After starting a vanilla EB 1.0 Qarthadatism campain and taking all of italy in 20 years on VH/VH I started currently playing a hayadsan campaign on a modded version of 1.0 (sinuhet, TW fanatic, alex.exe, konny's win conditions) VH/M and I must say it is very tough!

I have the Selucids and the Ptolemies both against me trying to make me their protectorate every turn and sending 3 half stacks per year followed by the bi-annual full stack. Sauromatae aren't being all that helpful neither, but I'm hanging in there with two armies while I try and build up some infrastructure. Ocassionaly I get enough time to raid an eleuthori settlement. I think I need only trapezous so I can get my reforms and start raping AS. The biggest threat came when a full AS stack of with elite phalnaxes and a very very good 10 star general started coming up through the southern caucus and I had an army raiding Ani Kamah. This left me with only my Karkithkerta-defend-against-yellow force and I had to march it along another pass through the mountains to try and itnerecept the AS war machine. I tried to time it all so I would get both armies, after I'd dealt with ani kamah to pincer their general. This didn't work as I miscalculated the winter and got attacked. Luckily the previous winter our old valiant AS general froze to death giving my Karkotherka veteran albeit crappy defence force a good chance which they capatlized on.

The trick with hayasdan is lots of family members cause that Armenian Noble cavalry is really really good; especially early on.

I'm also in a very difficult spot right now since pontus started to invade.