Armenia vs Parthia (Online Battle #92)

Hey, what's up guys, this is Oakley and we're playing a one versus one online multiplayer battle I am going to be Armenia on this side and my opponent Alex Stan is going to be Parthia So i'm going to start this on pause just so we can go ahead and take a look at the units first and foremost So i'm going to have Two of these noble spearmen one over here and one on that flank and then two more persian hoplites in the center So that's going to be sort of a line of spears there and then backing that up I'm going to have two elite persian archers over on those positions Then i'm going to have azat knights as my general and in the front i'm going to position two of my eastern cataphract units Just to soak up any archer fire and be able to ward off a frontal assault And then in the back here i'm going to actually have a persian cav Which is still pretty good, even though it's not sort of the best cavalry I can purchase It's still a very very good pretty armored unit and then two of the noble blood cav on its flank and then over here two horse archers And then backing that up with the mercenary capadocian cav and persian cav and then the noble spearman that I already called out to you earlier So that's going to be my build pushing forward then my opponent has brought a build where he has What is this four? There are three eastern cataphracts and one royal cataphract right there So that's going to be a lot of armor for me to chew through at least I do have two of my own Cataphract units. So if you want to sort of trade those off then i'm going to have more cavalry total However, he's going to have a lot more in the infantry department So what he's done is he's brought four of these parthian foot archers right up the front So he already outclasses me in terms of infantry or um archers And then he has what is a six of these parthian swordsmen as his core and then over on the right flank He has two mercenary samaritan horse archers. So we're going to put this on play and we're going to see how this starts to stack up against each other So this battle my opponent i'm going to say played very well first and foremost So get ready for that Anyways, what i'm going to see is he's going to have a huge heavy Left wing over here with a lot of these cataphracts and I realized that even if I have my horse archers doing a lot of tangoing I can't take out these horse archers I'm, just going to waste so much of my ammo trying to whittle away that armor that it's just not going to be worth it So i'm going to pull back these horse archers I'm going to try and redeploy them on the other side You can see my opponent is dragging over his sarmatians over here So i'm going to pull these horse archers back and pull back this flank because my opponent is too strong And I figured i'm going to go ahead and push this flank You can see he's sending all his cav on one side. So i'm like, okay I'm, just going to take out this side then and try and win in that position and retreat here I pulled back One noble spearman here because I figured the best way to counter these royal cataphracts is yes They're super beefy and they can probably take most if not all of my cavalry Um, if he gets in the mix with my spearmen in tight formation like this, he's going to start losing a lot more men. So Look at this i'm pulling back and i'm leaving one guy fully exposed and that's gonna be my noble spearman And that's going to be on intercept duty to keep his guys back. And now this is going to create a very interesting dynamic Look at this. We have our two armies Him and then me and then in between in no man's land I've placed one noble spearman unit and what that does is sort of prevents him from sending his cataphracts through the center And it's going to create a playing field in the center where we can have both of our skirmishing troops engaged So you're going to see that start to play out Right now these guys are going to pull back a little bit I'm going to start pulling back my horse archers who are going to try and go on the other side They'll be pulled back and now i'm going to be able to start countering his guys I even have some of my own elite persian archers positioning themselves up here and I have some more Persian hoplites to try and guard this flank But yeah i'm going to try and hold back his cataphracts by having these stationary noble spear units and then you're going to see my cav sort of Attack retreat attack retreat and then my baseline of spearmen hold this front here And try and get some more shots off with my horse archers and really just play a lot with his own sarmatians Now his guys are actually going to be I think cheaper than my own units and actually more effective as well I was actually surprised. I thought we would be able to trade pretty effectively, but he's actually going to end up getting a lot more. Um Cost effectiveness out of his formation so you can see we were dueling a lot. I think we have the same range, but he Uh, yep. He has more missile damage actually So that's going to start taking its toll you can see I already did no damage to him and you know That couple of volleys I already lost, you know 13 men So that's going to be um sort of a a tick off in my mind saying okay I can't win this in terms of skirmishing So i'm just going to have to buy my time and be super careful and try and win on this flank However, like I said before he has more archers than I do. So i'm going to have to find a way to win that The way i'm going to do that is by swinging these cavalry forces to the center and then start bringing them over Threatening this flank and over here i'm going to try and isolate some of his units So for instance here i'm double targeting some of his formations and that's when I start to win And then because his other formation is going to try and reinforce that flank I'm going to force the issue with two of my persian cav and try and force these guys back Allow me to continue to get some shots off and really isolate his cavalry. These guys got too far off