Warning: Assload of text below. If you don't want to know the story just skip to the very last paragraph.

I was reading a few old threads here yesterday and i saw a lot of people saying that the Hayasdan were all but impossible, which is also what the faction description for them says, so i decided to give them a try since i've been rolling over anything that comes my way as the Romani and it gets boring after a few days.

The first time i started the campaign i took the rebel city west of the capital, built a type 4 government, took all my units and began the march to the one north of the capital just across the river. I was beaten by the rebel garrison, badly... I should have used my 2-star faction heir but instead i used a 0-star noobcake.

At this point i was over -1000 in debt and couldn't do much, so i began tapping 'End turn' until i had some money to do something. After i had done this 3 times, to my surprise the rebels from the city to the north laid siege to and took the city to the west which i had taken earlier. They left 1 single unit defending the town to the north so i took my faction heir and 1 unit i had been able to create and stole it, but i was no better off because i was back in debt and couldn't even repair the walls i had damaged to get into the city in the first place. This was when the grey death laid siege to my capital with half a stack of troops.

I had an idea. I took my faction heir from the town to the north, raised everything i could in both towns and decided to hire some mercenaries and migrate to the town east of the capital. I had 7 grand to hire mercenaries and could afford only two units of medium infantry and some archers, so i took them and moved on. Two turns later i was -5000 in debt. When i arrived at the city to the east, what did i see? The grey death were laying siege to it with another half stack of units. I sighed, went into the kitchen to splash some cold water on my face and sat in disbelief for about 5 minutes before quitting the campaign.

I've only ever lost a campaign once before this... It was playing as Baktria in an earlier build of EB. My starting army was ambushed by rebel horse-archers and destroyed, then another rebel army laid siege to my only city and i quit, so losing this campaign was a big deal for me.

I tried to start again just now and had some initial success taking both the city to the north and west and even the one to the east, but as soon as i took it the grey death laid siege with half a stack which included heavy Persian spearmen and misthophoroi phalangitai, so all 4 family members were wasted along with the single unit of half-dead spearmen i had, including my now 3-star faction heir... Then that half stack of troops laid siege to my capital and, -3000 in debt, i quit.

You guys weren't joking when you said it was all but impossible. I can see it COULD be done, but i don't think i'll be trying again for some time. Has anybody here managed to reach that point with the Hai where you can deal with anything you come up against, even if their empire is 10x the size of yours?