The Seleucid Empire

[rvg]

...My question is how, with an infantry base of militia hoplites/ levy or phalanx pikemen, can I deal with armies composed of hoplites/armoured hoplites? Even pinning them with infantry and then charging cavalry into their rear doesn't provide a particularly clean solution (it is Greek cavalry though, so I probably shouldn't be surprised) and even worse, it is nearly impossible to hold them at bridges (usually rather a good way of defending an area with few troops) because they are largely impervious to arrows from the front and flanks, and will simply walk through any number of pikemen or militia hoplites. Even the Silver Shield pikes only seem to hold them up for a limited time.

I'm really not looking forward to the post-Marian Romans showing up...

Pin with Phalanx, flank with Elephants... even Spartans lose formation and subsequantly die if flanked by Elephants.

[Poulp']

even levy pikemen stand a chance against hoplites, because the grey have longer pikes than the yellow.
they can usually hold until the cavalry comes to the rescue, just make sure your line don't go crazy (sometimes, phalanxes just loves to present their flank to the enemy...)

if you can't push them back at a bridge battle, let them put a foot on your bank so that you can attack them on 3 sides: form a 3 sides square and wait; meanwhile, have your archers shoot the opponent's archers, levy and phalangites are really vulnerable to missile fire.

now, when you think the opposing hoplites' morale is going low, send some melee infantry to finish the job (mercenaries or legionnaries) and make sure your pikemen hold their ground just in case the enemy general decides to charge in.

edit:

wrote too slowy, I was answering to the previous poster

[Calgacus]

Thanks for the advice, guys; I'll see how the elephants pan out.

[pockettank]

for me the seleucid empire was a piece of cake i allied with everyone around me exept parthia beat them sown then egypt armenia and ponut allied against me so i beat up egypt slowly then pontus and armenia i moved to Scythia then on over to thrace then the roman brutii they were nastier then egypt so after beating them up i killed dacia then germania then britania then moved in to the Julii till i made it to rome and beat it afterwards i conqured the last of the map with Carthage going out last (They were my allies since i started the game

[Test112345]

how are you people playing this?

after like 10 rounds pontus, parthia, egypt, and numidia were ALL fighting me (and maybe another i cant think of)!

should i be keeping my taxes very high early on or should i keep them low? and is building farms a good idea?

[Stuperman]

taxes as high as they will go (blue face), farms are a good idea. go for levy pikemen over militia hopelites, preserve your elephants. Get alliances before you start attacking other factions (i.e. ally with pontus and armenia before you go after egypt).

[Test112345]

nevermind

[GM1940]

I'm being driven absolutely batty by the Selucids, in spite of all the juicy money and troop options. And it isn't the Egyptians, it isn't the Armenians, it isn't the Parthians, it's... the blasted rebels. I just can't stand pulling off fantastic just-barely-saved-my-jav-cav victories against one of my various malefactors only to see another rebellion crop out of nowhere in my territory. I know I certainly never had so many in my various games as the Julii.

I thought perhaps the difference was the provinces having natively higher unrest chances, or else the public health temples being not quite as effective as the Jupiter-line of Law + happiness temples. So I went ahead and kept my taxes at 'normal' so that all of my provinces except Seleucia had 180%+ public order - and still the infernal rebels come up! I take it, then, that I might as well use my normal practice of cranking taxes up as much as possible while still maintaining >100% public order... But blast it, I really do not enjoy all of this continual explicable cleanup behind my lines in happy provinces when I have much bigger things to worry about.

Are any of the rebellions 'scripted?' Is there no solution other than crossing one's fingers vis a vis timing?

I hate, in a 4x game, ever relying on luck. Selucids sort of strike me as being the "England 1419" of EU2, in that if you consolidated all of Anglo-France and won the 100 years war, you were a superpower, but if you simply got unlucky with revolts or early battles, that became impossible - unless you saved and reloaded, or relied on luck to get you a fantastic result in a minority of games. That sort of thing doesn't appeal to me. Anyway, appreciate the good advice in this thread, particularly that on the effective use that can be made of cavalry early on.

