Sassanids (BI faction)

[Trithemius]

I seem to have followed what appears to be the main Sassanid strategy. I bribed/cajoled the Huns into an alliance and was able to leave my Caucasian front pretty weakly garrisoned. I then pushed across against Antioch, defeated a few ERE forces in the field and then had an interminable siege and some fairly large sally-battles before I exterminated Antioch (I -really- need to get a siege train going, but I want to bring along a bunch of Sughdians as well and its costly).

At present, I've sent my cavalry field-force south to exterminate its way to Alexandria, but I'm having some doubts...

I'd thought that by removing the southern cities (they are the shorter and simpler "arm" of the ERE after you take Antioch) I'd divide them nicely and cause them to ineffectually recruit for their armies, while securing for myself a nice pile of wealth and one of my flanks. However, the ERE seem to be napping or, I dread, building a decent field force in Anatolia.

Should I have hit Anatolia first and conquered all the way to the Hellespont before mucking around in Palestine?

[Trithemius]

Oh, I also notice that recruitment of Sughdian infantry seems to be limited to the original Sassanid provinces, and nothing I can do can alter this (I thought it might be based on the "culture" of the Government building, but it appears that is not the case). Is this a bug or a "feature"?

[Conqueror]

My Sassanid campaign on H/H setting turned out to be positively challenging. The ERE were very lucky as all of the barbarians happily left them alone and it took a long time for the eastern rebels to pop up. Thus they were able to concentrate all their military might against me, their sole enemy. I was also playing on self-imposed rules of not recruiting/retraining units (other than peasants) in a city untill it has been converted to Zoroastrianism, and not training units in foreign culture's barracks.

The ERE attacked me early and was very aggressive. I could hold them off but going on the offensive was difficult without leaving my cities vulnerable (and the Romans sent armies against those cities every time I did). The main problem was that my economy didn't allow for much units, despite the fact that I focused on constructing trade buildings in all of my non-frontier cities. I was just barely able to afford to upkeep my defensive forces and retrain my losses after ERE attacks.

I solved my lack of funds by assaulting and exterminating ERE cities when they were left lightly defended. I had no chance of keeping those cities as the unrest was crazy despite extermination and I couldn't spare troops to set up strong enough garrisons to fend off the very numerous ERE armies. But I got plenty of money by raiding cities, and weakened the ERE because I destroyed their buildings.

Then the Eastern Roman Rebels finally appeared, and ERE finally had an enemy other than me. That gave me the opportunity to actually start expanding, and now I also had enough denarii to set up strong garrisons. I conquered territory from Sidon to Dumatha and I trained spies and assassins to cause unrest in ERE cities, greatly strenghtening the Eastern Rebel faction through revolts. Even more importantly, my economy actually started flourishing with trade from the coastal cities.

But just as I was prepared to attack the weakened ERE, my allies the Eastern Rebels backstabbed me and besieged many of my cities. I had to spend quite some time fighting them off, and ERE used this time to build up their forces in Asia Minor (they STILL hadn't been attacked by any of the barbarians, and now they didn't have to worry so much about the rebels either). By the time I had driven all the Eastern Roman Rebels out of my lands and conquered Alexandria and Tarsus, the ERE resumed it's offensive against me. This time my economy was so good though, that it was no trouble to fight them off and launch my own offensive.

I used my vast treasury to quickly raise two mighty armies of mostly mercenaries and handful of native Sassanid troops, led by good generals. My forces crushed the ERE on the field and poured into the Asia Minor like a tidal wave. I was capturing city after city in quick succession. Maintaining public order was troublesome, but I had so many family members and spies promoting Zoroastrianism in the area that the cities converted quickly. Soon enough I marched an army to the gates of Constantinople and the campaign was finished.

