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The family are away so I had another go! This time I knew what I was doing so I won a bit quicker - but it was tougher at first. I rushed ahead and actually lost early in second attempt because rebels in Hindush were really good. I faced 3 successive rebellions, all with varied and good troops, and managed to lose both king and heir in a final attempt to crush them - score 1 to the AI. So what I have posted is attempt 3. Good rebels are rare, so this was a real plus. I met good rebels again later in Albania and the most eastererly Indian province - so not just Hindush.

Also I fought on 2 maps in Hindush that looked new to me - a river joining the sea, with 2x interesting terrain. And later in Albania I think that might have been a new map too - a mountain pass. The old maps get tired so, if I'm right, new, less generic maps are a really good feature.

Again, the Medes spammed ships on the Caspian, which helped me. But it's also interesting and pleasing how different this second (we won't count the early defeat!) playthrough was. Persia got going this time. And those Babylonians were crazy for sea movement as the minimap shows - they got everywhere except the Persian Gulf, where they went last time.

The Medes were resilient and hard to kill. They ended up as 2 lively halves - one east of Caspian and one north of Bactria. I had to pause and recruit to finish them off, so certainly no pushover. (I think it helped them when they lost their shipbuilding province on the Caspian!)

No crashes at all. Noticed 3 units with no dead bodies - my bodyguard, Isvasa and Median camels. Also I should say a lot of the units are really fresh - the cards may look like traditional MTW, but the units they refer to usually are not.