Quote Originally Posted by fallen851
Uhh, I believe you have to build an imperial palace somewhere in Italy (Rome included) and the year must be at least 220BC for the Marian Reforms to happen in vanilla.

Where did you get your information? If what you said is true, those playing City Mod are having some issues.
The 220BC requirement for vanilla reforms was removed in the 1.5 patch. I remember that this was extensively tested for RTRPE, so I am absolutely sure all you need is an Imperial Palace in any region with the "italy" hidden resource.

To the original topic: Pahlava aren't impossible. I bumrushed Baktria at the start (VH/M), looted a few cities and then headed directly north with a reasonably-sized HA army with decent experience. The Sacae were quite hard to defeat, but they had more heavy cavalry and foot archers than horse archers so I still had the advantage of mobile firepower. It was only in the last stages of the northern war that the Seleukids declared war on me, which was enough time for me to return south and retrain my army. After that, I split the army into two forces of 4 HA units led by a general - this is easily enough to beat (and utterly destroy) the armies that the Seleukids will send against you, if you know how to use HAs properly. The biggest challenges you will face are against armies with lots of archers and slingers (particularly horse archers).

After conquering Baktra I was running on a bare profit and dipped back into the red a few times, but once a few Seleukid cities were captured (particularly Hekatompylos and its mines) I was getting a decent amount of money again.

Playing as any steppe faction requires you to be efficient in using small armies comprised mostly of horse archers. Learn to beat armies 3-4 times the size of your own and you'll be able to do it.