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I've been defated for the first time. I played the Parthians. They interested me only in the fact that they are a cavalry heavy force and I found that in almost all my games I ended up relying heavily on my cavalry in battles. I thought, hmmm...here's a faction that relies heavily on cavalry this could be hand to glove for me.

Wrong.

So fucking wrong.

I was prison gangraped by the Egyptians and Selucids. My ass hurts. I figured the Selucids are busy fighting the Egyptians, let me take this moment to sweep and take their capital.

Done, easily, I was impressed with myself. I waited a bit and then went on to take the next Selucid city when no counterattack to retake their capital came.

No problem there either. Then suddenly stacks of Egyptians swarm into my empire and within a few turns I lost all my plundered cities, back to my original states with -900 in the treasury and more Egyptians coming with Selucids in tow.

Horrible. Anyone have any advice. I have a sneaking suspicion I should not have gotten involved there and instead gone north for the Armenians and that bunch up there.

Cavalry heavy armies are good in open battlefield next useless in sieges and need intelegent handling in battlefields. You should wait before attacking spearmen heavy armies (Like Egyptian, Selucids, Greek, Macedonians, etc...), Since Pikes and horses don't mix.

on a foot note, my brits are very nasty, and can inflict heavy casualties to romans on open battle fields. against cities, not so well. strangely I have found the perfect siege tactic with them...

besiege a settlement for x number of turns, with a small infantry force. Then the romans/gauls/germans try and break the siege, command the counter attack, and send in missile chariots to "soften" the forces, followed by a massed heavy chariot rush once the small ones had broken a few units. I have killed legionary armies this way.

of course it also follows that you can't sustain a barbarian force. (inability to produce better roads/trade/farming)

The same thing happened to me, actually, except that I managed to go as far as neutralizing the Seleucids as an effective enemy before I was swamped and defeated by the Egyptian horde. I used horse archers and my extremely limited supply of cataphracts (you start with two units of them and I never got far enough to produce more) in skillful deployments deployments, with charge, countercharge, and maneuver to defend the newly taken city of Tyre from the advancing Egyptians, defeating in detail three gigantic armies in successive turns. Which they responded to by moving up three more.

I had very little money, and my unit production cities were all the way back in western Persia. So my armies were gradually ground down by the vast ahistorical Pharoanic hordes. I quit before I was actually forced all the way back to Parthia, but it was a forgone conclusion. I think Parthia and the Seleucids both kind of get fucked over by the mechanics of RTW.

1) Persia simply isn't in the game. I don't see why they modeled the trackless and worthless pre-Russian steppe while not showing a single inch of Persia. Historically the struggle for Persia was what destroyed the Seleucids and allowed the Parthians to become a great power. Since the Parthians can't overrun Persia, they are constantly short of cash. The Seleucids have a similar problem, but since they have some good cities in Syria and have access to Anatolia, it shouldn't be a problem for a good player.

2) The tech-tree fucks everyone over, but the Parthians especially. Parthian strength depends on good horse archers and heavy cavalry. You can get your hands on Persian Cavalry pretty quickly, but it takes you forever to get access to Cataphracts, which ought to be hammer of your army. So you end up with an army that has no shock component, and you'll probably never get it because you don't have any money to build your infrastructure, and even if you did get them it will take an obnoxiously long time for them to get to the front lines because of point #3.

3) Cavalry armies are much less mobile than they ought to be. As it is, an all cavalry army can campaign about 20% farther in a turn than an infantry army. For the Parthians, who can't build advanced roads, this means that their armies are going to take obnoxiously long to get anywhere. Now, realistically, armies on horseback are a lot faster than armies afoot. A lot.