Sassanids (BI faction)

[Ordani]

Sassanids have to be the easiest faction I've played so far.

1. Recruit Clibinarii
2. Flank Romans while shooting them with arrows
3. Charge Romans from multiple angles
4. Get coffe, come back 5 minutes later when their entire army is dead and you've lost 3 Clibinarii, which is apparently Latin for "impossibly difficult to kill."

Sieges can be a little rough against Comitatenses in the early/mid years but you essentially can not lose battles in the open field. You can have armies of peasants, but as long as they're backed by Clibinarii or Immortals all they have to do is hold the melee line long enough for your HEAVY cavalry to waddle around the flanks. Opposing cavalry functionally doesn't matter since it'll bounce off the Clibwall.

Did I mention Clibinarii are really good? Best record was a C and CI (yes, that's 2 units, alone) versus about 700 roman infantry and light cavalry. Persia represent.

[Garvanko]

Clibinarii rock, but I also like the Levy Spearmen as flanking units. Their bonus against Cav makes them an excellent support force for Sughadans and Clibinarii.

Best way to kill of the ERE. Cause internal disorder and destroy their military structures through use of assassins - especially in Antioch which will be training alot of Comitatenses. Wait a few years, while defending the bridge between Hatra and Antioch. When they are weak and you are ready (and when your economy needs a boost), take Antioch.

Best army composition so far..

1 Clibinarii Immortal (or 2)
3 Clibinarii
4 Sughadans
4 Levy Spearmen
4 Horse Archers
2 missile units/javelins etc

[stabularasa]

Sassanids have to be the easiest faction I've played so far.

1. Recruit Clibinarii
2. Flank Romans while shooting them with arrows
3. Charge Romans from multiple angles
4. Get coffe, come back 5 minutes later when their entire army is dead and you've lost 3 Clibinarii, which is apparently Latin for "impossibly difficult to kill."

Sieges can be a little rough against Comitatenses in the early/mid years but you essentially can not lose battles in the open field. You can have armies of peasants, but as long as they're backed by Clibinarii or Immortals all they have to do is hold the melee line long enough for your HEAVY cavalry to waddle around the flanks. Opposing cavalry functionally doesn't matter since it'll bounce off the Clibwall.

Did I mention Clibinarii are really good? Best record was a C and CI (yes, that's 2 units, alone) versus about 700 roman infantry and light cavalry. Persia represent.

Ordani, at what difficulty setting did you play?

[Ordani]

I always play on Hard/Hard since VeryHard has been reported to weird out, and didn't actually seem any more difficult except with low experience infantry at the very beginning of the game anyway. If it's anything like Shogun it's just an another bonus experience level for AI troops.

Clibinarii Immortals are just insanely good. I didn't even have a chance to get major Cataphract armies to the front since a few C/CI units per army bulldozed anything in their path. The only challenge at all was seizing gates with levy spearmen, though that got much easier when you forced farther into Roman lands and could recruit Merc Veternarii. You will only lose hugely lopsided field battles as the Sassanids, and unless you take a hundred years wandering lost in the desert the ERE will never field a significant enough force. By significant force I mean like 10x First Cohorts.

[Watchman]

Playing as the ERE, I actually found Legio Lanciarii to be among the better clib-counters. Ergo, when I tried the Sassanids, Lanciariis were singled out for every tactical nastiness I could dream up starting with massive archery saturation and converging attacks.

Commies usually just crumbled when charged.

[Ordani]

Legio Lanciarii are the best anti-cavalry unit the ERE has, but a flanking charge from CI will likely disrupt them to the point of routing without extensive extenuating circumstances. They also aren't good enough against infantry to run off Levy Spearman, and thus easy to pin and annihilate.

My fundamental gripe with the Sassanids is that CI can get away with charging spearmen unless you happen to be fighting the Roman A-Team 3-silver chevron max weapon/armor Legio Lanciari of Doom straight outta Compton.

[Watchman]

Well, let's be honest here - the Romans *did* have a Hell of a time with the Persian tanks under various flags. And they did *not* have pikes...

That said, BI FamiCav can usually roll up even spearmen without too much trouble assuming they're not green as newly risen grass. I've hunted bandit Saxon Keels with Paladin Bodyguards without excessive issues, although I'll admit it got a bit hairy at times.

I'd seriously hesitate about crashing even CIs into something like those Palatine spearmen or high-chevron Boshporans though, but then I tend to be a bit excessively cautious.

[SJRlunchbox]

A quick word on Sassanid soldiers. I was expecting their Levy Infantry to be, in a word, pathetic. However, they have a couple of intense bonus'.

1. (On large settings) 120 soldiers. Count them, one hundred and twenty. How does this help? It means they take longer to rout, usually outnumber opponents and can generally fight longer

2. They have better stats then I expected. As an opening infantry unit in an army tipped towards cavalry war, I was expecting them to be less then mediocre. But they quite surprised me by being acceptable.

3. Even better, when you get higher level barracks (either through building them yourself (which I recommend if you've got nothing else to spend your vast wealth on) or finding them in other cities you've taken) they're trained with an experience bonus. That, coupled with foundries (which are simple enough for the Rich Sassanid's to get their hands on) means you can get Levy Spearmen with three experience and silver weaponry/armour (effectively +5 to defense and attack) simply enough.

4. They can be retrained anywhere. Let me repeat that, ANYWHERE. The enemy city could have anything between the level 1 barracks, and the top-of-the-line-with-go-faster-stripes barracks, and you can retrain your Levy Spearmen. What does that mean? Throw the footsloggers into the grinder! Lose half of your 1,200 men, it doesn't matter, you can retrain them all in less then a turn anyway.

Right, moving on. The Sassanid general is, for lack of a better word, brilliant. He's far tougher then any other general unit (high defense and two hitpoints do wonder for a soldier) and he has the added bonus of being a horse-archer. Tough, strong and capable of ranged combat.

The Clibinarii are VERY effective, being able to hit home with a powerful charge. As well as having an almost obscene defense and the ability to fire arrows, they're effective warriors in any situation. However, they require a mid-range stable to retrain, which isn't always handy, and it takes a whole year to get a single unit of them ready.

Then, the archers. They take longer to get then other archers (The romans get a basic archer unit at the first Practise range), but they're worth the weight. Very effective, and when stuck behind a screen of Levy Spearmen with Clibinarii on their flanks (also firing their bows) invincible death dealing machines.

Finally, the Sassanid elite infantry, (which I unfortunately cannot spell). They are effective, that can't be doubted. Toe to toe I saw them take on two Plumbitarii units and emerge victorious with only half casualties. Unfortunately, they're too hard to come by to really risk. They take two turns to recruit, and at least double that time to march into the trouble areas to reinforce the units you already have. They're best in situations where you need a hard punch to deal with tough units (such as attacking a wall), but unfortunately those very situations are the ones they suffer too many casualities to be useful in your next fight. A pity, since I would use them all the time, otherwise.