make sure to stay nice with the ERE enemies. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Another great thing about Sassanids is that you can use their generals as a solo rebel mop up army. In this way you can train a few generals pretty quick to silver and gold chevrons.

You can use Ctesiphon and Antioch as your army training centers. Note that one of your family members has two nice ancillaries (Decorated Hero and a Mercenary Captain) that help train troops faster and cheaper. For instance, Clibinarii Immortals usually take 4 turns to train. However, you can train them in 3 turns, just see the picture below:



Just transfer these ancillaries to a governor in your troop building city to make training units cheaper and faster. Indeed, 4 turns - 30% = 2.8 turns and I guess the game rounds it up to 3 turns. Although still kinda strange that 30% reduction in troop price actually reduces the training time too. I wonder if there is a way to actually attain a 50% reduction in price (and so in time as well) to train units. This would mean the Sughdians, Clibinarii, War Elephants and Cataphracts would take 1 turn to train. That would just be EVVVVIL =)
Hmm, will have to look at all ancillaries in RTW:BI v1.6. Anyone got a link to the list of all different ancillaries and their effects?

Will write more of my thoughts at a later point, once I advance through the campaign. Cheers.

[Revenant69]

First things first. It seems that I was wrong about the fact that Sassanids start the game with a family member who has a Decorated hero and a Mercenary Captain ancillaries - it's just that I got them realy quick in my campaign.

Secondly, I dug through the ancillary file last night and managed to find some interesting stuff and do some tests as well. What are my results? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words...



So, it is possible to halve the training time of elite units (and Sassanids have lots of units which take more than one turn to train). In fact, the ONLY possible (for Sassanids) combination of ancillaries necessary to get the desired effect is the following:
Decorated Hero - 20% reduction;
Drillmaster - 10% reduction;
Master Smith - 10% reduction;
Mercenary Captain - 10% reduction.

A question rises. How would one go about "breeding" these ancillaries? To this end, I compiled a little chart of triggers and condition necessary to get the ancillaries.


And now some information from my personal observations.
1. To get a Decorated Hero ancillary just send a lone general unit on some rebel/brigand hunt and make sure that this unit takes enough casualties to be awarded the 20% chance to get a Decorated Hero.
2. Drillmaster is tougher to get as the chances are lower. Just put a general with Command of 4 higher as a governor of a city, any city for that matter, and train infantry units. I got my Drillmaster when I put Melchior, the starting general, to subdue the residents of Ancyra and he was training peasant garrison. So training cheap peasants will suffice, they are infantry after all.
3. To get the Master Smith, your city has to have an Armourer building and have a governor. Then, at the end of each turn, you get a 2% chance to recruit this ancillary. May take a while...
4. Mercenary Captain is one of the easiest one to get, just recruit some mercenaries once in a while and you'll get him.

Once you have all four above mentioned ancillaries, transfer them to the governor of your troop production city and be ready to start the Sassanian Blitzkrieg!!!
Beware, however, the upkeep cost of a unit is not reduced !!!

[Severous]

@Revenant69
Excellent posts. Learnt something there. Thank you.

I will look out for that training effect on recruitment.

[Revenant69]

@Revenant69
Excellent posts. Learnt something there. Thank you.

I will look out for that training effect on recruitment.

Thanks Severous, I tried my best, although, as it turnes out, the information in my previous post is not entirely accurate. I took the information for the table with ancillaries from an old Excel file. As I later found out, this file was for RTW 1.2 or 1.3. To correct this mistake, I actually looked through the export_descr_ancillaries.txt file in BI/Data folder and RTW/Data folder and incorporated the changes.

The full and final description can be found here: Military discounts Ancillaries

Hope you find it even more useful.

[Severous]

This information is not restricted to this faction. It deserves a place in the research part of this forum.

See if you can find a suitable thread here..or get a new thread going:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=88

[Revenant69]

This information is not restricted to this faction. It deserves a place in the research part of this forum.

See if you can find a suitable thread here..or get a new thread going:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=88

You're right Severous, I'll request to open an appropriate thread in Ludus Magna.
Cheers.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

If you do that, it would be good to include other ancillaries' adding boni such as the army movement bonus (drillmaster +25%, geographer +15%, quartermaster +15%/ 55% total) or those adding command stars (quite a lot).

Imagine the impact of the movement bonus for factions like the Sassanids that can rely on all-cavalry armies.

When playing as the WRE, I accumulated some command ancillaries and shared them around between my new generals, so they all had the nightfighter trait which helped me a lot against hordes.

Good work until now but it's not complete yet.

[Hound of Ulster]

Ah, the Sassinsids...my favorite faction in any total war game.

