Our garrison is very strong here so I'm allright with Ptolemaioi attacking this city constantly.
Pharos of Alexandreia... we could sell it for 4 thousand Shekels.
Ok, siege was going fine but then AI bork like it sometimes do during sieges and Ptolemaioi units got stuck on the walls (I had to go around killing them) and then I noticed another broken unit that was stuck carrying ladders back and forth, I was tired of this siege so I ordered my units to charge those guys and decided to go make myself a tea... And I forgot that I Ptolemaioi captured my towers and my pahalangitai were getting shot do death while I was wating for water to boil. But we saved Alexandreia and we should be able to replenish garrison next turn.
I'm all for Andhaira attacking me with crappy stacks. That's why I decided to deal with them now, I want to fight them while they can't produce any good units because their towns are horribly undeveloped and they will be stuck with "nomads" status until they reach Babylonia (I think that's most eastern part of the world where they can start building non-nomadic government buildings).
Well, for the first time we fight Pahlava in open field and no one else but Basileus Antiochos Syriakos himself is leading our army.
This is ALMOST army I want all my armies to look like. We have proper cheap skirmishers to catch arrows instead of expensive Peltastai and only thing we lack is more non-general cavalry and one more unit of non-macedonian-style-phalanx melee unit. Everything else is just about right.
Too old to rock'n'roll but too young to die!
Armored horse-archers - stuff of nightmares. Imprevious to arrows and only light/medium cavalry can catch them... but will be easily cut down by them.
We have small arrow echange between our archers and Pahlavan horsies.
We reposition one phalangitai unit to protect our archers in case of Parthian cav being sneaky.
Some of Parthian infantry finally approaches. They have three unit of regular archers so we will have to do something about it (their infantry is no concern but why lose our men to some yahoos with bows?)
Another batch of infantry, those are looking more formidable than "hellenic native spearmen" but still not very worrying.
Parthians left their archers behind and then send native spearmen charging at us. Most of them were killed by arrows and javelins.
Then we ordered our skirmishers to charge survivors to break them with shock and mass and make way for our generals Hetairoi.
I hoped that we will have clean, straight line for our cav to charge parthian archers but AI decided to be all sneaky and tries to cut our way with axemen..
Companion cavalry are no cataphracts but I think we can still easily break light infantry (even though it's not a "proper" charge because our lances are not lowered).
Dude who's name I can't even spell went right through parthian axemen while Basileus cut's them to pieces.
Meanwhile more parthians started to pop out from the trees but charging phalangitai from the front won't end well for them.
YOU ARE NOT EVEN TRYING!
Dude-Who's-Name-I-Can't-Even-Spell managed to catch enemy archers, unfortunately in the middle of forest which is not perfect but I'll get over it.
Antiochos is finished with enemy axemen and is getting ready to fight armored horse-archers. Parthians attack would be quite dangerous if they made them all at once, not one after another.
You have to give Parthians one thing, not only they can switch from nomads to settled people in one century, they can also switch from being horse niggers to being tree people during one battle!
But no matter from where you attack, attacking phalanx always ends badly.
Phalangitai screwed their job to protect the archers.
But that's just some light cavalry so our persian archers survived.
There is only one unit that sits near the edge of a map chilling. I will send my cavalry to deal with them and go make myself a tea... or not, I will actually micro this last charge.
They are outclassed and outnumbered... oh and being in loose formation is not helping them either.
And we won, not a glorious victory by any means because their army was extremely shitty even for early parthian standards.
Now we will starve Zadrakata because "slow and steady wins the race" and all that jazz.
Meanwhile in the Aigyptos, Sarpedon continues his offensive.
We are also in process of replenishing Alexandreia's garrison after last pyrrhic victory.
And in Asia Minor Epeirotes got their asses kicked by Pergamon, which makes me very, very happy (I don't want to border them yet).
Andhaira grow restless, they send another army at Antiochus.
And it's infantry army. What are they thinking sending those peasants at best infantry in whole known world? infantry that conquered everything that was to conquer! (and then lost it, but we got this shit now).
Dem fucking trees, man.
Seriously, what Antiochus army is even doing here? playing boyscouts?
Ok, I found clear space and we are going to deploy here.
We can hear proto-andhairas howling and then some banners pops out from the woods...
Not so scary without your horses eh?
Some light cavalry charged from the woods straight into phalanx formation, there were other targets but they decided charge phalangitai. Who are we to question their ways?
Then their infantry attacked.
It's time for some butt-charging so we pull our commanders from the woods.
To my amazement they managed to withstand our butt-charge and I'm not feeling comfortable when my commander is fighting spearmen (I don't even know if pandotatoi have any bonuses against cav, but still) so I decided to use our phalangitai to encircle them.
It's not obvious on still screenshot that all Pahlavans banner are turning white but, yeah, they are routing.
All we had to do then was to remove parthian archers from
premises woods and the battle was over.
Quite a few casualties but mostly skirmishers so no fucks are given (catching arrows it's their job).
I think that we will assualt this town afterall because there is no reason to sit here for 4 more seasons.
And I decided to listen to Voice of Reason (CorporateJewMaster and Storyfag) and recruit small army to take this annoying city west of Alexandreia.
There is no poing to fight this on battle map. I will auto-resolve it.
Goddamit we lost more than 600 men... I didn't even took screenshot because at first I decided that "no way, I'm reloading" but then gods said to me "Bullshit dude, you clicked auto-resolve, you take responsibility". We enslaved this town because obviously there is some kind of illegal cult of RNG gods here.