The Seleucid Empire

[pezhetairoi]

yeah, that too. :) Sorry that you disapprove, Frank... :( I shall restrict camera from now on...

[Franconicus]

If you read the posts here you can read that you cannot win if you do not attack Egypt at once. I tried - you can! It is not even that hard. I played very hard / medium.
First of all I made alliances with Egypt, Greece and others. They did not take long, but who cares? Gave me some extra money. If you have money left build some nice units and conquer Parthia and Armenia. The sooner the better.
Take Susa. Send a spy there, and place your army at the border. Wait until the enemy goes chasing some rebels and then attack the town immediatelly. When the enemy comes back you have retrained your army and some new units. Kill his field army. After that Parthia is no problem anymore. And Susa is a nice town to produce infantry and money.
On the other side buy mercs and take Helicarnasos. Then march into the heart of Pontus. Do not bother with rebel towns. You need a strong city, take Mazaka and Sinope. Then finish with Pontus and turn to Greek Cities.
At your southern front, fortify Damascus and Antioch. You can build militia cav at Antioch at once. Soon you will be able to build Greek cav. and elephants. So put strong garrisons at both towns and build an all cav field army. If Egypt lays siege on your towns you can attack their rear whenever you want to. Egypt will bring a lot of big armies, but they are not very good. With your cav army kill their cav first. Chariots are not that good if you pepper them first and then attack from all sides. Then kill their archers. They are really strong. Rest is easy. The Egyptian spear units are not very good. Let javelins rain on them and when they give up their formation kill them.
You can win two battles a turn with your field army. Then retrain them. After a couple of years Egypt will not be able to send new armies while you have a very experienced field army and strong garrisons. Now it is time to take all Egyptian cities in Asia. They are not well defended. Once you have them, they bring lots of money and new troops.
Right now I have two armies at the Sinai ready to invade Egypt. My northern army is ready to take the last Armenian town. (I trapped an Armenian army in a valley. It has four FMs. Their capitol is defended by their king and one EI )
Pontus is gone. Just took Pergamon and will soon take the last two Greek towns in Asia.
See you in Egypt

[bubbanator]

Yes, an all cavalry field army is very effective. You can also hire many horse and camle mercs in that area too. Be sure to send a young family member who hasn't been corrupted yet have him fight. Your army will get a ton of experience and your general will get many benifical traits. In fact my general became so good that I decided to set him as my faction heir. He had 10 command 10 influence and zero management. Perfect.

Though I must say that I did not do any of this in my Selucid campign. This was all done in my Brutii campaign where I was killing the Selucids who I had previously saved from the Egyptians...

[Deus ret.]

All-cavalry armies are by far the best choice for vanilla RTW in most circumstances. They are way too powerful. I switched tot RTR 6.0 two days ago and was relieved to see that it's not that favorable any more due to being nigh impossible to pay for such an army which wouldn't be as effective anyway because of their reduced numbers (40/48 instead of 54 on large).

[Taurus1]

Hello,
I am new to the org and my favourite faction is the Seleucids so I will give my strategies for them here. No doubt these strategies have been discussed before but I will give what I use. I have completed a long campaign of the Seleucid Empire (battle difficulty - medium, campaign difficulty - hard). I enjoy using them so here is what I do usually:

When the campaign first begins the first trick (even though the Seleucids have a nice money situation) is to get gain a steady income. Build roads and traders and sell map information for more money and trade-rights too. I will not explain the full process as this has been probably expalianed elswhere.

After you have set up your economy you want to concentrate on your military but with one eye always on your financial side. . First off you need to eliminate Egypt by immidietly taking Sidon, Jerusalem etc. I made alliances with Armenia and the Greeks and was also at war with Parthia. It is also a good idea to take the rebel provinces below and to the right of Damascus.
Once you have gained a foothold in Egypt you can perform an amphibious assault and take Alexandria, Memphis, and Thebes. This should cripple Egypt allowing you to concentrate on owning all of Asia with a destinct ease with the lack of any real power as Egypt.

I know this may not be the typical strategy from then on but I travelled into Numidia conquering it and also Carthage (if any are left thanks to the Romans). Then of course it is the Romans that are your biggest problem, but with the right army compisition and the correct tactics this shouldn't prove to be too difficult.

Here is my anti-rome strategy:

5 Cataphracts, 6 Silver Shield Pikemen, 5 archers, 2 legionarries. < Ideal Numbers.

Arrange them like this:

P = Pikemen
C = Cataphracts
A = Archers
L = Legions

AAAAA
PPPPPP
L L
CCCCC

Once the might of Rome has fallen then conquering the rest of the world should be easy. I hope this strategy helps people and forgive me if this has all been said before, lol. Thankyou

[Deus ret.]

