Civlization Bonuses:

Team Bonus: Knights +2 attack vs. archers

• Start +50 wood, food
• Town Centers, Dock 2X HPs; work rate +10% Feudal Age, +15% Castle Age, +20% Imperial Age.

ES_Deathshrimp: Persia is actually a pretty poor rush civ. I know--I tried it yesterday. The problem is that Persia is a very cavalry-oriented civ and cav are easy to counter with spearmen or camels. All units are easy to counter with the right counter-units, but Persia is not very adept at switiching to archers or infantry. To make matters worse, cavalry are expensive, build slowly and are poor against buildings. They are awesome in large numbers in the late game, but I would rather rush with infantry, who can knock down buildings, or archers, who can shoot up villagers. Persians are good at booming for obvious reasons.

Q) Since the Persians have weak walls and towers, how do you suggest a player playing this civ should protect themself long enough to get eles(note the plural), much less get upgrades for them?
ES_Sandyman: A) Persian walls and towers are as good as anyone else's in Feudal and Castle. It's only late Castle/Imperial that they start dropping down the curve, which ought to give them plenty of time, especially considering that they are an attack-oriented civ, which means their _enemies_ are usually the ones on the defensive.

Q) Based on your responce from my last question(a few days ago), the Persians don't get anything largely above average besides cavalry and navy. What else should a Persian player use to get rid of those pesky pikemen that could collapse their entire army? (cavalry archers, possibly?)
ES_Sandyman: A) You have answered your own question correctly.

Q) Except for their weakness in towers/walls, I am assuming that Persians can last long into Imperial, with their powerful UU and full line of cavalry.
ES_Sandyman: A) they just have to keep on the offensive.

Q) How fast are eles once they have been given the "husbandry drug"?
ES_Sandyman: A) They are still frustratingly slow. As they should be. I think husbandry adds +10 percent to your speed is all. Which makes a big difference to units at the high end of the scale, but not elephants.

Q) It's been often mentioned that the Persians main strengths are cavalry and elephants. But other than that, what units can they get/will work well for them? How strong are their archers, ships, siege equipment, and walls/towers?
ES_Sandyman: A) cavalry: better than average
foot archers: worse than average
cavalry archers: average
navy: significantly better than average
siege: average
walls/towers: significantly worse than average. Their disadvantage here starts to surface in mid-Castle.

Q)Do the Persians rely too much on elephants like in Age of Empires?
ES_Sandyman:  A) Actually, I found that the Persian elephants (except in Deathmatch) were not that wonderful in AoE, because of the constant food shortage you had. In AoK, the high cost of the elephants means that a Persian player has to rely on other units throughout much of the game. His super-units are the last to get the elite upgrade (usually), and non-elite war elephants, while still hard to kill, aren't nearly as dangerous to other civs. A Persian who wants to fight sans elephants will soon find that he has access to every single mounted unit in the entire game.

ES_Sandyman:  "The Persian town center bonus means that all production and research performed at the town center is done more quickly. For instance, it takes something like 140 seconds to research the Castle Age. A Feudal-Age Persian TC gets a 10% bonus, so it would only take a Persian 126 seconds to research the Castle Age. (These numbers sound real precise, but I don't actually remember how long the castle age takes exactly.) Or if it took 20 seconds to train a villager, a Feudal Persian would only take 18 seconds to train him. In addition to age research & villagers, there are 5 other research items in the town center."

Greg "Deathshrimp" Street: "Persians are a lot of fun in the first few minutes of the game because their extra resources give them a great deal of versatility. You can afford to explore a bit more before laying down that first mill or lumber camp or switch to a fishing ship strategy earlier. Fishing ships are not quite as effective as they were in ROR, due to their cost and build time, but a Persian player can offset this bonus a bit. The superior town center and dock have no effect in the first age, but do let you quickly ramp up to your full villager or fishing ship component in later ages. You can also recover from an attack quickly, provided you haven't blown all your resources on elephants."  -Gamespot Showcase

Unique Unit:

• The War Elephant:  A powerful , but expensive elephant trained in warfare

  Greg "Deathshrimp" Street: "This is one of those areas where fun wins out over historical accuracy. When we were first coming up with unique units for all the different civilizations, a lot of the units we came up with were fairly indistinguishable. A unique unit needs to be truly unique; not only should it look like nothing else, but it should play like nothing else in the game. Unique units are not the same as superunits, like the paladin and arbalest. The Briton longbowman grants an ability to his civilization, in this case absurd range, that no other civilization can match. Up until the point where we gave the Persians the elephant, there was no expensive but extremely powerful unit in the game except for the Teutonic knight. While it is true that Persia did not use war elephants much past the time period of the AOK Dark Age, once you see an army of elephants stride boldly into an enemy town, it is pretty easy to forgive the anachronism. Elephants elicit fear like few other units."  -Gamespot Showcase

History