Hayasdan Guide request !

[Morte66]

I've been fighting the Seleucids as Pontos for 20 years and I have a couple of thoughts:

- Slingers are dirt cheap. Slingers are absolutely deadly hitting a phalanx from behind. That's behind, not side on. To make this work you have to turn off skirmish mode, turn off fire at will (never waste ammo shooting heavy troops from the front), and micromanage closely.

- Cheap spearmen will hold a phalanx long enough for slingers to sprint round the back and kill it, if their morale is good enough. Good morale comes from good generals, who are made by having one or two family members do all the commanding to get all the upgrades.

- Slingers will take some losses at times from peltasts etc, so be very careful to retrain them rather than merging them and get their experience up. By the time you get that silver chevron they'll be doing about twice their original damage. [Slingers are a mathematical oddity.]

- Horse archers do less damage than slingers -- they don't have the "effective against armour" descriptor, or the flat trajectory that works so well against packed formations. But the penalties for tactical errors are less: slingers die, HAs gallop away; they're expensive to hire but with low losses they're cheap to retrain. And they can chase down routers, which is where half you kills come from in a lot of battles. You should never be letting more than 10% of the Seleucids leave the field alive, or you'll win the battles and lose the war.

- Beating phalanxes is all about manoeuvre. You want to be circling, pulling their line apart, destroying one phalanx at a time and killing the routers as the rest blunder around looking for targets.

- Unfortunately, Seleucid phalanxes keep company with skirmishers/spearmen/cavalry. Those can move, and they like nothing better than charging your horribly exposed missile troops. So make a virtue of necessity: whilst your missile troops are positioned to kill phalanxes, thay are simultaneously bait. Cover them with cavalry or spearmen, and be ready to sprint the missiles away. Your covering forces charge into the flank of whoever chases your missile troops, melee ensues, and the missiles can now hit their pursuers from behind.

- It's all about motion. All you need to do is learn to juggle chainsaws. After that it's easy.

- If you can find some way to get just a few phalanxes as a solid base for everyone else to fall back on, that's a godsend.

- Foot archers are for setting fire to siege engines. They're simple to use in battle, but if you stick to simple tactics the Seleucids will conquer you.

- I presume Armenia has some cataphracts. They might put useful charges into the backs of the phalanxes. The Pontic cavalry aren't good enough for that, they're better off acting as escorts for the missile troops.

- Offensive siege tactics... Use missiles to scare the enemy away from the walls and into the square. Batter your way in. Park slingers in the outskirts so they can just reach the square. Park defensive troups half way to the square. At those distances the slingers can fire over their heads despite the flat trajectory. Do this from at least two directions. Be very thorough with the preparation, and set hotkeys for single/triple speed so you won't go to sleep as your troops walk around town.

- Defensive siege tactics... Phalanxes are awesome street fighters since the walls secure their flanks. Don't fight defensive sieges if you can avoid it. Sally, or send relief troops. The key is having troops in the right place at the right time. You need roads and good intel to make this work on the strategic map.

- Don't forget that forts are free. A sacrificial unit of "poor bloody infantry" in a fort will hold up a huge army for a turn, while you concentrate your forces. And in the mountain valleys around Armenia they're great for channelling enemies and making them fight in places you like better.

My field army, currently sat in Antioch:
- 4 pike phalanxes: anvil
- 4 slingers: hammer
- 1.5 merc horse archers: ok missile damage, good decoys, rout-chasers
- 2 family medium cavalry: cover the slingers, chase routers, charge weaker troops (especially missiles at the start of the battle)
- 2 spearmen: fast-moving defensive troops that can fill a hole when you screw up
That'll take out a great big seleucid army pretty reliably.