Historical Battle help... pesky parthians involved..

[Underhand]

Yeah covering the rear is important in this battle, after the horse archers sluaghter your troops, they charge them in the rear while the cataphracts keep em busy in the front.

Although your strategy was helpful i still couldn't beat them i feel like a noob

What exactly do you and they have as regards units? And what do the Parthians usually do tactically? And what happened when you tried out my idea?

[Leet Eriksson]

I'll go in detail:

The Parthians are split in 2 armies, 1 horse archer, the other Cataphract, they have some 4-5 Cataphracts.

The Romans have 6 First Cohort Legionnaires, all of em in testudo in a box formation surrounding 2 cavalry units.

the first Parthian army,the horse archers, are already pelting the testudoed legionnaires with arrows, the second army is a bit far, but are dead on charging your legionnaires.

basically its like this:

C= Cataphract

HA= Horse Archer

Legionnaire = L

Marcus & Cavalry = RC

CCCCC



HA HA HA
HA LLLL
HA LRCL HA
L L
HA

Here i apply the strategy you provide, i formed the legionnairs, into a line with 2 covering the flanks and the other 2 covering the rear, the parthian cataphracts charge while my cavalry shooed the horse archers, i don't have any fast infantry so i tried using my flank legionnaires to form a ring around the cataphracts, while my cavalry complete the ring, like so:

LRCL
CCCC
LLLL

but the problem is the horse archers reform that circle, and add to that my cavalry charge impact could not kill the Cataphracts quickly enough, although i turned their cataphracts into motionless heaps of iron, my legionnaires were terribly reduced, and then there are 2 parthian generals who advanced in (1 cataphract and the other horse archer i think) and finished the job.

After the battle marcus had evening tea with the parthian generals, except they served him a warm cup of molten gold instead of tea

[Underhand]

My that sounds tricky. I didn't realise you had to start in the formation that the Romans historically used. Hell, try being historical; charge Marcus straight into the parthian army and when his unit's been slaughtered, form a dense blob and cry for mummy

The idea was, if I can get this pseudo-diagramatical stuff to work (I'm going to use underscores to seperate units because I can't see any other way to do this):


HA HA HA
HA RC HA
HA HA HA

That would be the first stage, with the parthians laughing and prancing gaily in circles around your exposed unit. The second stage is forming a screen below the predicament:

L_________L
__L_L_L_L

Then you cut through the parthian circle (again this relies on them actually playing by the rules of steppe nomad warfare) as hopefully follows:

___HA HA HA
HA L__RC___L HA
L HA HA HA HA L
__L_L_L_L_L_L

And you crush the half of the army caught in your new ring. Numbers of units may vary (dunno exactly how much you've got) and variations depending on situation may be in order.

The horse archers in your ring shouldn't be able to reform a new ring if you box them in sufficiently (again I don't have the game so I'm assuming this can be done). I'm not sure what to do about the cataphracts, but if they're inside your ring then hopefully you can overwhelm them with local superiority, if not then I guess pray they don't intervene until you're done. This would be a lot easier with some light infantry and a little more heavy cav.

After the battle marcus had evening tea with the parthian generals, except they served him a warm cup of molten gold instead of tea

Mithridates is gonna be pissed when he finds out the parthians stole his idea