In my new Parthia campaign I'm having a fun* time. I had a wonderful* seige which laid out in spades the problems with Parthia and horse archer based armies - amongst other things.

First off I figured out why not to assault any cities - you have no city buster infantry. So this seige occured because there were no walls. I assaulted thinking that it would be pretty easy to whittle them down with my HA and having my Cataphracts in reserve to mop up the rest.

The genius AI began their happy running around right in front of your troops getting shot up by my HA's. There's no wall - but the enemy never strayed outside of that area where the wall would be. Eventually my HA's found themselves on that path that the enemy runs along and I tried to get them to come back out and around the city.... somehow there's a special imaginary wall that keeps untis from leaving the air-walled cities. That was the first measure of my frustration - fighting my troops inability to cooperate.

Once I had killed about 600+ of their men with my HA's I realized that I probably wouldn't be able to kill all of the 110 Levy Pikemen in the center of the Square of Death because of lack of Arrows. My Cataphracts weren't looking too keen on fighting a battle of attrition at the beginning of the game either. Eventually after maneuvering through the city I shot the last of my arrows off. Then I quit the battle and lost my army. Wheeeeee .... i can't stand this.

I find myself putting more effort into making sure my troops are doing what I tell them to than paying attention to the enemy and fighting their tactics...

I shudder to think what this game would be like with a good AI and the same lack of troop manipulation.