My Late Game Seleucid Challenge

[Cheexsta]

Ave all

So, I've reached the last 150 years of the game period in my Rome game using Epigoni Mod. The two strongest powers in the game are, predictably, the SPQR and the Big Yellow Blob, which bas blobbed its way through the Black Sea (netting them a huge manpower reserve from the Pontic and Bosporan Greek provinces), Egypt (netting them a huge slave pool for income) and through Africa (netting them...umm...sand?).

I myself have been concentrating on the Western Mediterranean, happy to leave the Gallic and Belgic confederate states to war amongst themselves (incidentally, they actually have the highest tech levels in the game!). All other tribal states are vassals of mine.

Here is the current political state:

The Seleucids, having more same-culture provinces than I do, have a manpower advantage of about 3:2 at the moment. Their income is roughly the same as mine (60g per month; mine is 55g), and they have a much shorter frontier than I do. I, on the other hand, have the casus belli: they own Macedonia, on which I have a core.

So, Friends and Allies of the Senate and the People of Rome (and, of course, our most magnanimous imperator); what do you think is the best course of action?

 

[Marcus Scipio]

How stable is Rome and how stable is the coming enemy? Any change of keeping the peace, inside and outside the Empire, until a Civil War breaks out in Seleucia? Would you be able to provoke such civil war?

How are your relations with Gaul and Belgium? Will they attack from behind when war breaks out? If zo, deal with them first...

 

[Achab]

Depends on the ver. of your game and also on what goverment you and the Sels have. Let's assume you have 2.31c beta and your Rome is probably a military republic with the military faction controling the senate and the Sels are already a theocracy. Foreign CW intervention doesn't work that great in 2.31c, so you actually don't want the Sels go into a CW.

AI Empire of any size can be crumbled to dust and pieces by a clever player. You just need to assure the formation of as many independent splinter countries on the blobs territory as possible. You can then negotiate separate peace with each of the newborn states providing you with extra provinces/tributaries.

Before you go into the war be sure to have ready about 30-40 additional cohorts of cavalry organized into 6-8 armies of fast response. After you DoW the Sels and crush their army stacks to non existence occupy only those provinces you want to annex, their capital region and those provs which you intend for the Sels to keep after the war. Patrol the remaining territory with your cavalry and sweep any newly recruited cohorts. It will decimate the Sels manpower terribly.

Now just help the splinter states to form independence. Smearing the Sels ruler popularity low helps the process.

1) Disloyal governors just love to declare independence for their regions during a war. Encourage their disloyality. The regional country is created only from provinces not occupied by you (or others).

2) Let rebels spawn on the Sels unoccupied territory and capture the provinces. Soon or later they will declare independence or join neigbouring countries, depending on the provincial core affiliation. Note that when rebels spawn or move to occupied provinces they just liberate them and despawn.

3) The oriental parts seem to be pretty civilized already, but maybe you can still find provinces with barbarian population to revolt or "push" some of the euro hordes to the Sels territory. Let them rampage and occupy the provinces and declare independence for their tribal states. Barbies can be helped when you conquer the province of their interest just before their arrive, so the fort garrison is low and easily to beat for them.

4) There are probably some events, like the popping of Parthia, which can help to disintegrate the Sels further.

In 10-15 years the mighty Sels are stripped to only few provinces, so you can finally make peace and take what you want.


Possible problems:

The Sels go into a CW ... and rebels spawned in a CW immediately join the faction not controlling their province. For sure dont encourage disloyality of the Sels councilors or magistrates, maybe even assasinate those unloyal ones.

Some other state DOWs the Sels and starts meddling into your genial strategic plan. For sure dont CTA your allies. Maybe break alliance with possible culprits 1st, so you can occupy them when they start making troubles with the Sels.

 

[Phi]

Ave all

So, Friends and Allies of the Senate and the People of Rome (and, of course, our most magnanimous imperator); what do you think is the best course of action?

Ave Cheexsta!

The strength of Rome lies in its will to win. If the enemy loots our lands or destroys our fleet and armies, we build a new fleet, equip a new army and "encourage" our renegade allies to support us again.

Do we have a bigger fleet then the selucids or a loyal martial 10 or 11 general, that can command our ships? Do we have big fortresses in Greece and Africa? Then declare war immediately! After you have beaten their fleet, concentrate you land forces in Greek. Start a siege on the Selucid islands and lure the Selucid armies to Greece. You can open and close the Bosporus as you like, so it should be easy to destroy the selucid armies. After a few years the Selucid Empire should collapse.

