Thanks for the info.

I managed to weather the storm for a while and had taken Kotais, Trapezous, Mtskheta and Kabalaka and started building a city upgrade for Armavir (almost got the reforms...). I had a 5 unit army of pure HA's guarding me from Phraaspa, using the distance to whittle away at the smaller stacks coming from that side and my main army (3x caucasian archers, 2 x caucasian slingers, 4x FM's, 1 x Eastern Javelin, 4x caucasian spear and 2 x armenian spear) defending against increasingly larger stacks from Kharkatiokherta.

For whatever reason AS seemed to have a major grudge with me for daring to remain their ally, I briefly removed FOW and they've lost swathes of land to the Ptolies (antioch, edessa, damascus, palmyra, bostra,babylon!) and they still move all of their troops against me. I decided to restart when I saw 2 full (20 unit) stacks with good FM's and a fair number of pezhetairoi/phalanx marching right towards me.

I was amazed, first time I've ever faced an aggressive AS. I usually play as Pontos and end up taking Asia Minor to Charax and all in between pretty reliably.

Got to say though, I do like the Hayasdan and will be trying again soon. After some more success as Pontos though, Zadrakarta doesn't conquer itself you know...