Based on my experiences i can give the following advice:
- Having good economy is extremely important. The ERE starts out much larger and wealthier than you, so avoid getting into a stalemate; time will be on the Roman's side.
- Always exterminate non-Zoroastrian cities.
- The Eastern Rebels are a useful tool but don't let them grow too powerful. They are traitorous scum and will bite the hand that feeds them.
- Don't underestimate the usefulness of family members, spies and diplomats with the religious traits. Concentrating them into a single province can work wonders on the religious setup there.
- If you capture a city but can't hold on to it, be sure to burn the pagan/christian buildings and build Zoroastrian shrine (completed in 1 turn, even if the city revolts that same turn). The shrine will remain there even after the city has been taken/revolted and slowly turns the population to Zoroastrianism, causing unrest for the other faction and making it much easier for you to pacify once you conquer it again.
- The basic horse archer unit (Nomad Archer Cavalry) is very cost-effective, so recruit plenty of them in the beginning of the game.
- Clibinarii are very versatile, able to double as horse archers and serious heavy cavalry.
- You general's bodyguard are extremely powerful. Don't be afraid to use them, they alone can often turn the tide of a battle to your favour.

[Brutus]

Oh, I also notice that recruitment of Sughdian infantry seems to be limited to the original Sassanid provinces, and nothing I can do can alter this (I thought it might be based on the "culture" of the Government building, but it appears that is not the case). Is this a bug or a "feature"?

A feature. The Sughdians are meant to be recruitable only in a limited number of provinces, just like the Greeks in vanilla could only recruit Spartans in Sparta and Syracuse.

[Trithemius]

A feature. The Sughdians are meant to be recruitable only in a limited number of provinces, just like the Greeks in vanilla could only recruit Spartans in Sparta and Syracuse.

What a pain, I guess I'll have to rely on mercenary veteranii once I start to run low on Sughdian Infantry wall-stormers.

[Bullethead]

The Sassanids seem fairly easy compared to some of the other factions, especially the Sarmatians. Unless you just have bad luck with the hordes, you should essentially have a war on 1 front (although with northern and southern sectors), although you might have 2 enemies there at different times (ERE and ERE rebels). IOW, you can orient your whole military-industrial complex to face west.

Your first objective is to seize the strategic initiative so the war is fought on your terms. Otherwise, the richer and bigger ERE will grind you down. To do this, you must destroy the ERE field forces ASAP, which prevents the ERE from taking the offensive to you. While the ERE will still have way more troops than you after this, they're required to garrison the big, unruly cities, so most of them can't move. If they try to move anyway, the ERE rebels will probably appear, so they'll then have to deal with them instead of you. Thus, you will be able to start taking ERE cities without having to worry about a counteroffensive, and can do so at your own pace, leaving your main armies in new cities long enough to pacify them before moving on to the next city. This means you really only need 2 main armies, 1 for the Anatolian and 1 for the Middle Eastern sectors. The ERE will, of course, be pumping out individual troop units here and there, and rushing them to the front, but you can pick these off with small stacks of several horse archer units for the most part, so they're basically like suppressing brigands.

At this point in the game, your armies will consist of mostly of levy spearmen, desert archers, and nomad horse archers, with whatever supporting mountain slingers, Kurdish javelinmen, and camel raiders you decide to build, and your starting few units of clibinarii. You really need several horse archers, several desert archers, a couple of slingers, and a couple of camel units in both your stacks, so you can fight different types of battles depending on what the ERE brings. You can build neither clibinarii nor sugdians to start with, you really need some economic upgrades before you can support many of them, and they take 2 turns to build anyway. Thus, your early armies will be light and rather unreliable infantry with fairly heavy missile and light cav support, with a sprinkling of heavy cav. Not to mention you're outnumbered. You therefore need to fight with a terrain advantage.

