My Parthian Campaign

Loaded up a new Parthian campaign using v1.92beta (available over at rtr.org - http://forums.rometotalrealism.org/i...owtopic=19863). Quite fun so far.

First some setup considerations: if you've played Parthia, you know that doing nothing and hitting "Next Turn" will leave you with around -1300 or so in your treasury. So the first thing I do in my Parthian campaigns is disband spearmen - almost ALL the spearmen. I leave a couple units in most cities (Hatra and Ecbatana being the exceptions - they get no regular units) and disband all the rest of the foot units. I also move my fleets to port and disband them as well. The starting fleets are a completely unnecessary expense. Then I shift everything I have to the western theater - no need to worry about the rebel provinces to the northeast and east. They are too strong to take and too far from my Roman nemesis to bother about. Finally, I always push settlement taxes to High wherever possible. Now I should net about +1300 when I end my turn.

Unlike my previous Parthian games in which I shifted everything I had to the Hatra area, I decided to invade Armenia using most of my units that started in the east - lead by Phraotes, while moving against the Romans with Surena and everything I had in the west. Orodes was put in Hatra and Pacorus remained in Ecbatana, both helping boost those tax revenues.

Surena gathered his army together on turn one, taking the units off Orodes and the horse units from Hatra. Surena then moved his stack to the ford below Antioch, hoping the Romans would foolishly attack this strong defensive position. The AI played into my hands (of course) and attacked Surena across the river. They were defeated easily with huge losses (their army dissolved after the battle) while Surena only lost a handful of men. A heroic victory for Surena! As king, I'll have to keep on eye on him lest he become too powerful. Surena followed up this battle with an attack on a smaller Roman stack the next turn, obliterating them, and then withdrew to the bridge on the Euphrates as there were multiple large Roman stacks now in the area.

Phraotes, meanwhile, had moved his stack into Armenia and moved to besiege their nearest city, hiring a unit of Spearmen along the way so that they could build a single ram. This drew a stack of Armenians to relieve the siege. Now I've been playing Parthian campaigns for a couple weeks now, but I had yet to face Armenia, having concentrated on fighting Crassus previously. They came with five units of Horse Archers along with spearmen and cataphracts and some foot missile units. This battle proved to be most difficult. My Horse Archers had to be concentrated on the enemy HA's in order to drive them off, and in the meantime the enemy cataphracts managed to reach my cataphracts and general. Phraotes foolishly charged in amongst them, and was pinned in place while two units of enemy heavy spearmen rushed up to assist. My hired spearmen tried in vain to repulse this threat, and paid with their lives, only a handful remaining to flee the field. Then the enemy spears were engaged with my general, and soon Phraotes fell. By this time my Horse Archers had driven off their enemy counterparts and returned to shower the enemy general with arrows. He, too, fell, and then it was a matter of my Horse Archers cleaning up the field, spearmen first with their remaining arrows and then charging into the enemy missile units and defeating them hand-to-hand. It ended as a victory, but my forces were down to 360 men and Phraotes was dead. The only consolation to this was that the city fell after the battle, we slew the inhabitants and looted the place, and were immediately able to retrain my depleted units using the Armenian stables.

And that's where things stand as 52BC dawns...