How to make the Seleucid Empire realistic

[unmerged(5934)]

Trouble is, which is right for the Seleucids and other Hellenistic Kingdoms is not right for Carthage or Rome: you could defeat Roman or Punic armies and fleets ten times, and they would raise another one; you needed to conquer a lot of their provinces and wreck their treasury to make them ask for peace.

The Hellenistic Kingdoms, on the other hand, relied on the services of a relatively small group of Greek (culturally) military colonists. Only one serious defeat and they had to surrender; the survivors would be too badly needed to risk another battle!

 

[delra]

The only way is to make the map bigger. Extending it to Baktria and even a part of India will add a bunch of eastern factions all interested to take a piece of Seleucids for themselves like Parthia, Baktria, Saka, Yuezhi, Scythian tribes like Sauromatae and so on.

Also, it should be MUCH harder to hold onto a province than it is now. Rebels are pathetic, weak and useless. There's no chance a new faction could emerge and hold their ground against Seleucids now...

 

[Freebot]

Rebels should spawn with better troop types like heavy infantry, cavalry, and archers. I think they only spawn with militias under the current rules. Also, you need potential revolters with cores all over the map. Would also be nice if there was a chance for disloyal governors to declare their own kingdoms. In short, empires need to face substantial centrifugal forces.

 

[PkK]

I don't like country-specific handicaps to force them down a historical path.

I suggest to extend the map eastwars, so the Parthians are bigger and the greco-baktrican empire is included at least partially. The Selecids would thus no longer have the advantage of being a superpower in a corner of the map with their backs guarded by the map borders.

There's a nice map at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/e/ef/Diadochen2.png

Philipp

 

[unmerged(6582)]

I have been thinking about 2 changes that might help with the seleucids

1. Add a modifier for seleucids in the religious conversion event, so it would become much harder for them to convert non-Greek provinces. And if I remember correctly, the culture cannot change if the religion isn't greek. So their total manpower would not grow so huge so fast.

2. Create an event for parthia, giving it free units if it is at war with seleucids and hasn't expanded too far to the west

 

[TheLand]

I've just done some work on the SPQR mod which should make it more difficult for the Seleucids (or, indeed, anyone else) to maintain a large empire in the East.

This includes many ideas from this thread:
- bonus troops for the Parthians should they form
- border provinces can secede to same-culture neighbours
- more provinces/areas which can become independent
- patches of very high risk or revolt/secession

If you're interested in seeing how it plays, please have a look at:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=354075

 

[Charles Louis]

Trouble is, which is right for the Seleucids and other Hellenistic Kingdoms is not right for Carthage or Rome: you could defeat Roman or Punic armies and fleets ten times, and they would raise another one; you needed to conquer a lot of their provinces and wreck their treasury to make them ask for peace.

The Hellenistic Kingdoms, on the other hand, relied on the services of a relatively small group of Greek (culturally) military colonists. Only one serious defeat and they had to surrender; the survivors would be too badly needed to risk another battle!

I've observed that Rome has a much, much larger manpower than the large eastern kingdoms. Part of this may be that as I am playing Rome, I put high charisma governors in border provinces to make them Roman faster, and I colonize from Roman provinces, not just any province (which leads to silly expansion), but there is a core measure of this weakness, the question is just how to use it.

The AI in all EU games has no ability to figure out when its a good idea to make peace now because a failure to make peace is worse than even a bad peace.

For example, if Selucid having a very low manpower was the trigger for its bad events concerning break-away nations. If the Parthians and Bactrians see the Greeks devestated, they will see their moment and rebel or invade. Using manpower as a trigger seems to offer some historical sensibility.

 

[Charles Louis]

Add a modifier for seleucids in the religious conversion event, so it would become much harder for them to convert non-Greek provinces. And if I remember correctly, the culture cannot change if the religion isn't greek. So their total manpower would not grow so huge so fast.

I was listening to an interview with Victor Hanson and he observed that the long term impact of Alexander was not to bring the west to the east (in game terms making Selucid more Greek) but to bring the east to the west. Certainly part of this might be difficulties in Hellenizing the east, but also events that bring the east to the west, even to Rome. Mystery cults and so on that bring instability and the possibility that characters will have a mystery cult as their religious preference, so that impact of having the wrong religion has its natural (or an enhanced) effect.