Parthia

[wooly_mammoth]

Love this faction. By 250 BC I am invading the known world from all possible positions: the lybian desert, the hellespont, the steppes.

Anyway, quick question. I noticed that not all provinces can build trade caravans but I couldn't figure out yet what the gimmick is. It's not related to camels, since I have provinces with camels where this building tree is not available, and provinces without camels where they can be made. Is it a hidden resource placed around by the devs in a balanced way or is there another thing to it?

[ReluctantSamurai]

I guess I never really paid attention to which provinces can build caravans, and which couldn't. My favorite ME faction is Armenia, and I don't recall not being able to build them in any province I haven't played Parthia in a very long time, so perhaps it's a faction related issue

[wooly_mammoth]

I just realized that it may be the case of me not noticing that those towns weren't big enough to support such advanced buildings yet.

Anyway, I didn't write that in my last session I got a bit of big time excitement. The Brutii performed a surprise landing in Rhodos with a huge army! How often do you see that? Not sure if they're just mean or if the AI believed that Rhodes still belonged to the greeks (the romans haven't made it further south than Larissa yet). Unfortunately for them, a crack army of horsemen that had beaten the deserts all the way from Media was stationed there, so it was a complete slaughter.

[wooly_mammoth]

And just finished horsing around. Took Rome by the winter of 236 BC but probably could have been done even faster. I simply never rested those horses and only picked the odd mercenary here or there when I needed a ram. Had no use at all for cataphracts or elephants, I think I would have gimped myself by using them since there's really nothing for the AI to do once it is surrounded by the most basic of horse archers. I ended up disliking persian cav because they have less ammo and can't run as fast. Their armor, longer range and ability to fight in melee doesn't really compensate when you have to fight a doomstack of armored units + reinforcements since they have the exact same ranged attack as regular horsemen, so less ammo -> less kills.

Starting from the parthian homelands, my empire stretched continuously west and along the south of the Mediterranean all the way to Carthage, through Anatolia and over the Aegean Sea into Laconia and up to the Carpathians (first time I play rtw and actually bushwhack my dacian ancestors), and along the shores of the Black Sea, across the northern steppes up to the forests of Germania. At this time I ferried a veteran horse archer army from Carthage into Rome, had one hell of a horse party over Latium and the game was over.

City battles are just awful and probably the main reason I decided to finish the campaign early and not take my time to conquer Sicily and Italy. Cavalry units have horrible pathfinding and response in narrow streets.

The first real change will follow. Gaul is next.