Arche Seleukia difficulty level?

**Andy1984** · 05-21-2010, 15:00

I'm not sure about the automated battles. It's quite fun having your soldiers butchered, so I never auto_lossed my battles. But you'll have to retreat since your family member needs to survive the battle in order to gain the trait.

kind regards,

Andy

**Dragannia** · 05-21-2010, 22:27

Ah okay. Still, is there a minimum size to the army that has to lose? Because if there isn't I could send a tiny army to be sacrificed.

**Ludens** · 05-22-2010, 19:07

Yes, I think it was at least 1000 men on each side, with 10% of the enemy army being cavalry (the trait and script engines cannot tell the different types of cavalry, so it's assumed that a 10% cavalry army contains some). Your general has to lose a significant part of his bodyguard as well.

**Dragannia** · 05-23-2010, 02:52

A THOUSAND wow. Pahlava rarely ever brings that many, especially since I've taken most of their cities now. What other nations are there that can muster such high numbers of cavalry and use cataphracts?

**Andy1984** · 05-23-2010, 09:00

There are other factions that can give you the traits: the Sakae, Baktria and Hayasdan. Just for the record, there need not be cataphracts in the army you are fighting. Just 10% cavalry will do. Finding an army with considerably more than 1000 soldiers may be hard if you're not playing on huge unit settings. Other than that, make sure your army is stronger than that of your opponent. Hint: leave the mercenary pools to the AI. You won't get the trait if you lost a battle in which you weren't stronger than your opponent.

**Dragannia** · 05-23-2010, 10:32

Ack. I've actually given up on that campaign. When I hit the 30k per turn mark I found the game slowed down and I REALLY wanted cataphracts (just not Seleukia without it!). I've begun another Arche Seleukia campaign wtih VH campaign setting and Medium battles, and Huge unit size. My god I'm getting raped every turn. It's about 20 turns in and I've lost most of my eastern provinces to Saka, Pahlava and the Eleutheroi. They're just so damn aggressive and their cavalry archers completely annhilate me.

**MerlinusCDXX** · 05-25-2010, 04:39

give_trait "Caracter Name" ImpressedByCats, then wait 20 turns and you get Kataphraktoi and the TAB (Super Armored Thorakitai Royal Guard)

**Titus Marcellus Scato** · 05-25-2010, 07:45

Originally Posted by Dragannia

Ack. I've actually given up on that campaign. When I hit the 30k per turn mark I found the game slowed down and I REALLY wanted cataphracts (just not Seleukia without it!). I've begun another Arche Seleukia campaign wtih VH campaign setting and Medium battles, and Huge unit size. My god I'm getting raped every turn. It's about 20 turns in and I've lost most of my eastern provinces to Saka, Pahlava and the Eleutheroi. They're just so damn aggressive and their cavalry archers completely annhilate me.

Well, that's actually very historical. Seleukia really did get 'raped' between 272 BCE and 222 BCE. Then Antiochus III the Great arrived, reformed his army, and conquered nearly all of the lost AS territory back again.

EB is meant to be historical, so an AS campaign is about going through a very tough time in the first few decades of the campaign while you concentrate on building up your economy and fighting a delaying action against the invaders, and then gloriously recovering all the lost provinces later. It's about losing part of a great empire, and then getting it back and more besides.

If you just want a quick win campaign with lots of blitzing and winning everything from start to finish, AS is not the best faction to play. Try the Ptolemies instead.