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.