game is broken

[Randal]

I started a Baktrian campaign to test my own strategy of using the starting money to build stone walls and a few slingers in Baktra to safeguard my rear while moving against the Indian rebels with my starting troops.

It worked, in that it's 259 now and the Seleucids have not attacked, my armies have taken Kophen, Taksashila and Opiana, income is high and I'm gradually expanding infrastructure and soon I'll be able to field a pretty good Indo-Hellenic force. (I could learn to love those spear-armed peltasts. Now there's some versatile troops.)

On the down side though, (for my strategy) part of the reason the Seleucids didn't attack must be that the Parthians are attacking them hard and fast and from what my watchtowers show must have taken most of the Seleucid provinces around me. And taking Taksashila with just my starting archer-spearmen and pantodapoi phalangitai and bodyguards (I dismissed the starting cavalry to avoid bankruptcy) was bloody hard. Even hiring all the mercenaries I could afford (2 more archer-spearmen, all I had money for) I lost all but a handful of troops and 1 of my family members died. Turns out you can have five units of archers each shooting 10 volleys of flaming arrows at elephants and not kill a single one of them. And I had no skirmishers. (Yes, you guys already knew this. What can I say, my previous campaigns were in the west.) Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I think this is the only time I've ever won an "average" victory in a major battle against the AI. I -did- win. But in retrospect the Seleucids are looking like a soft target. Blitzing probably is the smarter move.