What makes Hayasdan a hard faction to play as?

[The Persian Cataphract]

As Hayasdan, you'll be commanding armies more suited towards highland combat, and for this task there is cavalry and infantry of high quality, including skirmishers to get the job done in carrying the battle to your favour. Taking advantage of the uneven terrain, and recognizing the weaknesses of the Seleucids, who often spam phalanxes, by bringing forth your heaviest nobles, and your archers to pelt them down as they attempt to march uphill, or upscale even. You will have to count on high casualty rates, but as long as you are able to replenish your troops (Hayasdan has the luxurious advantage of lavish natural defences, so the ways for the enemy to enter your territories are limited). The Suaromatae should not really be considered of any greater danger; The Caucasus shields you from them by large, and their siege capability is generally lacking.

Perhaps diplomacy will be one of the key factors to your survival; Ptolemaioi and AS struggle all the time, and further to the west there is Pontos. However your survival will not be easy; The AS, unless you take the initiative, will likely only be "replaced" as a threat, ranging between Baktria and Ptolemaioi (Who are not exactly that much softer than the AS, they are respectively Blue and Yellow Deaths), as Pahlava AI behaves somewhat strangely. However the defensive qualities of Hayasdan cannot be denied or overlooked. A skilled player will hold the enemy at bay, with honours. Their unit spectrum is equally diverse and provides a flexible selection of unit types, both in infantry and cavalry ranges.

[Danest]

My best successes with the Hayasdan involved taking the offense... immediately making a direct, head-on assault against the Seleukids, striking straight into the heart of the empire, taking Seleukia at the end. At the beginning, the Seleukids have their hands really, really full with all of their enemies, and are very, very vulnerable. If you wait to attack, they'll eventually often ally with those enemies (who would rather be attacking you), and then it'll get really bad.

[jhhowell]

Perhaps diplomacy will be one of the key factors to your survival

Translation: don't play Hayasdan on VH!! RTW doesn't really have a diplomacy system, but at least the other factions won't be quite so single-mindedly devoted to destroying the player this way. I still got attacked by AS (and Pontus, oddly) for no apparent reason, but at least I got almost 20 years to gradually capture the pan-Caucasus region and build up my economy first.

Contrary to Foot, Hayasdan easily has the money for horse archers, they're dirt cheap and very easy to get. These would be the Scythian ones, that is... As I've suggested elsewhere, I think the Hayasdan campaign would be improved if the Scythian units were adjusted a bit, such that it took a level 2 regional MIC to get the horse archers and a level 3 to get the Riders (who I normally don't bother with, but a real melee attack can be nice sometimes). Hayasdan's factional horse archers are a bit pricey - the basic kind are identical to Scythians but cost significantly more, and of course the Zrahakir Netadzik (sp?) have a cost proportional to their power.

In the early game you have to rely heavily on bodyguards. The basic foot archers are pretty good, but the infantry are weak. Using the faction leader as general (large bodyguard) should get you a couple of cities. At that point you should see a modest profit each turn to gradually invest in mines. Once the mines come online money won't be a huge problem for quite a while, so go ahead and pick up some of the Sarmatian mercenary horse archers to fill out your army without depleting population. Much later you'll be able to retrain Georgian infantry (MIC 3, I forget which type, in the northern provinces) so those mercs can be handy for army growth too. In hindsight, expending or disbanding the starting Aspet Hetselazor would probably be wise - FM provide all the shock cav you need at first, and later you'll have vastly better options.

Don't worry too much about AS - the AI is helpless once the player has horse archers and cataphracts (bodyguards) together. Fight defensive battles until the enemy armies are destroyed, then grab a poorly defended city or two. Karkathiokerta in particular has awesome terrain for defense.

Another subtle difficulty of Hayasdan is that they cannot naturally reach 24000 population in their cities. The sewer series ends at the +1.5% health, +5% law building (two choices), and AFAIK there's no level 2 healer or level 3 farm, no health temple, and no equivalent of latifundia. A good farmer-philosopher governor with low-ish taxes can probably do it, but I didn't realize this would be a problem until the early governors had died off. This isn't a complaint, it seems quite right for the region (not exactly full of huge cities even today), just be aware that population will always be a concern in the core cities unlike most other factions.

Also be aware of how the various reforms work. You can't build more than a level 1 factional MIC with a level 3 govt. That threw me for a while...

Anyway, apologies for being so long-winded! I think Hayasdan is freakin' awesome, quite likely the most fun I've had playing RTW. You've got powerful cav (melee and missile), pretty decent infantry in a variety of regional flavors (Srakir Martikner, Pantodapoi Phalangitai, Georgians, Persian Hoplites, and I believe Shipri Tukul once Western Expansion Region 1 goes active), and a set of reforms and victory conditions that keep life interesting long after, say, a Roman campaign would get too boring to continue.

[antisocialmunky]

You're basically poor as a nomad faction but without HA.

[jhhowell]

You're basically poor as a nomad faction but without HA.

Right about the starting poverty, completely wrong about the HA.

