Best Strategy on a Ptolemy game?

[Unintended BM]

I always start a game, but then quit, so maybe if I used a good strategy, I'd continue.

What should I focus on first? Asia Minor, Ethiopia, Syria? I don't really know where to go first.

[Poulp']

Syria.

Recruit one or two diplomats in Side and Tarsos, send them to Greece and Pontus, then forget your holdings in Asia Minor at the beginning.
Send a spy to Kyrene and concentrate on the Nile Valley and prepare a big push from Alexandria to Antiocheia. You can use Kypros to support your push to Syria with fresh troops.
Once Syria is yours, you can reclaim Asia Minor.

From here, you decide if you head West and get rich with the sea trade in the Aegean, or East and get rich with the mines.
Phalanxes then barbarians in the West, phalanxes them horse archers in the East.

[Unintended BM]

I've been slowly playing this game, and it's turning out pretty well. First thing, I made a little army of machimoi phalanx, peltasts and some of that egyptian light cavalry, and I went and took Kyrene and Ammonion. I probably wouldn't have bothered to normally, but there's a rebel army around there that always bothers me, so while taking them out, I figured I might as well gain some land. While I did that, I put a small little army together and took Antiocheia. A few turns later, I lost Tarsos, but it wasn't too hard to get it back. I built mines on Kypros and built an army in Antiocheia, because you can use AS's good MIC there. I had a bunch of medium phalanx units, some Jews, some archers, mercenary thracian peltasts and some galatian mercenaries. I fought some big battles near Damaskos first, took that town, fought some more big battles near Palmyra, took that town too, and now I'm seiging Edessa. There's a decently sized army in there, but it's just a lot of eastern light infantry and some native phalanxes, so it shouldn't be too bad. I have spies looking at Babylon and Seleukeia, and there's like two units in each. I'll go and sack them at least, after I take Edessa. Then I guess I'll move on to Asia Minor. Pontos is causing trouble there, which is a good, because no one is bothering me yet.

It's a fun campaign. Not really hard at all, but you do fight quite a few big battles right at the start. I don't like how you don't have a good cheap phalanx unit that you can build outside of Egypt, but I imagine if I stopped fighting for a while and built up my economy, I wouldn't think of medium phalanxes as expensive.

[Gabeed]

Go for Antioch, Damascus, Bostra, and Palmyra, and largely ignore what happens to Tarsos and Side in the process. Once you take those cities, you should have the funds to fight the Seleukids while starting another campaign--I usually conquer Nubia and Ethiopia.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I don't like taking Antioch too early, because losing that city really cripples Seleucia and makes them very vulnerable to the Pahlava.

As the Ptolemies, I'd rather fight the Seleucids than the Pahlava, that's for sure! So I don't want a total Seleucid collapse.

In the early days of a Ptolemaic campaign, I prefer to settle for taking just Damascus from Seleucia, while going after Eleutheroi cities in Egypt, Libya, Sinai Palestine, and Asia Minor, and building up my economy.

As with all factions I play apart from Pahlava, Eleutheroi are my priority targets.

[Andy1984]

It strikes me how aggressive you guys are towards the Arche Seleukia. After 10 years of gameplay as the Arche, I've only recently besieged Tarsos and I might take it because I really need extra funds for my wars against Pahlava and the Ptolemeans. Until that point, I've lived with the fact that the Ptolemeans would send rather impressive armies towards Antioch and cripple all trade in the Western part of my empire. It costed me a family member, a failed sally from Antioch (after year 8 or so despite having Syrian archers, chariots and phalanxes), furious defenses at Damascos,... I could easily send an army towards the south and take every city they have, but I don't. Why? I like the constant infighting of us, diadochi.

I haven't played too many campaigns as the Ptolemeans, but I can hardly imagine they have a more difficult starting position than the AS. I don't think I ever felt the need to take Antioch early, let alone to attack Babylon. And when I did take the city, the campaign felt like it was already over. As Titus Marcellus Scato, I too believe taking Antioch will cripple the AS that much you'll be facing an impressive Pahlava in the middle or later game. If that's what you want to do: go ahead. I wouldn't advise it, as it may be rather boring with your poorly armoured units. :) If you dislike fighting the Pahlava, you might consider building up a naval empire in the eastern mediterrean: taking Krete, Rhodos, Sparta,... and become fabulously whealthy with your sea-trade.

[Gabeed]

@the last two posts . . .yes, obviously if you want to prolong the battles between the successor states, go more slowly at crippling the Seleukids. I assume, though, that by the OP's desire for the "best strategy" he means the most effective one.

[Unintended BM]

Actually, Pahlava never declared war on AS in my game. Here's some not completely current pictures:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1 is my army I used to take a large portion of Asia Minor. It worked pretty nicely.
2 is a rather large crappy AS army that's been standing in the same place for like the entire game.
3 is my faction leader on my northern border.
4 is out of order. It's just my faction heir moving over to Asia Minor.
5 is the weird faction relations going on. AS kept all of its beginning allies. I made another thread about that a while ago.
6 is just showing the AS capturing stuff. Makedon captured Nikaia a few turns later and started a war.
7 is just a random picture I took, not sure why I'm posting it.
8 is an overview of Syria, I guess.
9 is Egypt.
10 is Greece.
11 is the cool Punic war that was going on for a while in Sicily.

Sometimes I go screenshot happy and just hit the button a bunch of times, as seen in this post.

Anyways, I'd say the AS never is really a big challenge, they're just kind of an annoyance. They keep on sending silver shield dudes up to Babylon, which ruins my chances of auto-resolve working in my favor, so I fight all of those battles. Syria isn't really as big of a money maker as I thought. I was breaking even for most of my conquest until I started taking AS territory in turkey, and now I get crazy large amounts of money. It's a fun campaign that I will probably never finish. If I were to do it again, I'd capture Ethiopia first and then send armies to Greece and take Asia from both sides. That way, the AS could build up a little, while I do other stuff. I don't like blitzing like I did in this campaign because I never have enough time or money to build good barracks so I don't get cool unique units to capture big cities with.

It was fun though, I'd recommend a Ptolemy game to anyone.