Well, I finished off that Baktria campaign a while back. The end result is as follows...
Pahlava decided they'd had enough of my being a good neighbor about four years after my last screenshot and attacked one of my cities. While I had been expecting this, my military build-up was still in its early stages, so I was caught a bit unawares. Thankfully, I managed to repel their invasion(s), which were... well, more numerous in quantity--of stacks, not units in the stacks.
After a few years of stalemate, I launched a double pronged offensive. The northern half was pretty much a sealed deal, as that section of their empire was somewhat lightly-defended, and my strike force was an army of veterans from the Saka war led by my best general. They never had a chance.
The southern offensive was somewhat more challenging, as my southern army, having been hastily assembled, was filled to the brink with greenhorn soldiers and led by an upstart general of barely 16 or 17 years of age. This unproven general, barely a man by his country's standards, took an inexperienced force and against all odds managed to not only survive, but excel. Province after province fell, and with each new victory, his army, though it lost numbers, became ever more battle-hardened. And the general himself, originally nothing but a young lad with dreams of greatness, became one of the most powerful and influential men in Indo-Baktria. So influential, in fact, that after his lord--who had been leading the northern offensive--died, the new Basileus named him as the man who would take his place, should the unthinkable happen.
A normal man might have been content with this and settled down to a life of luxury, but not this man. No, he pressed on, for the war with Pahlava was far from finished. Year after year, battle after battle, he fought to ensure his country's safety, and, after decades of struggle, Pahlava fell, stricken down from greatness almost entirely by the efforts of a man who at the beginning was merely a nobody with dreams of being his nation's greatest son.
In a cruel twist, the gods saw fit to award this man's crowning achievement with an actual crown, for on the very night that Pahlava fell, so did the Basileus. Though he had risen from obscurity to become not only his nation's greatest son, but also its leader, he would have preferred the gods to preserve his lord's life for just a bit longer, if only long enough to hear word of Indo-Baktria's--and his--triumph.
Regardless of the gods' whims, the man, having brought low an enemy of Indo-Baktria more dangerous than even the Sakaens and gained more territory than even the great Diodotos Baktrios, finally settled down to enjoy the fruits of his labors. Unfortunately for him--and Baktria--there would only be a scant few years of peace between the fall of Pahlava and the next era of strife.
In the mid 190's, the once-great nation of Arche Seleukia, of which Baktria had once been a mere Satrapy of, launched an unexpected offensive on the south-western regions of of Indo-Baktria, overwhelming the garrisons of several cities before a counter-attack could be mounted. Leading a hastily-assembled force of greenhorns not unlike the very first army he commanded, the Basileus not only recovered the cities the Seleucids conquered, but penetrated into Arche Seleukia itself, winning victory after victory and taking a number of Seleucid settlements.
After this point, there are varying, contradictory accounts of Indo-Baktria's ultimate triumph over Arche Seleukia, Arche Seleukia turning the tide and pushing back Indo-Baktria, and even a few odd accounts of armies sweeping out of the Caucasus Mountains and attacking both combatants while they're distracted. Unfortunately, the records after this point are scant to non-existent, so it's unlikely that modern man will ever know the exact details of the latter half of this conflict, assuming it continued. (In other words, this is where I ended the game.)
Anyway, after this game, my next few (incomplete) games were as Hayasdan, but I kept restarting whenever I conquered the entirety of the Caucasus Mountains, so I put Hayasdan on hold for now.
In my current game, I'm playing as As'Sab'yn wal'Ja, a faction I was originally reluctant to play as, since their roster didn't strike my fancy. However, I'm finding this faction to be quite enjoyable, since it's quite satisfying--and amusing--to play the underdog.
I've been making liberal usage of Pantodapoi Phalangitai in my armies, although I'm a bit leery of their low(ish) morale. However, they're fairly cheap, so I use them to hold the line, while the Lo'hamim Azzilim (Sabaean Noble Infantry) guard the flanks, and, if need be, perform a bit of flanking themselves. It's worked fairly well for my Arabian defense force, all things considered. There haven't been that many battles near my homeland provinces, since the Ptolemaioi don't seem keen on trekking through hundreds of miles of desert to get to me, what with Seleukia trying to kill them.
My African army, on the other hand, relied on Red Sea Hoplites to keep the enemy occupied, while my Ethiopian Swordsmen and Arabian Light Infantry flank the enemy. It's not optimal, perhaps, but my African army has been successful enough to become significantly more experienced than my army back home. I may add a unit of elephants to my African army, just for kicks. Kicks that send soldiers flying 30-40 feet into the air.
All in all, Sab'yn's been fun. Troops aren't uber, but they've got got... character, I guess, and there's the whole 'underdog' aspect I mentioned before. The only complaint I really have it that certain cities (Petra and Palmyra) keep rebelling to me, the latter of which has ruined at least three alliances with Seleukia. I don't mind Petra rebelling, although it a bit difficult to hold onto, given that it's currently a bit isolated from my troop-producing centers.
Ah well, that won't be a problem once I push take out the Ptolemaioi
Re: Post your EB empires!
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