I found out real quick that the Sassinsid infantry (except Sughdians) suck, that you make more money with them with low taxes and small garrisons, and that the Eastern Empire can't stand up to all cav armies.

My best force with Sassinsids was...

6x ClibImmortals
8x horse archers
2x clibnarii (sometimes)
4x cataphracts
+ some Elephants sometimes

You hit the flanks with the horse archers, the center with ClibImmortals and wait with the Cataphracts for any weak spots in the line. You then punch into those weak spots with both the Immortals and the Cataphracts.

I conquered all of Asia minor, the Levant and Egypt (albeit on easy/medium) with only two small cav armies. I would have knocked the Eastern Empire out and won the campaign by about 460 A.D if I hadn't decieded to drop vanilla RTW for various mods.

[samiosumo]

although it maqy be frowned upon by many of the more "hardcore" members i find that if you want Immortals and elephants and sugdians quickly i use the add money and finish queue cheats on turn one. First prees th "¬" buuton. Then type "add_money 200000" press enter. then press shift up and press enter. repeat until you have 5 million or whatever (trust me, you'll need it) then go on to one of your cities and fill the queue. then type "process_cq [settlement name, e.g. Hatra]" then press enter. next press shift up nad press enter. repeat until all buildings for that settlement are built. then do the sae for all settlements.

when you take a settlement you should destroy everything there. then build every thing up. even if you take a big christian settlement (90% or more) you can dewstroy everything then build all your zorestrian buildings. The conversion of the population to your religion should take a couple of turns.

*****the "process_cq" cheat dosen't work with settlements with two names*****

[Hound of Ulster]

All I usually did was destroy all of the Christian buildings and then built my Zorastranian stuff to replace. That and low taxes usually kept Asia Minor and the Levant in line.

[Quintus.JC]

The Sassanid shoud be steamrolling once they take Antioch. from there they can train Cataphracts and Climbrii, unlike Parthia their infantry is also worth while. anyhow playing Saassanid was easier than I thought, apart from their inability to build any advanced Plumbing system, which was always a pain in the backside.

[Hound of Ulster]

We Persians don't need plumbing..........

Right now I've got the Byzantines on the run (new campaign with the VBM M/M) with only Alexandria and Constantinople between me and victory.

I love Cataphracts.

The Sassinid infantry are actually really good for defending against sieges.

make an alliance with the ERE rebels. it helps a lot.

Antioch is the key that unlocks the door to Constantinople.

[Hamilcar Barca]

I have a few questions and could use some help if anyone has a minute.

I'm obviously not seeing what some other people here are in regards to the Sassanids. I've seen comments regarding how rich these guys are and how they get richer. I've seen comments on how some of my outlying provinces are on the verge of rebellion. I'm playing this game on the Total War:Eras edition and I've seen neither. When I read these guides it causes confusion.

What exactly is the starting income for the Sassanids in the versions you guys are playing, because in this one I'm starting each campaign (regardless of diff level) with a meager 7000 dinari. That's hardly enough to get the ball rolling without falling into dept. Especially when every other faction in the game starts with atleast twice as much money as that. I've played barbarian factions that all seem to start with about 15,000 yet I'm playing Persia now and they only start with half that?

Am I making too much over the starting income or is this something strictly confined to the version I own? Are you guys seeing that at the start too or what?

Thanks gang.

Oh and P.S.

Long-time reader of the forums here and glad to have finally gotten that first post in. This is a great site. Appreciate any help y'all could offer. Thanks.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

Playing the 1.6 version, my starting money is 7000, too. But I disband some troops which I feel are worthless on turn 1 - slingers, javelin throwers and camel raiders that is. I build what I can afford on turn one, usually sewers in the northern settlements in the mountains and something else in Hatra and Ctesiphon. You need to get that population growing in the mountain towns. You know what buildings to concentrate on for money.
Kotais in the northwest (modern day Georgia) is my first target. I start besieging it with my faction heir on turn 1 to prevent they build a christian shrine. I move in some more troops from Artaxarta on turn 2.

My early field army consists of only the 4 starting clibinarii and two nomad horsearchers for chasing routers, of course commanded by the Eran Spahbad. There is not much that can stand against this small but effective army and those clibs will gain experience fast. Later armies consist of cataphracts and clibinarii at a 1:2 ratio. Edit: A surprise from India might be useful, too.

