Baktria - Opening moves and early strategy

[moriluk]

Never had a great campaign yet. Here is my lame history:
1st. (1.0) m/m went east. put all eggs in one basket. lost first ever battle against eleutherio city as i didn't know they had 3 garrisons of elephants including huge general. learned the value of spies. relatively inexperienced at that point, 4th total war campaign ever. (late 250s)
2ND (1.1) h/m: shamelessly quit after blitzing all the way to Babylon and trying to send armored war elephants to take Syria thinking 4 archers and 5 med phalanx will hold the fort then full stack of saka armored ha, catas, 4fm attacks Baktra. (early 250s)
2nd. h/m (1.2) same strategy; blitzed AS, got very rich, but after many many many battles against pahlava and their allies saka, i am wondering when i get my fabulous reforms and toggle fow to see epeiros has italy. (early 240s)

Perhaps because I don't play vh/m but i don't agree with the ingame assessment that they are one of the easier factions (challenging i think). Not to debate the difficulty of this game in general, but compared to other factions I find them slightly more challenging than their neighbors AS, Pahlava, and Saka. Early on Pahlava and Saka are tough to fight as you don't have much HA or heavy cav. Keeping your capitol at the center of expansion is difficult if trying to avoid fighting Pahlava, Saka, and AS at the same time. They seem to lose the most if no MOT. And their HA are nothing compared to Hayasdan, Pahlava, Sauro, and Saka. However, they have one of the most diverse armies in both factional and non-facitonal troops. At least equal to or greater than Carthage and Koinon Hellenon.

Thinking of starting one up at an incredibly late hour. My goal is to have India as early as possible. I want indian and baktrian elites invading persia and arabia without having to "cheat". The difficulty will be not having to blitz so much to afford the money and time for elites and then not have them too far away from the battle front.

It is that first turn choice...do I hope Pahlava doesn't attack me for a long time? Or do I hope AS doesn't attack me for a little time? I am unsure how long I can keep an alliance with AS on H/M. I may take a tip from here and offer Saka a small amount of money for a very long time. Maybe I will try this with AS too.

edit:
1st turn: Sent Petrokles (sp?) north to Marakandios. Why not? his name sounds like the capitol.
everyone else sent to Margiane.
Diplomatically ended alliance with AS.
disbanded med cav
started building large stone walls.
recruiting one archer