To destroy the ERE field armies, I've found that bridge battles work pretty well, but aren't guarantees. On the 1st turn, move whoever you can to the bridges NW and SW of Hatra, and reinforce these tiny stacks as rapidly as possible. These stacks will later grow into your 2 main offensive armies under your 2 non-leader generals, but for now they're on the defensive, protecting your cities and killing ERE. The ERE watchtowers along the Euphrates will see your stacks on the bridges, and the ERE field armies will promptly attack you. And if you do well, they'll keep attacking until the ERE runs out of mobile forces.

Attacking ERE stacks will be 2/3 to 7/8 full and will contain about 1/2 to 2/3 infantry, most of the rest foot archers, and 1 or 2 cav or hippo-toxi units. In the 1st wave, the infantry will mostly be limitanei, which your rather shaky forces can deal with in the conventional bridge-slaughter manner. The limitanei take serious losses from your arrows and usually break as soon as they reach your waiting spears. Then you can chase them back across with your cav and pretty much kill every ERE soldier.

Comitatenses and legio lancieri, which will be the bulk of the 2nd and later waves, however, are MUCH harder to handle. These guys take their time calmly forming up in a neat column at their end, all the while totally ignoring massed volleys from your horse archers and flaming arrows from your desert archers. They seem completely impervious to arrows of all kinds. Slingers and javelinmen can hurt them, but due to the flat trajectory of slings, and the short range of javelins, you don't get off enough shots to do decisive damage before they get across. Then they charge across the bridge faster than you can blink, all the while maintaining impecable formation, and rout your waiting spearmen on contact, even those with bronze weapons and 3 bronze chevrons. Then things get desperate.

Clibinarii are the only things you've got that can go toe-to-toe with ERE heavy grunts, but even these have their limits. They kill slowly, due to a low attack rating, and this isn't really helped by their charge bonus, because these tincans can't manage more than a brisk trot. However, they have a very strong defense, so they don't die quickly, they have high morale so they can take serious losses before routing, and they have so much mass that even 10 of them can push 500-600 ERE heavy grunts backwards along the bridge in a prolonged melee. So what you do is use them as a stopper in the bottle while your missile troops run back a couple hundred yards and spread out with your light cav on the flanks. Then pull the remaining clibinarii back, let the ERE fan out after your missile units, and you can get flank shots with arrows that will hurt them, and flank charges with your spearmen and camels that will rout them. The ERE heavy grunts, having been fighting hard while being pushed back 1/2way across the bridge by the clibinarii, will now be exhausted and will rout quickly. Then pursue them back across the bridge and kill them all.

All in all, it's best to avoid being attacked on a bridge by comitatenses and legio lancieri. It's too expensive in scarce clibinarii and experienced spearmen. Plan B is to have spies across the river so you can see what's coming. Then, when attacked by a heavy infantry stack, you choose withdraw. This backs you up a couple spaces, the ERE pursues and attacks again, and this time you've got a different type of terrain advantage: high ground and open fields, either in the foothills by the NW bridge or in the sand dunes by the SW bridge. The ERE heavy grunts take forever to climb the hill, so your slingers have more time to hurt them, and they get tired so your arrows have at least a better morale effect. Plus you can use the open ground to get your horse archers around behind them, where they can do actual damage. Of course, the ERE will have some hippo-toxi, and maybe a general's heavy cav. Use your clibinarii and especially your camels on these. Camels really seem to rout horse units quickly, so always have some with you.

Bridge battles are enlivened sometimes by the ERE trying to swim some units across, either peasants or horse archers. However, it's not very smart about this, sending them right next to the bridge instead of way off to the side somewhere. Thus, you can deal with them from your initial deployment. Swimming units do a lot of dying from prolonged exposure to point-blank missile fire, and the few units that make it across without routing don't last long trying to fight up the steep bank. An interesting thing is that slingers can swim faster than horse archers, and fight more effectively in the water, so send them in after routing horse archers--it's like a feeding frenzy