Tactical: You know how to use that combo, right? ( )
A. Keep your cataphracts back in the beginning and use your horsearchers to disrupt the enemy formation.
B. Now pick single units, isolate them and pinch them between two clibinarii. The one in front of them serves as a bait to keep them in direction, the other in the rear decreases numbers and moral by ,well, shooting them in the back. When their ammo is depleted, decide whether you want to shoot some more - so turn the enemy in opposite direction by pretending a charge from their back - or if you want to save the ammo for other enemy units...
C. Get your cataphracts in position for a good charge. Charge in with lances, then switch to swords (alternative attack) and sandwich with clibs from the other direction. Result:
D. Enemy unit annihilated, no own casualties. Repeat with next unit.
Advice: - Beware of enemy javelins and pila, keep out of their range. If charging, order to run the last meters.
- Enemy archers are targets for early charges before they can do any harm. Just surround the enemy army, isolate them and charge.
- If you are in a melee, something went wrong. If you are in a melee and being charged by legio lanciarii, pull out immediately.
- Your clibinarii will get tired by shooting their arrows. Avoid to charge with tired units.
This should help you to preserve your precious army, may they gain a lot of experience and become ever stronger...

[Hamilcar Barca]

Thanks Flavius Flave.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

BTW, welcome to the hood Ham Bee.

[Hound of Ulster]

Its good to see more followers of the Savaran amongst the org.

If you feel that the vanilla campaign is a pushover, try the House of Sassan in both Rio's Flagellum Dei and the Invasio Barborum mods. Its hard. very hard.

[Roslagii Keel]

Faction Overview: Sassanids
Wow, this sure is a popular faction! Good for me I like to write. Don't know if I can provide any new insights, but hopefully this will be some moderately entertaining reading.

General Overview
The seal is broken. The Parthians overthrown. The spirits of the Immortals stir from their slumber, eager for combat and new glory. The legacy of Alexander is gone, our old enemies conquered by the Romans. But they are a divided people. Ripe. Once more the peoples of asia stand united under the banners of Persia. Once more the armies of the east stand ready to claim their rightful place as rulers of this wretched world. As leader of the known world's oldest empire, you must use every edge at your disposal to crush the Romans, who will stop at nothing to halt your ever-increasing dominion of the east. By bow and mace, dagger and diplomacy, the light of Zoroaster and the world's finest generals, the Sassanids will be victorious!

The Sassanid Army
The key strength of the persian army (and sometimes it's key weakness) has always been it's multi-ethnicity. Together with a core of levy infantry and persian elites, you command the finest warriors from all over asia: Specialized elites who cannot easily be matched by the copycat romans. It's relatively easy to use the sassanid's best units effectively, but to master them, you must learn to use the supporting units as well.

Infantry
Levy Spearmen suffer from a lack of special abilities and are probably the worst of their kind in the game. Their main achievement is the tight formation, unlike the unwieldy and vulnerable "horde formation" utilized by runaway slaves and peasants. This alone make them better fodder units than peasants, and good training (extra experience) also helps. Use them with wild abandon to tie up enemy units and don't be alarmed when they die or run away as there is always plenty more ready for training in the nearest settlement. Unless you have an all-cavalry army, always bring two more levies than you really need and watch the enemy crumble under the sheer weight of numbers. Sughdian Warriors are very badass-looking with their cruel maces and face-covering helmets, and are the terror of roman legionaries! Understand that roman infantry use swords and spears exclusively in hand-to-hand; good weapons against barbarians, but not against disciplined heavy infantry. A skilled mace swing on the other hand can crush a shield and the arm that holds it, and a man wearing chainmail hit by a mace could just as well be naked. If you're not afraid of micro management, you should continue to train sughdians in the cities were they are available and continuosly spread them around the empire. Make sure you have at least two units in every important border town, as such a settlement will be very hard to take. They will typically suffer few casualties, so don't consider sending them back for retraining unless they have lost about 50% of their numbers. A carefully managed unit of sughdians with silver equipment and high experience is a nigh unstoppable force. Also, garrisoned at border towns they are near at hand if you feel they are more needed in your field armies.

Cavalry
Nomad Archers are your standard horse archers and this subject hardly needs to be further elaborated upon. Clibinarii are the awesomeness of the east and make the "equites clibinarii" of the ERE look like mounted, armored bakers (I mean, look at those wooden clubs!) Cataphracts are the usual "finish them" cavalry, and now look even more awesome with the symbol of persia emblazoned upon their shields. Camel Riders are a bit tricky, since they are your only light cavalry and not nearly fast enough to be reliable in that duty. Often you are forced to use nomads instead and while this is an adequate solution it would sometimes be better to have more meleeish light cavalry at your disposal. Still, good when taking the southern provinces from the ERE. Armoured Camel Riders are slow, very slow. They are cavalry-routers of the highest degree but difficult to use offensively. I´ve found them to be a great supporting unit for my infantry, especially when the time comes to wrest Thracia from whatever steppe faction that holds it. Present a line of levy spearmen to the enemy elite cavalry, receive the charge and send in your camels quickly. War Elephants. No one else has them anymore. They are worth bringing to battle just for the sheer fun factor of watching them tear up enemy formations. Send them to tie up one enemy flank, pin the enemy center with your infantry and send all your fast and nasty units against your enemy's other flank.

