Parthia

[guineawolf]

When I played for Parthia I relied only upon cataphracts, coz nearly all other units definetely suck.

But as for money, after some time I just didn't count the finances, I was bribing Romans and their towns not paying any attention to the ammount of price, and not having any money lack.

It's well known that a bribed town won't tolerate your troops for a long time, so, knowing that a bribed Roman town will soon get back to them, I used to demolish all buildings possible to riun, and when Romans had their settlement back it wasn't a megapolis, they had a hole where everything must have been started from the very beginning.

my campaign of Parthia,i do attacked by egypt,but by then i send my diplomat to ask the egyptian for cease fire,they ask me become protectorate,i accept(get 10000 denarii into my coffer).After that,my cities near egytian front become safe,that make me have the spare money to take out Pontus(all balkans) and the Greece(Thracian own it),now i got 50k net income per turn.With these income i start build up my cities and begun to produce cataphract....

[paul_kiss]

Yes, I also was a protectorate of Egypt. This is that after I had a few fights with Egyptian troops my troopes proved themselves totally incapable. That time I uswed to have eastern infantry, hillmen, horse archers etc. So I had to have peace with Egypt, needed some time to develope my cities, build a strong army etc. And I had to abandon a couple of provinces in the far east and give them in to Egypt.

But many years after Egypt weakened greatly and I finished it like a wounded beast it was.



Sometimes it's usefult to make 5 steps back in order to make 20 steps forward in future.

And except cataphracts I used archers, coz something with arrows was certainly needed. But Parthian archers are weak as most of their troops.

[Zasz1234]

Yeah, with Parthia it's all about horse archers. And as far as the Egyptians are concerned, hit them head on. Us an army of all horse archers and just ride cricles around them and rain death on them. When you run out of arrows retreat and then head back again and kill more. The key is mobility and don't be afraid to run in and hit archers with your missle cavalry, especially Persian Cavalry who are actually fairly decent in melee and have long ranged missles. The only really bad part about Parthia are sieges where all your speed and mobility are useless. In these cases hire strong infantry mercs or just use waves of eastern infantry and sap some holes for Kataphracts. The worst part about Parthia is only being able to build dirt roads and no public health buildings so getting bigger cities and dealing with squaler are big problems until you get the big Seleucid and Egyptian cities.

[GM1940]

Re: defeating cataphracts; while I endorse the horse archer advice for Parthia, I actually had a surprisingly easy time with Armenian and Parthian cataphracts as Seleucia, in part because I tended to fight defensive battles. 1 on 1 I'm sure no single phalangite is going to have very good odds, but I massacred them with militia hoplites simply because you get so much phalanx for your money; and because I dragged them around with jav cav before leading them up a hill to my infantry, at which point their performance weren't so impressive. (Still good, but surely not cost effective, especially against militia hoplites and eastern mercenaries)

There's perhaps a question of what is and isn't cheesy vs. the AI - using terrain, using corners, using cavalry to disorient them - but ultimately an amount of gaminess is part of the game, since to maximize the ai's intelligence would require you to play with somewhat boring and routine tactics.