I have been reading The Persians by Maria Brosius, and have a question about the Pahlava faction.

Are the Pahlava intended to be proto-Parthians? Their starting position in the time frame seems to imply that they are meant to be the group that became the Parthians known to Rome.

The question that I have about this is that the Persians/Parthians that Rome had so many problems with were the Arsacids, who, according to Brosius and other sources were the Parni, as I quote,

"In the 3rd century BC ... a nomadic tribe called the Parni, or Aparni, crossed into the northern border of Parthia. The Parni were an Iranian speaking people who belonged to larger confederation known as the Dahae. After a period of an apparently peaceful settlement in Parthia the Parni adopted the name of the province, and became subsequently known to the outside world as Parthians. With their establishment as a political power the term 'Parthia' became a generic term for their empire as a whole, and the term 'Parthians' for the many different peoples who inhabited it."

Whereas the Pahlava do not seem in the least to be the same guys, according to Brosius and some other written sources that I have. The following is a quote from Wikipedia but is a paraphrase of a similar passage in Brosius.

"The Pahlavas are a people mentionned in ancient Indian texts like the Manu Smriti, various Puranas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Brhatsamhita etc. They are referenced in the Mahabharata and the Puranic literature as Pahlavas as well as Pallavas. They were ancient Persian tribe known as Pahlav, who migrated from Persia to west, south-west and southern India and founded the Pahlava dynasties. They are said to be same as the Parasikas."

So the Pahlava faction, in RTW game faction context, is an Indo-Persian faction in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a not a faction set on a course to replace the Seleukids.

Question then, is, should the EB Pahlava faction actually be the Parni? Or do you guys have something else in mind? Just wondering, not criticising.