godly horse archer spam. also starts on the edge of the map. also can defeat each of the factions that border their starting provinces only with units produced by that province. horse archers are also so great at preventing loss of territory. you cant catch them, every battle they have more arrows. you lose to attrition and have to march home or be annihilated, and they just replenish to full immediately because theyre at home. i imagine the campaign eventually gets difficult when you hit rome's elite infantry, but your empire is just too unstoppable by then.
I love your video. This game is my all time favourite. Spartian Tier: Default vanilla normal horse archer. Spartan Wannabe Tier: Slinger, Cataphract, Elephant Decent: both Bodyguard cav Bad: long range horse archer Trash: all infantry, foot archer, siege. The only S tier units in the entire game in my opinion is the default horse archer and chariot archer. In the more modern total war game, you need to unlock general trait or technology of parthian tactic to be able to shoot arrows on the move, or to shoot backward. These HA is just op right out of the gate. Also in the vanilla version of the game, so many units from all factions have low armour, only noticeble exception being the Roman legion and urban cohort and Greek heavy hoplite. If you wannna face stacks of post marian roman armies at late game, dont sweat. 3-4 units of Elephant just charge into their center, and your other cav should just mop up the rest. If you are cash strapped, or for logistical reason wanna faster trained army recruit from nearby regions in Italy or Greece, then go for slingers. Slingers counter heavy foot soldiers. Army compostion 7-8 slingers, and the rest cav. Let slingers tire out their heavy front line infantry, use cav to kill their missile and cav. Only engage exhausted infantry, shoot from their back, which you should have at least one or two surviving unit of sling with still half of their ammo left. Watch and be amazed, that the tickling dmage of what is like maybe 2 or 3 ? and somehow their gonna muder those urban cohort. I think one of the dev talked about this in an interview I've seen somewhere, sorry I can't find the link. But the story is that they tried to give peasant the ability to sling, but only for 1 damage, and half range of the already horrible short slinger range. Yet it turned out to be too powerful, because if they shoot slings even if just 1 damage they have a chance to kill urban cohort from the back. The low trajectory of slings also mean all the shots if directly shooting into the back of a unit cannot miss, they all go into the formation, and they eventually always hit someone. Therefore the seemingly low damage slings become machine guns.
for seige weapons, i dont use them much either, but i split the movements. i move forward into enemy territory with the horse archers well ahead of anything else, to bait out counterattacks and sally attempts, but if there's a tough nut to crack with lots of infantry in a settlement, a small army with some infantry and the onagers that lags behind, will catch up to the siege and allow you to crack the walls. then that army can stay behind as public order, with your general, while your horse archers move forward to the next settlement. you can bring peasants, eastern infantry, hillmen, even foot archers, to make sure the new settlement doesnt revolt or get retaken, while your horse archers move forward to harass and starve enemy armies/settlements in the next province. its a nice one-two combo of punches that allow you to use horse archers for expansion and aggression and almost never for defense or public order. the best defense is a good offense.
It's so weird to me that none of the eastern factions have trainable good archers, when historically they were quite renowned for their archers. I also wish that Cretan Archers were trainable for the Greek Cities
I think that you take the wrong way to view the late general bodyguard. I understand your point but think like this: you will have a mounted general in the late game. Against phalanxes it's bad of course but what is worse, a medium horseman or a cataphract? The cataphract is obviously better so I would put them in Spartan tier as they have a change to break phalanxes (and destroy all other units by the way). With a less armored bodyguard you would be crushed in mêlée by other heavy units.
Thanks for the comment. Imo it is kind of both and. Agreed fully if they were available from the start of the game. But you have to manage with the early bodyguard quite a while. Imo would have similar aspects than saying that Light Lancers are trash because you can get Companion Cavalry (yea, I know that the analogy is not perfect but goes to the direction) ;)
I'd rather have the early bodyguard just for the extra versatility. The late bodyguard is just a cataphract with two hitpoints. If I want cataphracts I'll just use cataphracts. Early bodyguard performs a lot better than what its stats indicate as well. Persian cav, as an advanced horse archer, also has less ammo than the basic model. They're nice, but they shouldn't be your primary mounted archer.
i use them to defend my horse archers from foot archers or other horse archers. the extra range comes in handy to destroy those counters to regular horse archers before they get to counter my horse archers. basically, their role is to defend the bulk of my horse archers from other kinds of archers, by being better, longer range, mobile archers that also never get hit because their range is too big. true, you dont want only them, because less ammo and more expensive, but i like the extra optimization that comes with protecting the mass of my main horse archer force from taking casualties. they already never take casualties from infantry and unarmored cavalry, this prevents them from taking missile casualties too. that just leaves heavy armored cavalry and you'd need an awful lot of those to be remotely scary to a horde of horse archers.
their main function, why you'd want a lot of them, is if you want to fight another horse archer faction like scythia and want to cause lots of damage to enemy horse archers before they even get in range. thats the scenario where a lot of them are useful, instead of just a few. but after that, you don't need that many.
