Do you cheat with Pahlava?

[NoHelmet]

You should take Kophen (just east of Baktra), you could have a nice amount of cash from mining, and after that, India is always tempting. Even though that means another army, it will pay of. And dont forget the fact that cities in india have elephants in their garrisons, so bring some skirmishers

[xypherx]

Hmm I think there is no need for sacking cities and giving them up - I usually just conquer everything I can get as early as possible right before resistance can be recruited and i use many spies to encourage/suppress rebellions- sure they cost 100per turn but you will need them to move on with your forces instead of leaving leaders or horsearchers in town.
I think Pahlava is quite easy to play - you have the best heavy calvalry you can get - capture persepolis build barracks - build cataphracts and crush anything in your way,
on VH/VH you will have to use your general's guards exessively - just to reduce recruiting costs for other units - I usually charge with 3 units into a phalanx (as long as there is no faction member general present) and they usually just flee - just try to get away before they switch the direction of their lances an you will lose only 0 till 2 men - but thats fine with me - horse archers when they get some experience will even shot down heavier troops so in the end you will have the most effective army in the game at your command. But one thing is really annoying - skirmisher against cavalry i hate peltastoi - you charge into them and sometimes you kill just 3-6 and the rest of them is slaying your guards because of their missile attack - they are as long as under AI control often more effective than heavy spearmen - that sucks^^

I think the factions mentioned hard to play in the introduction are quite easy ones - as long as you are aggressive enough (hayasdan - just capturing AS capital and babylonia +3 other towns in the beginning and you will have an easy game) - I have more difficulties with Sweboz and others just due to the fact that you are low on money and every battle costs quite an amount of lives and you will have no possibility to recruit new ones without money( last game i conquered 8 provinces with the first forces you get in the beginning but had about 80k depts and was just slightly recovering as the getai got pissed off)

[ChingizLink]

Hmm I think there is no need for sacking cities and giving them up - I usually just conquer everything I can get as early as possible right before resistance can be recruited and i use many spies to encourage/suppress rebellions- sure they cost 100per turn but you will need them to move on with your forces instead of leaving leaders or horsearchers in town.
I think Pahlava is quite easy to play - you have the best heavy calvalry you can get - capture persepolis build barracks - build cataphracts and crush anything in your way,
on VH/VH you will have to use your general's guards exessively - just to reduce recruiting costs for other units - [snip made by Chingiz Link]

Okay, this is another thing that is totally news to me viz-a-viz EB: I had no idea that spies cause a ruckus and all other kinds of shenanigans when in a settlement that isn't your faction's! (this would explain why my allies all have such crappy public order, and why they tend to be so cold toward me when we hang out...I thought Rome just felt weird partying with Pontos, Saka, Sauromatae, and then their competitors like Macedon and Carthage...)

I've looked around the forum for info on that (and I'll keep looking, sorry for the off topic tangent), since I can't seem to get the public order in an enemy faction any lower when I use more than 1 agent. Is there a trick I'm missing?

Also, I totally agree re Pahlava (or Parthia in other realistic RTW mods) being fun to play/not difficult, though I'm probably biased (for several reasons).

[Ludens]

I've looked around the forum for info on that (and I'll keep looking, sorry for the off topic tangent), since I can't seem to get the public order in an enemy faction any lower when I use more than 1 agent. Is there a trick I'm missing?

Maybe only the highest-level spy causes unrest? There is an agent guide for M1:TW, but I don't know of similar research into R:TW. In any case, it's usually a waste of effort to try and get enemy towns to revolt, as the threshold for A.I. towns appears far lower than for the human player.

[xypherx]

they can actually cause quite an amount of unrest - just test it - the seleukids have many spies in that area and when you have some good spy or assassin just kill one of them in your town an than you can see a difference in civil unrest, spies are able to even provoke revolts quite easy and early in this region - the problem is that you will have to oppose a stronger rebel garrison than factional garrison in some rare cases,
when you have a problem with capturing the easternmost settlements of AS - send spies, when you have problems with their public order, send a trained spy usually there is a Saka spy in one of them and you will have to throw him out or kill him in order to get control of the town (same with the AS southeastern provinces - often AS has 2 or more spies in or near them and they really suck)