Best faction in Vanilla?

[ReluctantSamurai]

What timeline are we talking here? IMHO, Armenia, Pontus, or Seleucia all have better cavalry than Macedon, especially Armenia. They do require some advanced infrastructure to produce, hence the time question.

Sure later on Armenia/Pontus/Scythia/The Seleucids are all a threat but by that time any Roman stack worth's it's salt will have Legionary Cohorts or better + Auxilia / Archer Auxilia + Onagers.

That mix will lose every time to a cataphract army. Roman Archer Auxilia cannot go toe-to-toe with Cataphract Archers and the Heavy Cataphracts will grind cohorts into the ground. I always love the suicidal Auxilla charging my Cataphracts I keep telling them that just because the manual sez you have a bonus fighting cavalry that you can go off charging armored cav with defensive values well over 30.....but they never listen and so die by the hundreds............