[GM1940]

Loathe as I am to change the game around, I modded down the base brigand/pirate percentages, and sure enough, things are looking pretty peachy for the Empire. Egypt's last city is under siege, Parthia is building Igloos in their northern town I can't be bothered with, Demetrius is well on his way to being deified, etc.

[Centurion1]

Sometimes you just gotta love the seleucids. I was playing them and conquered the whole eastern world russia to egypt. And i didnt lose a single Battle. And im no magician when it comes to battles, but the flexibility really works for me. Any idea how the seleucid AI always seems to lose to the Egyptians. I know about wealth and all that but the seleucids areen't paupers either!

[GM1940]

I imagine it comes down to geography and autoresolving. I think militia cav and militia hoplites are much better commanded personally (because of phalanx and using the cav to disorganize the enemy) than the autoresolve would ever give it credit for. And the Seleucids, even played by a cagey human are pretty much doomed to fighting Parthia, Armenia and Egypt every game before teching up. With Pontus and the Greek Cities there on the borders too.

Then comparatively, Egypt has to worry about... Numidians. And other than being far too dorky to play, they've got almost everything the Seleucids have at low and mid-game, and less reliance on 'trash' units the autoresolver doesn't probably like.

No disrespect to my 'not quite peasants' vanguard, of course, I've got all of Asia Minor, Egypt, Parthia, and the East now, and my battle line is still cheap & cheerful Militia Hoplites. Today I wiped out, to the last man, a 670-sized army of Pontus' horse with 200-odd militia hoplites and oddsorts while defending an Anatolian town from assault - I had a great relief army coming but the besieging army forstalled me. Anyway, huge corpse-pile built, I actually felt like the enthusiastic cheesy greek accent herald should have kept raving a little bit longer after a victory that heroic. I mean, my army must have cost 1/6th of the enemies, tops.

[guineawolf]

No disrespect to my 'not quite peasants' vanguard, of course, I've got all of Asia Minor, Egypt, Parthia, and the East now, and my battle line is still cheap & cheerful Militia Hoplites. Today I wiped out, to the last man, a 670-sized army of Pontus' horse with 200-odd militia hoplites and oddsorts while defending an Anatolian town from assault - I had a great relief army coming but the besieging army forstalled me. Anyway, huge corpse-pile built, I actually felt like the enthusiastic cheesy greek accent herald should have kept raving a little bit longer after a victory that heroic. I mean, my army must have cost 1/6th of the enemies, tops.

pals!same as me,using the militia hoplites,i will try to change all my seleucid regulars from phalanxe pikemen to militia hoplites after the successfull conquest of Thracian campaign just only militia hoplites.
My thracian army form by 30000 militia hoplites and about 10 units of militia cavalry for taking out archers purpose.....

you can own 100000 militia hoplites with just 62500 denarii each turn....for me that can group into 5 army group,for 20000 each.Quite enough for both conquest and defenses.

[I of the Storm]

Sometimes you just gotta love the seleucids. I was playing them and conquered the whole eastern world russia to egypt. And i didnt lose a single Battle. And im no magician when it comes to battles, but the flexibility really works for me. Any idea how the seleucid AI always seems to lose to the Egyptians. I know about wealth and all that but the seleucids areen't paupers either!

The AI Seleucids lose because they mass produce militia hoplites and those are - while extremely useful in the hands of the player - terribly underrated in autoresolve battles. Plus the Egyptian army has a lot of chariots in standard cavalry strength (54) in it and chariots receive a huge autoresolve-bonus. That is the exact reason btw. why the Britons almost always own the Germans.

The Chariot bonus is so imbalanced, that the Seleucids will fall to the Egyptians, no matter how you beef them up in the descr_strat.txt.

[Centurion1]

Do you think its worth it to go with silver shield pikemen over phalanx pikemen, and as to chariots having the advantage, whenever i play britons auto-resolve usually goes against me even if my army is huge and i have heavy chariots, maybe its chariot archers because seleucids have scythed chariots too.

