Seleucid gameplay guide!

[AqD]

The guide was made for beta-testers. The campaign has been made more difficult in the released version, but everything else should be similar!

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Campaign

Here is what the new Seleucid campaign looks like:


On the bottom is your royal army led by the Great King (yes that's a persian title!); The distributions of armies have been made more historical - garrions are all AORs of mixed quality, phalangites are few and only in field armies, and you have only one hypaspistai unit and one agema (kataphract) unit in the beginning; Also the eastern parts are going to revolt or be occupied by the already-rebelled parthians and bactrians.

The campaign has been made slightly harder by AI bonus (such as 200% tax income) and scripted armies, in all 5 factions surrounding the Seleucid empire. But it's not impossible to win since the land of Persia is relatively well-developed, and there is the Persian Royal Road, paved from Susa to Sardis, which boosts your economics and travelling speed a lot.

PS(1): the blue regions are held by the Free People. You can trade with them, and they wouldn't attack you. And you should not waste time on them unless you're obsessed with their wasteland.

PS(2): see the galatia is under their control, how can you recruit galatians? To make it easier and realistic, the new galatian infantry are also available in several asia regions and near east regions, where the galatians were historically hired and/or settled (according to EB, my history reference!).

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Battle - Cavalry

The Seleucid cavalry units are much better than in original RTR. The cavalry force in seleucid armies are heavy-armoured enough to neutralize eastern composite bows (but it's not that you can stand and take all arrows ), and so skilled that they could fight toe-to-toe against the tough Armenians and Parthians, although there is a great chance your generals may be slaughtered in battle if not carefully used, but most of Seleucid kings died in campaign anyway so you should get used to that!

One of the new types worth to be mentioned is the "Akrobolistai". Carrying javelins and large apis shields, the fast Akrobolistai cavalry were used against Parthian horse archers with some success, despite the lack of proper horse archers in seleucid army itself. It's represented by two units in Seleucid army: Hippeis Tarantinoi (AOR in greece and asia) which are pure skirmishers, and the elite medium cavalry "Hippeis Elaphroi". And you can use them in exactly the same way as they're used historically!


The other important change is the xyston carried by heavy cavalry units - It is now held one-handed in the overarm style, and the charge power has been weakened since it's really not a lance but more of a lenghty spear. Remember a decisive charge is a matter of "when", not "how".

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Battle - Infantry

The phalanx units have been changed a lot, and hopefully much accurate now. They're strong in frontal attack but very weak in defense, and the size is reduced too (since previous version) for better game-balance.

Historcally the phalanx units were always few in number - Especially in persia where hundreds of thousands of light infantry and cavalry could be easily mustered, there were no more than 100,000 phalangite soldiers, and less than half could be committed to one battle!

However, they're still the backbone of army and meant to take the heaviest fighting. Also due to the 20 unit limit you can have in one battle, it's unlikely you can form a completely historical Seleucid army on their campaigns, but only the core part that actually does fighting rather than throwing javelins and going home (although you can group skirmisher armies and let AI command them).

So, here is what the army would look like, in Syria and Mesopotamia:



The phalangites should only form the center and count no more than 2/5 of units (but more than 4.. fewer would be useless!), and the macedonains should be stationed in the leftmost and rightmost place, or interleaved if you have enough number, to prevent the phalanx line from collapsing. It's very important especially when you face Ptolemaic's veterans!

Behind them are the medium/heavy infantry to guard flanks and fill in the gaps when phalanx line begins to break. Galatians or Argyraspidai Peltastai are preferred, but thracian mercenaries and persia/asian hillmen are also good for their armour-piercing weapons. If you just don't have enough numbers, put some of the phalangite units with phalanx formation off so they can fight normally - they could at least hold against levies like Hastati or Judean mercs.

Once the enemy get through the pikes, you should send forward some medium infantry to help them in melee combat, and when the phalanx is broken, you must turn off the phalanx formation on the units which can no longer hold it, because a broken phalanx itself is not only useless, but harmful and could get your troops slaughtered.

Note the ahistorically high proportion of native phalangites - they were rarely used in real battles because the Seleucid court always fears rebellions, especially from Syria and Babylonia which are the center of the empire. The native phalangites can be raised very easily in huge numbers, and their skills are only slightly inferior to that of Macedonians, albeit not as experienced and motivated. Considering you're not as paranoid as the historical kings in the Diadochi, they should replace the overpriced and rare-in-number Macedonians for later battles.

PS: no need to waste unit slot on light skirmishers since the eastern archers can do it much better. As said above, the limit of 20 unit slots means you have to put them in separate armies if you really want them.

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Against the eastern factions, however, you may want to have a very different composition of army, like this:



Phalanx is useless. Instead you have to rely on old Achaemenid army - spearmen with a lot of archers, especially the persian heavy archers or syrian archers who can outshoot HAs. It's hard to recruit the persian kardaka hoplites, and so you're left with Medez infantry (they beat romans once!) or simply use Persian native pikemen with phalanx mode off.

On the right picture is a raiding party of all cavalry. It should be handy but very difficulty to recruit and replenish.

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There is a new recruitment zone for macedonian military settlers - it covers "potential" areas and therefore bigger than you can find in EB: the entire Mediterranean - italy, greece, carthage, western iberia, Anatolian and Syrian regions bordering the sea, Bosporus, and a few regions around Babylonia, plus Bactria.

[AqD]

renamed and updated for released v2.5!