Pahlava Expansion Question

[george585]

I don't recruit mercenaries unless in dire straits and then I dispose of them as swiftly as possible. Again, I don't know how you could possibly lack for infantry the west, unless by west you mean west of your starting location, which is steppe-land and thus naturally devoid of infantry for the Pahlava to recruit. And until I finally started making good cash my primary army was mostly HAs plus a general or two, and one or two armored HA's (Dehbed Asavara or such; the mid-level HAs), with a small core of greek pantodopai phalangites.

I actually meant the region between my starting position and Anatolia... But now, like you sugested I managed to destroy their barracks-related building, built local conscription, and now at least I can recruit basic archers.
My army too is just HAs and General.

25k per turn from 35 territories isn't TERRIBLY bad, but you probably have an excess of troops somewhere which could be reallocated to a war front. Just how are you spending that 25k per turn? Level 1 MIC only costs 300 Mnai, and Level 2 is 3000. So to get L2 Region and Faction MIC you need 6600 MNai total and....9 turns I believe. So 733 Mnai "saved" per turn is needed, which is hardly much at all, roughly 3% of toal income per turn.
Just for note I was probably only to 35-40k per turn by 35 territories, and if you check the 0.8x Faction Progression thread you'll see my larger Pahalv empire which pulls in roughly twice that, mainly from its new acquisitions.

Surprisingly now for some reason after about 20 turns or so, situation inmproved, and now it is double that 50000. Butb this is still nowehere near what you need for massive construction in all cities. I get about 4000-5000 of profit now. Hmm.. I guess I was confusing different MICs... for quite some time I was under impression that you need to build several levels of those to build any troops. I guess I was wrong now that I discovered you should destroy former barracks.

Well the steppe cities should already have a Nomadism/Pastoralism building in place. With the Pahlava as is, when you conquer a place, you destroy the existing gov/barracks (unless you can use the barracks...hahaha Haikakan!!!) and then you get to build Regional Pacification plus you should be able to build a Migration, much like true nomad factions. Then, as long as you DON'T build a normal government (Type I-IV), you can build Nomadism or Pastoralism, and usually only one of those, as the Pahlava are not true nomads in the game. Not only is it a swank 5% happiness bonus but, if you build Nomadism on the steppes, or conquer a place that already has Nomadism in place, you get to recruit spiffy HAs and armored HAs by building up the Clan Chief's Camp line, which is significantly cheaper than standard barracks. The problem is that the Saka lands are pretty barren as far as Pahlav recruitment goes, the best I've seen is the basic HA, and that is not everywhere that is Saka.

Hmmm. So from what you are saying I figure I made a mistake of Building Gov-t III there. So you are suggesting I would be better off if I destroy it and build nomadism/pastoralism if it is not there and if it is a steppee city?

35 provinces should mean you have roughly 25-40 grown generals, no? Surely you don't need all of them in the army. In fact, a lot of the Pahlav ethnicities are well suited to governing and their education system pops out some pretty good ancillaries and traits, especially when you can afford to go beyond the basic school. That is also the secret to keeping those core provinces happy after moving the capital: its generally very easy for even my less-than-inspiring FMs to at least get unrest-reducing traits, even if they all don't get 10 influence (though a nice number will). Most of my hinterland is one or two units plus a FM, and it works even in India.

LOL. I am pretty sure (but I didn't count them yet) I have less than 25 for my current 34 regions. I would say I have around 16-20. Twise as little.
And somehow my generals (at least those who didn't stay in cities for long) actually get unrest-INCREASING traits. And most of my generals (both family, and adoptees) have only one or two good primary trairts... It is extreemly rare for me to have one that is Sharp, Charismatic, Vigorous. And even in that case they would certainly not all 3 other good personality traits. But I guess it makes game more realistic so it's not really a complaint here at all.

Culture penalties, my friend. You just need to build lots of Pahlav stuff to reduce that. And, as mentioned, culture is capped at 50% penalty, distance at 80%. Squalor shouldn't be a problem in steppe cities unless they are thoroughly Pahlav by that point (and rather large). And you only need a few troops to keep small pop steppe settlements at 80% garrison bonus.

Well actually two of my steppee cities on the far north are rather small, yet I am close to having 10 units in them... and archers (not cavalry), yet I did not reach 80% limit there.

So if you have more than that, just move the extras out and relocate them somewhere useful. Also, if you wait for a while to expand you'll find that a lot of those eastern provinces not owned by AS are built up with your culture already, custom-made for easy governance. And if you keep an active and large spy network going you can keep the AS from reasonably building up its cities. I even managed to keep Persepolis from becoming Huge before I took it when it rebelled for the umpteenth time, which made life easy for me there. In fact, I don't think any Seleukid province east of Seleukia (which I managed to make rebel a couple times but couldn't snatch for myself then) managed to become too thoroughly Greek that I had issues with it.

Well I some cities my strategy now is move nearly all troops out, let it revolt, and then recapture it exterminating the populance - it would be more effcient than keeping troops there (that do not do much, as order is till below 70%, but in addition they get hurt)

Well there ya go. just need to build those mines then.

That's what I started doing :)

I guess the newest thing in all of this for me was that I need to destroy barracks before building my own.... Not only does it let you recruit your troops, but you also get some money. In fact it allowed me to start building campaign in most of my cities, as I got something close to 80000 for free there.