Parthia

[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.