So this is how i'm going to try and win these types of engagements But i'm really really really taking a lot of damage from these formations. These are probably the most cost effective Horse archer cavalry units I think in the game Um, yeah, the formations they're just super cheap and they have much better damage, uh than my own horse archers So I don't quite have parity with his men and now it's going to trigger Um his eastern cataphracts to get into that fight. That's okay These guys are all much more mobile than his cataphracts and i'm not intending to pick a fight I just want to ward off his own sarmatians and start to um, you know, even that, uh, the kills over here I need to start returning fire, but my capped oceans have pretty good armor and they got just out of range As his guys are reforming that's what i'm going to decide to push up and try and engage these guys as they're exposed like this I'm going to start pushing up my persian cap because what i'm thinking is he doesn't he doesn't actually have any spears here So if I can land a cavalry strike on his guys as they're unin, uh, you know unformed and unbraced I can get a lot of free kills and that'll allow me to just come in and crash in with the rest of my forces However, he's going to start to redeploy and he's keeping his cataphracts in a nice position where they can counter charge my guys So I don't quite want to engage in a frontal assault I'm going to have my persian archers here in the woods to get some initial shots off i'm going to start swiveling my guys back over here and Push my eyes at nights over to the flank and really threaten his rear because he has no cav And what that's going to do is force him to pull back some cav over here And allow me to regain a little bit more of an advantage on that flank So a lot of back and forth a lot of baiting and i'm going to realize these guys are a little bit too far in range If i'm going to push this nope, actually i'm going to pull back to the woods I didn't intend for them to go all the way out and they're going to get back into cover and not take too much damage That was good. Um, and I do have cavalry units threatened here So if I do feel like he's getting the advantage in terms of archers Um, I can just shoot my eyes at nights into here and threaten the flank force these guys back and relieve pressure on my archers So that's something you always have to do Is if you have this type of engagement where you know, you're not going to win the archer fight You have to have some sort of release valve where you can relieve the pressure on those guys And that's going to be these as at nights these cavalry who can release the pressure on my archers by threatening the flank If your opponent decides to push up heavily like this, just go ahead and pull back. Feel free to do that It's not going to cause you any troubles. Just make sure that you do leave some units to hold the opponent's back So my elite person archers here, for example tangoing with the parthian foot archers That's not a prolonged engagement that I want to be partaking in but it's something that I will go ahead and entertain for the time Being just as I try and force him back over here and allow my archers in this position to get some additional shots off You can see i'm starting to get some advantage there. My guys are drawn out in a thin line So i'm not taking too much damage. Um, yeah killed five of his men and I actually lost a pretty good amount So probably not the best exchange, but I think it was worth it to hold back his force He's going to go ahead and chase me and that's going to expose him to a cavalry strike He's not going to be stupid enough to fall for that But it's going to allow me to you know, charge him force him back and then continue to get some shots off over here i'm continuing to play with his guys, but The tide is slowly turning against my cab. I'm down to 17 and 29 He has a full one here and then a half strength guy here. So I do have to continue to force back my opponent with capadocians I'm going to threaten the rear of his guys here and I figure you know Just like I was saying before if he has unforwarded infantry Oh, that's going to be the best place for me to strike especially in thin lines like this So i'm going to charge right through that unit and smoosh them smash them over here I tried to threaten his archers You can see they got into a blob and I forced them back But he was able to get a nice strike with his parsian Uh swordsman and this is something that was probably a pretty decent move on my opponent instead of going for spearman He decided to go for a lot of swordsmen because swordsmen in this case have a lot of these javelins So they can really counter my cavalry much more effectively Maybe not more effectively but in a different way than spearman would so for instance These guys can get a lot of kills from my cav without being in direct contact with them They can kind of create a buffer zone where I can't get in range without being threatened from his uh, his own javelin man So uh or his own javelin, so that's that's an interesting take on that type of engagement But anyways, I did lose six men, but I was able to kill only 11 So that's not much gain from just charging to these guys. I thought it'd be much better Um, but I guess he did turn around and brace them thin line I figured I would have smooshed more of them if I were if I had cataphracts over on this flank. I probably would have But uh, at least it did, you know force him to reform his line that he had here I'm going to push up my persian hoplites and try to force back these parthian foot Uh archers here and just start putting the pressure on continue to get some archer fire and I want to target his parthian swordsman I don't care too much about his archers to be honest I want to take out his heavy infantry because I know if I can take those guys out Then I can start sweeping in and crashing into his forces Over here. He's going to continue to target my noble uh spearman and that's going to be a problem for me because