Scythia

[mystic brew]

a few things i have to add in to the pile.

1. first thing i did was change my capital to Tanais... this is the most central, is the one that will most likely grow the fastest, prevents your starting cities from being too rebellious, and is least likely to be under threat anytime soon.

2. in both east and west the rivers provide natural barriers that you can exploit. a single unit of archers in a fort can certainly hold the enemy up as your cav redeploys
(this is especially applicable near campus scithii... when a thracian army can just walk in and siege straight off.)
if you so this there is no need to have a garrison in any of your cities of more than a couple of archers/axemen, and this is important since cash is hard to come by.

3. i siezed the northeast parthian city, then negotiated peace with everyone i could get at.
then i moved all of my horse archers towards the west, split into 2 armies of about 4 HA and 1 light cav (in the NE i develped head hunting maidens, and they are excellent light cav... better than barbarians by some way)
each with a general, and in a few short years of fighting the Dacians and Germanic peoples had gold chevron troops and 6*+ generals... which would come in handy when the massed forces of Parthia and Armenia came calling.

but when they did the forts at the fords meant these armies were bimbling around in a whole big area of naff all, and vulnerable to the fast, small cavalry raids... after a few turns of being smashed up like this, they saw sense, and paid through the nose for a ceasefire!

4. never leave your cavalry in towns if possible. your infantry can hold a few turns, and gold chevron cav is too valuable to lose in a siege of some pointless little germanic town...
use the starting forces carefully, and you hardly need to sell map information at all!