Parthia

[pezhetairoi]

I think the consensus is that the AI is incorrigible and unmoddable. We've all given up on the recalcitrantly bad generals on the -other- side.

[gardibolt]

I've been dealing with numerous Egyptian full stacks of ships at sea, which are a serious pain, so I don't understand the comment about them not building a navy. Mileages may vary, I guess. I have the same experience with the Thracians, and even after wiping them out as a faction, the naval stacks are still there, just turned Rebel and they still have to be dealt with.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Can you bribe fleets? Rebel/pirate should be easier.....

[pezhetairoi]

*shakes head* you cannot bribe fleets. Not unless your diplomat is Jesus and can walk on water.

[yogol]

Just finished a very hard / very hard long campaign with Partia and decided to share some thoughts, like the "Yogol's thoughts on ..." that perhaps some of you know from Shogun and MTW.

----

There are two decisions to make in the beginning with Parthia :

1. Attack Selucia or Armenia ?
2. How to handle the economy ?

----

1. I decided to go for Armenia. The reason was that if you go for Selucia, you'll get in contact with the dreadful Egypts very soon and they are STRONG when you don't have you Kataprhacts yet.

So I conquered Armenia : I took the rebel city west of my capital and grouped ALL troops (from the far north with a boat and from the far south by foot) there. Then I took the two Armenian cities.

After that I took Pont. Then that-faction-who-is-so-small-I-don't-even-remember-their-name. Then I threw the Greek out of the Eastern parts (made peace with them afterwards, no need to take their cities in Greece itself). Only THEN I went after Selucia : their cities fell fast.

Then I was ready for the Egypts : they didn't get have a chance against my Kataphract-stacks, you're south of Gibaltrar before you know it, wondering why you didn't bring ships with you !

I managed to get GOLDEN kataphracts : +2 forge and an egyptian building that gave +1 to armor and weapons. I retrained all my Kataprhacts there and then just took whatever region I wanted to take untill 50.

----

2. At the start the economy was terrible. Instead of trying to fix it, I decided to make it even worse and get all troops out of it that I could take : I sold all buildings that I didn't need and used ALL the money I had for horse archers (and one single road at my capital to move the troops from the south quicker). You'll go in debt VERY fast and deep (like minus 8000 after a few turns), but with a few city captures and looting it will get positive again. This way you got the most troops for your money.

Forget about building up your starting cities : once you take the Greek cities at the west of your little empire, move your capital. You'll get more money then you can spend (as in 20k per turn) this way AND you got bigger cities then your starting cities will ever get.

When you take the Egyptian cities, you should get 50k each turn. If you can't win the game with that much money, you should go play Tetris or Pong.

Once you go above 50k money in your treasury, you can remove ALL governers and make peasant garrisons instead, because those governers will cost ALOT ALOT of money once they get those money-spending traits :-(

----

Some remarks...

a) Until now I usually let the computer resolve the battles but I noticed that with the horse archers you lose ALOT of them. So I played the battles "myself" : just run the archers to their enemy and go eat a sandwich, clean your desk or read a good book (I recommend the latest Harry Potter). Every once in a while the archers get into trouble, but that's an exception.

----

b) Once you can make Kataphracts, don't make anything else, these troops will kill everything. E-VER-Y-THING. They are amazing, even if I don't have a clue how to spell their name :-)

Another benefit on these is that you can let the computer do the battles again, even he can win with these troops.

----

c) A nice bonus of going west fast are the three wonders there, they make some happy citizens !

----

d) After each battle, I merged the troops I could without losing units : if I got a stack of 20 I merged them so I got (for example) 16 at full strength and 4 at 1 or 2 soldiers. Those 4 units I retrained somewhere.

This way you can fight several fights in one turn, as long as your general doesn't get too few boduguards (somehow the AI always loses bodyguards in each fight, I don't know how he manages it).

----

e) I'm still unsure what's best to take a city : use one troop of peasants and make use that tunnel-thingy or take one catapult with me in my army. I don't know, shrugh.

----
----

Hope you find this useful (if anyone reads this board, it seems dead to me).

[Seamus Fermanagh]

In English it's spelled:

c-a-t-a-p-h-r-a-c-t

Latin and Greek (other?) spellings exist, and the EB folks and others will have it spelled properly in their mods.


With a largely mounted army such as Parthia fields, it may be a good idea to have a separate half-stack army or two for siege work, letting your HA concentrate on field battles. Siege weaps and cheap infantry slow your main body if you mix. Parthia may use combined arms tactics, but is one of the few factions where keeping theelements separate may be the best choice.

The siege army should have infantry for sapping/rams etc.
The siege army should have a pair of onagers.
The siege army should have 1 or 2 cav units as flankers.

SF

[Agent Miles]

Well, I finished off Egypt. After destroying their armies outside Damascus, I laid siege to Bostra and Petra. I chose to “starve them out”, so that the remaining Egyptian forces would be drawn into Asia in order to relieve them. The relief force had some chariot units. The trick to defeating chariots is to use War Elephants. Just get near them and the chariots run amok (or if you have a low frame rate, “trot amok” ). The HA’s can then easily slaughter them. I was thus able to deal with the relief effort. Both settlements eventually fell without a fight from the garrisons. Now that they were defenseless, I also took the Nile settlements as Egypt collapsed. I have fortified the Nile and turned my attention elsewhere.
After smashing Thrace and gifting the settlements to my ally Macedon, the Macedonians betrayed me (and paid for their transgression). I had my armies hunt down the royal family of Macedon and slay them. Their settlements became rebel.
In the northeast, I’ve taken Campus Alanni and retaken Campus Sakae with one army. I am going to upgrade this force and finish off Scythia. I built a fort blocking the ford on the Volga and I will use this as a base for further expansion.
I’ve recycled my military. A temple in Athens upgrades my missile units to gold and I have a temple city with a foundry in Memphis that upgrades my units to golden armor and melee weapons. I’ve replaced almost all of the HA units with Persian Cavalry, who can shoot and fight. My field armies now have fifteen Persian Cavalry (arranged five to a group, on each flank and the center), with four Cataphracts and a general (change #1, I switched one of the Cataphracts out for a War Elephant unit). I was able to crush a Roman legion in a custom test battle with this arrangement.
I was forced to make siege armies because my spies were unable to penetrate Roman settlements and open the gates. I have two siege armies, each with four Onagers, four cataphracts, a general and an assortment of Eastern Infantry and Archers (as well as two mercenary hoplites and two cretan archers) for support. The Onagers blasted the gate at Brutii held Thermon and made for a great show! The remaining garrison was “cat” food.
I’ve built an armada and blockaded all Roman faction ports. Eight Brutii armies are decending on Greece, where my armies are staging. It looks like a real cataclysm brewing! I am going to take Sicily, Caralis, Carthage and Thapsis with the siege armies while my field armies bleed the Romans white in the Balkans. This should leave Italy defenseless. So far, continuing with the long campaign has indeed been worthwhile and interesting.