The game design in Rome TW factions is pretty interesting. The Greek Cities are pure hoplite while the unplayable Macedonian faction is more of an allrounder faction and the same seems true with the specialized cav faction of Parthia and Armenia. Parthia is really cool and would be my favourite if it wasn't for Germania and the SPQR... I might just like purple factions too much.
I like playing Parthia, it's chilling and with horse archers you can clean every battlefield, but then again it get's a bit boring after early game. I have a personal question to you: May I ask where you're from? I'm getting balkan or eastern european vibes, but maybe am totally wrong :D
Northern Europe it is then :D In my inner eye you are sitting on the couch drinking beer, smoking cigarettes while listening to metal :D Kalsarikännit or something Just joking, I really like our content! Keep it up! Rome is one of my childhood games. Greetings from Germany!
i never built camel cavalry, in fact i never went war elephants or even armored cataphracts. my entire cavalry was just a mix of the early horse archers and the later longer range horse archers. then lots of hillmen infantry, theyre really mid but they can clean up enemy infantry or cavalry units that have been heavily damaged by my horse archers. for stone wall settlements, i would put foot archers on the walls. good defensive unit but there's no use for them in the open field when you have horse archers. parthia, worst infantry in the game and at the same time i barely even notice this, because by the time my hillmen infantry touch anything it is already routing or mostly dead. they can handle clean up duty. the key is to simply use them sparingly, defensively, and for the briefest of melee engagements. kind of like if your horse archers had to engage in melee, you want the contact to be brief but overwhelmingly in your favor, so you break them before losing too many people. not a faction that does prolonged melee well, but if youre going to do so, send in those worthless pajama boys. even if they get slaughtered, you dont care, because they were never an important part of your offense. they die so your horse archers can live. like 95 percent of all your kills come from those horse archers, so you value their lives much more than the meat shield infantry. hey, if im going to take melee or archer fire from the enemy, i'd rather the pajama men die than my elite horse missile units. its funny, even my eastern infantry rarely ever get wiped because they rarely see combat for more than a few seconds, but if they do, i'd rather be using hillmen instead.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed. An additional bonus with Hillmen is that their demands for population is signifanctly smaller than Eastern Infantry's :)
I don't understand your point about different bodyguard units. You're facing the same enemies either way. It's not like *you* initiate the Marian reforms or decide the technological progress of your enemies, or decide whether you're using early or late bodyguards. That's out of your hands. (To clarify the point it's not as though you can press a "keep everyone else in the early era, I don't want to face any tier 4 units" button by keeping the early bodyguards around). So you get to fight the same battles against the same enemies (until and unless you get to Roman territory). Which would you rather have - early or late bodyguards? The answer is obvious.
Thanks for the comment. Fully agreed - if late bodyguards were available in the early game. Furthermore, in this particular case, imo javelin cav is a bit more versatile than pure melee cav :)
Parthia overall bad civ in my opinion, their unit roster is far too limited and Seleucids actually outclass them in almost every regard and copy parts of Parthian unit tactics like the Cataphractii
@@qualityoldgames7721 Yeah horse archers are the best unit in Rome and Med 2, and they are so rare in Rome that the fact that Parthia not only has basic horse archers but elite horse archers makes them really strong. Frankly an army of Persian Cav and Cataphracts can take on any army, even one full of Pikes. As you can just retreat with your army, and then get more ammo.
@ Cataphract Archers have better armor, but otherwise their stats are the same, with Persian Cavalry being faster do to their horse type. So Cataphract archers can get caught by other cav units that persian cav wouldn't Cataphract archers also: Take 2 turns to build Higher upkeep Higher cost Personally I want my Cav Archers to avoid melee, and leave my melee duties to my Cataphracts, rather than have a jack of all trades master of none
This series will always be welcomed! Would love to see a video of your top 10 favourite units... not based on stats, just what you like
Thanks for the comment. Sounds intriguing. Perhaps for all of the units ;)
Initial horse archers and cataphracts ( alt + attack for armored units ) are best Parthian units.
Agreed on that, though I wouldn't write off persian cav either :) Thanks for the comment.
godly horse archer spam. also starts on the edge of the map. also can defeat each of the factions that border their starting provinces only with units produced by that province. horse archers are also so great at preventing loss of territory. you cant catch them, every battle they have more arrows. you lose to attrition and have to march home or be annihilated, and they just replenish to full immediately because theyre at home.
i imagine the campaign eventually gets difficult when you hit rome's elite infantry, but your empire is just too unstoppable by then.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed, and against Romans, one would probably have Cataphracts and War Elephants :)
I love your video. This game is my all time favourite.