um Basically, um This is all that I have holding down this flank in terms of being able to counter all of these cataphract units if he takes These guys out Um, then i'm going to be at a severe disadvantage when it comes to engaging his cataphracts So I have to save those guys So i'm going to charge in with both my horse archers pretty aggressively get point blank and try and kill these sarmatians I'm backing that up with some capadocean cav and whatnot Now I was able to bait these guys forward and start to peel apart his formation as he's doing that He's going to expose some of the rear of his forces to my persian cavalry Who were taking some damage from his archers and it looks like they'll be a little bit in range of his own swordsman So here you go They're going to start cocking, uh their arms for this volley It's going to be a problem for me But I figured I had to engage on this flank just to try and destroy these swordsmen on the charge I'm, not quite sure he's going to be braced for this. Let's go ahead and watch. I think he's going to be unbraced Yep, so they're at 120 So these are the types of engagements you want against um parthian swordsmen So I was able to pretty heavily, um damage that unit. Let's see Um, no, it says only one kill So that's surprising actually very surprising for me on a charge like that You figured I would have gotten way more kills on his guys Um, so I was a little disappointed there and now he's going to get some rear volleys with his parthian swordsman With the javelins, I believe yeah, so that's gonna be costing me every volley that I get into here Every charge I get with my own cavalry. I mean three kills for smashing into his guys It's gonna be very problematic for me At least it did slow them down and allowed me to move back my persian hoplites into the formation And I can start warding off this force And meanwhile all this disruption has allowed my elite persian archers to start raking in the kills I'm almost going to be able to break and it looks like I did finally break One of his parthian foot archers and i'm going to be able to target the other one I won't quite win that but i'll actually be able to knock out both of those guys at least remove their influence from the battlefield And i'm going to start falling back So i'm going to fall back leave one of my persian hoplites who are not that strong But if you leave them in square, um, it's going to take a lot of time for your opponent to kill you So that's exactly what I want They're going to be here as a buffer formation allow me to pull back and then if he does Start to collapse on this I can just hit him in the flanks and whatnot And that's why I have some more cavalry back here ready for some kills I will say my cavalry did not get quite the killing power that I expected to Against some of his parthian swordsmen So if you want to look at the aftermath of my double charges against him Basically, he lost just what? I mean really five six men here and there. Yeah, four men with that strike And nine with that even though I got a full-on charge against his guys as they're running Um, I guess they weren't quite the shock cavalry that I thought they were I believe these are more. Um, Melee calves so they're good in prolonged engagements and not super good on the charge Again, I really need to bring these cataphracts over to this fight if I landed those strikes with cataphracts Oh, it would have been way better. And again, we're gonna see another one of these into unbraced infantry And it should be doing a lot of damage but for some reason it won't But the reason I can't redeploy these cataphracts over there is because that's the only thing that I can do to face off his own Cataphracts on this front and i'm starting to really lose my horse archers. I'm down to just 29 He's down at about you know, full strength one half for the other so those guys definitely paying for themselves And i'm just barely hanging on on this front. I'm hoping I can be able to win on this Uh side, you know pull some of his eastern cataphracts off and try and um, Isolate them or maybe even slip in and get his archers. He's not going to fall for that He's going to fall back to his formation So I landed that strike and it looks like that was a little more fruitful I just got uh up to 22 kills But because of all the swordsmen that he has and the fire at will mode He can just continue to just unleash volleys on my guys. So a very good choice I would say with these swordsmen they they held up a lot better in a cavalry engagement than I thought they would um and to to very Um deadly ends to be honest. Um I could not crack those guys even in those types of engagements So I guess what I needed was maybe some of the armenian cartley axemen to get in the fight fix them and then really attack from the back Um, but yeah, even noble blood cav who should be really good cavalry. We're not able to crack those formations So, um, my port is definitely playing a very good build parthia. I've heard is one of the the strongest factions Um, the infantry are pretty solid archers are top-notch Cavalry are very good And especially i've been seeing a lot of players just feel these cataphract units and just keep them in close order next to your guys And just you know deal death with your infantry and your archers and keep these cataphracts here for a contingency You know if your opponent comes in and charges You can just hold them on the flanks and they will ward off any cavalry strikes Or you can even send them into the infantry fight and they'll do well themselves. So that's something you saw. Um, Um indie pride doing a game against me a while back where I played as carthage But he had the same type of idea with a lot of the heavy eastern cataphracts So now i'm gonna bring in my own eastern cataphracts I want to be able to wedge and engage his eastern cataphracts and I figured you know with my noble spearman nearby I should be able to win that fight So let's watch some of this as I come in And now what i'm going to do is i'm going to have one of