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Thread: The Seleucid Empire

  1. #61
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Do pontus! ^_^ Let's see how you rule the world with EI :-P


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  2. #62
    Senior Member Senior Member katank's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Pontus has nice jav cav in the Pontic cav and Pontic heavy cav line. They also have access to chariots.

    Gaul is more fun as you can play around with quickly sacking Rome and also getting forester warbands which are the best missile units around. Fully upgraded from Abnoda temple, weaponsmith, and getting 3xp from Epona temples, they have something like 22 missile attack which can bring down anything. They also can expand fast into Iberia the same time as you attack Rome.

    Numidia is best for the blitz fanatic. You must rush to quickly take Carthage and fortify it before the Romans land. You also would want to rush out fom Siwa and take Thebes before it has walls up. Grabbing that helps to cripple the Egyptians and gives you an archer factory.

  3. #63
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Pontus has chariots? o_O never knew that. Numidia...a strange place. But well, this is the seleucid thread, so let's leave off this discussion or bring it to the colosseum, eh? :)


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  4. #64
    Eran Spahbod Member Ziaelas's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Pontus=easy as pie, nice bronze shields, chariot archers, scythed chariots, cappadocian cavalry (like Cataphracts) and good archers.

    Seleucid Empire=If you can survive the first onslaught, build up Antioch and Seleucia, and start churning out enormous units. If you can, take Parthia and Armenia while they are weak, Pontus too. Then you can focus your entire military might on Egypt, and you should win. Egypt assassinated my 10 star commander, so I assassinated the assassin, then killed their faction leader and faction heir (in battle at Thebes) then finished them for good.

  5. #65
    Ultimate Member tibilicus's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I found Selucicia rather easy when i played them. Smashed the Delta in about 10/15 years and after that it was plain sailing.


    "A lamb goes to the slaughter but a man, he knows when to walk away."

  6. #66
    Hǫrðar Member Viking's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Easy, yes. But so funny with cataphracts, legionares and elephants that can be trained all over the world!

    Actually TSE is so funny that it might be the second campaign I conclude in the five months I`ve played RTW.
    Runes for good luck:

    [1 - exp(i*2π)]^-1

  7. #67
    Senior Member Senior Member katank's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I don't think that waiting for Eggy to grow while you smash your other neighbors is a good idea.

    I siege Sidon the very first turn with cav and queue a ram, then follow up with inf to assault. I also move from Damascus towards Jerusalem. You also move the garrison from Sardis to siege Halicarnassus. You can take the rebels when they sally if you use a phalanx box to lock in the gate.

    Second turn, I assault Sidon and exterminate. The 2 bowmen and 3 spearmen should have move from Jerusalem towards Sidon. Smash those 4 with your faction leader's army that just captured Sidon, leaving behind a token garrison. Siege Jerusalem. Also queue a bireme to capture Salamis quickly.

    By the third turn, you will have taken 3 of the Eggy cities before their reinforcements ever arrive from the Delta.

    They would send full stackers at you but those are weakened and you can use the sea lanes to amphibious drop into Alexandria with their armies counter marching on land in vain.

  8. #68

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Can't do amphibious on Egypt, they sent a full stack fleet at me on turn 5!

    Wow, your rush fast, Katank. Ever kick back and "farm" better quality AI full stacks for fun?

    Oh yeah, full stacks so too much on huge, that pisses me off.

    What are your opinion of levy pikes, I've heard solid ratings for them but I found that they break rather easily.

  9. #69

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I don't really rate levies but they can save you in a crisis (early game) .

  10. #70
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Talking about levies, when I played Macedon, which also has levy pikes, they served my purposes well enough. They rarely broke, often because they had no time to break before I scored victory, and often because of the stupid AI, which much prefers to frontal-charge them. Levy pikes were my backbone for nearly forty turns, actually, and when I ended the campaign due to burnout in the 60th turn standard phalanx pikes only made up about 10% of my total infantry force. Levy pikes are pretty solid, but it your cavalry lets them down, they will let you down.

