Seleucids are godlike

[soibean]

Im playing as hayasdan and have been waging a war with the Seleucids for the past 15 years. It is enjoyable to see the seleucids actually be aggressive and continue to send armies, even stealthily through the hills where I cant see them! I love what you've done with Hayasdan btw.
The Seleucids are also at war with Baktria, The Ptolemies, and Pontos but after checking everyone's map information none of their armies are attacking so yea

Anyway back to the point of this thread. Fighting against the Seleucids with their generals and phalanxes make for amazingly hard battles. Each family member tends to have between 60 and 100 body guards and, thanks to their amazingly high defense and legit attack, are nearly invincible. In one battle from last night, I surrounded one of these units with 2 medium armenian cav, each with 2 chevrons of exp, and my own general, 4 chevrons. Each medium was at full strength with my general at 48 guys. The seleucid family member slaughtered both units of mediums down about 3 men wherein they routed, and brought my own general down to 12 men. When the first medium routed, I sent in 3 units of spearmen to attack the general. He routed one of these as well before he was overwhelmed. This general had 1 chevron of exp, had to have been hit by negative morale traits because he'd been chasing my guys between towns to stop me from invading, and was completely surrounded. My own men were confident troops and all of that.

The same goes for the Seleucid Phalanxes. The Pez... whatever and the Ag... whatever are just about invincible. I usually have a panzy unit of spearmen distract their front while I'll pelt the phalanx with slingers or archers from behind. This works for other factions but against the seleucids... The Pez will probably lose about 60 men from 3 units of slingers using their entire stock and the Ag lose like one or two per volley, if Im lucky. Even getting smashed into from behind with my heavy cavalry barely hurts these guys.

One last thing i noticed, cataphract archers for the armenians have a worse attack than medium cavalry. I dont know if this was meant to show that they were slowed because of their armor but their attack is a 3, medium starts at 6 I believe. I just thought they should be a little more intimidating once they were in the fray instead of having to rely on them charging in and out. I know this is the point, the charge bonus for the cats, but even so.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

What difficulty are you playing on?

[soibean]

campaign is VH battles are M

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

campaign is VH battles are M

We'll see what's up.

[Tuuvi]

I agree the seulicids are very strong. I am playing as Pontos and I had their general surrounded with tindonotae(sp?) and some other units...my guys were being slaughtered, so I sent in some Curepos (which have no charge bonus BTW) and that still wasn't enough...I did manage to kill the unit, but by then my units had taken too many casualties and had low morale, they all routed and I lost.

[tk-421]

so I sent in some Curepos (which have no charge bonus BTW)

Curepos have a charge bonus of 28. It's for their secondary weapon (underhand spear), though, so it is not displayed in the in-game information screens and things.

[Moros]

Here some tips to play as hayadan against Seleukids:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74826

[Kugutsu]

Two words: Horse archers. Get lots of them and get some round the sides and back. They do lots more damage shooting the unshielded sides of phalanxes. Then when you are out of ammo (it helps if you have already destroyed their cavalry or lured it away from the fight) charge in. The morale tends to be lowered, and they rout quite easily. If they dont, withraw and then charge again. As for killing generals, I just overwhelm them with arrows. I try to avoid fighting them in a fair fight, as they will win! The key to Hayasdan has to be their mobility and range. Treat the cataphract archers as normal horse archers, with the bonus that they can charge and do some serious damage (ie when you are ready to rout the enemy) and you should prevail...
Wait till the Seleukids start throwing Kataphracts at you - they are so well armoured that arrows have very little effect. It makes taking down generals look easy!

[tk-421]

One last thing i noticed, cataphract archers for the armenians have a worse attack than medium cavalry. I dont know if this was meant to show that they were slowed because of their armor but their attack is a 3, medium starts at 6 I believe. I just thought they should be a little more intimidating once they were in the fray instead of having to rely on them charging in and out. I know this is the point, the charge bonus for the cats, but even so.

This is not a mistake. Cataphracts do have a lower attack factor, but they have a much higher charge bonus and higher lethality. If you have cataphracts stuck in melee, it may be best to switch to their secondary weapons (its either a mace or sword, can't remember). As for the "Cataphract Archers" (Zrahakir Netadzik?), it might be best not to charge them until the enemy is fairly weakened.

[FoxFreeze]

I have to agree that the Seleucids are quite overpowered in some regards. But I have to say my most frustrating moment was when I was playing Bactria. I had captured a town from the Seleucids fairly easily, and they sent a general with a smaller stack to besiege me. The guy is a 1 star general with perhaps 1 chevron, not faction leader or heir. This man was incredible. Now, after a fairly lengthy engagement, we had both whittled down our units. He had phalanxes and skirmishers, plus one group of archers. I had a crap ton of slingers and archer-spearmen, 1 phalanx, my general, 1 full group of mercenary heavy calv, and about 4 groups of the hellenic native spearmen. Plus 1 group of skirmishers. The man brough out his general unit, quite full, and rushed into me. Not only did I lay my 4 spearmen into him, I took my heavy calv and my general into the fray. I do not exaggerate, 10 minutes or so pass and I finally have this down to only the general. 5-10 more minutes pass and this general, the single man left in his unit, routes the entire force engaging him. It was ridiculous that he lived for that long, surrounded by spearmen and heavy calvalry plus my generals troops. He killed so many. Luckily, I was able to regroup and work myself behind his forces. They routed, but the general still survived.

This guy had to have some crazy hitpoint bonuses or something, that was just silly.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Post a pic of this guy's traits/character card. It'd be interesting to see.

[tk-421]

I actually had a similar problem with Pyrrhos. It wasn't so much that the bodyguards are overpowered as the general just wouldn't die. At one point I had him completely surrounded by Eqvites Consvlares and half a Hastati unit, but he managed to wade through the fighting and escape. He had eight command stars. He died in a siege of Ambrakia a few turns later so I can't post a screenshot of his traits.

[abou]

I had the same problem, except I was playing as Epeiros fighting against the Romans.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I actually had a similar problem with Pyrrhos. It wasn't so much that the bodyguards are overpowered as the general just wouldn't die. At one point I had him completely surrounded by Eqvites Consvlares and half a Hastati unit, but he managed to wade through the fighting and escape. He had eight command stars. He died in a siege of Ambrakia a few turns later so I can't post a screenshot of his traits.

You're all taking the wrong approach. After most of his BG are killed, retreat your troops and put some slingers on his back. He and the rest of his BG will last 30 sec at the most...