them engaged on this cataphract unit The other one is going to be uh, um, i'm going to disengage and i'm going to hold them here Just so I can try and ward off his own cataphracts You can see I was able to force them back So I should be able to get a nice rear strike on his cataphracts And it's gonna be a little hard to tell who is who but I did get the strike on his guys who were stationer So I should be able to win that engagement, um provided I can get some of my own noble spearmen into that fight So I should be committing them soon And now look at this. This is the type of engagement that I was saying before which is where you have eastern cataphracts coming into Unformed parthian servants. So let's see the difference They had 120 before and let's take a look at what happens after I get this strike on his men So now you're going to see the the mass calculations really get into this fight, um, what's he down to 111 so we already got nine kills and as I stay in this fight I'm going to be getting a lot more kills So cataphract charges are way more beneficial And I guess that's why I probably should have brought more cataphracts just to be able to knock out all of these infantry blocks Um, and he's gonna be throwing a lot more of these parthian swordsmen into the fight and i'm gonna accept that i'm gonna let my cavalry Slug it out and over in this position. I got my capadocians on his eastern cataphracts He will probably win that but I just wanted to tie that down Persian cavalry are waiting Um, my noble spearmen are going to be here to try and engage with his royal cataphracts and you know Tie down this flank and then maybe i'm keeping these persian cavalry in reserve try and engage with his men I guess I wasn't microing this I figured these guys. Yeah, they should definitely be on hold formation I don't know why I was charging them. They they should have been braced. Um, but yeah He's gonna bowl me over and I already lost so many men. Oh my god. That's crazy Um, yeah, he killed a ton of my guys in that charge. I guess it's because he employed trample at the same time um But yeah, I don't seem to be getting quite as many kills as my opponent when it comes to these cavalry charges but at least you know, despite That clear, um poor move on my part to not brace. I was microing I believe over here Um, it's gonna at least allow me to fix his cataphracts move into the side with the persian cav and then engage But even my own noble spearmen, I mean they've gotten zero kills You'd figured spearmen against cavalry would at least now start to even the fight. Um, but they will in the future Anyways, now i'm going to commit my noble spearmen into this engagement And I was able to pull out some of my cataphracts from that fight Or some of my other cavalry from that fight and intersperse My uh noble spearmen who are full health into this fight And then my other cataphract persian cavalry on this flank are going to start to engage his guys who are caught on my blobs Over on this side I did engage some persian hoplites over on this flank to force back his eastern cataphracts My opponent still has some reserve blocks of parthian swordsmen and archers who are continuing to get a lot of kills off But there here you go I'm landing a nice rear strike and this is exactly what you want engage parthian swordsmen And finally, I think i'm going to start getting kills But these guys are much much heavier And harder to kill than I had remembered before so I was having a lot of issues with those guys Um over on this flank i'm able to get you know spearmen noble spearmen in the mix against his cataphracts Plus my own persian cav in this fight So I should be able to start wearing down his royal cataphracts, especially with his general That'll be a boon to me. My own capadocians are faring not so well They've only gotten four kills and lost 30 against the cataphracts so you can just see why parthia is such a strong faction because of the The just killing power and staying power of these cataphracts. I mean for the price. Um, they do a lot of killing especially against mercenary Capadocians, I mean, maybe I don't have the best charge, but I should be good in armor and melee. Um Yeah, I have higher melee than him Let's see. I'm at um 49 and he's at 40 So I should be getting that and I have even more higher weapon damage So i'm not quite sure why i'm losing this engagement It may have been the charge that just knocked me out early on and maybe some of the supporting fire But anyways now i'm going to be able to thread the gap a little bit with some noble blood cap and finally pursue his Archers i'm going to pull in my Persian hoplites here to try and get his cataphracts same with my as at nights over here Try and wrap this up and clean up the rear and then land some rear strikes onto the infantry blobs over in this position Continuing to get some more strikes on his um, his birthday turban. Um, they're showing their steadfastness. However More cavalry waiting on the wings to be engaged. Now. I'm finally able to get in Through these gaps and charge into his guys and you can see in the distance Some of the eastern cataphracts are finally going to go down because they're engaged I guess my noble spearman i'm going to chase away these archers if not kill them then at least Keep them from killing my men His own cataphracts are going to chase away So this is a very expensive unit who he would like to have in the fight, but now it can't This is a very good move i'm going to chase them away with my persian hoplites and then come in I should be threading these as at nights through here and Landing some rear strikes, um, because that's definitely what I need to even up these fights basically all in these positions They're um, they're just waiting for the tide to turn one way or the other especially over here I can't hold up that long against these parthians and this is exactly where I need a cavalry strike So i'm going to pull these noble blood calf Over here and then try and land some rear strikes. I have not been getting what