Missile
I just love Kurdish Javelinmen. "Eat javelins, roman oppressors!" Suprisingly effective in melee, these guys really deserve to see more use by sassanid players. While the "skirmish screen in front of infantry" tactic is oldfashioned, the kurds can run right back into the fight when your spearmen has received the charge and make a good account of themselves. Needless to say, they are also superb ambushers. Mountain Slingers are another unit that is easy to underestimate. They can soften up comitanses and force them to come to you, and can even inflict casualties on equites cataphractii and clibinarii. Remember, even a single casualty on these units is a good achievement becase of their cost and high defense. Slingers can now hide in long grass, and considering the range of slings compared to javelins this can be really useful in striking at the heavy cavalry of the enemy, then forcing them to pursue the slingers out of position, creating a gap for you to exploit. Lastly we come to the persian Desert Archers. They are another cool-looking unit, with shields strapped to their bow arms making them look like the elite skirmishers they are. Persia has always been famed for it's archers and these guys are no exeption. Superior equipment, training, and stamina ensure that they are way above average foot archers.

General's Bodyguard
The Immortals are back and where are the greeks now to oppose them? As every sassanid commander will know, this is the best bodyguard unit available to any army. They should play a more active role in battles than other generals, as they are less fragile and can often steamroll the enemy almost by themselves.

Buildings/Technology
Your main enemy control more provinces and sea trade than you, so make sure to give the building of trade caravans high priority. Being an entirely zoroastrian faction is a great edge over the ERE, as this nullifies any governors religion penalties and zoroastrian temples provide more public order due to law bonuses than any other religion. Combined with some good old eastern law enforcement rioting and revolts should be a rare occurance in your provinces, if indeed they happen at all. Otherwise the Sassanids have access to pretty much the same buildings as earlier eastern factions. They can build level 3 roads and this is really, really nice for trade and distributing sughdians to the far corners of the empire.

Diplomacy
The Eastern Empire Rebels will be your key allies in the early to mid game. They are frequently too weak to do more than annoy the ERE, but this is still desirable. If they manage to get a stable foothold within ERE lands and you have money to spare, consider donating some to your allies. The rebels will frequently invest this money in better walls and more troops, and as long as the ERE and EER stay at war this aids your cause greatly. Other important allies include the Roxolani (unless driven away by the Huns.) Don't let the ERE get an alliance with them before you! If they are not driven west and control Tribus Alanni, they will occasinaly attack your northern provinces unless you're allies. You don't need that annoyance. Encourage them to expand west instead. It is also good to be allied with wathever steppe faction currently causing the most trouble in the ERE's western provinces. Usually this means the Huns, but occasionaly the Sarmatians, Goths, or Slavs. Keep a diplomat in the area if things turn complicated (as they will.)

Campaign Advice
Just some general opinions:
§ Don't bother taking Campus Allanni or Dimmidi. They are poor, far away from your objectives, and not worth the time and effort. Invest your armies elsewhere.
§ Keep track of the Eran Shahbod and the High Priest of Zoroaster(can't remember the titles correctly.) While the bonuses from these positions seem minor, they are frequently your best general and best governor, respectively. Your starting supreme commander, Melchior, is simply amazing. Use him.
§ Choose your battlefields. Many of your units excel in rough terrain, while many ERE units do not.
§ Exploit the AI's tendency to attack cities with captured eagles. Build the best possible walls, train a good garrison and strike hard whith your field armies while the romans smash themselves on your city.

[gollum]

The Sassanids are too easy, almost anti-climactic as once you take Antich from ERE and cut them in two there is no going back for them, and taking Antioch can happen very fast... Unfortunately due to win requirements there is no need to fight the Hordes or the barbarians - however the Sassanid campaign can shine at 34 or more required settlements that include the Italian peninsula, North Africa, and the balkans.

[Callicratidas]

Long ago I had a Sassanid Persian miniatures army. As I recall the "Levy Spearmen" where moral class "D" ( "A" being the best) one article said that in many cases these where slaves or bound men whose morale was so poor that they where in some instances chained together !

I remeber a unit of cataphracts rated as "Super" heavy Cavalry and elephants of course. The meat of the army was an "Extra" heavy Cavalry archer/lancer the rider had chain mail and the horse was armored on the front.