Administration of Arche Seleukia

I've recently began my first campaign as Arche Seleukia and am having a bit of trouble managing the empire. Usually I start off with a small faction such as Pontus or Epeiros, and then grow into an empire. I am finding to start with an empire is a different type of challenge. Do any experienced AS players have any advice? At the beginning I focused on building mines, and now have most available tier 1 mines built or building. I've also focused on improving Antioch and Seleukia while and providing a minimum level of development to my numerous eastern towns. I've pretty much left Asia Minor alone and plan to focus on that late in the game after securing the east (hoping to have a great war with Pontus and/or whoever wins on mainland greece later on). I'm also vigorously pursuing war with Ptolemaic Egypt, and now hold Alexandria and Memphis. So my question boils down to this, where/how should I focus my building efforts while fighting a war with Egypt? The year is about 260BC.

TM

Sounds good, I'm about 50 years into an AS campaign atm using a simmilar method to your own. Personally I gifted/let rebel more or less everything east of Persepolis, and have only just retaken my old provinces. Same as yourself I'm only just getting involved in Anatolia. Ptolies are beaten back to the sahara and the lower nile and have been at peace for a few decades now.
My advice would be continue developing your principle cities, and then just develop any infrastructure where you can, preferably on the interior of your empire (unless you have some really productive border provinces you want to develop).
Then just cut costs by keeping garrisons to a minimum, keep a few small armies of regionals and mid level troops to defend your empire, and use your developed cities to pump out a "proper" army or two.
More or less what I did anyway and seems to have worked quite well so far :2thumbsup:

Cheers

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Originally Posted by overweightninja

Sounds good, I'm about 50 years into an AS campaign atm using a simmilar method to your own. Personally I gifted/let rebel more or less everything east of Persepolis, and have only just retaken my old provinces. Same as yourself I'm only just getting involved in Anatolia. Ptolies are beaten back to the sahara and the lower nile and have been at peace for a few decades now.
My advice would be continue developing your principle cities, and then just develop any infrastructure where you can, preferably on the interior of your empire (unless you have some really productive border provinces you want to develop).
Then just cut costs by keeping garrisons to a minimum, keep a few small armies of regionals and mid level troops to defend your empire, and use your developed cities to pump out a "proper" army or too.
More or less what I did anyway and seems to have worked quite well so far :2thumbsup:

Cheers

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thats pretty much what I did. The eastern provinces like to rebel, so you have 2 options for an easy time with AS (not the only successful means).

1. Keep your power center at Antioch, and push for control of Anatolia and Egypt whilst gifting off and selling your provinces north and east of Persepolis

or

2. Move your power center to Seleucia and play defensive in the SW perhaps as far as Sinai, and capture any other Ptolomy provinces NW and maintain peace with the other Anatolian factions while you focus fire NE on Pahlava, Baktria, and Saka to secure your flank. You'll still have some discontent in the eastern provinces even though your capital will be closer, although you can offset the cost of managing the normally large garrisons by focusing on developing the mines, and eventually turn a profit with the later stage mines.

You also cant get too comfortable with the tax setting, as you'll have to continually check the provinces for rebel sentiment almost every turn.

I was very sucessful with the following strategy:
First thing to do is moving the capital to Seleukeia and build roads and foreign MICs everywhere. With your starting troops and a few additional Pantodopoi Phalangitai you can kick out the Ptolemaoi out of Asia Minor and the Phoenician provinces till 270. They will take a while to recover, you may even be able to take Alexandreia and Memphis.
I took Baktra as soon as I could, this crippled the Baktrians and broke their alliance with Pahlava. I also destroyed Pontos very early, so I had a lot of time to conquer Asia Minor. Of course it might be more fun to fight these factions later on, but I deceided to go the easy way here...

You'll also find some usefull AS-tips in this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79867

The first two decades are equally a pain in the *** and extremely fun. My opening move is always to take Tarsus, which you can do with the few troops you can spare from Asia Minor and Antioch. Judaeans and Peltastai are your friend here. I can usually manage to hold the empire together, more or less. Once you took Tarsus and Side, Asia Minor is safe for the moment and requires only minimum garrisons (provided Pontus is concentrating on rebel towns, not on you). I tend to spend what I can on economy, recruiting offensive units in Antioch only, to work my way down the coast to Sinai.
Watch out for Baktria. They'll betray you around 250 at the latest. Until then, your eastern defences should be up (but that's plenty of time).
Once the ptolemies are gone the world is your oyster. You can take out Pontus and then Hayasdan or you can take out Baktria and Pahlava. I wouldn't recommend to go immediately after Greece then. It will be a tough fight and eat up your resources. Save Greece for later.

Actually I've found that behaving like the AI (spamming cheap troops and expanding like hell) really works much better than I thought. Especially these Pantodopoi Phalangitai are decent troops, they can even kill Pahlava Bodyguards. Managing such a big empire isn't easy, it might take very long till you can recruit elite troops because you'll have to focus on economy and public order.

I've tried one AS campaign.

Upon starting up the game and looking over the vast lands the AS has to control....I immediately quit.

I don't know why, but controlling an empire that large from turn one just seemed a little overwhelming. I like to organize my empire, specializing cities, etc. That's easy to do when you start out with one or two provinces....The AS seems like it would be a nightmare to organize right from the word go.

I also know that's the point....it provides a unique challenge.

The largest empires I could bring myself to play have been Ptolemaioi and Qarthadastim. They were both fun though.

Maybe I'll give the AS a try in 1.0.

Thanks for the replies. Right now I think I've broken the Ptolemies backs but think I've let Baktria expand a little too much. I'm going to try and mop up and stabilize the war on that front and shift resources to attack Baktria. Should I go straight for their capital?

TM

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Originally Posted by burn_again

I was very sucessful with the following strategy:
First thing to do is moving the capital to Seleukeia and build roads and foreign MICs everywhere. With your starting troops and a few additional Pantodopoi Phalangitai you can kick out the Ptolemaoi out of Asia Minor and the Phoenician provinces till 270. They will take a while to recover, you may even be able to take Alexandreia and Memphis.

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God yes almost forgot, roads everywhere! Build them early or it'll be a nightmare when you get truly huge :shame:

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Originally Posted by TunaMaker

Thanks for the replies. Right now I think I've broken the Ptolemies backs but think I've let Baktria expand a little too much. I'm going to try and mop up and stabilize the war on that front and shift resources to attack Baktria. Should I go straight for their capital?

TM

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Baktra is very important for several reasons. Of their 3 starting provinces it's the only one where Baktria can recruit their better factional troops, because they have lvl4 gouvernments in the other 2. Also you can recruit lots of good units there. Then it's their most build up province at the start, so you'll get a very rich city. If you manage to take Baktra early, they won't be able to expand to India and will have only regional troops left.
Even if they have expanded yet it is one of their most important provinces, so take it if you can.