Slitherine

Except by retreating constantly!

The Indian army is almost entirely archers. The moment the Macedonians close, you have lost. The elephants and chariorts are surprisingly tough but the Macedonians have a lot of pole-armed troops. It seems a foregone conclusion.... defeat!

Rough terrain, steep hills, and deep rivers. Those will all prevent the phalanxes from effectively engaging you in melee. Individual pikes are quite expensive compared to your archers, so you should be able to have a numbers advantage and threaten flanks. In the open, it gets tricky, obviously. No easy advice for that........

...feed the Macedonians lots of curry before the battle.

Don't shoot the Pikes. It is a waste of time given the number of shots you need to pump into them before they will take CT tests. Go after their support infantry and cavalry. Shoot them up good and deprive their pikes of any support. After you strip away their supporting infantry, you can flank them and take them down from sheer numbers. It is about 50/50 fight. How well the Macedonian player manages to use skirmishers to screen the infantry from missile fire and how much rough terrain the Macedonian player has to deal with to get to the bow line will tell much of the story.

It's definitely a hard matchup. I like to grab all the chariots I can, to pelt the Macedonian support troops with arrows. The Light Chariots try to get behind and flank, the Heavy Chariots use their status as Shock troops to ZoC the Macedonian line and slow its advance, forcing cohesion tests when they charge, and allowing the archers more time to fire. The archers should be deployed to maximize flanking opportunities on the Macedonian heavies, with elephants in support to crush any impertinent lancers. Indian Cavalry are a good cheap flanking unit, able to evade out of trouble. The Indian Javelinmen have no chance in the open against steady foes, but a phalanx disrupted by archery or flanking is actually quite vulnerable to even such budget troops. Finally, grab that light artillery unit! Cavalry and elephants are very vulnerable, and even when low on ammo, the artillery cause additional -CT modifiers even if they inflict no casualties.

That all being said, it's not easy. On an open map, if the Macedonians effectively use a screen of light troops, and pour more points into numberous units of Hoplites, Thracians, and Thureophoroi... good luck.