Army compostion for seleucids in the west

**Arjos** · 01-08-2012, 20:55

Originally Posted by seleucid empire

i mite just stay away from spain until ic an reform my armies those guys are too though. Ive finished conquering north Africa now and sent my second army to spain where it got ripped

Hispania is to be taken by swift units and missiles units, not by armour and melee ^^

**seleucid empire** · 01-08-2012, 22:50

havent had much experience fighting iberians lol. btw has anyone ever used a single army to conquer a rich civilized faction which is very far away from your capital and has large distances between cities, for example a single greek army conquering eygpt and ethiopia or a pontic army conquering carthage/.

**rickinator9** · 01-09-2012, 00:30

Not in Rome or EB, but I have done that in medieval 2. I took the Holy Land and some cities surrounding it as France, but my coffers emptied as I couldn't get any trade from those regions. That's why I usually don't do any naval invasions.

As for the armies, why would you need them if you know the tactics to utilize against a faction. Remember, the bigger an army gets the more difficult it is to control. All those elite units are very expensive and if you would need to maintain those armies + all your garrisons you might go bankrupt. I had to take out the Seleucids as Bactria with one army consisting of a FM, 5-6 klerchoupikes and some regionaries and that worked. Notice I started with 4 provinces.

**panten** · 01-09-2012, 10:06

Originally Posted by seleucid empire

oh and btw your first priority i think should be to conquer a ring around the black sea before you begin attacking makedon and getai. if you conquer the entire black sea and build some ports the black sea will add around 10, 000 to your income. what difficulty are you playing on btw?

I play on VH/M. So far I own pretty much all of the Black Sea already, except Kallatis (which is infested with the Getai, so no going there atm) I make around 30.000mnai a turn and unfortunately I can't cut spending as much as I would want to since I need loads of troops to control the Steppe regions and keep the Saka in check. I don't want to march into Greece before I have finished my campaign in India and secured my borders in Arabia. Fighting the Getai and Macedon will be challenging, and I'd rather have my royal army around and maybe a stack in reserve.

**seleucid empire** · 01-09-2012, 10:54

i think the getai stacks around the black sea wont be too hard to handle, their elite stacks usually go west onto pannonia so the stack in kallatis and oblia should be filled with thracian levies. in my seleucis campaigns india has just been a big drain on money cause i have to build loads of happiness buildings. send a spy to oblia and kallatis and check out their situations. if they are filled with levies i think you should just besiege them. your playing medium battles so it should be ok

**panten** · 01-09-2012, 11:24

Originally Posted by seleucid empire

i think the getai stacks around the black sea wont be too hard to handle, their elite stacks usually go west onto pannonia so the stack in kallatis and oblia should be filled with thracian levies. in my seleucis campaigns india has just been a big drain on money cause i have to build loads of happiness buildings. send a spy to oblia and kallatis and check out their situations. if they are filled with levies i think you should just besiege them. your playing medium battles so it should be ok

Oh, I'm not afraid of the battles, I'm just a bit reluctant to open up my empire and create more points of possible conflict. I know it's just the AI, but I prefer to attack from a strong defensive position, and right now I have two chokepoints that are easily defendable and reinforcable: the Crimean and Byzantion. I guess I don't want to give up these positions just yet as it would also mean to wreak factional havoc in Greece. Although I have around four full stacks in the area, I want to add a bit more military power to have a quick and decicive campaign. When I eliminated Hayasdan I went in with three full stacks eliminated all resistance in one turn and had them completely annihalted one year after that. I have a prolonged war with the Saba, Saka, and Baktria due to the remoteness of the regions.

For Greece I have all the logistics I need and the recruitment centers around the corner - I will have fun with that and not drag it out like other campaigns :)

**seleucid empire** · 01-09-2012, 11:37

hahah make it more more interesting if you can. see if you can move a Roman stack into greece using cheats or something start a Roman war. Then send another stack into Asia minor and you can have a battle of magnesia i think your campaign is 188?? thats only like 1 year after the real battle of magnesia

**panten** · 01-09-2012, 11:49

Originally Posted by seleucid empire

hahah make it more more interesting if you can. see if you can move a Roman stack into greece using cheats or something start a Roman war. Then send another stack into Asia minor and you can have a battle of magnesia i think your campaign is 188?? thats only like 1 year after the real battle of magnesia

Sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, the Romans in my campaign are battling it out with the Lusos right now and have suffered some setbacks, so I don't want to further weaken them :/

Besides, I'm currently having a blast with my Roman campaign and I'm campaining against the Arche - bad for them, but some sort of Magnesia has already happened, and there are more full stacks on the way so I'll have some more fun battles :D

**seleucid empire** · 01-09-2012, 22:13

i remember ages ago when i was still playing M/M. in those campaigns Rome always dominates the west and KH always takes all of greece before being steamrolled by Rome so in that game I actually had a battle of Magnesia where they invaded Asia Minor near Sardis. I wont that battle but it was still epic

**seleucid empire** · 01-19-2012, 18:37

Originally Posted by rickinator9

As for the armies, why would you need them if you know the tactics to utilize against a faction. Remember, the bigger an army gets the more difficult it is to control. All those elite units are very expensive and if you would need to maintain those armies + all your garrisons you might go bankrupt.

i have never had financial problems with seleucids even from beginning of the game they are earning as much as carthage dispite having a bigger army. although i play on H diff not VH so i dont know what its like there. oh those two royal armies were kinda like experiments. usually when i conquer away from homeland regions i use a lot of merc armies or resilient units such as horse archers which i import from the black sea or even as far as parthia if they managed to conquer the north intact

**d'Arthez** · 01-20-2012, 21:17

Financially the difference is not that big between Hard and Very Hard campaign difficulties. If I recall correctly, trade gets multiplied by:

Easy: a factor 1.2
Medium: a factor of 1.00
Hard: a factor of 0.92
Very Hard: a factor of 0.85

The difficulty with the Seleucids is not so much the economy, but the management of the troops, and the vast expanses of their empire.