    As with the Marquis of Roland, I am in awe at the speed of katank's katank. I rarely go that quickly at the start unless I'm Julii.


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  11. #71
    Senior Member Senior Member katank's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Amphibious is quite possible on Egypt. You have to produce quickly biremes in Antioch. Do need to drop the Salamis garrison before their fleet arrives. This, as you are aware, needs to take place in a very short time frame.

    They then tend to clump fleets around Salamis.

    Build a port in Jerusalem and wait there. When their navies are far, you can go fairly far. The second turn of sailing allows you to land in the Delta.

    I've tried to farm enemies before. They still disappoint. Personally, I have a vendetta against the Eggy since they produce hordes and hordes of their ridiculously overpowered and ahistoric units.

    They are too much of a threat to Seleucids to farm em. I'd rather use full Seleucid roster to have nice fight with post marian romans.

    As for levy pikes, they are quite solid. As with all phalanxes, shield their flanks and then they are good.

    Try putting one unit inside each other makes em practically unbreakable. Remember to stretch them out 2 deep and then stack so you have both 3 units' worth of glittering pike points at each location but also a long frontage to prevent wrap around.

    Unfortunately, they aren't that much use early on while fighting the Eggy.

    The Eggy forces are fast and mobile. I find pumping out some militia cav to be the best option. Making a few levies is useful but definitely for sieges against Eggy and not field battles where you would rather use your cav to smash and run.

    BTW, when I blitz through, I don't have much time to deploy a sizeable levy pike force even against the Eggy. The threat is Kiya's army which is a full stack with the 2 nasty chariot archers.

    Getting em to counter march in the stretch between the Suez location and Jerusalem is fun when you do an amphibious drop and sack Alexandria.

  12. #72
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    ...Kiya? Who's Kiya? Heh, amphibious on Alexandria is for some strange reason the first thing that pops into any first-time anti-Egypt player. I wonder why. :-) So you're saying you'll rush into Egypt with horsemen and let your pikemen follow if they can run fast enough?


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  13. #73

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Kiya is the Egyptian general who starts with an army outide the delta.

    He was my best faction leader ever, EVER!! At least 10 star command (the most possible to show) 6 management and at least 10 influence. Conqueror of all Asia!! He went on to be 89 too and died in Rhodes.

  14. #74
    Passionate MTW peasant Member Deus ret.'s Avatar
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    Post Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Quote Originally Posted by Craterus
    He was my best faction leader ever, EVER!! At least 10 star command (the most possible to show) 6 management and at least 10 influence. Conqueror of all Asia!! He went on to be 89 too and died in Rhodes.
    Want to have an ...awesome faction leader? Play as the greeks and don't conquer Sicily too fast to have some nice battles. After it's conquered, finally build some trade upgrades in Syracuse and the other cities....let him walk around a little to be in town upon completion....and the only flaw he had was that he had only 9 management instead of 10. Sadly, he was assassinated by the Carthagians but still....his memory remains....
    Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni.

  15. #75

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Sounds good, I would have sent him away from Sicily and off to some major battlefronts, you could do with a commander like that leading your army to victory.

  16. #76
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Me, I would've had him landing in Africa the turn after I conquered Lilybaeum and turn White Africa into Cream Yellow Africa. Such a wonderful general is too good to be worth leaving in a city. But of course, this comes from the guy who left his Scythian king and army in Campus Getae for seven (7) turns. While the Thracian front stood still.


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  17. #77

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Best late Seleucid order of battle:

    1 General's unit
    1 companion cavalry
    2 cataphracts
    4 cataphract elephants
    6 silver shield pikemen
    4 silver shield legions
    2 cretan archers
    = massive, steamrolling lawnmower

    Fighting the Brutii with this army is fun, since Romans are infantry-heavy. Plus Brutii have lots of money, so there's no end to the amount of men you can kill (and gain lots and lots of experience, since most of their units are good morale and won't just run off somewhere at the first sign of trouble).

