Well, after a few turns of war with Egypt things have really quieted down, so I'm not worried about facing their chariots anymore. I took Petra from them easily, which left them with the 3 Nile cities plus Siwa. From Petra I took a young family member and an all-cav, mostly HA army towards the Nile to pick off Egyptian armies in the field. There were a few close battles, where the Egyptians had several units of heavy chariots & chariot archers, but I managed to win them all thanks to my HA superiority. I knew I'd take some losses from the slingers and chariot archers, but I simply had so many HAs it didn't matter in the end. Heavy chariots fell very quickly to my HAs; chariot archers took longer but fell just as surely. A few turns later that army besieged and took Alexandria; I followed up with another army from Petra and took Memphis. Now that army is besieging Thebes and there are no large Egyptian stacks in sight. Once Thebes falls I'll regroup, then send a force to take Siwa and finish them off. That will put me up against the Scipii, who have taken all of Western Africa.

The war in Anatolia proceeds apace, and just as I had predicted, as soon as my faction leader took Sardis, Pontus declared war. Actually, they didn't so much "declare" it as fail an assassination attempt . At this time I had finished training my first War Elephant unit in Susa, and sent them west with 2 cats, 6 Persian cav, 6 HAs, a general, and some Scythian and Sarmatian mercs. I've only had one battle involving the elephants, and they didn't play a part. I was relieving Tarsus by attacking the besieging Pontic army, and used my standard "HA-envelopment" tactic. The elephants, my shock-cav and general I left back while the HAs and Persian cav did their work. After a few minutes of getting shot up and some inconclusive skirmishing the Pontics had enough and quit the field. I pursued them north into Anatolia and that army is now laying siege to Mazaka. Hopefully the enemy will sally out and I'll be able to use my units to best effect, but my general is young and has the time to wait out the siege if need be.

Elsewhere in Anatolia, as soon as Pontus declared war I pulled together an army from Armenia and sailed them down to Sinope. I could see that the Pontics had, typically, left their cities lightly defended and had their full-stack armies near their southern borders, so I was able to quickly take their capital. This distracted the Pontics enough for me to raise some Persian cav and HAs in Sardis and send them north to meet up with the Sinope army. En route, however, they were attacked by a small Pontic force, beat them, and I got a "man of the hour" quite unexpectedly -- a 4-star 20-year-old! With some mercs and reinforcements from the Sinope army, that force is now besieging Pergamum, which holds a full stack and seems to be one of only 2 areas of serious Pontic resistance (the other being the full-stack near Mazaka). Once those 2 towns fall it should be a leisurely mop-up operation.

I still haven't won the short campaign because Seleucia is still around on Salamis and Sidon, but I think I'll try to play through the long campaign on this. Once Anatolia is secure my next major offensive will be to push through Africa, which means fighting the Scipii. I can't wait to fight Romans. After that I'll probably hop over the Bosphorus into Greece, try to get my 50 provinces, and take Rome for the win.

CountMRVHS