Achaemenid Perisan - Royal Army
Table of contents
Achaemenid Persian - Royal Army
Why Use them
Who doesn't want to be able to turn the sky black with arrows and make your enemies fight in the shade?
Pros
- Pretty much everybody has a bow
- ..and they know how to use it
- Guard (superior) Immortals are rock hard, and will upset pretty much anything on foot.
- Even average immortals can make life difficult for foot of a similar grade
- A good amount of bow/short spear cavalry, mostly relatively cheap formed average
- The guard cavalry is excellent, and the Royal guard is exceptional
- Some really cheap crap hoplites
- Crescent shield troops give you a lot of bowmen who can fight, and dont have to rely on a thin crust of combat troops to give them a chance.
Cons
- The pavise that give the Immortals a good impact factor
does not mesh well with their drilled status - they can manoeuvre, but they can't actually go anywhere.actually no longer a con, as pavise no longer slows them - all the decent foot is loose order, so is horribly vulnerable to mounted.
- and the pavise does not help against them
- Instinctive generals can leave you a bit exposed when it comes to the pre battle phases, and then leave you hung out to dry when your formed cavalry has got a bit carried away
- Crap hoplites are crap, and even more so now that long spear does not cancel melee expert
- Sparabara are unprotected, so the pavise brings them up to shooting equality with most other troops, rather than really giving an advantage.
Using them in MeG
- Make sure you have decent terrain.
- The Loose order foot will not stand up against cavalry in the open, and may need some support to deal with decent close order foot.
- If you are up against close order foot broken ground is your friend
- Against mounted rough going is a must
- The Immortals are not going very far during the game, they need to wait for their prey to come to them, so make sure they are in a place where the enemy want to fight.
- Do not get into a shooting match with your good cavalry, they are far too expensive to do a fair exchange of wounds.
- Crap hoplites have their place - either studded in the immortal line to help resist cavalry or sitting on the flank.
- Immortals as skilled shooters is interesting - but most average foot is beatable without it, and it doesn't help against superior foot. It may be better for the non-Guard Immortals, than for the Guard. But that just feels wrong.