So far, this has been one of the hardest scenarios in this campaign that I've encountered so far.
The brief restarting of the scenario is to show that different scenarios can place you in different starting positions, depending on where you attack from in the main map.
So I decide to attack India from Afghanistan as I haven't tried it before but I reasoned that I'd be placed closer to the Indian capital as compared to the time I attacked India with the Americans, and I was right. What I didn't expect was that it be almost literally next to the capital, and I wasn't expecting as much aggression as I did.
You start with a small base near the Indian capital with an army of sorts and 1000 of each resource (bar knowledge). You can go full economy and build a city and expand quickly but the better play would be to place a city and then spend all your resources on units.
You are capped to 50 units with your current population, but getting units out and having a superior military force is better in this scenario as you need to gain territory and cities quickly and it's easier to capture them than to build them up. A mixture of units is ideal. Some copters, a bomber or two, a few extra tanks, infantry and maybe a spy or general is a good idea.
With a bit of resistance, you should be able to capture New Delhi. The Indians will move their capital to Madras though, ensuring the fight will continue. Once New Delhi is captured, you need to move quickly down south to Rajasthan and capture that as well while it is still lightly guarded. Holding back will result in the Indians coming to hunt you down in force regularly with huge armies, so speed is critical!!!
Mumbai, Visha (not even going to try to type the rest of it) and Kolkata are all viable next targets, and you should try to grab one of them while you still have momentum. If you can keep reinforcing your army, fantastic! Keep gaining territory and put the squeeze on the Indians otherwise they will fight back with venom.
While the fighting is happening, any spare time needs to go into getting an economy up. That means, you guessed it, researching basic technologies, building your various buildings and churning out villagers.
At some point your army will lose steam and you can very quickly lose a lot of the territory you once had if you can't defend it. It took me a long time in this scenario to get back on my feet as the Indian fighters decimated me militarily and economically.
SAM's are a must have around any city and each city needs a bunker or two and a few fighters defensively patrolling over it to eliminate other fighters/bombers and to help pick off any ground troops that will bombard you.
So until you can get these defenses up you will keep being harassed and unable to make progress. Building cities out eastward will help either buying time or contributing to the economy, although the quickest way is grab science technologies and then grab the technologies for the smelter, lumber mill and granary.
With your cities adequately defended, you can now go on the attack. A strong ground force with a lot of air support should see you capture all three cities I mentioned earlier and once that happens, the battle is won but not the war. Keep pressing forward towards the capital and expect fierce resistance until the end. Use missiles to target temples, fortresses or other annoying buildings to help gain ground quicker.
Once you grab a city on the coast, add in naval support. Battleships will wreck buildings will subs will stop any reinforcements coming across the channel. Aircraft carriers can wreck entire battalions as well so get one or two of them out if the Indians are still resisting.
Capture and hold the capital to win! Then celebrate cause you've earned it with this scenario.
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