Questions about Seleucids

[Count Belisarius]

The Seleucids were by far my favorite faction to play before I made the switch to R:TR. They are fantastically rich, their force mix is the best in the game, and they are surrounded by enemies. It's GREAT, but not so hard as to be impossible! In R:TR, they are a much more difficult faction to play (less money, weaker starting army, and a MUCH stronger Parthian enemy).

Anyhow, I recommend consolidating your starting army and immediately going onto the offensive against Egypt. In R:TW, the sooner you get rid of them, the better, and they will ALWAYS attack you. Always. Take the fight to them, and don't stop until they have been exterminated. If you don't take Egypt down first, they will attack you with wave upon wave of HUGE armies. The Egyptian people multiply like locusts, and you will get swamped if you give them enough time.

Punching out the Egyptians will take a while, so you should make nicey-nicey with your other neighbors in the meantime. Or bribe them, whichever. Just make sure that you build up your garrisons in Seleucia, Antioch (you can use this garrison to defend the capital against Pontus, defend Hatra if the Armenians get frisky, reinforce your offensive into Egypt, or if things are going well snap up a rebel province or two), and Asia Minor while you are on the offensive in Palestine. Be sure to handle Pontus carefully because your Asia Minor province is out there hanging in the wind all by itself with no infrastructure to build an army.

Once you have crushed Egypt (don't forget to take Cyprus), your southern and western flanks should be secure. The desert will defend you to some extent. Even if it doesn't, the Numidians usually aren't strong enough to make TOO much trouble, and the Carthaginians inevitably are busy with Rome and/or the Spanish and/or the Greeks and/or the Numidians.

Garrisoning Egypt is a pain, the cities revolt constantly, and sometimes I would just let them revolt and keep a major army or two in the area to make sure Numidia and Carthage kept their hands to themselves.

Now, you can take any remaining rebel provinces in the area and pick off your northern neighbors one at a time. I usually would go after Pontus first, mainly because they seem to be the most credible threat. The Armenians and Parthians are just too poor to field more than one or two major armies. Just make sure to bring plenty of archers and light cavalry to deal with annoying horse archers.

Next, you can go whatever direction you want. I usually would land in Rhodes just to get the Wonder, which set off a war with the Greeks. To that end, I would have already taken Crete, using it as a springboard into southern Greece. Or, you could go across the Bosporus to Byzantium. I would recommend against going north. The mountain passes into Scythian territory are very defensible for you, and I have almost never had trouble with the Scythians unless I was instigating it. Plus, there's NOTHING up there that you need. Lots of empty space and wasted time for an infantry-based army.

Alternatively, you could go across the desert to Carthage. It's an attractive option, but you run the risk of getting all the way to Carthage . . . only to find out that the city has fallen to the Romans. And Rome is just too far away from your borders at this point to make war with them practicable.

On a tactical level, I almost never build the higher-end Seleucid infantry. They look cool, and they're effective as hell, but the difficulty in retraining them slows down your operational tempo, which is unacceptable to me. I do the bulk of my fighting with Levy Pikemen or (maybe) Phalanx Pikemen, while having my "fun" with cataphracts and elephants.

Good luck!

[Rodion Romanovich]

On a tactical level, I almost never build the higher-end Seleucid infantry. They look cool, and they're effective as hell, but the difficulty in retraining them slows down your operational tempo, which is unacceptable to me. I do the bulk of my fighting with Levy Pikemen or (maybe) Phalanx Pikemen, while having my "fun" with cataphracts and elephants.

I agree to that, to some extent. But usually if you build those high-end units they don't take many losses either so there's not much replacing needed to be done. When going into barbarian territory it's especially useful to bring older units, but when going for greece and rome, the cities there already have buildings that allow instant retraining. I kept some levy pikemen for my war with Scythia and later Dacia, Germania and Thrace even when most of my southern armies were silver shield pikemen and phalanx pikemen. I must say the phalanx pikemen are really unnecessary to replace with silver shields, because phalanx pikemen have a pretty good morale already. Still, I can't resist it just in order to get some variation and the the pleasure of seeing those guys in action...