I found that the special geographic situation of Armenia becomes problematic as soon as you hold Phraaspa and Ahni?-whatisit or even Trapezont: You have now to defend several entries to your kingdom that are separated by mountains in East-West direction. So you have either to leave back very strong garrisons in all towns or field three armies, one for the West, one for the center and one for East, because you won't be on the other side of your empire in time to even repulse moderate enemy invasions.

In my experience Hayasdan needs to keep separate "armies" on each front. Quotation marks because they're really just large town garrisons until the local AS armies have died off in siege battles - as I see it your either/or statements are equivalent. Then, hopefully with a newly arrived young FM and a few reinforcements from Armavir, Kotais, and Mt-whatsit, push forward another city (from Phraaspa to Ekbatana, say) and start the process over again. It's slow, but EB lasts 1000+ turns so there's no need to hurry... And eventually AS will militarily collapse and you'll snap up half a dozen cities in quick succession.

[tapanojum]

I agree with jhhowell. It seemed like I faced endless and endless stacks of Grey Death. After around 10-15 enemy FM's slain their military seemed to decline and I was able to push south and East.

As far as sauromate is concerned, you can go neutral and ally them in the first few turns. I have not experienced them break the alliance, even on VH/M.

Use the terraine to your advantage.

[V.T. Marvin]

Well my experience with Hayasdan on H/H difficulty with BI.exe was somewhat different. Playing as them was really a great fun - now I am around year 200 BC and still enjoy it very much - especially thanks to the reforms feature. The difficulty though was not that extreme as campaign description suggests. As Hayasdan you have quite a lot rebel cities around where you can expand at the beginning of the game without starting a war with other faction and setting your economy on a sound footing. On the other hand Pahlava has no such obvious opportunity for expansion and economical growth. Moreover, Armenian basic units are extremely cost effective and combination of Kavkaza Sparabara + Caucasian Archers + general bodyguard can deal with anything your enemies could throw on you early on.
IF you manage to capture them BEFORE Arche attacks you, you are basically over the hill. Taking Karkathiokerta (Sophene) completes the requirements for Caucasus Kingdom reforms - very nice gameplaywise - and you should have a decent economy by then. Therefore I would recommend a blitz through Caucasian rebel provinces at the very start (except Karkathiokerta), than wait for Arche´s treacherous attack, punish them by taking Karkathiokerta and after that a measured - "historical" - push against Mesopotamia and Persia after is taken... Hard campaign difficulty is probably advisable and can be somewhat compensated by hard battle difficulty as well.
In my campaign Archie even accepted cease-fire after I conquered all Mesopotamia (Edessa, Arbela, Seleukeia, Babylon, Charax, Ekbatana, Perseopolis, Apameia, Gabai) and we live in peace since that time for more than 30 years or 120 turns, which is amazing for RTW and I guess that the hard campaign difficulty AND bi.exe are doing the trick!!!

[pezhetairoi]

The difficulty for me with Hayasdan in the two campaigns I tried was that though you can own the AS easily as long as you are using many of your family members (I only had them to worry about as I was allied with Pontos and Sauromatae), you have the classic problem of the Salient. The deeper you expand into AS territory the more bloated your salient becomes, and the longer the front on which the enemy can attack you. Not to mention there aren't any more mountains or valleys to protect you.

That, and you have the two giants ingame to worry you. After taking Antiocheia and Damaskos to remove one of the three fronts the AS could counterattack me on, the Ptolemaioi did the unthinkable and signed alliance with the AS, attacked me, and got me embroiled in an escalating struggle in Antiocheia. Meanwhile the AS attacked from the east towards Arbela, with nothing to even stop them. It was very nasty work, and I quit after I spied another 2 Ptolemaioi fullstacks headed for me. This was in the first 30 years.

[konny]

Hayasdan has the luxurious advantage of lavish natural defences, so the ways for the enemy to enter your territories are limited

I found that the special geographic situation of Armenia becomes problematic as soon as you hold Phraaspa and Ahni?-whatisit or even Trapezont: You have now to defend several entries to your kingdom that are separated by mountains in East-West direction. So you have either to leave back very strong garrisons in all towns or field three armies, one for the West, one for the center and one for East, because you won't be on the other side of your empire in time to even repulse moderate enemy invasions.

AS loves to play this funny game with me: they send an army through the valley against Amavir and as soon as my army is up there to encounter them, the next grey force sneaks out of Ekbatana and starts sieging Phraaspa. Once I got down there the next AS stack comes across the Western mountains, and so forth.

Even invading their territory doesn't really help because AS immediatly counters with a diversion against Armenia.

[Cyclops]

...AS loves to play this funny game with me: they send an army through the valley against Amavir and as soon as my army is up there to encounter them, the next grey force sneaks out of Ekbatana and starts sieging Phraaspa. Once I got down there the next AS stack comes across the Western mountains, and so forth...

Yep, they seem to think its so hilarious

I find the AS attack on Hayasdan even more inevitable and swift than the AS attack on Pontos (and thats scripted in, pretty much, once they attack Nikaia).

Why can't we just all get along?