[Prince Toad]

Well, I'm crossing a river. They've got spearmen sitting up and down the only fordable portion. I can break through their lines with my cavalry, possibly kill or rout the general (though he's on a chariot), maybe kill their foot archers (except the horse archers), but I still need Alexander and the other cavalry to deal with the hundreds and hundreds of spearmen, not to mention their heavy cavalry, and by that time I doubt there would be more than 25 of my cavalry out of 140 left, if that. Plus the Persian units tend to have good morale, and if Alexander dies, I lose. However, routing them is obviously the better choice.

edit: I RULE. I have attained victory at Issus. That was easily one of the hardest battles I've ever fought... and really, it was mostly the fault of dumb AI. They improved it some, but not enough, apparently. First, I rained some fire arrows down on the easternmost spearman unit. Then, I was able to make the other cavalry units into wedges and squeeze them by that unit, and then crush it between them and Alexander, while my phalanxes marched across the river with my hypaspists, and my archers and javelinmen tried to draw fire. I had all the cavalry, Alexander included, ride around and rout their archers... eventually they pinned Darius's chariots against the sea and destroyed all but the general unit himself. Darius made it away, but the effect was just as good. While this was happening, my phalanxes and hypaspists were busy heroically fending off the Persian spearmen and heavy cavalry. They were close to flanking my phalanxes with their own, but I managed to bring the cavalry back in time and rout them. Eventually, I also needed the cavalry to fight off theirs. Basically from then on I was just charging the cavalry around, hitting spearmen in the rear while advancing on them with my phalanxes, which as anyone who played Rome will know is one of the best ways to rout any unit. By the end, it was three nearly-dead units-- two phalangites and one of my cavalry-- plus Alexander, who was pretty beat up himself, vs. a full, fresh unit of Immortals. I had to chase them around a bit, but eventually the same old tactic worked its magic. It was a hell of a fight, and I'm proud of it... even if it was mostly the result of poor AI. I'm happy.

Next up is Gaugamela, which ought to be easier-- I get a better army, and as far as I can tell, the Persians get a worse army. Plus I don't have to cross any rivers. We'll see, though.

Yeah, that wasn't so bad. A lot of fun, though. I just made a little pentagon of phalangists, put archers and hypaspists inside, and had my cavalry run around behind their lines trying to kill Darius and the rest of their cavalry. Fortunately, they didn't have any archers, or my phalanx-fortress could have run into problems. They had some elephants and chariots, but my archers eventually got the elephants to run amok, and the chariots were duly impaled on the end of phalangists' spears. Alexander and the three companion units were able to beat all the cavalry and Darius's chariot unit without too many problems... well, that's not true, two of them routed. But they kicked a lot of ass beforehand, and Alexander plus the other unit finished up anything they hadn't. Then it was just down to their infantry-- Persian spearmen (crappy infantry) and some Immortals. A combination of running onto my spears and being run down by the cavalry dealt with them, although it took a while. The hypaspists finally proved their worth-- they did well at plugging up a hole in the formation when the Persians sort of broke in and killed a large number of soldiers from two of my phalangist units. It wasn't nearly as desperate as Issus, but it was still fun.

Now the final battle: Hydaspes, against the Indians. I'm not sure how it'll work out... they have a huge army, but mine's pretty big too. I have several phalangists, but I'm not sure how much good they'll be. Basically, they're sitting near the two fords where the Indian army is situated, with a couple other units, while the rest of the army is way upstream at an unguarded crossing. I'm supposed to cross the river with the other units and flank them. But it's going to be hard to fight without phalangists as a base... we'll see how it goes. Probably not tonight, though. (edit: I actually did get two phalangist units with Alexander's force.)

Alright, beat Hydaspes. Fun battle. Turned out there was a little army hiding in the forests across the bank where my main force was, so I had to deal with them... then they sent their huge main force over. My troops put up a good fight, and managed to rout one of the three elephant units, plus all the chariots and cavalry, but their elephants eventually proved too much. Alexander and his cavalry might have been the only unit to make it out alive. But I'd crippled them severely-- all they had was an elephant general, another elephant unit, a beat-up light infantry/spearman unit, a healthy unit of the same type, and a unit of archers. I still had the four phalangists, one unit of archers, and one unit of heavy cavalry that were "guarding" the other fords... so I was able to bring them across and make a little line, behind which I was able to hide Alexander, whose unit had gone from 148 or so to about 15. The heavy cavalry did a good job of slaughtering their infantry and archers, and the phalangists served for the elephants. Good stuff. Now I suppose I'll work on the campaign... which I set on Very Hard... and is supposed to be hard anyway... we'll see how that works out. Probably very poorly.