issus vs gaugamela

[TWFanatic]

Strategically, they're both overrated.

At Issus, Darius led an army that had taken him mere months to assemble. Although they lost, the Persians retreated with the bulk of their better forces (cavalry, immortals, greek mercenaries) intact.

After Issus, while Alexander besieged Tyre and Gaza, the Persians (and their allies) counter-attacked on multiple fronts in the Peloponnese, Lydia, the Hellespont and the Aegean. Hardly the actions of an empire on the ropes.
(By sheer bad luck, all of these counter-attacks were defeated).

You, sir, contribute quite a bit to luck. Forgive me for speaking plainly but you blatantly disregarded the greatness of Alexander and the superiority of his system of warfare to all others that he encountered. I suppose it would be more correct to say his father Phillip II's system of warfare, but that's beside the point (just had to appease the detail nitpickers). You simply cannot deny that the Macedonians were superior militarily to the Persians and the entire near east, and that Alexander and Phillip were (and still are) two of the greatest military leaders and reformers ever.