Help needed vs. Parthian Cav!

[HicRic]

I just had a very, very bad battle.

I'm playing as Scythia..things were going pretty well. My horse archer armies were winning against most things the enemy was throwing at them. I'm playing VH/VH for the first time, and I seem to be under almost constant attacks from stacks from various factions. However, Parthia just sent another army against me. Thinking it would be a walkover, like all the other battles, I sent out my faction leader (10*) with 5 HA. It was against an army with their faction leader, five Parthian HA, and three inf units.

I got totally destroyed.

For some reason, Parthian HA can massively out-shoot my HA. Whether I used the canabrian circle or not, even when I double-teamed individual units of PHA, they shot me to pieces. Each volley killed loads, their range was superior, and to cap it all off, they chased down my HA with theirs, overtook them, and killed them in a moment of melee.

Frustrated, I sent my leader with his bodyguard into melee with the enemy faction leader, beat him, and caused him and two other men to rout. I sent my HA to chase them off the map...and they killed them all. Except the faction leader/general himself. Instead, they surrounded him with their unit, and walked along with him. I tried everything: I fired a volley or two of arrows at point-blank range, I charged into combat and pulled out after they started doing the "walking alongside" chasing thing, but I couldn't kill him. Eventually he went off the map edge. Annoying!

Then, to cap it all off, a unit of PHA charged my general/faction leader's unit and killed half of them, and then routed them. What? Not only that, they stopped pursuing, and ran off. Thinking my leader would get away safe, I watched. Everyone else was dead or routed due to those damn PHA! As I watched, a unit fired off about five arrows at my remaining eight men (including my leader) at extreme range. One man died. Guess which one! Grr!


A unit of PHA also managed to beat my Sarmation mercs in melee. I don't understand-are Parthian HA supposed to be all-killing gods of warfare, or is VH just stupidly biased, or am I just useless? And how might I counter them-seeing as my HA obviously aren't up to the job?

I'm need help-I've managed to beat off all other armies easily with my own HA, but not this!

[Oaty]

Well you can hire professional cannonfodder to rid them of there arrows. This sometimes suckers in there cavalry and if your peasants can tie them up long enough, you can start flanking down on there cavalry.

Does Scythia have archer warbands? if so that'd be the way to go along with a few support troops in case they feel antsy for suicidal charge after your archers. Then theres Cretan archers. Of course they'll get chewed up quickly so have your most inferior missle unit start the shootout while bringing in support of your better missile units.

I've had success using (javelin) skirmishers on them as long as you have support nearby they'll either shoot them up or tie them up so your support troop(s) can finish the job. Numidian mercanaries tied with those Libyan skirmishers(both have a low upkeep) work nicely on HA unfortanately your in the Northern hemisphere.

[Doug-Thompson]

Were the Parthians vanilla HA, or were they Persian cav?

Persian cav have a missile attack of 10, compared to an HA regular attack of 7. They also have much better defense, so they survive a missile fight better.

PerCav also have good melee -- which is massively increased at the VH setting.

[Maltz]

Does Scythia have archer warbands?

Yes, they have chosen archer warbands - very much like Dacian's. It requirese the pop. 6000 town level practice range. For the same level of town you get the stable producing Scythian noble horse archers That both give you a better chance against their 2nd level HA. For foot archers they come with longer range, but you need to protect them well on the open field, which can be impossible with larger unit size (every thing turns and runs slowly except fast horse archers).

I don't know whether difficulty setting affects missle attack - I know they affect melee for sure. In my Vh experiences I just try to avoid all melee and missle exchange. If you have no other choice but melee, send at least 3 vs. 1. It is not even safe for 2 vs. 1. I do notice that AI seems to be able to shoot my men very, very fast even if they only have 10 soldiers firing vs. my 100.

A few weeks ago I mod the game so my patheic Carthagian slingers have 100 attack strength, just for fun. They have a horrible kill rate! So I would assume difficulty settings also affect missle fire (?)

In my Scythian game I took the Parthia town on the corner as one of my first priority. A hard fight, and that's it. Parthia was out of business.

[lars573]

CA has had a simple philosophy for the difficulty in the TW games. It hasn't changed since shogun. Boils down to this on easy you get a morale/attack bonus in battles, on medium nobody gets any bonus, on hard the AI gets the bonus you had on easy, on very hard they get double the hard bonus.

[Slaists]

well, on VH, AI can chase equal horse archers with equal horse archers and win... the AI gets +7 attack on VH... as to persian horse archers: those are much better than their vanilla counterparts: both, missile wise and melee wise.

[LordKhaine]

CA has had a simple philosophy for the difficulty in the TW games. It hasn't changed since shogun. Boils down to this on easy you get a morale/attack bonus in battles, on medium nobody gets any bonus, on hard the AI gets the bonus you had on easy, on very hard they get double the hard bonus.

Well that isn't entirely true. In MTW the AI didn't get any stat boosts at hard (though I believe it did get a morale stat boost in expert). In RTW even hard starts to give the AI pretty impressive stat bonuses. Makes me dislike using hard/very hard settings in RTW

[HicRic]

Plus seven attack? That's insane...no wonder I'm finding it hard.

FYI, STW/MTW gave no bonuses to AI on Hard, they just allowed the AI to use all it's tactics and try as hard as it could. On normal it held back, and on easy it held back more and gave the player a morale bonus. On expert there was a bonus to the AI, I think it was morale in one game and valour/honour in the other. I don't quite remember though, but I think it's in one of Froggy's guides.

Yeah, they were Persian Cav, not vanilla. Looking at their stats and the bonus due to difficulty, I can see why what happened happened...fortunately, I eliminated one army they sent by using a bridge, although I still lost about 200 of my 400 men. (playing on Large, btw). Thanks for the tips people have given me-I'll try and put them to use. I'm not sure about the cannon fodder idea, though-HA tend to have a massive number of arrows. I tried using a unit of merc Hoplites to plug the bridge in that battle-the unit was killed in a few volleys.

I think I might try playing a faction I'm supposed to be allowed to play instead of editing the text file. I might stand a bit more of a chance then, until I'm more used to the VH difficulty. It doesn't help that the AI seems to be able to train units very...fast. I get the feeling that it's allowed to go into negative cash or at least train more than one unit per city per turn..

[hoof]

As far as I know, the *only* change that Very Hard does in battle is give the AI combat bonuses. The tactics the AI uses don't change. Therefore, I would recommend that unless you like fighting peasants that are as tough as Principles, stick to medium difficulty. You get the best AI with equal unit stats.