As too militia hoplites they are good early game but if you get serious with the greeks and macedonians later their longer pikes will rip you apart. Sort of like the egyptians early units phalanx compared to the Seleucids.

Still think seleucids kick butt and if in right hands are unbeatable.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Never enjoyed the Selkies.

Love the varied unit roster, since with Rhodians and Cretans for purchase you have a very flexible list and can craft to choice.

In campaigns, never got to use the roster much as you're at war with Egypt, Greece, Armenia, Parthia, and Pontus early and constantly. You never have time to build an army or establish anything before you are off to piss on the next fire, so you end up with a hodge-podge of mercs, milhops and milcav supplemented with a few good units whenever a city has time and funds.

By the time you have this sorted out and a few of these folks crushed or weakened and forted off, you have new wars with the Scipii and the Bruti....and still no time to properly develop and grow your cities up to the level to produce all those really cool units.

So you wax the Romaoi after some hard fights and counter punch into Carthage, Greece and Italy using an army of mercs, hoplites and cavalry and just when you finally get to cataphracts and armored hefalumps you've won and the game is all over except for a few provinces of mop up.

Rather anti-climactic really.

[GM1940]

Solution, then, would be to not be totally ruthless in expanding, wouldn't it? Sacrifice a little world-conquering efficeincy to tidy up and build and organize shiny armies before wholeheartedly tackling the Romans? I'm sitting Caucases-Bosphoros-Aegean/Cyrenica-Siwa in 253BC with Silver Shields and War Elephants coming on line and I'm thinking while I mop up Macedonia I'll have time to send one or two really primo stacks by the time I get into things with the Romans.

It's true that Armoured Elephants and Silver Shield Legos are not going to be used as much as might be really fun, but even playing as the Romans I have switched to using -Early- Legos instead of standard ones just because it's such a pain not to be able to retrain armies in cities that don't have higher than an Army Barracks. Regular legos and even more so, praetorians, just strike me as a logistical hassle compared to the advantages they confer.

So, extending that analogy to the selucids, it's a bit of an extravagant approach to even expect to use (2 turn) silver shields as line infantry, let alone those sweet, sweet grey legions. It seems like a small price to pay for having such a fascinating array of light and heavy cavalry, chariots, multi-flavour phalanxes and multi-flavour elephants (after all, basic elephants are early game stuff).

And although I absolutely swore by Hastati and Legos (and probably wouldn't have gotten into Seleucids had I realized where their legos were on the tech tree) I have really gotten into the Phalanx-and-Cavalry tactic. I strongly suspect it leads to more catastrophic triumphs on average since there is a large complement of pursuit cavalry in even the smallest functional Seleucid army.

[GM1940]

(Naturally, right after I say this, the stinking Romans attack me. With Hastati.)

[Centurion1]

The phalanx cavalry relationship is tenuous at best. I feel that all it does is disorganize my lines, but i do admit its near imposssible to beat archers and it is impossible to beat horse archers with a phalanx. Doesn't mean i have to like them however. Chariots SUCK , except for chariot archers (because they don't go into melee), they dont have enough numbers to last long and therefore just an annoyance.

I love cavalry in other civs and mainly use them but hate pairing it with phalanxes even though their is obviously a need for them.

[Breetai]

Chariots SUCK

Try charging a unit of chariots directly into some melee cavalry. I just did a test battle where 3 chariots, when charged directly into 2 groups of Parthian Cataphracts, took out both units of Cataphracts within 3 seconds of contact, killing al but 3 and sustaining only one casualty. They're also incredibly good battlefield assassins, and a single unit of melee chariots can take down even a post-marian eastern general in a metter of seconds with few losses.


Bottom line: Chariots are your anti-cavalry units. Use them as such, and they'll make you very hard to outflank.

[Phoenix]

Aside from being anti-cavalry, I found that Scythed Chariots break up infantry formations rather well also, as long as you keep your chariots moving constantly and avoid any phalanx units.

