Long time without update, but here it comes.
The siege of Susa would be a long one. My forces quickly occupy all the stratetic chokepoints, and after I'm done dealing with the Ptolemaic armies that were left inside the "quarantined" territory, the garrison within the city could abandon all hope of relief forces showing up. Even so, they persist stubbornly for years under siege:
The forces that sally out are thoroughly decimated from starvation and disease, capable only of token resistance. They are soon to meet a bloody end,for I have spent the many turns building a very large number of siege machines:
The sky is darkened by the missiles from the towers and the archers, and the corpses of the doomed defenders pile up:
Conquered Susa is made the new capital of my empire. With the frontier secured, I begin to plan for future expansion. The Fertile Crescent looms before me, but these lands are very heavily defended:
Instead of banging my head against the Ptolemaic wall, I take a more radical approach. Entering into an alliance with my former enemies the Seleukids - now reduced to a piddly regional kingdom - I raise armies from Hyrcania and march them across to the Ptolemaic-controlled Caucasus. Military forces in this area are considerably weak, allowing me to raid through the countryside and storm the poorly garrisoned cities in a kind of a blitzkrieg:
Honouring my alliance with the Seleukids for the time being, I hand over the administration of these conquests to them. This enables my armies to keep up the momentum, for I need not bother trying to pacify and hold on to the Caucasian lands, all the while denying them from the Ptolemies. The expeditionary forces arrive to the coast of the Black Sea, where a permanent foothold is established. Trapezous and Ani-Kamah will act as bases from which to expand further into Asia Minor. My hope is that this will act as a distraction, drawing the Ptolemaic armies away from Mesopotamia and thus enabling me to push the frontier westward to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. As you can see from the map, significant events have taken place in Arabia. Where it looked like the Sa'byn were doomed to fall, they have miraculously turned the tide and kicked the Ptolemies out! They offered me an alliance, which I gladly accepted:
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