Seleucid Empire Strategy

[99KingHigh]

Anyone have any tips for the Seleucids? I can't seem to get a grip on the early campaign, especially as I start hemorrhaging money deep in the red, and become afflicted with riots and rebellions galore.

[QuintusSertorius]

Easy fixes for economic issues: disband the elephants with the king (that's 10k a turn right away); disband some of your starting fleet.

Riots and rebellions galore are par for the course, holding a large empire together is hard.

[99KingHigh]

Easy fixes for economic issues: disband the elephants with the king (that's 10k a turn right away); disband some of your starting fleet.

Riots and rebellions galore are par for the course, holding a large empire together is hard.

I
I would imagine that disbanding your fleet is a self-harm approach, given that the Egyptians are sure to steal the advantage and blockade your ports.

[Genghis Skahn]

I
I would imagine that disbanding your fleet is a self-harm approach, given that the Egyptians are sure to steal the advantage and blockade your ports.

Let them. Unite your spread out forces into larger stacks which you'll use to campaign and police the various parts of your huge empire, and then attack the ptolemaioi by land.

[Seimour]

Most of your trade at the begining is inland. Maintaining a fleet and an active naval war against the ptolemies is asking to sink money into something they have all the time in the world to indulge in. You are a massive empire spanning the middle east and the ptolemies only have you as a serious rival whereas you are fighting on several fronts. Prioritize. If you want to use the elephants, do so on the first turn against either the ptolemaic stack near Akko or the large rebel stack in Tarsos and then disband them in Antiocheia.

When you have thrashed them, you wont need a strong fleet to grab Salamis.

You are also very likely to have to give up on some cities you cant hold in the east. Destroying the buildings in them before disbanding or retreating with your units will give you some cash for what you can actually hold. Iran is going to be a massive rebel nest so you'll need to deal with that periodically. Watchtowers and patrolling armies of cost efficient troops. The area around Iran and Mesopotamia has a lot of rich mines which might be worth investing into for a long term cash flow.

Remember that native colonies give decent troops but may upset the locals so watch out for that. You can't tax a lot of your cities too high if you dont want to lose them and your foreign governors tend to piss off the locals more than anything.

Anatolia is key for good quality troops and sorely needed greek colonists. Pergamon is not very dangerous but it will betray you eventually and might take over a lot of cities making them strong enough to challenge you. In my last game, I got very lucky and Pergamon lost most of their troops against the Ptolemies so I backstabbed them and took their capital. You have to be opportunistic. Anatolia is easy to hold and you need to abuse defenseless cities if you can. The ptolemaic main army there went rogue leaving their cities defenseless but you can probably capture them quickly if you dont siege by using Achaios' army and beg the gods that he wont be like the historical one.

Try to get trade with the greek countries to boost your income and to grab alliances as you can find them, if only not to be invaded freely. Side with whichever power is winning in Greece and Macedonia to secure that front, try to ally Pontos so they will have no choice but to expand over Armenia.

As for the Parthians, you can hold them off in the mountain near their capital but taking them on early runs the risk of having large stacks of nomadic troops running around trying to find a new capital.

Ideally, you want to clamp down on Anatolia after securing Palestine and then make peace with the ptolemies. Securing an alliance with the nabateans can be a good idea too if only to prevent them attacking you. In fact, expect no help from any ally and just consider an alliance to be a non-aggression pact.

[QuintusSertorius]

I
I would imagine that disbanding your fleet is a self-harm approach, given that the Egyptians are sure to steal the advantage and blockade your ports.

I didn't say your whole fleet, I said some of your fleet.

[Haramir]

Also In the West, attack the two pergamon army that are outside the city on turn one, then besieged their capital. Only fall back to destroy ptolemy stack if they attack your cities

[alex33]

Most of the time i disband the entire fleet. You don't really need it as you have few ports actually. Keeping or disbanding elephants depends on if you want to rp or not. I mostly use the in the first few battles and then disband them as i don't find that much use in "wonder-weapons" like elephants and chariots they are quite hard to replace and cost so much that i find them not that worthwhile. I would also recommend replacing the government buildings in the east with native administrations at least until you can build poleis and other colonies there. If not you will face constant annoying rebellions. I would concentrate on anatolia the first few turns. Try to kick the ptolemys out and subjugate and ally with the pther anatolian powers. With the starting army kill the big ptolemaic stack sout of you and take akko. After you kicked them out of anatolia and akko you should force peace and start to build up your economy and protect the east. After the thorakitai reform i mostly take hellas and makedonia. Remember to kill of useless generals you dont need because if you have as many generals as citys you will not get any marriage proposals and that could mean that your heir wont get a wife and thus no children which could mean that the empire gets in the hand of some random hobo.


what i really hope is that the seleukid family tree gets revised in the next version as its way to big

[QuintusSertorius]

what i really hope is that the seleukid family tree gets revised in the next version as its way to big

I queried this; it's not changing because those "random hobos" are the sons-in-law of the king.

[alex33]

I queried this; it's not changing because those "random hobos" are the sons-in-law of the king.