Spartian Tier: Default vanilla normal horse archer.
Spartan Wannabe Tier: Slinger, Cataphract, Elephant
Decent: both Bodyguard cav
Bad: long range horse archer
Trash: all infantry, foot archer, siege.
The only S tier units in the entire game in my opinion is the default horse archer and chariot archer. In the more modern total war game, you need to unlock general trait or technology of parthian tactic to be able to shoot arrows on the move, or to shoot backward. These HA is just op right out of the gate. Also in the vanilla version of the game, so many units from all factions have low armour, only noticeble exception being the Roman legion and urban cohort and Greek heavy hoplite.
If you wannna face stacks of post marian roman armies at late game, dont sweat. 3-4 units of Elephant just charge into their center, and your other cav should just mop up the rest. If you are cash strapped, or for logistical reason wanna faster trained army recruit from nearby regions in Italy or Greece, then go for slingers.
Slingers counter heavy foot soldiers. Army compostion 7-8 slingers, and the rest cav. Let slingers tire out their heavy front line infantry, use cav to kill their missile and cav. Only engage exhausted infantry, shoot from their back, which you should have at least one or two surviving unit of sling with still half of their ammo left. Watch and be amazed, that the tickling dmage of what is like maybe 2 or 3 ? and somehow their gonna muder those urban cohort.
I think one of the dev talked about this in an interview I've seen somewhere, sorry I can't find the link. But the story is that they tried to give peasant the ability to sling, but only for 1 damage, and half range of the already horrible short slinger range. Yet it turned out to be too powerful, because if they shoot slings even if just 1 damage they have a chance to kill urban cohort from the back. The low trajectory of slings also mean all the shots if directly shooting into the back of a unit cannot miss, they all go into the formation, and they eventually always hit someone. Therefore the seemingly low damage slings become machine guns.
Thanks for the comment. Very good points :)
for seige weapons, i dont use them much either, but i split the movements. i move forward into enemy territory with the horse archers well ahead of anything else, to bait out counterattacks and sally attempts, but if there's a tough nut to crack with lots of infantry in a settlement, a small army with some infantry and the onagers that lags behind, will catch up to the siege and allow you to crack the walls. then that army can stay behind as public order, with your general, while your horse archers move forward to the next settlement. you can bring peasants, eastern infantry, hillmen, even foot archers, to make sure the new settlement doesnt revolt or get retaken, while your horse archers move forward to harass and starve enemy armies/settlements in the next province. its a nice one-two combo of punches that allow you to use horse archers for expansion and aggression and almost never for defense or public order. the best defense is a good offense.
Thanks for the comment. Sounds like an interesting and useful tactics :)
It's so weird to me that none of the eastern factions have trainable good archers, when historically they were quite renowned for their archers.
I also wish that Cretan Archers were trainable for the Greek Cities
Thanks for the comment. I guess there was some balancing decisions as they have the rather powerful Horse Archers already :)
I think that you take the wrong way to view the late general bodyguard. I understand your point but think like this: you will have a mounted general in the late game. Against phalanxes it's bad of course but what is worse, a medium horseman or a cataphract? The cataphract is obviously better so I would put them in Spartan tier as they have a change to break phalanxes (and destroy all other units by the way). With a less armored bodyguard you would be crushed in mêlée by other heavy units.
Thanks for the comment. Imo it is kind of both and. Agreed fully if they were available from the start of the game. But you have to manage with the early bodyguard quite a while. Imo would have similar aspects than saying that Light Lancers are trash because you can get Companion Cavalry (yea, I know that the analogy is not perfect but goes to the direction) ;)
1. Cataphract 2. Elephant
:) Thanks for the comment.
I'd rather have the early bodyguard just for the extra versatility. The late bodyguard is just a cataphract with two hitpoints. If I want cataphracts I'll just use cataphracts. Early bodyguard performs a lot better than what its stats indicate as well.
Persian cav, as an advanced horse archer, also has less ammo than the basic model. They're nice, but they shouldn't be your primary mounted archer.
Ah, didn't realize the fewer arrows. Well, that is bad :) Thanks for the comment.
i use them to defend my horse archers from foot archers or other horse archers. the extra range comes in handy to destroy those counters to regular horse archers before they get to counter my horse archers.
basically, their role is to defend the bulk of my horse archers from other kinds of archers, by being better, longer range, mobile archers that also never get hit because their range is too big.
true, you dont want only them, because less ammo and more expensive, but i like the extra optimization that comes with protecting the mass of my main horse archer force from taking casualties. they already never take casualties from infantry and unarmored cavalry, this prevents them from taking missile casualties too. that just leaves heavy armored cavalry and you'd need an awful lot of those to be remotely scary to a horde of horse archers.
their main function, why you'd want a lot of them, is if you want to fight another horse archer faction like scythia and want to cause lots of damage to enemy horse archers before they even get in range. thats the scenario where a lot of them are useful, instead of just a few. but after that, you don't need that many.
