Alexander - Playing India

[Didz]

Having dowloaded the Mod for Alexander I have already played and successfully completed The Defence of Persia campaign. This turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax, as Alexander was killed in the first battle, essentially putting an end to the Macedonian threat and the India Army was quickly destroyed having only captured one of the Eastern towns.

However, The Rise of India campaign is proving to be more of a challenge. My first attempt failed simply because I did not expand fast enough and ran out of cash. The opening game requires a bit of blitz approach to expliot Persian weakness in the East and seize one or two cities early. I managed to seize Bannu and Bactria.

This increases your treasury enough to get your empire started and also provides quick access to the better buildings in the new cities.

The size of the Persian Armies can be intimidating and I was quite cautious about facing them at first. However, I discovered to my surprise that by accident or design the Indian Javelinmen are much tougher than they look. In fact, I've taken to using these supposed skirmishers quite frequently as my main battle line simply switching off their skirmish ability and making them stand and fight. The combination of massed javelin fire and reasonably stalwart melee defence seems enough to unsettle most of the Persian infantry and the only time I try and move my spearmen in to relieve them is if the Persian cavalry has embedded itself in my battle line.

The AI tactics for Persia are quite curious and a little fiddly to deal with. The general approach seems to be a extended battle line which seeked to envelop both your flanks. However, these flanking forces seem to take a long time to get themselves in position and commence attacking, and in the meantime the Persian centre has usually slammed headlong into your own main battle line and been soundly beaten and routed.

Thus, battles with large Persian hosts I find myself having to redeploy my main battle line to both flanks and fighting the End game back to back against two demoralised flanking forces.

To this end my normal deployment places four or five javelin units in the front rank, shielding a mass of archers in the centre, and three or four spear units in the rear with any cavalry tucked into the flanks of the rear rank ready to expliot. This means that my spear units can either move forward to support the javelins in fending off the enemy cavarly, or move to deploy on the flanks to fend off the enemy envelopments. Whilst the archers are safe in the centre of the box and keeping up a steady hail of arrows on anything that isn't enegaged to front flank or rear.

The indian cavalry is mostly light and so worth little except to ride down routed enemy units. This is quite important as the Persian's are prone to panic, but do frequently rally. So, whenever possible its worth riding them down if you get the chance.

Indian Longbowmen are definately the unit to go for as early as possible, the long range and greater killing power is essential for dealing with units like the Heavy Bactrian Cavalry and the bow armed Immortals. I don't bother with the Indian slingers, female and levy archers anymore and in fact they are gradually being replaced in my existing armies.

Money is the biggest problem and pillaging cities is essential to keep the coffers full. The size of the Persian armies makes such expansion fiddly to say the least, and I have been forced to use guile to distract these armies away from target cities and into strategic traps so that I can force them to fight on my terms.

So, far this campaign has proved to be the most challenging of the three, and so the most enjoyable. Just wondering if I'll even get any elephants to play with.

[Third spearman from the left]

Sounds like were playing the same mod as all your notes make perfect sense.

I only started once but was going to give up at one stage, because I was so in the red and had a tiny army. But a quick attack on a Persian city with a small garrison helped me out, sack sack sack!

I managed to gain about five or six regions overall including the two Barbarian ones to the north. The battles were epic, as I was always outnumbered (but never out gunned ) which really means you have to plan all your unit engagments carefully and fully exploit the weaknesses in your oppoents forces.

Sadly just as it seemed my Empire was about to push even further into Persian lands, my game end date was reached. I forgot to extend it from the 70 or so turns for normal Alexander....

One other thing, I could not hire any mercs, which was a real shame.

[Didz]

Sadly just as it seemed my Empire was about to push even further into Persian lands, my game end date was reached. I forgot to extend it from the 70 or so turns for normal Alexander....

Yes, the one thing I find annoying about this mod is the time limit on the campaign. I appreciate the point of it being there, but it should offer you the option to carry on not just pull the rug out form under your feet in mid-stride.

One other thing, I could not hire any mercs, which was a real shame.

Ah! you noticed that too. I found that a bit puzzling, and was half-expecting it to be regional and so possible once I had driven further into Persia, but in fact I was never offerred any mercenaries for hire at all.

Nor, for that matter did I ever get the chance to train elephants, despite capturing some pretty well developed Persian Cities.