Arche Seleukeia - A Guide by/with Hax

[Dutchhoplite]

Great guide

[machinor]

I'm quite far into my current AS campaign. It's a great guide.

[Hax]

Nice guide, Hax. I hope you could do something similar for other factions as well.

Thanks. Another few of my self-proclaimed specialties are Epeiros and Hayasdan, so perhaps I'll write guides for them as well. A guide for the latter is quite important, I think!

[Unintended BM]

Yeah, I suck at Hayasdan, you should make a guide for them!

[satalexton]

Seconded. Hai has good potential: Sturdy Medium infantry, excellent archers, wonderous cavalry.

p.s. In the east, persian hoplitai are the next best thing after smoked cheese.

[Cute Wolf]

Seconded. Hai has good potential: Sturdy Medium infantry, excellent archers, wonderous cavalry.

p.s. In the east, persian hoplitai are the next best thing after smoked cheese.

When I Play Hayasdan, my game usually developed into Kavakaza Sparabara line guarding line of archers behind, let the enemies charge my men, and I win..... Kardaka are somewhat just for guarding flanks

ADD: And the Royal army only consist of cavalry =p

[seienchin]

I usually dont bother with my cities on the boarders in the beginning and disband most of my troops to get way more than 10.000+ every round and than humiliate the ptollis by taking everything except egypt from them. Than I conquer minor asia and cyprus. Having sea trade makes minor asia extrem rich. Just have trading agreements with Macedonia, epeirus or whoever the heck is in charge of greece. Having so much money and provinces makes the AS game a little bit too easy for my taste.
Esspecially with the considerate Alex.exe Ki you are never endangered.

[vartan]

Seconded. Hai has good potential: Sturdy Medium infantry, excellent archers, wonderous cavalry.

p.s. In the east, persian hoplitai are the next best thing after smoked cheese.

The problem is the medium inf are low in numbers, archers aren't as armoured as their Syrian and Bosphoran counterparts, and the fact that Persian Hoplites are pretty useless, for they've poor morale, stamina, and their swords suck. I've experienced they even lose to missile fire so easily.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I'm having fun with my M/M Arche Seleukia campaign. I'm fighting every battle manually, plus micromanaging my huge empire, so I'm still at only 264 BC, but it's all good fun!

I've spent nearly all my money on town building thus far. I try to have something building in every settlement all the time. So my army is still very weak, composed of mainly cheap units like native spearmen, archers, and slingers. However, despite that, I've managed to hold Antiocheia-Margiane (just) and have actually retaken Hekatompylos and Asaak(!) after Pahlava took them early on due to their nearly-invincible FM's. I made peace with the Ptolemies first thing and they haven't been a problem since, being too busy fighting Elutheroi on their borders.

[WinsingtonIII]

The problem is the medium inf are low in numbers, archers aren't as armoured as their Syrian and Bosphoran counterparts, and the fact that Persian Hoplites are pretty useless, for they've poor morale, stamina, and their swords suck. I've experienced they even lose to missile fire so easily.

I've found that the Georgian Medium Infantry may even be a better choice than the Armenian Medium Infantry. They have slightly lower stats, but they make up for it with higher numbers. The main problem with both units I think is that sword units like them simply aren't very effective in the east. They can't hold off cavalry, and they can't go head to head with phalanxes very well, meaning their main use is as flankers against phalanxes. But, since you're playing as the Hai, your cavalry perform this job much more effectively, so in the end, they just end up being underwhelming, which is really too bad. I guess if your enemies are fielding lots of Theurophoroi, Thorakitai, or Hoplitai they could be an effective counter to those units, but I've found that the AS tends to go very phalanx heavy in its infantry selection. The ironic thing is that the enemies that these units would actually be good against (the Romani and the Western "Barbarians") are enemies that you probably will not run into very much in the average Hai campaign (if you are only trying to achieve your victory conditions that is).

As for Persian Hoplites, they are so disappointing it's unreal. If you want an armored eastern spear unit, the Babylonian Heavy Spearmen are actually better than them (higher defense and an armor piercing mace as a secondary instead of a low-lethality sword) and can be trained without going through reforms. Of course Babylonian Spears have a very small AOR, but they are pretty widely available as mercs.

Sorry for the somewhat OT post, in regards to the actual thread, this is a really great guide, Hax. I've started an AS campaign because of it and I have to say there's something about it that I haven't really experienced playing EB before. I think it's the novelty of having this huge empire, but since it's at the beginning of the game, it isn't secure (as opposed to late game huge empires where you have so much money and troops that you really don't have to worry about much). Actually losing provinces and knowing that it's going to be years before you can retake them is a very refreshing feeling.