Problems

[duncan.gill]

Got a difficult situation. I am trying to spread the yellow death to all corners of the world and have almost succeeded (only the Casse, Pahlava and some rebels are remaining). The Pahlava have been beaten back to one small town in the far north. I built up an army of HA to finish them off however upon besieging the town I found that right next to the town was an army of something like 10 family members (all of which had large, ultra-heavy bodyguards).

The problem that I had – how do you defeat an army like this? I do not think that I can access experienced/strong enough troops to take on an army of that nature. The tactic that I usually use against Satres and the like has been phalanx combat but the heavy horse will push through phalanxes even in head-on charges (plus there is the problem of cutting through the heavy armour). I tried assassination but this just ended up in the death of my assassins (including all the experienced ones). I could try hitting them with 2 or 3 armies at once but I don’t trust the AI not to do something stupid with the reserve armies. I have enough gold that I could bribe all the family members however diplomacy doesn’t seem to work (and I don’t want to use FD because I want to complete my conquest without cheating).

Any suggestions? I was thinking of recruiting full stack of elite Thracian infantry but don’t know how well they will go against heavy horse.

[johnhughthom]

Beseige with huge armies and deplete their units, if you are lucky they may get depressed with the seige and get a huge morale penalty. 10 Pahlav family members, yikes.

edit: whoops read it wrong, next to the town, that is a nightmare. Those elite Thracian dudes will kill a lot of them but will also die quickly, used in conjunction with Phalanx it may work, it may take more than one attack though.

[desert]

Presumably, they will have at least 1 ten star FM, so you could buy every single mercenary in the world and they would defeat even that constant stream of fullstacks. Your best bet is to take the settlement, so those FMs will become Eleutheroi, enabling you to take care of them at your leisure.

Ah, i see - they are outside the settlement. So what you should do is let the AI attack the city for you, while you control a huge stack of mercenaries to delay the FMs. Then, wait for the AI to take the town square and you win.

[antisocialmunky]

Rocks... very large rocks from your Greek made rock tossing implements.

[Chris_]

I had exactly the same problem in my old Luso migration campaign. Around 10 Pahlavan family members in one stack. I believe what I did was :

Build a very large strong army and hide it somewhere near the town (in trees or something).

Move spies (as many as possible) into the settlement.

Sent a series of smaller armies to hang around near the superstack. As always, the AI jumps at the opportunity to ruin P1s day, and attacks the army. Fight the battle, try and take out a family member if you can, it's not really important though.

After that battle is over, you should be able to move in your hidden army, and with some luck the gates will be opened by the spies and you can get in. Also, if you have some siege weapons or elephants, take them as you will still have a chance if the spies don't work.

Basically, there's no point engaging a Pahlavan death stack. Take their city and laugh at them as they stand aimlessly and eventually die (they really did annoy me in that campaign ).

[Aemilius Paulus]

I quite frankly do not see your problem. Just train a bunch of stacks of the best spearmen, or the Thracians, and then siege the city with multiple stacks, but without AI control. Never use phalanxes - they SUCK against heavy cavalry. Their pikes never seem to kill anything mounted that is heavier than medium cavalry. So just storm the city, AI reinforcement control off, and when your first stack is used up, the second will enter the map. If it does not do the job, then the third one should. Siege weapon spam is not really viable unless you have more than 500,000 mnai in your treasury, as they cost a fortune. However, your empire should be able to support at least three extra stacks. In my current Romani campaign, I have more than 15 armies, all of very high quality, and 115 territories.

How many territories do you own?

[duncan.gill]

At the moment I owe all the settlements bar 7 or so; I have been supporting a number of expensive full stack armies so and extra couple shouldn’t make any difference.

Are there any spearmen that are particularly good against heavy cav?

Unfortunately the FM army is literally right next to the settlement (so that if I attack one then the other army arrives as reinforcements). The other issue is that if I attack (but fail to kill) the FM then in a couple of turns their bodyguards go back up to full strength.

[bovi]

When you have almost all settlements, just spam ANY units and send 20 stacks at them in succession. They're tough, but can't take unlimited enemies.

[Megas Methuselah]

Yeah, Bovi's right. It also sounds as if he's suggesting that blitzing the world is kind of boring and takes the realism out of the game, in which case I would agree.

Anyways, just spam Thureophoroi or something similar. Attack the army with at least 4 stacks of spearmen, with another 4 ready to attack in the very same turn in case you lose the first battle.