    I say bring on a 20-unit army of urban cohorts, I want to test this army on THAT.

  18. #78
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    ...that may not be a good idea. somehow I have this feeling it's not going to be a good idea. urban cohorts don't break until they're down to 2 men, you know that don't you?


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  19. #79

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Yup! It'll be fun!

  20. #80

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I've broken an Urban Cohort at 33 men left, but they were the last unit left so that might have been the reason.

  21. #81
    Senior Member Senior Member katank's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Urbans do break. The armoured eles plowing through followed by cata/companion charge is enought o break them.

    You really don't need infantry as late seleucids. Load up on armored eles and heavy cav. You will be invincible and can make sure you run down every last enemy router.

    RTW cav is really overpowered.

  22. #82

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Yea, I have a full stack of armored elephants sitting around for whenever I feel like having fun

    It just doesn't feel right though when you have so many good infantry units and you don't use them.....plus I just love it when over 1400 pikes come down into phalanx formation. It gives me a chill everytime

  23. #83

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    My (hard) guide notes on the Seleucid Empire:

    The Seleucids are in the unfortunate position of being surrounded by factions that for some reason despise you. Soon enough, within approximately 10 turns i was at war with the Armenians, Egyptians, Parthians and Greeks. Theyre attacks were totally unprovoked.

    However, i was able to fend them off.

    The Seleucids have a pretty strong economy and cheap troops to start off with, so my solution for survival was creating lots of troops to fend of the enemies on all sides of my borders. Howvwer at this point, i was not able to push forward and counter attack. For that, i would need a stronger economy.

    So i started the slow process of developing my economy to support offensive armies and this eventually happened after 7 turns. Whats more, the generals that were preoccupied with defending were now military geniouses with 8 stars.

    The Egyptians proved the toughest problem mainly because of their chariots and strong economy. Nonetheless i was able to drive south and capture Jerusalem because of my far superior battle tactics.

    The Armenians at first proved a tough cookie because they had cataphracts, and i only had Militia Hoplites to deal with them. However, the Amrnians soon sought to peace because they realised they could not conquer me. Preoccupied in other fronts, i put the idea of crushing the Armenian infidels to the back of my mind.

    Pontus, sneakily attacked me in Turkey, where i had no troops at the time. I had to quickly build a reactive army and drive them away. They were not easy to deal with.

    The Greeks were the latest faction to bakc-stab me. Again, this happened in Turkey with my Turkish army already occupied in crushing Pontus, so i had to create a new army. I made it in time to relieve the city that the greeks were besieging and crushed them.

    Now, the main problem is resupply. The economy is pretty strong at the moment, but the problems are retraining my over stretcched and exhausted armies so that they can continue to push as effectively as before. Economical hardship at the beginning of the campaign had caused he Seleucid ecomomy to become largely centralised.

    As a result, i was soon having big casualties in battles because there was no supply to a demand of a new soldier type: The Archer.

    The Seleucids are not able to create good archers in the game, so the best source is from Cretan Archer mercenaries in Turkey. These are very effective archers, but they lack in availablility.

    Try not to over-push your armies and frontiers. The fact that you are surrounded by enemies means that you need to take a cautious and slow advance. Take a good close look at the enemy units you are up against and try to flex your tactics toward beating them as badly as possible. Keeping populations happy is not a big problem at the start. Howveer, i exterminated a few cities because of the extent of treachery that was happening. Soon, thanks to the high number of troops being recruited, the population of the cities will fall, and you will need to resort to slavery to find the troops to recruit for your army.

