Thoughts on my just started Parthian Campaign

[AchillesXX]

Hello all,

I recently downloaded XC, and I started a Parthian campaign. I have played XGM and vanilla quite a bit, so that is my background. To start, let me say that I really like it so far. I haven't gotten far enough into the campaign to give any final feelings, but I thought I would share a few of my findings.

1. The Parthian Heavy Calvary do not have a unit description on their card (you probably know this).

2. It seems that some of my armies have two full movement allotments per turn. I am sure you know about this - is it because they are headed by young generals? With an all horse army that equates to some serious movement (which I like).

3. When I conquer the rebel settlements to the north of me they are always wanting to revolt because the population is eastern civilized but the "native colony" is barbarian giving 50% unrest. I assume you did this to add challenge? Is there another reason for this?

Well, I have to work soon, so that is all for now. Again, thanks for the Great Mod!

[CaesarVincens]

The Parthians and Scythians can get some serious movement. Part of that is because of the bonus to movement while you are in friendly territory. Move into enemy lands and watch your movement drop dramatically.
As for the unrest, that is an oversight and will be corrected in the next release.
Sometimes provincial campaigns lag behind the main campaign in minor feature changes by a version or two.

[Zarax]

1) That's a bug, hopefully we'll get around to fix it in next release or the one just after

2) You must have some generals with pretty good traits, that's Suppanut's work

3) The steppes are still in a balancing phase. The north is supposed to be barbarian and hard to conquer, steppes weren't exactly known for their ease of control.

Oh, and while the game may still have still a lot of the old XGM looks it's completely new under the hood, you may want to be more careful with economy and selection of heirs especially

[AchillesXX]

One quick question, will my current Parthian campaign be compatible with the next version you release? Or is that still not known?

[Suppanut]

It will be save game break in next version for sure. especially in traits.

[CaesarVincens]

The next release will certainly break saves.

After that, there will probably be one or two more "betas" then the full release should last a good long time.

[AchillesXX]

A few more observations:

1. Horse archers are much cheaper than any other unit I can recruit. I know this is for balancing reasons, but I think their cost does not make sense in proportion to other units. I could probably make and maintain 3 horse archer armies versus one Persian Cavalry army. This seems wrong, and would strongly favor large volumes of horse archers.

2. In my earlier post I mentioned that the rebel steppe settlements were hard to conquer. This difficulty has not just effected me, but has led to the stagnation of Bactria - my loyal ally who cannot seem to expand past their original two settlements.

3. My armies are currently all horse archers (almost done with a city barracks to produce Persian Cav). When it comes time for unimportant battles I usually like to auto-resolve because I don't like to micro manage easy victories. However, I find that you cannot really auto-resolve with horse archer armies because the system rates them as a lower quality than Doryphory (sp?) armies. Does this hinder Parthia's advance when it is controlled by the AI?

Again, I love the work you have all done here. I hope I don't seem negative. Mod seems rock steady so far, so that is great! Thank you for your efforts.

[Nicodemus]

To be honest, I gave up on my Parthian game....twice !

For me, the lack of diversity of units was a factor, as was the difficulty of besieging settlements. In both cases I "resigned before I was mated", since stacks of Seleucids appeared and attacked two of my cities simultaneously !

As for Baktria, I gave up on that a few times as well ( see thread I started ). It is very hard to succeed as a human, so I guess for the AI its just as bad ( if not worse, since it will probably suffer from the human-biased traits system and end up with lots of negative management traits, resulting in no money to grow ?!)

The auto-resolve has caught me out as well. In the end, you have to fight the battles. After all, its why we play RTW

A good mod though and I think only 1 CTD for me, and it might have been the standard RTW settlement capture issue anyway...

[Zarax]

1) This is historical, Parthian armies were largerly composed of HA, with heavier cavalry being around 10% of the army.
Once rosters are a bit more fleshed out I'll probably balance things in a slightly better way (especially in regards of the infantry component which although not exciting was present) to make parthians more playable.

2) I need to review the culture balance in the region as some of the beta 3 changes introduced a few culture conflicts, will be fixed in one of the next patches for sure.

3) I might reintroduce some XGM balancing fixes for autocalc although they don't feel me with joy.
AI Parthia does well because the seleucid east is pretty weak (even more under AI control) so they face mostly rebels.
Playing a Seleucid campaign will give you a pretty good challenge if you choose to maintain the area (although as a bonus in that case you won't have an eastern front for a long while), with a little surprise to spice up the game if you are VERY good at keeping your towns happy.

That said, take into account that historically the Parthians appeared around 30-40 years in the game and didn't seriously expand for almost another 100...

[Zarax]

Parthian roster will be fleshed out (don't expect them to get heavy infantry for long time though), however I strongly advise to use reduced AI bonuses especially if you choose to play as a smaller faction.

I am working on rebalancing those two campaigns at the moment, Baktria with reduced bonuses is not that hard if you play the first few turns well and Parthia should be rebalanced if not for Gamma then for the next minor patch.

Allow me to reiterate though: the mod is best played on M difficulty and unreduced bonuses unless you are VERY good at it and a lot lucky.
You will also do better with a small quality army than a bigger militia one as losses are much more expensive to replace in the long run.

[Kara Kolyo]

Playing a Seleucid campaign will give you a pretty good challenge if you choose to maintain the area (although as a bonus in that case you won't have an eastern front for a long while), with a little surprise to spice up the game if you are VERY good at keeping your towns happy.

So now i have to restart my seleucid campaign under the senate version to find out the surprise!

[Zarax]

BI - Senate install.

You will hate me for that

[Kara Kolyo]

Should I? Unless by surprise you mean 10 armies of haoma drinking parthians knoking on my doors... I'll just have to try it, although it's hard to get back to BI phalanxes after Alex...

[Zarax]

What's wrong with ahoma?

And surely your eastern satraps won't stay idle if such a threat appears...