Seleucid

Although eventually embracing many eastern customs, the Seleucids are renowned for their city building and civil engineering, driving the Greek colonisation and Hellenization of their empire. Although furnished with expert cavalry, including horse archers, and war elephants, Seleucid armies sport a solid core of infantry provided by a growing number of Greek-speaking colonists.As the campaign begins, such measures are a necessity when faced with the continuing threat from their Ptolemaic Egyptian neighbours and upheaval among the Seleucid's satrapies and protectorates. Ever the opportunists however, the Seleucid kings may yet turn the tables, bringing much of Alexander’s former western empire under their sway.Founded by Seleucus ‘Nicator’, or Seleucus ‘the Victor’, at its height the vast Seleucid Empire stretched from western Anatolia as far east as the Indus River. During the turmoil of the Wars of the Successors, the Seleucids were able to claim and expand Alexander the Great’s eastern empire, as well as parts of Asia Minor. Seleucus sealed his overall victory at the Battle of Ipsus, in 301 BC. There, the fielding of his 500 war elephants, gained through negotiating peace on his eastern border with the Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, proved decisive. The territory now under his control contained a diverse range of eastern subcultures, which rapidly became Hellenized by its ruling Macedonian elite and a flood of Greek settlers. Despite an, at times, precarious position at home, as The Seleucids now look to expand into Ptolemaic Egypt and beyond, to Alexander’s former western empire in Greece and Macedon.