Help against Parthia (Pahlava)

**seienchin** · 07-07-2010, 10:02

I hate the parthians as enemies. Mainly because most of their infantry take forever to take down and in the same time you get butchered by arrows.
When you play on huge, armies of horse archers can be easily surrounded by 6-8 wide strechted phalangitai and maybe 1 or 2 light cavallery.
But then there is the parthian infantry... :( Anyway in my roman campain I just let them have the eastern part of the map and I defended all the river crossings against them.

PS: I love too overkill the sarmatians with thracian podromoi. There are sooooooooooo fast and have a merciless charge. In the east there are the indogermanic cavallery, but you have to conquer the province east of bactria^^

**boxleitnerb** · 07-07-2010, 11:39

I think I will just retreat towards Ektabana and Susa, build walls, raise Thorakitai and advanced armies later on and defend the crossings and my larger cities for now. The cities on the mediterranean are more profitable and easier to conquer, anyways. Means giving up 6 or 7 provinces, though. But if I sell all buildings, I can raise so much money to invest in the west and in stone wall defenses elsewhere.

**Chris_** · 07-07-2010, 15:25

When I had to fight the Pahlava in my old Luso migration campaign I would hide in cities and send armies specifically to hunt family members (the armies I fought contained large numbers of FM). I would send out spies to look for the AI moving unguarded family members around, then move my army (medium cavalry, whatever I could afford) in. Then I would just charge the left side of the FM unit since that has a reasonable chance of actually killing the man himself. You could also use assassins, but the odds never seem to be that good.

**Unintended BM** · 07-07-2010, 16:15

I always let Antiocheia-Margiane, Marakanda, and Alexandreia-Eschate go at the start. Also, I obviously let them capture Asaak. At the start, I actually move my garrisons out of all those towns and have them converge Hekatompylos. The first thing you have to do in all of those border cities is build stone walls. Pretty much the most important thing you can do. You don't really need to build very many troops for a long time in a Seleucid game, but when you do, build a whole bunch of archers and native pikemen on your eastern front. Thorikitai are really good too, but they can be difficult to get out that way unless you take Baktra early on. Actually, according to the recruitment viewer, Alexandreia-Ariana can recruit Thorikitai as the Seleucids, so you should build up that town a bunch and maybe blitz Baktria at the start if you want a good base of operations in the east that you can actually conquer the Parthians and Saka from. Otherwise, just loading up on garrison troops in stone walled cities works just fine too.

**MisterFred** · 07-07-2010, 18:05

Or if you're too cheap to buy a decent barracks, like me, just bring more men than they have arrows. This can be hard on huge unit size settings, because of the depopulation. But while a-historical, it works in single-player to just bring hordes of pantodapoi (NOT the phalangites, the native spearmen) to absorb waves of arrows/charges (keep them well ahead of other troops if you have Alexander where the AI prioritizes archery targets). Follow up with the cheapest non-pantodapoi spearmen and AP infantry you can find. As long as you outnumber the enemy by two or three times their number of troops and are careful to avoid a mass rout, you should be able to take one of their settlements with a human wave attack. Don't be afraid to bring multiple stacks and put one or more under AI command to increase the number of levies on the battlefield.

Sure, they'll spawn some more bodyguards in their next town and decimate your army even when you win, but hey, you have a new settlement to drain for pantodapoi, you hire a few mercs for your back line, and on to the new settlement. Actually, its really good to use mercs as much as possible, since they can form the best units in your army, and the enemy doesn't send huge merc stacks back at you. The fun part of this strategy is that occasionally you get greedy and suffer devastating losses and it keeps your provinces small and poor, prolonging the game and challenge. And you can roleplay your generals as merciless bastards who never personally engage in combat, which is really the only historically accurate part of the whole strategy for AS (at least the merciless bastards part, dunno about not personally engaging in combat).

This strategy is even more fun once you take Babylon/Seleucia as Hai when going for the Orontid reforms. But its harder to beat AS/Ptoly stacks with this sort of army :).

**Burebista** · 07-07-2010, 21:21

If you don't mind taking advantage of the AI , just try to position your armies in forests , bridges or very high ground. That should give you enough advantage to massacre them.
Also try to get some cheap mercs , such as the scythian ones or the archer/spearmen. They are very good in these kinds of situations.

**ARCHIPPOS** · 07-07-2010, 22:43

Originally Posted by MisterFred

Or if you're too cheap to buy a decent barracks, like me, just bring more men than they have arrows. This can be hard on huge unit size settings, because of the depopulation. But while a-historical, it works in single-player to just bring hordes of pantodapoi (NOT the phalangites, the native spearmen) to absorb waves of arrows/charges (keep them well ahead of other troops if you have Alexander where the AI prioritizes archery targets). Follow up with the cheapest non-pantodapoi spearmen and AP infantry you can find. As long as you outnumber the enemy by two or three times their number of troops and are careful to avoid a mass rout, you should be able to take one of their settlements with a human wave attack. Don't be afraid to bring multiple stacks and put one or more under AI command to increase the number of levies on the battlefield.

Sure, they'll spawn some more bodyguards in their next town and decimate your army even when you win, but hey, you have a new settlement to drain for pantodapoi, you hire a few mercs for your back line, and on to the new settlement. Actually, its really good to use mercs as much as possible, since they can form the best units in your army, and the enemy doesn't send huge merc stacks back at you. The fun part of this strategy is that occasionally you get greedy and suffer devastating losses and it keeps your provinces small and poor, prolonging the game and challenge. And you can roleplay your generals as merciless bastards who never personally engage in combat, which is really the only historically accurate part of the whole strategy for AS (at least the merciless bastards part, dunno about not personally engaging in combat).

This strategy is even more fun once you take Babylon/Seleucia as Hai when going for the Orontid reforms. But its harder to beat AS/Ptoly stacks with this sort of army :).

Sweet Jeesus that's by far the most spectacular and ruthless Zerg strategy i've ever read in these forums. Here's a balloon for roleplaying Seleuceia as Soviet Union.And i really like the Hetairoi-Comissars too!

**anubis88** · 07-08-2010, 13:59

Originally Posted by ARCHIPPOS

Sweet Jeesus that's by far the most spectacular and ruthless Zerg strategy i've ever read in these forums. Here's a balloon for roleplaying Seleuceia as Soviet Union.And i really like the Hetairoi-Comissars too!

hahaha... epic post