[GM1940]

The phalanx cavalry relationship is tenuous at best. I feel that all it does is disorganize my lines, but i do admit its near imposssible to beat archers and it is impossible to beat horse archers with a phalanx. Doesn't mean i have to like them however. Chariots SUCK , except for chariot archers (because they don't go into melee), they dont have enough numbers to last long and therefore just an annoyance.

I love cavalry in other civs and mainly use them but hate pairing it with phalanxes even though their is obviously a need for them.

My experience is that I stopped sucking with the Seleucids when I stopped trying to get kills with my phalanx line; it is supposed to keep itself organized, avoid getting flanked, and handle any army to army clash that the AI forces on me. Cavalry, both missile and melee, archers and slingers do the damage and absorb most of the micromanagement.

Not that the phalanxes are shabby, mind - mil-hops can defend cities against 10 times their number, take out charioteers as if with laser cannons, and generally hold their own against anything except roman heavy infantry or longer-speared hoplites.

Cheesily, the phalanx line is the ultimate 'corner camper;' - if you don't care about absuing 'red lines in the ground noone can cross,' hoplites with artificially secure flanks can put vastly superior armies to flight, at which point any mil-cav around will commence to make it a lovely 0 survivor route. If like most people you find this a little bit much, more maneuvering is involved. But as long as you stay defensive you can still make very cost effective use of pikes.

[I of the Storm]

Bottom line: Chariots are your anti-cavalry units. Use them as such, and they'll make you very hard to outflank.

Plus, if you're rich, and as the Seleucids you usually are, Elephants (even the little ones) can serve the same role. They have an anticav bonus as well plus can handle any non-phalanx infantry for a while on their own. And they frighten the enemy. So they are an excellent flank protection also.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Plus, if you're rich, and as the Seleucids you usually are, Elephants (even the little ones) can serve the same role. They have an anticav bonus as well plus can handle any non-phalanx infantry for a while on their own. And they frighten the enemy. So they are an excellent flank protection also.

Depends who you are up against. If the AI team has a goodly proportion of archers, you can pretty well bet on panicked elephants unless your cav can get to the archers.

Mind you, you can use this against the AI as well, since their monomaniacal focus on panicking your elephants means that the archers aren't doing dorcas to affect your other units. I often use elephants as bait this way. Then, when my cav has sent off the archers....

[Rotc_Railey15]

I use elephants only to spearhead through infantry, never cavalry. Usually to send those Eastern infantryman to the north heading for the hills leaving behind only Chariots. Then I use archers and Greek cav. to take out chariots.

[RexCroatorum]

I am new here but I play Total war games since shogun. I think that playing with selucidians is not fer couse they have the best balance in the game and are positioned on the very best trade roads, whenever play with them I get whole asia and greece and have about 300,000 denarii, for me better chalange is to play with macedonians or pontus, and especialy Scynthias.

[Rotc_Railey15]

Ooh I just started a Pontus game and its real difficult! You rely solely on cavalry in the beggining of the game and thats difficult when in sieges.

[Centurion1]

Pontus is difficult, but this is a seleucid thread so stay focused The seleucids if you manage to survive the early game are very easy to play and thats the problem. They have nice cities to start with too, the only problem is that they are almost on a straight line and therefore susceptible to attacks from......well everyone. Which is what makes early game so much fun, but diplomacy is easy cause everyone hates egyptians, only problem is that no one in the middle-east has the decency to keep a treaty.

[RexCroatorum]

Why people allways say Selucids are attacked by everyon, when I play with them only that attacked me was Egypt and after that (because they were allys) Pontus and couse you are very very rich youn easily manage to buy/destroy them all. Selucids are also very good couse they have much sons and doughter which provide us with plenty of goood generals.

[Centurion1]

Depends on your game difficulty, and the Egyptians are hardwired to attack you no matter what . And Parthia always cheats on an alliance as you saw. As to Armenia it all depends on who gets there first you or Parthia. However Pontus is usually pretty reliable as are the Greeks.

[RexCroatorum]

I play every game on very hard/very hard. But maybe this is becouse I have my favourites nations (Carthage, Macedonians, Selucids and Brutii) with which I made perfect start and then it is easily to develop in world wide kingdom.