After several battles at each bridge, the ERE will be immobilized by the need for garrisons and probably by the appearance of the ERE rebels. Now you fully top up your 2 main stacks, merge and replace units as needed, and go on the offensive. Take Antioch and Tarsus simultaneously to cut the ERE in half, then gradually work each army through the rest of its sector. While this is going on at a comfortable pace, put together a 3rd army on the northern flank to take Colchis and/or some of the NE steppes. But I'd as soon leave the steppes to the barbarians, and better they take them from rebels than go to war with me over them. Colchis is worth taking, however. While the bridge battles are going on, you might want your 2* general to go by there and build a fort blocking the path along the Black Sea coast from the ERE to there, to keep the ERE out of it while you kill them at the bridges. And always have several small horse archer stacks scattered about your interior to suppress brigands.

The only trouble I've had as the Sassanids, and that was pretty minor, was the plague. If you keep your infected cities quarantined, the plague goes away in several turns and no harm done. In fact, it's often a positive, because it reduces population that's becoming restive due to the slow pace of your expansion against the ERE.

[Majikos]

The Sassanids

When playing as the Sassanids i set myself a goal: to create the Ottoman
empire, 1000 years earlier. I first started on bringing asia minor under the Sassanid banner. This ensured that the ERE was effectively cut in half economically and they could not come to the rescue unless they wanted around 30 elephants stomping on them. I quickly took antioch as it was badly defended (after a few turns on civil revolts for the ERE) and immediately took to zoroastrianising the province. After a few unsuccessful attempts to reclaim syria, and thus their armies weakened, it was a walkover for my elephant/catapracht/clibinarii armies to claim more turkish lands. I then took Constantinople. These lands were create money generators. After that i started to move south from antioch (which after building a foundry was churning out levy spearmen and cataprachts) and captured sidon and Jerusalem. This was my empire just after capturing constantinople, as you can see my faction is under the tryannical OAP emperor: Melchior the Butcher.

As i see it there are a few things you must do to succeed:
On capturing a city that is predominantly christian or pagan, exterminate the population. This is to quell religious riots and easily convert the people. This the main reason my leader is 'the butcher'.

After exterminating a population it is time to zorastrianise the people. Destroy the existing temple/church and replace it with a zoroastrian one. It is a good idea to bring characters with the 'light of zoroaster' trait and/or a zoroastrian ancillary to aid conversion.

Make use of elephants, i always use two units of elephants in my purely 'military' armies, backed up by some cataprachts and horse archers.

Trade rights are not required. After taking the rich turkish lands i was pretty much self sufficient. As long has you build economy-enhancing buildings and exterminate with each conquest you should have a large treasury. If you look at my picture you see what i mean. I normally make about 7-10k a time, but i am generally building buildings all the time.

[MerlinusCDXX]

Attacking ERE stacks will be 2/3 to 7/8 full and will contain about 1/2 to 2/3 infantry, most of the rest foot archers, and 1 or 2 cav or hippo-toxi units. In the 1st wave, the infantry will mostly be limitanei, which your rather shaky forces can deal with in the conventional bridge-slaughter manner. The limitanei take serious losses from your arrows and usually break as soon as they reach your waiting spears. Then you can chase them back across with your cav and pretty much kill every ERE soldier.
.

I find the ERE even easier, as they tend to bulk up their crappy 1st wave armies with peasants, just shoot them with your archers/nomad cav and they should run by the time they smell your spears coming,thus allowing you to concentrate your entire army on the few decent units they have left.

[Severous]

For experienced players and those patient with archery this faction is straight forward. Horse archery and some heavy cavalry makes for a winning combination of mobility and missiles.

Try to avoid the Roman pila/spear throws which can rout your weaker troops in one volley.

Religion makes for an interesting change. As you capture Antioch and other christian cities you spend a few turns working out the conversion process.

I sent a spy north to look out for Hordes. Then two army groups..one south heading around to Egypt and another west through Turkey. Not finished yet. Hoping it will be less than 10 years on vh/vh.

Link to the After Action Report on this campaign:
http://rtw.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/f...&f=10,2521,,20