Do you cheat with Pahlava?

[Cute Wolf]

I think your concept is wrong here, Im playing with Saka Rauka but since theyre almost the same,...

You do not need to cheat. Right from turn one you can go all out smashing anything that comes in your way, FMs with horse archers are impossible to face with Phalanx armies, None of my armies have yet sat down peacefully, theyve been on the move since turn one. I mean, Your a NOMAD, its your LIFE going out far and wide looking for things to kill.

well, I allready beaten Saka, Pahlava, and Sauromatae VC with no cheat at all...
*. (PS : but recently I've mod the EDB myself so I could build nomadism everywhere, that's it, campaigns that I won with World Domination without any kind of cheating is Saka, that occurs far before I become a modder)

[Cambyses]

@ Atraphoenix: i never cheat, never... i just asked people who played Pahlava for some stories based on their experience with Pahlava, because, to me, on the beginning it seemed imposible to play with them without cheats and at that point i wanted to quit. But not anymore! This is what i achieved this far (and i think im gonna go for victory screen)

here is my picture:

Ive got to say, for someone who is finding it so difficult, you sure have a large empire at an early stage of the game! The thing is to use all cavalry 3/4 stack armies. The basic horse archers and a couple of FM/riders should be enough to kill anything. They arent so expensive and move very fast. So you will find that youre upkeep is less than if you were using infantry (which you need a lot more of to cover the same area). Also you should suffer hardly any casualties and tehrefore not need to spend time/money retraining. If you are short of cash dont use elites and dont use mercs and dont build stuff you dont need. Many of the most expensive buildings give you very limited benefits and just arent necessary until you have more money than you know what to do with.

[Skuda]

I see no need to cheat with Pahlava. I never played it but it couldn't be harder than Saka Rauka and Saka is one of the easiest factions especially if you play on M/M or H/M

[Jebivjetar]

After a year since i wrote the first post in this thread i found no reason to cheat with Pahlava anymore. I guess it's the same with all EB factions, especially with "difficult" ones: once you learn what is the best expansion-route for your faction, army composition, tactics, and what is the most likely behavior of surrounding factions, it gets pretty easy to play. Few months ago i started Pahlava campaign anew, and it was, more or less, a piece of cake to reach Antiocheia and to have stable economy able to support decent army at the same time.

[ChingizLink]

Just as I said. The East has a lot of mining Money to get. Just Stay away from Client rulers and conquer mining cities. When I played Pahla I also raided Seleucid Settlements. Mainly because I needed to stop the Elite Stackspamming but not for money.

Wow, I had no idea how much those client rulers drained your economy. After reading this thread, I started a new campaign and, I gotta say, I have so much more $ now that I'm without any client/recruited rulers or generals.

[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)