I've had a good amount of success recruiting a bunch of LI in the first couple turns and useing them to beat a path through indies (with indies set at 5 or 6). I use the city gaurd then as a wall to keep the indies off the javaliners for a bit. It's been quite effective, though the CG gets chewed up after a few provinces. However, by that time I've got enough swamp gaurds ready to replace them, and then I can hit provinces that have some HI. This is all without using a SC pretender, its just the army. Is it worth sticking an early marsh master in there for some decent site searching?
The bummer is not being able to use indie HI at the start to help speed up the HI build up. Though maybe one can risk it, even though they will get diseased you can always suicide them at a later time, or just stick them in some backwater and let them die off...
Will their disease spread to your other troops? I guess I should test that...
