Armenia - what a faction!

**Ybbon** · October 05, 2009, 06:26 AM

Not saying I was getting bored of Rome, but winkling out all those damn Gauls, finally wiping out Macedonia and to say nothing of suppressing riots in Greek cities takes a long time each and every turn.

So I thought I'd try another faction for a while....

I've tried Iberia - hard to play, I seemed to be surrounded by huge stacks of Free People so trying to get an economy going was a non-starter. I tried Parthia once (ages ago I recall), I think I gave up when I ended one turn 20K+ in the red! Maybe I need to revisit that one day.

And then I found Armenia - well we have those damned Selucids at war to start with, but Armenia starts off with 3 cities that are pretty much surrounded by mountains so a nicely defensible position. I took the 3 cities to the north and now have a line of mountains at my back and a port on the Black Sea and Caspian (or Aral?) Sea. I have now taken a few Selucid cities and am pretty much constantly at war with them and it won't stop until I have a Mediterranean port (Antioch) and have a nice garden - well the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to be precise.

What a lovely well balanced army, hillmen are quite useful, Eastern Infantry hold the line well and Eastern Heavies will hold off pikemen no trouble, and best of all, I have discovered why people rave about horse archers, oh my, what a delight to see them completely destroy army after army, a couple of battles my other troops never even got to fight! In one battle, I think I had a slightly stronger army but I lost 10 men - they lost over 900. And now I have visions of Armenian Legion's backed by HA's - the World will be Armenian!

I don't actually have any point to make beyond just what fun I have had with them

Do the Armenians still say "Archerers" in RS2?

**Lord Dakier** · October 05, 2009, 06:31 AM

Thoe horse archers are not really that good unless you have unlimited arrows turned on. Well to be fair I don't know about Roma Surrectum.

**Enyalius** · October 05, 2009, 06:58 AM

Ive played quite abit as Armenia Aswell and yeah IMHO they field one of the best Armys of the game. @ Lord Dakier You can wipe out a whole phalanx army using ONLY horse archers Especially in RS where they have long range missiles.. But the general Idea is (against stronger units) is to take out the enemys skirmishers with light cav.. Meet the enemys Phalanx/legionares/whoever youre up against with the Heavy Phalanx or eastern inf for that matter and just flank with the horse archers/eastern heavy cav(missile) and just destroy them from behind and rout and kill all works everytime only thing that poses a threat is usually just other cavalry.

And the really FUN thing with horse archers (once again IMO) is to do hit and run attacks.. You can harass an invading army or act as an buffer for your own invading army and seriously weaken the enemy before engaging them with your main assault army. if you like this though you should use eigher use assassins to destroy their barracks so they cant retrain or use a diffrent .exe than alex.exe

**Tesla** · October 05, 2009, 07:12 AM

Originally Posted by Enyalius

You can wipe out "a whole phalanx army" using ONLY horse archers

"any army" is more likely

**Lord Dakier** · October 05, 2009, 07:22 AM

And if you are tackling a full stack without unlimited arrows, see how far the HA gets you. Armenia are my main faction especially in vanilla and I don't think theyre HA are really all that good especially when you end up fighting some Cretan Archers. With a phalanx in the mix you'll get cut down fairly quick if you don't stomp out the archers.

Their effective HA but they're still just as easily dealt with.

Personally I'd rather see a little bit more bloodshed on the battlefield and have my infantry do something.

**torzsoktamas** · October 05, 2009, 07:37 AM

Originally Posted by Lord Dakier

And if you are tackling a full stack without unlimited arrows, see how far the HA gets you. Armenia are my main faction especially in vanilla and I don't think theyre HA are really all that good especially when you end up fighting some Cretan Archers. With a phalanx in the mix you'll get cut down fairly quick if you don't stomp out the archers.

Their effective HA but they're still just as easily dealt with.

Personally I'd rather see a little bit more bloodshed on the battlefield and have my infantry do something.

In RS1.5 HA are very very powerfull.IN my old parthian campaign I had an army of 4 cataprakt archers(eahc with 3 silver chevrons),and I killed 3 Seleucid full stack without losing ONE soldier.You don't have to have unlimited arrows,because they have enough and in RS1.5 arrow fire is very devastating.

**Tesla** · October 05, 2009, 07:42 AM

what unit size were you playing on? and was it really 4 cataphract HA's against 20 of their units ? or did they have less units in their army?

cuz if they had a full army wouldn't you have run out of ammo by then?

**Theoroshia** · October 05, 2009, 07:48 AM

Cataphract archers are deadly. To save arrows, I used to have them charge against enemy archers or light infantry.

**torzsoktamas** · October 05, 2009, 08:25 AM

Originally Posted by Tesla

what unit size were you playing on? and was it really 4 cataphract HA's against 20 of their units ? or did they have less units in their army?

cuz if they had a full army wouldn't you have run out of ammo by then?

Large unit size.Well they had like 17-20 units in an army,but they(the seleucids)used very limited cavalry(mainly just famili members).

**Ybbon** · October 05, 2009, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by Theoroshia

Cataphract archers are deadly. To save arrows, I used to have them charge against enemy archers or light infantry.

I have one army with 3 Cataphract archers in but I've no idea how good they are as the Eastern archer cavalry destroyed the enemy before the cataphracts were needed

I use the HA's to first take out any missile troops, then cavalry and finally to harass from behind. I am using stacks of roughly 6 HA's, 1/2 generals, 2 hillmen, 3 each of heavies and Eastern infantry and then a mix, other missile troops or more infantry so I'm not just using HA armies. I admit I haven't fought any really big phalanx armies yet, they've all had a mix, and no elephants so still got to see how they do there.

**SonOfAlexander** · October 07, 2009, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by ybbon66

hillmen are quite useful, eastern infantry can hold the line...

Do the Armenians still say "Archerers" in RS2?

1. Uh, what? The rest I agree with, but... I don't see how hillmen or eastern infantry are good for anything. I love using heavy spearmen, legionaries, catas and cata archers as Armenia to great effect, but I hate hillmen and easterns.

2. Lol someone else who noticed

. That always pissed me off haha :haha