Welcome to the org, Taurus!

Indeed starting strategies for the SE all seem rather similar (except for Franconius', see his post). Nevertheless I found your approach rather interesting because with the SE I always had so many wars to fight on all fronts at once that when I finally had some space to breathe the game was basically won.

Focussing expansion consciously in one direction after eliminating Egypt was made impossible for me because the Parthians, Armenians and Pontics were attacking me relentlessly....especially Pontus had too strong a position to be left alone in the North, and when Asia Minor was finally conquered, Greeks, Macedons and Thracians, soon joined and replaced by the Brutii, made it impossible to turn away from there without leaving massed troops in the area (which could also be used for further conquest into Greece) to counter invasions.

Thus, when I had fought all wars that were brought upon me, there was not much left to do before conquering Rome. How did you keep these nuisances away, thereby allowing for a more strategic expansion?

[Taurus1]

Thankyou for the welcome Deus ret.

What you say about fighting on all fronts is true and it was with me for the most part but I was able to concentrate in one direction becuase of a nice helping Parthia despite being my enemies they were keeping Armenia at bay. Armenia in turn was acting more like a buffer faction from Scythia and Parthia and was keeping them both occupied which left me to concentrate on my own conquering.
Although Pontus was repeatingly attacking me they just kept sieiging my cities and assaulting them which was easy to defend against with just a few pikemen at the gate of my cities.

With Asia Minor all in its own war lol I just had to conquer Numidia and Carthage as stated in my previous post. I could have just helped in the war of Asia Minor and eliminated them all but I thought it would be a far interesting campaign if I travelled South-West.

Spain had already been near enough crushed by the Julii and Gaul aswell so like you by the time I got to Rome the campaign was basically over.

Thankyou Deus ret.

[Legend5000]

The Seleucids may look like they have it tough in the beginning, but if you know what you're doing, this campaign is pretty easy. It's because they have two major advantages:

- A great starting location with lots of wonders and money-making provinces
- A supremely powerful and diverse army including Pikemen, Legionnaries, Cataphracts, and Elephants + powerful mercenaries close by (Cretan Archers, Sarmatian Mercenaries, Bedouin Archers)

You should first ally with Greece, Pontus, and Armenia (and get map information from them. Then, you should take those rebel provinces close by. Thirdly, you should attack Egypt, and QUICK!!! (Egypt has wonderful moneymaking provinces and if you let it expand, it will be virtually unbeatable later) Luckily, there are some bridges you can guard there where you can massacre them. After they're weakened a bit, you can then take those provinces (don't forget the island). Afterwards, Parthia and Greece will likely try to invade, but compared to Egypt, they're a walk in the park (however, be wary of letting Greece become too strong because Armoured Hoplites can be a pain). You should also bribe the Parthian army with the Cataphracts (he he, I love using the enemy's own units against them!). Take care of them, and then invade Pontus and Armenia. If possible, try to siege both of Armenia's provinces in one turn to neutralise Armenia quickly.

After that, the campaign is a walk in the park! You're rich and have enough money to bribe people left and right! You can now do what you want. Do you want to invade Scythia, or take over the Balkans? It's up to you!

[Taurus1]

Very nice strategy Legend5000, I forgot to put in the info about the decent array of mercenaries you can recruit. Good call.

[pezhetairoi]

It's a nice strategy, but it's the micromanagement of the war in Egypt that will take up most of your time. The campaign may actually stretch on longer than it appears unless you manage to attract all armies to your bridge, which does not appear likely.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

I personally think this faction is the easiest to play. It has the best unit variety (in my mind) and the amount of money and cities you start with are good. I

[Craterus]

Unfortunately, you could be enemies with (from the start):

Egypt, Pontus, Armenia, Parthia and the Greeks.

Of course, once you're on your way, and have eliminated some of the above factions, then the campaign becomes a cakewalk, but most campaigns do after 30 provinces.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

As Seleucid though, you have a powerful cavalry to match the powerful middle east cavalry...(Pontus, Scythia)

[Rilder]

sorry about reviving this old old topic... but the seclucids are awesome settlement defenders so just putting a meager hoplite militia garison , maby some archers but not needed will reflect even the largest armies what i did is just souped up my garisons pretty heavy while i had my main armies taking egypt and stuff and i never had a problem with losing settlements... usualy they were all busy trying to take sardis which had a pretty good hoplite militia garison since all they could train was hoplite militia and i... all the piles of dead eastern infantry and calvary... even the pontus scythed chariots couldnt do high damage since if they managed to break a phalanx there was another behind it... the only time my settlement was "truely" threatened was when pontus sent phalanx pikemen into my weaker defended settlement and there longer spears posed a problem but i laid a trap using a unit of peasants coming from behind and they had to rise there spears and i my hoplites came in and took care of them

[GreatEmperor]

That's a good strategy but you can also disable Phalanx mode, then engage the enemy and when fighting them, enable phalanx mode again this will cause a huge amount of casualities on the enemy although I don't know how.