I want in these types of engagements So i'm going to continue and just hammer an anvil up and down the line where I can Um over here i'm going to start, you know, evening up the fight a little bit It looks like he's down to 46. I'm at 20. So i've stabilized, uh quite a bit My opponent does however have some of these starvation horse archers who I was, you know Fighting off with some of my guys and they're going to just sacrifice themselves to buy the rest of my army more time Um, but let's see over here. His catapacts are still disengaged I was able to knock out his archers and now here comes my general i'm going to get this strike that I was talking about into the rear of his swordsman and Again, i'm having a lot of issues just knocking out these swordsmen I don't quite know what it is what i'm doing wrong this type of strike should definitely just obliterate These types of swords especially with noble blood calf. I mean, these are very very strong troops Uh, they have 34 charge bonus. So maybe not quite as high as a um, let's see what charge bonus 67 okay. So yeah catapacts have much much higher but still I mean charge bonus of 34 I should be able to knock out these guys. It definitely you know Angered the the nest of bees and they're all chasing against me, but that should have knocked out those troops um And so the the sturdiness of the parthian swordsman is what's going to be turning the tide of the battle To my opponent's favorite and let's let's look at one of these clashes Cataphracts against my own general unit And I am going to get you know a pretty good exchange on this Maybe not in terms of the charge, but I think because he was weakened in the battle beforehand Look, I lost about eight men right there and he's you know already weakened from the battle I had over here So that should start to turn in my favor, especially since he's tired and i'm winded. I should be winning that i'm going to engage more of my Uh remaining persian cab into this blob but same thing with my opponent He's gonna get into the rear of my persian cavalry So we're sticking everything we can against these and I hope to take out this general But at the same time my general is at the risk of failing and uh and dying My own persian hoplites are going to be you know Cleaning up the rear and I have to really pull them back into the center and try and guard against this eastern cataphract unit Who's fresh who still has a lot of killing power and he's going to make a beeline for for this position Um, my opponent cannot crack these hoplite blocks Um, however, he was able to win in other parts of the battle So for instance all the cavalry rear strikes that I that I had here were not enough to crack the the parthians Uh, and my cavalry are now going to disengage I figured you know I just need to commit to winning these cavalry engagements my hoplites. I believe in them I think they can hold out for long enough and I think the deciding factor is going to come down to the cavalry So that's why i'm going to engage in these fights and really pour in the fire And just try and mop up these types of engagements over here It's just a huge mess and this is going to be very very troublesome for me the uncommitted cataphract unit That's going to turn the tide over here So, yeah That's going to start you can see. Yep. One of my guys already started losing. He's going to employ Uh fear ability on my guy and that's a very good move of my opponent to use that general's ability right here right now I think that's a good combination because he can just you know Knock me out with his cataphracts and then he can come in and basically Selectively scare away certain units. So actually my guys did not hold up quite long enough And now they're going to finally collapse he threw in more swordsmen against me these guys are going to be routing My own archers out here. I should have brought the mech in the fight. I didn't realize they rallied But it wouldn't have been enough. I mean my opponent still has more guys over here He's going to crash into my hoplites with some cataphracts Smush those forces and uh, yeah, he's going to pour in the fire here So a really fun battle, uh, very very well played on my opponent's part And I I think this is something you guys can learn if you want to if you're um, maybe not the best at the game I think selecting the type of army that my opponent brought and Playing it in the way that he played it is going to land you a lot of victories Parthia is very strong in the latest patch and this will get you. Um, very solid wins I think and they can fuel this army against a lot of various troops You'll obviously want to tweak it, but this is probably a very good starting point So let's go ahead and look at the build that he brought So look at his swordsman here. I'm getting a decent amount of kills archers a decent amount of kills Uh and eastern cataphracts pretty good my own guys Um, you can see I brought a lot of calvary and they just didn't get quite enough kills I think um, these guys are rather expensive. Um, and they just couldn't they couldn't cut it for some reason against his swordsman. I figured they would have but uh, I guess um That's probably why my opponent has brought this very well tuned and honed build because he knows that cataphract or calvary Strikes against these types of infantry is not going to be quite as effective because they have the javelin they have the armor Um and just the sheer numbers of them is going to be able to negate a lot of my calvary And also just not having the archer advantage meant he could you know, um sort of dictate the pace of the battle I tried to confront that and change that and really wrestle control the battle back into my hands Um, but I think with the presence of the cataphracts he can dominate one wing of the cavalry engagement the presence of uh archers He can dominate the skirmishing component and with a lot of swordsmen. He can at least have parity with the uh, The infantry fight so a very good build. Hope you guys enjoyed and uh, yeah. See you next time