The game design in Rome TW factions is pretty interesting. The Greek Cities are pure hoplite while the unplayable Macedonian faction is more of an allrounder faction and the same seems true with the specialized cav faction of Parthia and Armenia.
Parthia is really cool and would be my favourite if it wasn't for Germania and the SPQR... I might just like purple factions too much.
Thanks for the comment. Yea, the focus variety is rather nice :)
CATAPHRACTIIII
A really nice unit :) Thanks for the comment.
I like playing Parthia, it's chilling and with horse archers you can clean every battlefield, but then again it get's a bit boring after early game.
I have a personal question to you: May I ask where you're from? I'm getting balkan or eastern european vibes, but maybe am totally wrong :D
He can speak for himself, but the creaky voice is a giveaway.
Quite close. Greetings from Finland ;D Thanks for the comment.
Northern Europe it is then :D
In my inner eye you are sitting on the couch drinking beer, smoking cigarettes while listening to metal :D Kalsarikännit or something
Just joking, I really like our content! Keep it up! Rome is one of my childhood games.
Greetings from Germany!
@@hulkgermany4077 Thank You! :D
i never built camel cavalry, in fact i never went war elephants or even armored cataphracts. my entire cavalry was just a mix of the early horse archers and the later longer range horse archers. then lots of hillmen infantry, theyre really mid but they can clean up enemy infantry or cavalry units that have been heavily damaged by my horse archers. for stone wall settlements, i would put foot archers on the walls. good defensive unit but there's no use for them in the open field when you have horse archers.
parthia, worst infantry in the game and at the same time i barely even notice this, because by the time my hillmen infantry touch anything it is already routing or mostly dead. they can handle clean up duty. the key is to simply use them sparingly, defensively, and for the briefest of melee engagements. kind of like if your horse archers had to engage in melee, you want the contact to be brief but overwhelmingly in your favor, so you break them before losing too many people.
not a faction that does prolonged melee well, but if youre going to do so, send in those worthless pajama boys. even if they get slaughtered, you dont care, because they were never an important part of your offense. they die so your horse archers can live. like 95 percent of all your kills come from those horse archers, so you value their lives much more than the meat shield infantry. hey, if im going to take melee or archer fire from the enemy, i'd rather the pajama men die than my elite horse missile units. its funny, even my eastern infantry rarely ever get wiped because they rarely see combat for more than a few seconds, but if they do, i'd rather be using hillmen instead.
Thanks for the comment. Agreed. An additional bonus with Hillmen is that their demands for population is signifanctly smaller than Eastern Infantry's :)
I don't understand your point about different bodyguard units.
You're facing the same enemies either way. It's not like *you* initiate the Marian reforms or decide the technological progress of your enemies, or decide whether you're using early or late bodyguards. That's out of your hands. (To clarify the point it's not as though you can press a "keep everyone else in the early era, I don't want to face any tier 4 units" button by keeping the early bodyguards around). So you get to fight the same battles against the same enemies (until and unless you get to Roman territory). Which would you rather have - early or late bodyguards? The answer is obvious.
Thanks for the comment. Fully agreed - if late bodyguards were available in the early game. Furthermore, in this particular case, imo javelin cav is a bit more versatile than pure melee cav :)
Parthians are inferior Sassanids in other words Sassanids are prime Parthians in RTW
Agreed on that :) Thanks for the comment.
It's a neat little roster, but to me, it's just not any FUN. Which is at the end of the day, the point.
Thanks for the comment. Yea, it might get rather repetitive soon :)
Parthia overall bad civ in my opinion, their unit roster is far too limited and Seleucids actually outclass them in almost every regard and copy parts of Parthian unit tactics like the Cataphractii
Thanks for the comment. Imo their main strength is Horse Archers which the Seleucids don't copy. :)
@@qualityoldgames7721 Yeah horse archers are the best unit in Rome and Med 2, and they are so rare in Rome that the fact that Parthia not only has basic horse archers but elite horse archers makes them really strong.
Frankly an army of Persian Cav and Cataphracts can take on any army, even one full of Pikes. As you can just retreat with your army, and then get more ammo.
@@micahbonewell5994 Agreed on that :) Thanks for the comment.
@@qualityoldgames7721 But then Armenia and Scythia have better horse archers imo. Both have better infantry.
@ Cataphract Archers have better armor, but otherwise their stats are the same, with Persian Cavalry being faster do to their horse type. So Cataphract archers can get caught by other cav units that persian cav wouldn't
Cataphract archers also:
Take 2 turns to build
Higher upkeep
Higher cost
Personally I want my Cav Archers to avoid melee, and leave my melee duties to my Cataphracts, rather than have a jack of all trades master of none