Slitherine

at first it seemed to be a mouth watering prospect to me: playing as a small eastern tribe, repelling the persians, slowly ousting the greeks and the tribal people, and finally gaining control of all of asia minor.... but when i started it, i found that the persians were super lazy.. holding just the only city the conquered in the beginning, untill some army came and wiped them out. the persians did come back sometimes later, but the situation was the same. and same was the matters with the spartans. they came and conquered one coastal city( i think it was samos), and then bagan spawning large armies.. i thought now i will see some action, but then an army came and conquered that city, the spartans did capture another city, but their armies stabilized afterwards, motionless. although i am having good fun with the scenario, but the name says "coming of the persians", and the persians seem all too lazy, and so a major portion of the reason i wanted to play the scenario goes out. is there any way to remedy it? maybe editing the text files and all... also, i noticed that i cannot send my diplomats to thy persians, ia that real, or maybe a bug?

It depends on the difficulty level - on the higher levels there are a lot more Persians!

What Iain said. The difficulty level has profound effects on many aspects of the game.

At "Hard", the Persians usually only take one city with the first wave, but the army they send is large enough to hold off any half-hearted attempt to dislodge them. The second wave generally gives them enough force to begin expanding and "sweeping all before them", as they did historically. If you're playing one of the small states along their invasion route, you could have a really good fight on your hands, at least for a battle or three until their powerful "starting" units are gone. At normal or easy, they pretty much just park for a while, unless something happens to change the situation.

I never seem to have any trouble sending diplomats to the Persians, as long as they hold a city.

but i still cant send diplomats to the persians . their territories are shown as "independent territories" on the diplomacy screen. any ideas?