Seleucid Tactics.

[Osbot]

Ok, so who out there playing hard/hard or above has had a succesful Seleucid campaign?

I'm about to pull the plug on my current and retry. Basically, I went and allied up with everyone I could and drove hard on egypt. I took 3 provinces from them and thought I had them licked for the time being. I then began to consolidate my positions when Armenia hit me from the north. They slaughtered a garison and took a town. Seleucia was cut off so I pulled that army out and gave the city up to a rebel revolt hoping to stop the bleeding. I had a nice army that I thought was nicely teched, containing Levy Phalanx and Phalanx Pikemen. So I head towards the Nile hoping to finish the Egyptians off and I run into 3 full stacks of Egyptian armies. I lost the entire army in a retreating action hoping to fall back to link up with another army.

Im not so worried about Armenia atm, but Parthia is looking hungry and has yet to attack, however im not sure WHAT I can do to stop the egyptian hordes. Their units are vastly superior to anything I can put out at the moment in numbers.

Has anyone had success attacking Egypt first? Im thinking right now, you've got to attack and attack hard crippling Egypt before they start getting lots of Nile spearmen out. Racing for Archers is probably also extremely important, if you go phalanx heavy, the archer heavy eygptians will simply slaughter your lightly armored phalanxes. Basically it seems you need to enslave populations untill you can start building armored phalanxes otherwise you're hooped.

[hoof]

Hard/hard, are you insane? The AI gets big combat bonuses above Medium. I tested that theory, and with like vs like units, the AI on hard will kill 1.5 to 2 of your men for every one of his lost. Personally, I'm of the camp where difficulty should be in tactics, not in arbitrary stats boosts. It's kind of like boxing, except the other guy has much longer arms than you, or outweighs you by 30-50 pounds.

It's too bad, because I don't know if the AI uses it's best tactical ability at Medium. But I refuse to play above Medium in combat unless unit per unit the sides are equal (given identical valour, morale, unit type, general, etc). If I recall, MTW didn't boost the stats until the highest difficulty level.

I tried the Seleucids on hard, and quit in disgust. Watching a normally poor fighting unit walk right through my spear wall and slaugher my units is not fun. Good luck in your campaign, though. If you win, please let us know. I'd love to find out if survival is possible given the artificial stats boosts that Hard gives the AI in combat.

[Osbot]

Well, im almost 100% sure that the AI plays retarded on medium. Its tactics are much more apparent on Hard, as in it actually uses tactics.

Anyways, I stuck with that campaign. I THINK I may be over the hump *knocks on wood*. I gave ground and pulled armies from my outlaying regions down to deal with Egypt. I withdrew almost everything but a token garrison from Sardia and recruited mercs along the way. Just as my two "last hurrah" 2.5k man armies reached Jerusalem, egypt made its push. I caught 3 armies, 2 of which were around 1k men each, the other about 2.7k. I wiped them out in a series of battles and have just conquered Alexandria and am laying siege to Memphis. I think this is all she wrote for Egypt and soon I should be in a strong position to tech up to some decent units and turn my attentions towards those danged Armenians.

I ran into a little luck, although it was annoying at first. Armenia entered an alliance with Pontius which cancelled our war. I took advantage of this and entered into a trade agreement and full alliance with Armenia to get my devasted economy rolling again. The Greeks have been making a serious nuisance of themselves. My countryside is swarming with greek diplomats and its pointless to attempt to ferry any units about without the escort of a family member. I've had 6 Greek Cavalry and 4 Phalanx Pikes bribed away from me.

In anycase I can't wait to execute a coup de grace on Egypt, they are without question the most annoying faction i've fought so far. I have a feeling Armenia may prove to be worse with the scads of horse archers i've seen in their armies.

[biguth dickuth]

Hard/hard, are you insane? The AI gets big combat bonuses above Medium. I tested that theory, and with like vs like units, the AI on hard will kill 1.5 to 2 of your men for every one of his lost. Personally, I'm of the camp where difficulty should be in tactics, not in arbitrary stats boosts. It's kind of like boxing, except the other guy has much longer arms than you, or outweighs you by 30-50 pounds.

It's too bad, because I don't know if the AI uses it's best tactical ability at Medium. But I refuse to play above Medium in combat unless unit per unit the sides are equal (given identical valour, morale, unit type, general, etc). If I recall, MTW didn't boost the stats until the highest difficulty level.

I tried the Seleucids on hard, and quit in disgust. Watching a normally poor fighting unit walk right through my spear wall and slaugher my units is not fun. Good luck in your campaign, though. If you win, please let us know. I'd love to find out if survival is possible given the artificial stats boosts that Hard gives the AI in combat.

This is quite true. I don't have the game yet but i have played the demo mod and i agree. At "hard" there are some extreme morale bonuses given to the opponent while my units rout with 25% casualties as if they were the peasants in Medieval. I find this really annoying. I would prefer the higher difficulty setting to be based on better tactics rather than "cheating".
Therefore, i'm probably going to use the "medium" difficulty-setting for battles, once i get the game. I'm just afraid that there are also lesser tactics employed by the AI at this level, thus making the "medium" level unchallenging.

[Thoros of Myr]

I'm finding most battles fairly easy to moderate on hard, if it takes a bonus for them to fight atleast this good then so be it, any weaker and I would be falling asleep.

[discovery1]

Have to agree with Thoros. Even on hard the battles are relatively easy. Then again, it's been awhile since I fought with anything less than veteren hoplites commanded by a 3+ star general.

[Osbot]

I don't think the bonus in combat is that apparent. Just pretend you're fighting generals with a couple stars. The MAJOR difference i've noticed is that on hard the AI will attempt to actually flank with cavalry. On medium it simply frontally charges with cavalry. In the event you are attacked by two armies, the AI will link them up on hard. On medium they usually attack individually.

My medium campaign as Brutii got so incredibly boring that I had to quit. Nothing was challenging and I was SO far ahead in the game that it was just tedious. I'll probably play it a little yet, at the very least to see the senate DoW me.