If you have enough forces, you can try to defend Africa. But that is not important, as long you control the waters around Gades.

If your fleet is not big enough, conquer the forests of Gallia and Britannia first. That should do the trick.

The main idea is, that a superior fleet enables us to concenrate our troops very quickly and gives us always a (indeed only local) quantitative advantage against those Selucid tyranns.

 

[unmerged(206114)]

Why not engage in a bit of guerilla warfare, if you can afford it? Pop in and out of undefended (or poorly defended) provinces to the north, near Greece, where you seem to be quite strong, and meanwhile, start picking off those North African provinces from them. I would actually think about taking that main Egyptian province that Seleucid has, and try to defend the choke point at the top of the Nile, while picking off the rest of the North African areas while they're cut off from the rest. My 2p's worth!



DD1

 

[jhhowell]

As a practical matter, the best course is probably to declare victory and start a new game. Then again, I don't really enjoy hot blob-on-blob action, so to speak...

Achab's strategy is of course correct, and very familiar from reading various EU3 AARs over the years. A slight complication for Epigoni is the fact that the Seleucids are effectively immune to rebels due to all the wonders they control (and being an Imperium for an extra -1 RR). Only nationalists can be expected to rise, if there are any provinces with a minimum revolt risk. On the other hand, barbarians can be used well in that strategy. The "Scythian Raider" and "Arabian Raider" events will periodically drop 5 barbarian population into map edge provinces in the east and north, and south, respectively, and eventually the barbarian pops rise up to loot and pillage.

When/if you can occupy most of the wonder sites, rebels should kick in and you can consider using the support RR intrigue mission. You'll probably want to occupy the wonders to help mitigate your own war exhaustion with a long-term occupation strategy anyway. Key provinces are Lydia, Babylon, Kirkuk, Susiana, Persepolis, Alexandria, plus there are single wonders in Rhodes, Caria, Judea, and the Nile provinces. Some are religion wonders not RR/stability wonders, but I forget which are which. And I've probably missed a few here and there.

From my own Seleucid Epigoni game (semi-abandoned when I realized my 10-15 province Macedonian and Bosphoran vassals were too big to diplo-annex o) I'd expect the Seleucids to have manpower of at least 400K. And by now a good chunk of that should come from their core territories in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Parthia, thanks to cultural conversion events. So taking the border/coastal Greek provinces won't do all that much to hurt them, you really have to get to the capital to do serious damage. Especially since this late in the game the capital could well have 100+ population. And unlike Paris when taking down EU3's big blob, Seleucia is pretty deep in enemy territory...

A relatively minor concern would be Ideas. As an Imperium the Seleucids will have more than Rome, the question is whether the AI was smart enough to upgrade them over time or whether they're stuck with the basic level Ideas. But this shouldn't be decisive - if you can win (and you almost certainly can), more or better Ideas shouldn't make a huge difference.

 

[Cheexsta]

Thanks all for your contributions I am running 2.31c, for what it's worth.

Both of our governments are Empires, I have +3 stability and they have +1, so it may be possible to encourage a civil war - indeed, the Seleucids suffered a big civil war just a few decades ago. Our relations are currently about +120, but that is rapidly falling thanks to our respective Infamy scores. My relations with Gaul and Belgica are pretty bad, but we've spent the past century or so largely ignoring each other. I'll keep a couple of legions on that border to keep the peace.

As for the military, I have about 200 cohorts in total (about half of which are concentrated in Greece or Thrace), with two fleets of 100 ships each to back them up. The Seleucid military must be stronger, since I have a few characters with the personal ambitions of making a stronger army than the Seleucid Empire, but their fleets are only about 50-strong at most (I haven't yet conducted an extensive reconnaissance of their fleet, though). I remain confident that I'll be able to defeat them at sea. Both of us have a large number (4+) of 10-martial generals.

I think the current course of action would be to start scouting around and finding out how many of their generals/governors are likely to revolt after a little bit of 'encouragement'. Then, I'll try reorganising my armies a little: move the regional legions out to the front lines and keep a few cavalry armies behind to guard against rebels.

