Sassanids (BI faction)

[projectmayhem]

ok so i found the sassanids to be really easy compared to the Byzantines after playing both to victory... the ERE/Byzantines can't really stop your heavy cav to save their life... even fulls legions of roman spearmen fall to 3-4 units of any heavy calvary with few of your units lost (especially immortals ofc). basically the strategy is to charge them all at one line or spears and scare them to death with the arrows and the charging and such, they get a lil paniced and when they start to run, all your guys pull out their bows and shoot them in the soft spot in the back where they don't have armor.


that's pretty much it for the battle strat just one more... your spears are better fighters than almost any horde unit (and also have the full 120 unit size), so if you find yourself up against them train lots of levy spearmen (at advanced exp if at all possible).

For the campaign map strat i found the game is almost too easy if you simply aim for antoch early. take it with everything you can, exterminate, and get to work teaching them about heaven and hell (Zoroastrian) with all of your faction leaders and generals (you get at least 5% conversion for every family or general in the region, so send them all to help initialy, then attack from there)

once anitoch likes you enough, set it to be your capitol (VERY IMPORTANT!!) it is not only close enough to keep your homelands happy, it's also now your biggest city, and the ERE was kind enough to build a hipodrome there so you can train all the cav that are so good at killing romans.

from there just fight a long 1 on 1 with the byz/east romans, making trading and map agreements with everyone else, and try not to war anyone but the rebels and the ERE.

To comment on an earlier post of religious troubles its not that hard: take more generals, or the ones with 25%-30% conversion strengths to new cities, and sometimes you need to use the border conversion strat... which is taking cities that border your unruley target, sit your generals with conversion on the edge of that territory, waiting 5-10 turns then attacking it (it will already be mostly your religion.)

i like them and their horsies so much that i am currently working on taking over the world with them. right now i have killed ERE and ERE rebels and own ALL of their homelands. I eliminated the vandals and am fighting a standoff with the WRE and two horde tribes (the yellow ones [name escapes me] and the huns [who are almost dead]) I took carthage and everything south of the Mediterranean, and i have more money than davey crocket. (the ex ERE cities are goldmines, as are your homecities) The entire east med is full of my trade fleets from alexandria to antoch to carthage to constantinople to jerusalem (each netting over 2k/turn)

[samiosumo]

Playing H/M i started by taking Kotais and turning it into my unit centre. With a couple of armies i took antioch and tarsus(very hard to control they keep rioting) Then moved south and took Sidon and Jerusalem. Fully at war with ERE now they started blockading my ports, with 4 ships i won 15 consecutive sea battles and on land was helped by the arrival of ERE rebels, and the Berbers. Got my king in a ship with elephants (from Pharapsha) and full army and took alexandria. The WRE allied with me so ERE was at peace. THEY offered me traade rights and map info then next turn blockaded my port. My 5 star kng was dead in the ground so i changed my heir to my best general. Next turn my king dies so i gather an army and sail across the black sea to constantinople. it was held by rebels i take it and hold it. I take Philedelphea but keep on being attacked from Petra and the ARab inferia.

Next i plan to take Petra and Dumathra, then try to hold Tarsus.

[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.

[Revenant69]

First things first. It seems that I was wrong about the fact that Sassanids start the game with a family member who has a Decorated hero and a Mercenary Captain ancillaries - it's just that I got them realy quick in my campaign.

Secondly, I dug through the ancillary file last night and managed to find some interesting stuff and do some tests as well. What are my results? Well, a picture is worth a thousand words...



So, it is possible to halve the training time of elite units (and Sassanids have lots of units which take more than one turn to train). In fact, the ONLY possible (for Sassanids) combination of ancillaries necessary to get the desired effect is the following:
Decorated Hero - 20% reduction;
Drillmaster - 10% reduction;
Master Smith - 10% reduction;
Mercenary Captain - 10% reduction.

A question rises. How would one go about "breeding" these ancillaries? To this end, I compiled a little chart of triggers and condition necessary to get the ancillaries.


And now some information from my personal observations.
1. To get a Decorated Hero ancillary just send a lone general unit on some rebel/brigand hunt and make sure that this unit takes enough casualties to be awarded the 20% chance to get a Decorated Hero.
2. Drillmaster is tougher to get as the chances are lower. Just put a general with Command of 4 higher as a governor of a city, any city for that matter, and train infantry units. I got my Drillmaster when I put Melchior, the starting general, to subdue the residents of Ancyra and he was training peasant garrison. So training cheap peasants will suffice, they are infantry after all.
3. To get the Master Smith, your city has to have an Armourer building and have a governor. Then, at the end of each turn, you get a 2% chance to recruit this ancillary. May take a while...
4. Mercenary Captain is one of the easiest one to get, just recruit some mercenaries once in a while and you'll get him.

Once you have all four above mentioned ancillaries, transfer them to the governor of your troop production city and be ready to start the Sassanian Blitzkrieg!!!
Beware, however, the upkeep cost of a unit is not reduced !!!

[Severous]

@Revenant69
Excellent posts. Learnt something there. Thank you.

I will look out for that training effect on recruitment.

[Revenant69]

@Revenant69
Excellent posts. Learnt something there. Thank you.

I will look out for that training effect on recruitment.

Thanks Severous, I tried my best, although, as it turnes out, the information in my previous post is not entirely accurate. I took the information for the table with ancillaries from an old Excel file. As I later found out, this file was for RTW 1.2 or 1.3. To correct this mistake, I actually looked through the export_descr_ancillaries.txt file in BI/Data folder and RTW/Data folder and incorporated the changes.

The full and final description can be found here: Military discounts Ancillaries

Hope you find it even more useful.

[Severous]

This information is not restricted to this faction. It deserves a place in the research part of this forum.

See if you can find a suitable thread here..or get a new thread going:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=88