Parthian Guide: Hints and help to get you started

City Building and Planning

1. Build a farm in every minor settlement, upgrade it up to Tier II so you can get food without public squalor problems
2. At Province capitals, always go for the city center (gold/yellow) buildings, select the eastern spice trader and eastern markets to continously augment your gold reserves.
3. For recently conquered settlements without strong cultural conversion, build an eastern wrestling arena, that way, public order will be a thing of the past.
4. Avoid building up the city (via settlement - orange tab) unless it has unique resources.
5. Parthians were never really big on navies, to gain more income per turn, create fishing ports, harbours should be created especially when one reaches the Mediterranean.
6. Build religious buildings in ONLY the non-capitals of the provinces, this should be the 2nd building after making a farm to put up in one of the settlements, and follow the path to the tower of silence (dakhma). The other settlements, if there are any others, should be geared towards military (red) buildings.
7. do NOT have more than 2 military buildings in the province of Parthia, it helps with public order if you reserve room for the religious buildings to have importance first

Army makeup

1. At the beginning, create horse archer units, they are your bloodline in this game, one can never go wrong with horse archers.
2. Deploy horse archers in every battle to pummel units continuously - in open battles, they are great and are amazing to go against every unit EXCEPT light cavalry, use spearmen accordingly then. For Siege battles, deploy them to fire upon the defenders of the walls to provide cover fire for your melee to pull ladders up/torch gate.
3. An army mostly made up of Eastern Spearmen, especially at the start of the game is not advisable, however, Parthian Swordsman, once researched, are VERY effective at melee, amazing if backed by Persian elite archers.

Battle Strat

1. Parthian horse archers are you friends, use them generously against the enemy, continue to pelt them and wittle them away.
2. When you expand north, and north west/west, beware of the nomadic tribes that inhabit modern day Ukraine and southern Russia, In my campaign experience, they use their horse archers effectively in open field and are brutal to fight against. Use Caution.
3. If you happen to fight them in town, funnel these barbarians. Funneling your enemy works wonders.
4. Be heavy with archers, Parthia has amazing archery and marksmanship (as evident for their focus shot)
5. Median cavalry decimate horse archers of other factions, and they are good shock cavalry in the beginning. Use Median cavalry wisely (i.e. don't charge at the front of a pikeman formation).
6. Use your wits about you, don't charge into enemy ranks head-on, attack from the sides and back when you can and use melee troops (if you have them) as a pinning point.

Hope you enjoy playing the Parthians as I did, My first campaign and my first faction i ever played was Parthia, i won that campaign with a military victory. Try not to scream "AHURA MAZDA" at the top of your lungs as you pummel Roman legions and Spartan Hoplites with your cataphracts!

Have fun and Good Luck!