Thank you all for your input. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, but it's always interesting to see what other people would do in a given situation

Edit: well, that didn't quite work. I selected my best spy (finesse 9, two traits with +10% to intrigue) and even he was incapable of encouraging Seleucid disloyalty (ranged from 'Impossible' to 'Very Unlikely'). So, I ended up smearing the reputation of their basileus, which succeeded, but then my spy was captured and killed. Needless to say, our relations have been tanked because of that, so it looks like war is on the horizon

Edit 2: Ok, so I found a much better spy with finesse 10 but no intrigue bonuses, and for some reason his chances for everything are 'Very Likely'. It's amazing how much difference that one point of finesse makes. He's now brought the popularity of Seleucus down to 0 and a number of his generals' and governors' loyalty down below 30. Let's see how much that affects the upcoming war...

 

[Achab]

Edit 2: Ok, so I found a much better spy with finesse 10 but no intrigue bonuses, and for some reason his chances for everything are 'Very Likely'. It's amazing how much difference that one point of finesse makes. He's now brought the popularity of Seleucus down to 0 and a number of his generals' and governors' loyalty down below 30. Let's see how much that affects the upcoming war...

That's weird, I found that in 2.31c the specific traits are much more important than the finesse stats. My assasin fin 10 with +10% intrique trait had better chance than a char with fin 16. That other char chances improved once I conducted a failed assasination attemp on him which provided him with that Suspicious +10% trait.

 

[Hardradi]

Cheexsta,

My advice is to control the sea and break them down in a long war of attrition.

Also did any of your generals get awarded any Crowns during your game so far?

 

[nachinus]

That's weird, I found that in 2.31c the specific traits are much more important than the finesse stats. My assasin fin 10 with +10% intrique trait had better chance than a char with fin 16. That other char chances improved once I conducted a failed assasination attemp on him which provided him with that Suspicious +10% trait.

Mmh, I don't think that can be intentional. Perhaps a bug? It'd be a good idea to report it, methinks.

 

[Cheexsta]

That's weird, I found that in 2.31c the specific traits are much more important than the finesse stats. My assasin fin 10 with +10% intrique trait had better chance than a char with fin 16. That other char chances improved once I conducted a failed assasination attemp on him which provided him with that Suspicious +10% trait.

Weird, indeed. In any case, my propaganda campaign is working so far: Seleucus is down to 0% popularity (and has 1 Martial, so no chance for triumphs) and he has no employed character above 35% loyalty. War has been declared, time to just wait until the empire crumbles

Interestingly, Seleucus has also been giving out land grants to his generals and governors to buy their loyalty (it's an Epigoni thing), but that has cost him heaps of tyranny

Cheexsta,

My advice is to control the sea and break them down in a long war of attrition.

Also did any of your generals get awarded any Crowns during your game so far?

I wholeheartedly agree, gaining control of the sea is always my first focus, especially in a transcontinental war.

Nearly all of my regular generals have received various crowns, usually the corona castrensis and muralis. To be honest, I haven't really been keeping track of them.

 

[Hardradi]

Is all this intrigue affecting you bad boy? The gauls might stab you in the back.

I also noticed in a previous game that the AI is quite active at giving out titles to disloyal governors. As Ptolemy it sprayed Magas the governor of Cyrene with multiple titles to keep him loyal.

Glad to hear that the crowns are being dished out - perhaps a bit to much for more common ones. Thanks for letting me know.

 

[Thorv]

AI Empire of any size can be crumbled to dust and pieces by a clever player. You just need to assure the formation of as many independent splinter countries on the blobs territory as possible. You can then negotiate separate peace with each of the newborn states providing you with extra provinces/tributaries.

Achab, I tried your anti-blob strategy (patch 2.31c) but it didn’t work for me.

I did exactly as you said. My Roman legions annihilate all Seleucid stacks and occupy only the provinces I want. I use cavalry min-stacks to patrol remaining Seleucid land, kill newly trained units, and prevent them to join into armies. My objective is to let rebels spawn and disintegrate the yellow blob into as many splinter states as possible. Did I succeed? Not really.

These are the problems I had with your strategy:

(1) Even with my help, rebel armies are painfully slow and inept. They have a tendency to wander outside Seleucid borders and get killed anyway.

(2) After smearing the emperor's reputation and encouraging the governors' disloyalty, I get an unwanted side-effect. When the rebels (with the red&black banner) take almost all of the Seleuicid land, the “start of civil war” windows pops up, immediately followed by the “end of civil war” window. The usurper faction wins by default, the land is instantly cleared of all rebels and everyone gets a loyality boost! This happened to me three times in a row.

(3) Neutral armies routinely wander into Seleucid land and interfere with my plans, killing the rebels at sight. (The Armenian and the Bosporans kept doing this, so I had to declare war to them too in order to get rid of that nuisance).