    The ideal early battle winning tactic is to have about 10 units of levy pikemen, stretched nice and wide with 6 pikes thick, 2 general units to pack a good punch, 4 archers of any kind (because youre desperate), 2 sythed chariots, 1 greek cavilry and 1 elephant.
    forums.clankiller.com
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  24. #84

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    My game as the Selcucids, I tried a completely different tactic. I retreated back into Asia Minor, and let all my other provinces rebel or be captured. This kept me from being in a war on all fronts, to having a war with only Pontus on one front. This makes it much easier and Asia Minor, once built up a little, is extremely profitable. Then slowly make your way towards Armenia and Egypt simultaneously. Armenia is usually a pushover as they have few troops, and Egypt really wasn't what I was expecting either, even though they had time to build up. All the Chariots they sent against me were completely massacred by my units of Levy Pikemen with no losses most times, and if there were losses, it was very few. The archers weren't much of a problem either, as once the Chariots were gone my Cavalry could rein free making Egypt pretty much a pushover. Parthia is the faction I had the hardest time with. Those Horse Archers gave me hell, but I eventuall conquered Parthia, and after that I went on to Greece and Africa. By then noone could match my strength and I didn't have to fight battles, and just auto-resolved. It's basically just a race to see how fast you can beat the game by then.

  25. #85

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Nice tactic, I never abandon provinces though, I just fight on.

    Alternatively, you could try and build an army from Sardis that could take Asia Minor. Make sure you get Rhodes, that wonder gets you lots of money.

  26. #86
    Senior Member Senior Member katank's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Really depends. I find it possible to use Sardis garrison to take Halicarnassus right away.

    Then, you build from those two locations to slowly take Pergamum and Rhodes.

    Plenty of phalanxes can kill Pontus.

    Beauty of this is simultaneous war against Egypt, the main threat.

    I've only kept defensive against Parthia but you could do after Susa right away if feeling really adventurous.

  27. #87

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    Sequence of events in my early game:

    1. Made alliances with all neighbors
    2. 2 turns later Egypt attacks with full stacks(2-3) under Kiya
    3. 1 turn later Parthians raid around Seleucia with small bands of cataphracts and eastern infantry.
    4. next turn greece starts to bribe cities in Asia Minor. I bribe back.
    5. Same turn Armenia sends full stack of hillmen and eastern infantry to siege Hatra.
    6. next turn Pontus attacks Tarsus with full stack under 4 star general.
    7. Same turn Parthia combines small armies to a half-stack of cataphracts, HA, and eastern infantry and siege Seleucia.
    8. next turn greeks lands a half stack of hoplites near Antioch.

    If you can just get past these couple of turns alright you're set to systematically wipe out all your neighbors, because by this time if you don't have at least three reliable field armies, you're dead. You could do with two but you will lose 2 or more cities.

    Tried to rush the egys but was stopped in Jerusalem, too much rebellion and those damn egyptians send at least one full stack every other turn.

    Small bands of egyptians coming out of bostra harass your rear to no end.

    It wouldn't hurt to save up to bribe back things, if you don't have 1.2 I guess...

  28. #88
    Amanuensis Member pezhetairoi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I hold with retreating into Asia Minor. It's naturally defensive, and you get the advantage of having plenty of units available within that small area, enough to make a full stack that you can concentrate on one objective. Good tactics.


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  29. #89

    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I just started the S.E. I'm not finding them hard, really (except against Parthian missile cavalry). I took Jeruselem, Sidon, and another Egyptian town, while Parthia took Herat from me. I took that back, and reduced the armies of Parthia greatly.

    Against the Egyptians, I have a very easy go of it, most battles never losing more than five percent of my army, with them losing almost all of theirs. I'm allied with Scythia and Pontus right now,though I may extend an offer towards Armenia.

    My only really hard enemies, so far, are the Parthians. They overwhelm me with cataphracts, though they aren't much problem (how do cataphracts run faster than podromoia?). The real problem are their missile cavalry, which cut through my infantry like butter. Meh, but they'll be gone soon, anyway. Then, Africa will open up fully, me not having to worry much about my rear.

  30. #90
    Lesbian Rebel Member Mikeus Caesar's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Seleucid Empire

    I've recently started a Seleucid campaign, after my first one collapsed, and all i can say is before you do anything else, blitz the egyptians. Get to them before they get to strong. If you kill them quickly, then you should be fine.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ranika
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