Do you cheat with Pahlava?

[ChingizLink]

Hmm I think there is no need for sacking cities and giving them up - I usually just conquer everything I can get as early as possible right before resistance can be recruited and i use many spies to encourage/suppress rebellions- sure they cost 100per turn but you will need them to move on with your forces instead of leaving leaders or horsearchers in town.
I think Pahlava is quite easy to play - you have the best heavy calvalry you can get - capture persepolis build barracks - build cataphracts and crush anything in your way,
on VH/VH you will have to use your general's guards exessively - just to reduce recruiting costs for other units - [snip made by Chingiz Link]

Okay, this is another thing that is totally news to me viz-a-viz EB: I had no idea that spies cause a ruckus and all other kinds of shenanigans when in a settlement that isn't your faction's! (this would explain why my allies all have such crappy public order, and why they tend to be so cold toward me when we hang out...I thought Rome just felt weird partying with Pontos, Saka, Sauromatae, and then their competitors like Macedon and Carthage...)

I've looked around the forum for info on that (and I'll keep looking, sorry for the off topic tangent), since I can't seem to get the public order in an enemy faction any lower when I use more than 1 agent. Is there a trick I'm missing?

Also, I totally agree re Pahlava (or Parthia in other realistic RTW mods) being fun to play/not difficult, though I'm probably biased (for several reasons).

[Ludens]

I've looked around the forum for info on that (and I'll keep looking, sorry for the off topic tangent), since I can't seem to get the public order in an enemy faction any lower when I use more than 1 agent. Is there a trick I'm missing?

Maybe only the highest-level spy causes unrest? There is an agent guide for M1:TW, but I don't know of similar research into R:TW. In any case, it's usually a waste of effort to try and get enemy towns to revolt, as the threshold for A.I. towns appears far lower than for the human player.

[xypherx]

they can actually cause quite an amount of unrest - just test it - the seleukids have many spies in that area and when you have some good spy or assassin just kill one of them in your town an than you can see a difference in civil unrest, spies are able to even provoke revolts quite easy and early in this region - the problem is that you will have to oppose a stronger rebel garrison than factional garrison in some rare cases,
when you have a problem with capturing the easternmost settlements of AS - send spies, when you have problems with their public order, send a trained spy usually there is a Saka spy in one of them and you will have to throw him out or kill him in order to get control of the town (same with the AS southeastern provinces - often AS has 2 or more spies in or near them and they really suck)