(4) When the Parthians finally join the war they don’t conquer any province, instead they do the Seleucid a favour: they kill all the rebels and accept white peace!

(5) By patrolling Seleucid provinces without occupying them, I made them into an easy target for Egypt. End results: instead of many splinter states, I got the yellow blob being replaced by a brown one.

A side note: in the Magna Terra mod, a weak and fragmented Seleucid empire is quickly swallowed by Maurya. So you don’t want to erode the Seleucids too much, but you keep them as a buffer between you and the far east.

 

[Achab]

Achab, I tried your anti-blob strategy (patch 2.31c) but it didn’t work for me.

Well ... this is how the Sels look like after 10 years of gameplay in our MPC.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=475066&page=2

But I agree that the issues you report can be an obstacle ... especially the CW.

 

[Achab]

Was on my way to lunch when posting previously, so I will elaborate a little bit more.

I was hinting cheextra who I consider to be a seasoned player aware how the rebels work and I took into consideration the specific geopolitical situation his campaign reached ... for example the fact the Sels territory was full of cores of previously conquered nations.

Generally speaking the best approach is, again in this order:
1) Encourage disloyality of the governors as they have high chance of declaring independence during the war. Their regional states can be quite huge, they start at war with you (so you can strip them) and they are plagued by high nationalism.

2) Encourage rebels in the provinces which are cores to at least one other nation then the Sels. After a province is occupied by rebels for some time it can cooperate with neigbouring rebelled provinces and they do one of the following:
a) They declare independence, mainly when the cores belong to a previously annexed state.
b) They join a state they border, mainly when the cores belong to that state or when they share culture or religion with it.
c) They start a CW as rebels or join them. That's when the cores belong exclusively to the mother country.
So you want a) and maybe b) but you dont want c). Don't let the rebels occupy provinces which are cores to the Sels exclusively. Also to prevent other causes of the CW dont encourage disloyality of the generals, magistrates and ministres, only of the governors. Maybe even assasinate the possible CW revolters.

That the neutral AI countries interfere is also a fact you have to take into account. Or conquer/tributarize them first, or occupy the border Sels provinces first so the other interventionists cant pass them ... and make sure you dont grant them MA.

 

[Thorv]

Achab, thanks for the clarification on the anti-Seleucid strategy. I found that the most difficult part of the strategy is to help the formation of splinter states while at the same time preventing the Seleucid from descending into civil war. I will keep in mind what you said about cores and CWs.

A couple of questions:

1) How do you find out who gives military access to whom? I have not been able to find this info in the diplomacy tab. This info is important if you want to block other blobs from blobbing into Seleucid land.

2) I thought I had the Egyptians blocked out, but somehow they slipped through. Even if I had not given them military access, the Egyptians could still walk across the frontier provinces I had temporarily occupied. Is this a bug?

 

[Thorv]

A couple of questions:
...

Please ignore that above post of mine. There were multiple bugs in my (modded) game, which somehow messed up military access and screwed up my attempt at Achab's anti-Seleucid strategy.

I have just tried out the Epigoni mod (which, by the way, I found to be a rich and well researched mod). After choosing the Pictii, I let the game auto-play itself for about a hundred years - taking a look at the map every now and then. To my surprise, the Seleucid empire gradually disintegrated, and got relegated to Coele-Syria and a couple of pockets in Anatolia. The Eastern part of the empire was taken over by Median Atropatene, Parthia and a new Assyrian kingdom in Babylonia. Anatolia was mostly conquered by Macedon. Syria was controlled by a new Egyptian Kingodm (which had gradually replaced the Ptolemaic Kingdom). In the Epigoni mod, the Seleucids have much less manpower, which is due, I think, to a judicious re-distribution of culture groups.

 

[Cheexsta]

Sadly, my game has reached a point where it is continuously crashing. War was declared on July 2, 611 AUC; in April of the following year I started running into a reproducable crash but I could not narrow down the issue. I managed to get around it by jumping my savegame 2 months forwards and now, two years later, I'm getting the same problem again. I don't really have the patience to keep doing this, especially since Autosaving doesn't seem to work properly at the moment.

For those interested: the anti-Seleucid strategies seem to be working. Before the first set of crashes, Syria announced its independence (though was re-annexed by the empire shortly afterwards), and just before the second set of crashes one of the Seleucid generals started a civil war. So, three years into the war the Seleucid cookie began crumbling.

Also, Gaul and her Belgic allies did end up declaring war. Luckily I still had 4 legions (12,000 men each) in Italy and two more in Transalpine Gaul to deal with the incursion...