Couple of Pahlava Issues

**Floren d'Asteneuz** · October 15, 2019, 08:17 AM

What is strange is assuming that Parthian were mostly horse based, and then arguing that horse breeding was not possible except in steppes.

There are a lot of thigns wrong with Parthia, including the royal domains restrictions based on a hidden generic ressources instead of a specific parthian related cultural ressource.

Beeing limited in our own territory and having to invade a non-iranian country just to have more opportunities for royal domains is strange, whatever the gameplay consideration behind it.

Historically it just doesn't make sense.

The same goes about the "usurpator" trait based on the tribe of the general administrating a province. While this is a good idea, it doesn't fit in the gameplay where you just can't chose a province leader when you have more than two, and if you have too much leaders you just can't manage anymore.

I won't even talk about the fact that when you king is not an Arsacid, it becomes a pain just to find a way to fill a royal province with a royal familly, even though a Suren or a Karen could creat technically a royal dynasty of it's won. (at the end, you end up with a Karen king, a Karen prince who are tagged "royal" and then all the other Karen who are not, while arsacids are royals even though they are not part of the king's clan anymore...)

I am really sorry but Parthia was the reason I started to play EB, and I was really enthousiast during the EBII construction and played Parthia a lot, but I waited a lot and all I saw was more complexity with less historical accurate features and less practical gameplay features.

I don't say that to destroy your work of course. Nothing is perfect, but anything to make Parthia better is worth saying.

**QuintusSertorius** · October 15, 2019, 08:40 AM

Look at historical horselords, and how long they successfully established themselves in agricultural lands. You can't feed horse-herds on crops, they need grasslands, which don't exist in cultivated lands.

They either went back to the steppe, or culturally changed to a settled state (with fewer horses).

**Camcolit** · October 15, 2019, 08:52 AM

Originally Posted by Floren d'Asteneuz

I am really sorry but Parthia was the reason I started to play EB.

Same here, and it's frustrating because there have been so many great changes to the overall game systems since EB1 that it's far superior, Parthia as a faction seems to have gone backwards.

**Slaytaninc** · October 15, 2019, 09:28 AM

Where did the horse archers of Surena that fought at Carrhae come from? Were they steppe nomads corralled into Parthian service or were they members of a formalized Parthian army?

**QuintusSertorius** · October 15, 2019, 01:03 PM

Horse archers were ridiculously overpowered in EB1. Not that there are many meaningful comparisons you can make, given they're different engines.

There seems to be a consistent mismatch of expectations going on here from people who played EB1. EBII is not merely attempting to be EB1 ported to a new engine; it is a different game with different objectives and a different team for the most part. There are many goals of EB1 which are not shared by EBII, so expecting it to be similar is a recipe for disappointment.

**QuintusSertorius** · October 17, 2019, 11:51 AM

An update on the Hellenistic unit situation. Following some discussion with the historians, it's been agreed to add a simulated helcol_one as well as the current polis_two. That means some more light cavalry, but also Hoplitai/Hemithorakitai before the ThureosReform, and afterwards Machairophoroi, another point of Thureophoroi and one of Euzonoi. That impacts the Philhellenic Satrapies of Hayastan and Nabatu as well.

In the case of the Iranian plateau, they're not actually "Greeks" from the late reform onwards, but Hellenising Iranians, but they're still best represented by Hellenistic units.

**Camcolit** · October 17, 2019, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius

Horse archers were ridiculously overpowered in EB1. Not that there are many meaningful comparisons you can make, given they're different engines.

There seems to be a consistent mismatch of expectations going on here from people who played EB1. EBII is not merely attempting to be EB1 ported to a new engine; it is a different game with different objectives and a different team for the most part. There are many goals of EB1 which are not shared by EBII, so expecting it to be similar is a recipe for disappointment.

Again with all due respect this seems to be another strawman and is rather patronizing. I didn't hear anyone complain about the horse archer rebalance or wanting to go back to EB1. There were points made about government type availability, recruitment availability and unit balance. If you think that's all fine as it is then fair enough, but there's no need to misrepresent the opposing arguments.

**QuintusSertorius** · October 17, 2019, 03:18 PM

Originally Posted by Camcolit

Again with all due respect this seems to be another strawman and is rather patronizing. I didn't hear anyone complain about the horse archer rebalance or wanting to go back to EB1. There were points made about government type availability, recruitment availability and unit balance. If you think that's all fine as it is then fair enough, but there's no need to misrepresent the opposing arguments.

It's a common complaint made against EBII, when comparing it to EB1. Which as I said is one of many meaningless comparisons given they're different engines (RTW's battle engine was better than M2TW's) and EBII isn't trying to be like EB1.