[Rilder]

Nah i never did that, seems to much like cheating :P, i've never disabled phalanx in my units unless i was trying to rush them into settlements and stuff or remaking the phalanx since alot of the times when trying to manuever them some of there men get seperated

[GreatEmperor]

In my campaign I saw something wierd; the Scipii landed in Greece and took Corinth, is that normal in a Seleucid campaign?

[pezhetairoi]

It's normal everywhere. I've seen Julii in Corinth, I've seen Scipii in Narbo Martius and Patavium, I've seen Brutii in Carthage...

[Garvanko]

The problem is, they usually walk all the way round the map, rather than invade by sea. Especially true with the Scipii.

[Craterus]

The problem is, they usually walk all the way round the map, rather than invade by sea. Especially true with the Scipii.

They've got a long walk to Carthage then...

[Trithemius]

They've got a long walk to Carthage then...

Maybe their doctors think they need to walk to avoid heart-related health problems?

[King Macedon]

With the seleucids, I send one army to a quick strike on the parthians. With luck, my spy opened the gates to me!
I send two diplomats to Egypt for bribering their leaders, diplomats and cites.
I also send one diplomat to bribe the town of Halicarnassus. This city will be my operation base against the greek cites later.

After 8 turns I had taken over the southen part of Partia (not that in Kazakstan) and egypt has fallen. Now the armenians send a army of horse archers to raid my citys. This is not a great trouble because even my milita hoplites coud easaly crush them. Now I will send my armies towards Armenia and Pontus. I think a temporary aliance with the greeks will strenghen my position so I allied with them in turn 12. Their spartan hoplites helpt me a loot. The downside was that I was forced to partrice Pontus!

[GreatEmperor]

You really shouldn't trust the Greek because everytime I ally with them they betray me and attack me while I'm busy.
Pontus are really annoying with their Chariot Archers and Pontic Heavy Cavalry but in my campaign I got lucky and their last city revolted resulting in destroyal of their faction.

[King Macedon]

Yes. It was sweet to wipe out the Pontus. I dont now where I should expand next, maby finish the Partians in Kazakstan or crusch the greeks and Macedonians (with maby means war with the Brutii) or I could invade Numida and Chartage.

[GreatEmperor]

War with Brutii is only a small problem because they only have Hastati in the beginning but you should watch out for the armored hoplites and Spartan Hoplites of the Greek, but with some cataphracts that shouldn't be a too big problem

[pezhetairoi]

[QUOTE=King Macedon]Now the armenians send a army of horse archers to raid my citys. This is not a great trouble because even my milita hoplites coud easaly crush them. [\QUOTE]

Are you absolutely sure? Hmm. Your hoplites must be ironskinned, and very very fast runners. And they must have very good aim with their throwing spears too. :-P Then they will bludgeon the horse archers to death with their shields when they catch up to them.

[King Macedon]

[QUOTE=pezhetairoi]

Now the armenians send a army of horse archers to raid my citys. This is not a great trouble because even my milita hoplites coud easaly crush them. [\QUOTE]

Are you absolutely sure? Hmm. Your hoplites must be ironskinned, and very very fast runners. And they must have very good aim with their throwing spears too. :-P Then they will bludgeon the horse archers to death with their shields when they catch up to them.

Yes I'am sure. My milita hoplites crushed them instantly. Well, the may have som experience.

Unfortunately i tryed to mix with the codes and play as the rebels (slave). Now I can youst play as brutii, macedon and greek cites! Well, I have to reinstal it.

[pezhetairoi]

I'm curious... how did your militia hoplites catch the HA?

[GreatEmperor]

They must've been good runners than :P
It's hard enough for normal cavalry to catch Horse Archers, not to think of Militia Hoplites.

[Patricius]

The option of bribery is now completely lost. A major element of strategy for this faction therefore lost.

Going on the offensive seems the only option. Susa of the Parthians, as well as anything Egyptian, become targets. Once Susa is taken, the Parthian are distant and neutralised for a while. The Greeks tend to rebuild the faction if they lose their Greek cities by taking them. Absorbing the rebels in Asia Minor is important Hatra can be a problem. It can be an early target of an enemy and is not really capable of defending itself. Putting anything from mercs to whatever I can spare from other cities is something I do also. Losing it cuts the faction in two and both attacking Parthia early and raising anything other than a defensive garrison for Seleucia is a strain. Still the wealth of this faction means that the situation is not irretrievable if mistakes are made.