Parthia

[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.