Can the Seleucids beat Egypt?

[afrit]

I am playing parthia on VH campaign/Medium battles. I allied early with Seleucia, and then invaded Armenia and now I am fighting Pontus. So I secured the Seleucids' back. They got no other help from me except trade rights.

It is now 256BC and the Seleucids and Egypt have been at it for at least 20 turns.Looking like a stalemate!. No settlements have changed hands. On the faction graph, Seleucia is catching up to Egypt on military and overall, but Egypt is still better.

Is there a chance the Seleucids will win this fight?
My fellings are still that Egypt will end up on top, so I am waiting.

Anyone wants to place a bet on the silver shields ?

[solypsist]

my opinion is they can do a holding action defending their border, and maybe some bribery, but won't be overrruning eqypt at any point in the game

[Lemur]

I beat Egypt when playing as the Seleucids, but I guess that doesn't count. Especially since it involved a lot of bribes, double-dealing, and a few white-knuckle battles.

I've never seen the Seleucids survive their three-way gang-beating when the AI controls them. Heck, even with the unfair advantage of a human player, they barely survived with me. Actually, thinking back on it, I experienced more of a four-way attack. The Armenians wouldn't chill out until I destroyed one of their cities.

Hmm. Has anyone seen the Seleucids emerge as dominant in the region? I haven't, Egypt or no.

[Basileus]

if a human player is controlling the Seleucids he will most likely rule the east, good great economy great units but if the ai is controlling them then eventualy they will ose to the egypts.

[Theodoret]

Has anyone opened a second front against Egypt whilst they are fighting the Seleucids? I'm playing the Carthaginians, and as Egypt is expanding westwards as well as northwards, I was considering an attack. I'm not tough enough to defeat them alone (I've still got Roman, Spanish and Numidian problems although I've got the upper hand) but I was wondering if a little pressure from me combined with the Seleucids could stunt their growth.

[SpencerH]

I'm just finishing up my second campaign (total) with the selucids. I think they're a great faction, especially once you get silver shield legions.

[The_Emperor]

If the Selucid player can keep Armenia, Pontus and Parthia at bay they have a chance at defeating Egypt (but it takes all of your strength to do it).

With the AI though its a different story. Armenia, always invades the Selucids from what I have seen. Pontus and Parthia always get in on the action shortly afterwards, looking for a piece of the pie.

In the meantime Egypt gets to pile into the Selucids from the South and expand into all those rebel territories to the East as well. Strategically Egypt have it too good, the Numidians have too far to travel to be of any real threat (Libya is just too big) and they will be busy with Carthage anyway, and with the gangup on the Selucids to the north there is nothing stopping Egypt from growing into a superpower.

[Ravenfeeder]

The Selucids are fantastically wealthy, but unfortunately the AI doesn't know how to use this properly. The Egyptians are easily bribed, but regularly defeat armies full of Militia Phalanx, which is pretty much all they can raise at the start.

In addition, as soon as they have a war on a second front (usually Pontus in my games), the AI seems to move its major army first north then south then north again, without actually attacking anybody.

The Selucids are probably the easist faction to play youself however. You just can't spend all that money!

[Akka]

Well, I can't spend the money when playing Greek, Julii, Brutii, Scipii, Egyptian or Carthaginian either. So that's not really something exceptionnal to Seleucids ^^

The two big problems of the Seleucids are :
- They start with VERY low population cities. They can practically raise no units for several turns, they don't get that much money at the start, and they don't have very advanced city infrastructure.
- They are surrounded by enemies that will all gang-bang them.

If they could just have some turns alone, they would most probably be able to field their awesome units (seriously : elite phalanxes, legionnaries, chariots, elephants, cataphracts... There is no good units they can't produce, that's simply frightening ^^), and crush everything in their path ^^

[SpencerH]

I didnt have as much problems with the Egyptians as others seem to have had. As has been mentioned, the selucids are wealthy. Buy merc's, especially cav and bedouin archers, and crush a few Egyptian armies. I took Sidon, Jerusalem, and Damascus then we had peace (for a while). It gave me time to take cities from Pontus and eventually deal with the Armenians.

[andrewt]

It seems that the Egyptians take great offense if their favorite whipping boy becomes somebody else's whipping boy. I've played both Parthia and Pontus and attacked the Seleucids ASAP. Both times the Egyptians allied with the Seleucids and attacked me. In my Pontus game, even the Armenians got into the action and I had to bribe their army that was besieging me.

[Postino]

in 10 turns, through bribery and carefull construction/management, i destroyed egypt as selucia. it requires getting Pontus and Partthia allied with you in the first 3 turns. with Pontus on your side they worry themselves with armenia, though they will break alliance eventually so be ready for it. I did get lucky on my way to Alexandria, bribing 2 egyp[tian nobles and then hiring a large merc army. once at the bridges of the nile delta, all you need to annilate anything is 3 phalanxes.

AI dosent stand a chance against egypt in the long run

[hoof]

I've beat the Egyptians as the Seleceids, but that was on Medium difficulty and Huge units. The reason I mention the Huge unit size is that the AI does not adjust its unit building habits to take into account the much higher drain on its population. Personally I wish CA would have done something about this, but I digress...

Like others have said, a good Human player should have no problem holding the Seleucids together long enough to stem the Egyptian tide, and to eventually conquer them. It'll be hairy at times, although I must admit, my toughest challenge was when the Armenians attacked me with about 15 units of Horse Archers (pikemen aren't too effective against horse archers). Fortunately I had just added six Greek Cavalry units to my army. I'm very glad that wasn't 15 units of Persian Cavalry, otherwise I'd have had several thousand dead soldiers that day ...

Oh, and I did it w/o bribing. Given how much power bribing gives a player, I prohibit myself from ever bribing an AI army. Fortunately the AI has never bribed my units as well, otherwise I'd be in trouble ...

[andrewt]

I've had the AI constantly bribe my troops. That's why I train assassins when there are many diplomats in my lands. In fact, I didn't know diplomats can bribe fellow diplomats until the AI did it to me.

[afrit]

An update to my original post, which was whether the AI seleucids can hold off the AI Egyptians when neither side is fighting a second front:

It is now 243 BC. Finally, Egypt has taken Damascus after many attempts. Egypt's 10 star (!) faction leader is fighting around Antioch, but looks outnumbered. Egypt has also expanded into the desert provinces of Palmyra, Bostra and the Sinai.

I think they will get entangled with my Parthians pretty soon...

So the verdict is: AI Egypt will beat the AI Seleucids even if the latter are not attacked in the back by Parthia, Armenia and Pontus.

Of course, a human player at the head of the Seleucids is a different story.

[Osbot]

Ya, in vanilla RTW Seleucid stands no chance against Egypt. All they build are huge armies of Phalanx troops which def is not the way to fight the people surrounding them.