Really? I would be very interested to see sources on this one.
At the start of the game the dead Seleukos I has his son Antiochus. Then we have Achaios who married seleukos daughter apamea which is historical correct. Then we have Patrocles who was a general of Antiochus but i haven't found a source that he married into the seleukid line. Then we have Demodamas who is a mercenary according to his bio. Don't think he married a daughter of the king. I think patrokles and demodamas would perfectly fit as Generals outside the family tree.
At the start of the game having so many fm's and fm's in the making isn't that big of a problem. But once you get around the Thorakitai reform you will have so many characters that through engine limitations you won't get any marriage proposals or kids. Which could easily make your main line die out completely. that's what happened to me. And you as the player can't really do anything against it as you will always get marriage proposals for the same guy if you decline. I for myself don't want to kill every fm so that my lawful heir can have at least 1 child

[Slaytaninc]

About a month ago I started trying to research who was who, but I found so many that weren't on Wikipedia* or had different names that I gave up trying to figure out who was who.

I know that the size of your family tree is related in part to the size of your empire so hopefully you're expanding. The base game wasn't designed to be historically plausible in terms of conquests so you're stuck with a lot of hardcoded issues and features.

*I admit that that's not definitive, but for my purposes it was good enough, I'm not a modder for EB2 (or any other project for that matter, never got the hang of it.)

[MrBlack103]

Can elephants even be argued to be cost-effective at all? For the same price you can just about maintain another full stack. It's not like they're impossible to kill.

[_Tartaros_]

first don´t build up anything, only when you make money. sell your mapinformations to anybody. destroy the trader in marakanda_settlement and fight the overall rebel stacks in the first 1-2 turns. much ot the eastern cavalry can also be destroyed/used against rebel stacks, you don´t have to fear any attacks in the first 20-30 turns. killing rebels in you regions is important because of the massive devastation malus after some turns.
with this i managed to get a financial + after 4 turns. i also captured 5 ptolemaio settlements. i personally don´t disband my fleet, i use them to kill the enemy fleets. after some battles they are quite low.

[Rad]

Don't ever sell map information.

[Aneximanes]

Don't ever sell map information.

Why not?

[Rad]

Because the AI will be more likely to attack you if it knows where your cities are.

[Ziltoid]

Because the AI will be more likely to attack you if it knows where your cities are.

And ive been always trading map information with everyone ive had diplomatic contact with in MTW2 mods.

Oh well, atleast more action and entertainment for me in those campaigns. Currently in my Macedonian campaign, even after sharing maps with everyone, noone attacked me for like 20-30 turns (almost all rebel cities been taken), felt weird, so had to go start a random war with Seleucids to spice things up myself.

Maybe ill try to go under radar of AI and be "more stealthy" in my next EB 2 game to see how it works.

[_Tartaros_]

Don't ever sell map information.

let them come...
normally i hit the prolemais first and push them out of the nile into the desert. with this, i own half of anatolia + judea + nile valley. pontos and pergamon still struggle to conquer more than one settlement (pergamon doing better, but is allied to me). armenia slowly grow, but once they attack me, one of my two nile armies are back in place + the guard army returns from conquering the arabian coastal settlements contrapersia.
once my mines are running, money come in to deal with this situation. bactria is still allied to me and my biggest opponent are the indian armies right now, giving me a hard time in the east.

with actual three fullstacks i made about +17.000 every turn. so i´m able to recruit at least two more fullstacks to deal with the east

[MrBlack103]

Do Whatever Seleucids are doing in my latest campaign. They're stomping everyone, and I (Rome) am getting very scared.

[parthian8]

You have to think of the Seleucids as like playing four or five factions at the same time.I divide the Arche into theatres of operation based on Anatolia, Syria, Babylonia, Persepolis and Hecatompylos.
I think a lot about the ethnicity of governors and try to develop the families in position at the start of the game as strong satraps. So Archios and his descendants rule Anatolia, the king runs Syria, his heir runs Seleucia, and so on. All you can offer them is a degree of latitude, and protection. It won’t make them love you, but it may prevent them deciding to go it alone.
I try to have a battle-winning army in each of these theatres, with heavier Macedonian armies in the west. East of Seleucia you pretty much have to put your faith in the natives as the native troops are cheaper and more mobile on both the strategic and battle maps.
The main purpose of these armies is defence. You can simply invite a war by leaving a city like Edessa under-garrisoned and out of range of reasonably speedy reinforcement. I always find Pergamon and Hayasdan are the ones to keep caged early.
I don’t allow the Silk Road and the Royal Road to be severed or subjected to banditry. This leads to heavy loss of income from trade and devastation. The cities on these roads benefit from governors who are good traders, so try to keep them busy picking up good traits. Since struggling with corruption and devastation I have discovered that entertainment supplements law as a counter-measure. I tax the established cities heavily, and use low taxes to grant smaller ones boom-town status. Choose carefully, as you want population growth to bring upgrades quickly.
Anatolia is my where I look to expand against the Ptolemies. I’m happy to stalemate them in the Levant, as I try to avoid borders with the expansionist Nabateans. My strategic aim is to minimise territorial losses until the Ectbana, Seleucid, Sousa triangle is a powerhouse shoring up the the eastern edge of the empire and until it can become to launch pad for a counter-attack.
Overall, a show strong deterrent defence has served me best in the first 250 turns. You cannot afford to let parts of your empire look like an invitation to buffet for the circling wolves, foreign and rebel, no matter how skint you are.