Sassanids (BI faction)

[Revenant69]

Just started playing as the Sassanids (BI v1.6 Hard / Hard) cuz I love playing factions with nice cavalry

My strategy was to do a two pronged assault.
1. Collect all armies from Artaxia, Phraaspa, Artaxarta (you should get almost a full stack) under the command of Melchior, the Eran Spahbod - Commander-in-chief of all Sassanid armies, and take Kotais. You'll have to spend a few years there teaching the Armenians about Zoroastra and pacifying the populace. You can then use this army, if your northern mountainous border is secure that is, to march across the mountains to Sinope and Caesarea.

2. Collect all armies from Ctesiphon, Hatra and in between them and quickly occupy the bridge between Hatra and Antioch. Let the Romans waste their forces in bridge attacks. After you have smashed their stacks in bridge battles you can move your army up to take Antioch. You can then use this army, retrained in Antioch, to take Tarsus and to march south into Judea and Aegyptus.

Sassanids have one enemy - the Eastern Roman Empire, so make sure to stay nice with the ERE enemies. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Another great thing about Sassanids is that you can use their generals as a solo rebel mop up army. In this way you can train a few generals pretty quick to silver and gold chevrons.

You can use Ctesiphon and Antioch as your army training centers. Note that one of your family members has two nice ancillaries (Decorated Hero and a Mercenary Captain) that help train troops faster and cheaper. For instance, Clibinarii Immortals usually take 4 turns to train. However, you can train them in 3 turns, just see the picture below:



Just transfer these ancillaries to a governor in your troop building city to make training units cheaper and faster. Indeed, 4 turns - 30% = 2.8 turns and I guess the game rounds it up to 3 turns. Although still kinda strange that 30% reduction in troop price actually reduces the training time too. I wonder if there is a way to actually attain a 50% reduction in price (and so in time as well) to train units. This would mean the Sughdians, Clibinarii, War Elephants and Cataphracts would take 1 turn to train. That would just be EVVVVIL =)
Hmm, will have to look at all ancillaries in RTW:BI v1.6. Anyone got a link to the list of all different ancillaries and their effects?

Will write more of my thoughts at a later point, once I advance through the campaign. Cheers.