Fighting Parthia

[dpt24]

Did you know that you are able to fight the Parthian's and try and take their capital during the Year of the Four Emperor's if you play as Vespasian? All you have to do is keep troops out of Syria. With the new expansion focusing on the East I had to try and get a preview. One issue that has been brought up on the forum is balance and the Legion's advantage vs. non legions. Some thought that the combat system needed reworking or new units needed to be produced. As far as I could tell this is not the case. Whatever the Parthian's have got is pretty good as it is. Facing the Jewish Revolt a Roman Army can be outnumbered and win. Facing the Parthians is a much more fair fight. I had aprox. 50K of Roman's face 50K of Parthians one time and lost the battle. Another battle saw about 50K of Roman's fight 40K of Parthians and lose. This one did bother me some because I held the position AND inflicted more casualties (both total and percent) and yet lost a bunch of morale. That may be one reason I saw these results as i had fairly low morale. Still I wouldn't worry too much about balance in the new expansion. Supply is difficult which is realistic and challenging but I worry it may not be a lot of fun. However it should be noted the starting position I had was terrible as I had to keep all of my troops bottled up in Judea while awaiting the war then try and rush in as fast as possible before the scenario ended. With a better starting position managing supplies and depots might not be so unpleasant. It was interesting to try and take Parthia as Vespasian and hopefully it'll be even more fun to play other attempts when the expansion comes out.

[PJJ]

Interesting experiment. So it seems that the legions aren't too good against Parthian armies that use a lot of cavalry? My experience against other foes has been that the cavalry units tend to suffer extremely heavy casualties and become wiped out much easier than infantry.

Parthia should be a tough opponent. Rome always had considerable difficulties fighting against them. But with careful preparations of logistics and good leaders and troops, it was definitely possible to beat even the Parthians.

[bob.]

This reminds me, can't you also fight Parthia in the Caesar vs Pompey scenario? (Maybe to free up your locked legions there once Partia is defeated?) Never tried that, but now I want to!

[Soulstrider]

Dear lord, I completely forgot about that, I guess I'll provoke parthian attack for fun.

[dpt24]

Sadly I tried to do this months ago (long before the Parthia expansion was announced) and while Caesar is at war with Parthia he cannot invade deeply into it, and they don't seem to try and do anything to you. Once thing I think some people forget is that while Rome lost significant battles against Parthia (and the Sassanids) they also won a lot of battles and usually won the war in the end. After Crassus's defeat the Parthian's were then defeated by Cassius. Anthony failed to invade Parthia but his subordinates won significant battles. Trajan devestated them and while the Parthian's got a good start against Lucius Veros in the end he penetrated Parthia fairly deep.

[pantsukki]

There are also huge Parthian hordes in the Severus scenario.