Need help with Epirus

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

Hello all. Playing betapatch4, Normal difficulty.

Started a game as Epirus, and decided to start out pacifist. Made a trade agreement with Macedon, started to build economy on my first two cities. Bolstered my two starting armies. Did not make any threatening moves towards anyone (except for trying to convert an Athenian spy with my own spy... didn't work).

Well about turn 3 of being Mr. Pacifist, everyone and their mother DoWs me. Rome, Syracuse, Athens, someone else I think... So now instead of just the default war with Sparta I have that going on.

So I take a sigh, and move my forces towards Athens (which was probably dumb considering Rome landed near Apollonia on the next turn.......). I figure ok take Athens out quick. Well, and this really bugs me, Athens starts with two powerful armies sitting in the city, with support from their naval forces in their harbor as well, which when factoring in their garrison ofrces they outnumber be by a very large margin, even with both my General's armies there.

So how is one supposed to get Epirus off the ground? It seems like being Mr. Pacfist doesn't stop the known world from DoWing you, and little Athens outnumbers you from the very start....

Do I sit defensive and just let them slam armies against me and hope they get whittled down?

Thanks in advance for any tips.

[GenTiberius]

Keeping with history, Pyrrhus was rather aggressive and I think that is the best strategy for Epirus. You can combine your two armies and hire mercenaries to further bolster your forces. After doing that, you can take Pella, as Pyrrhus did, or go for Athens. The amount of troops you have should be enough to defeat whatever armies you come against and you can disband the hired troops after you conquer in order to save your economy.

I don't think being passive can really work as Epirus, so many factions dislike or hate you and they are bound to end up at war with you. The best thing to do is just be aggressive in taking over the Greeks around you as fast as you can.

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

I don't think you appreciate the fact the the entire known world DoWs you and Rome lands right on your front porch almost immediately. If I take all my forces out immediately, I have nothing to stop them... Plus I think we all know history goes right out the door with Rome 2...

[GenTiberius]

I don't think you appreciate the fact the the entire known world DoWs you and Rome lands right on your front porch almost immediately. If I take all my forces out immediately, I have nothing to stop them... Plus I think we all know history goes right out the door with Rome 2...

Except no. I've played the Epirus camp for hundreds of hours, you can do it historically, the game even sets it up in such a way. The attacks Rome sends can be fought off easily by using autoresolve or simply conquering Pella or whatever city you want as quickly as possible. Being aggressive is the key in the Epirus campaign. You have to be nuts to think you can just sit on the defensive and win this one.
Historically, Pyrrhus attacked Pella and Sparta. The very set up of the campaign drives you to do that. Although yes, Athens falls faster almost all of the time. Though, my suggestion wasn't all that different from the others, I think you got hung up on the one word and worrying about a rather minor Roman force.

You don't even have to go to war with Macedon if you don't want to, most of the times I've focused on Sparta and then Athens, the Macedonians totally stayed out of it.

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

Except no. I've played the Epirus camp for hundreds of hours, you can do it historically, the game even sets it up in such a way. The attacks Rome sends can be fought off easily by using autoresolve or simply conquering Pella or whatever city you want as quickly as possible. Being aggressive is the key in the Epirus campaign. You have to be nuts to think you can just sit on the defensive and win this one.
Historically, Pyrrhus attacked Pella and Sparta. The very set up of the campaign drives you to do that. Although yes, Athens falls faster almost all of the time. Though, my suggestion wasn't all that different from the others, I think you got hung up on the one word and worrying about a rather minor Roman force.

You don't even have to go to war with Macedon if you don't want to, most of the times I've focused on Sparta and then Athens, the Macedonians totally stayed out of it.

if you hadn't noticed, my comment was made obsolete since I went about things differently anyway.... the conversation has developed since what you quoted lol...

(and now Sparta belongs to me and Rome has finally declared war... pfffft hello Brundisium)

[karamazovmm]

well they are the most difficult faction by far, with them its do or die

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

what you have to do is, combine your forces assault sparta and win, or the method that is most beneficial to you is to use only 1 army and defeat sparta with their 2 1/4 stacks and garrison.

while the other army stays and trains more units

when you conquer sparta proceed to train more units and assault with that army athens

in all probability you are going to lose apollonia, say so be it and move on to crush macedon or retake apollonia with the other army

basically, its a pure aggression campaign, dont stop till you have destroyed rome, macedon, sparta and probably syracuse

your army is basically pike, hoplite and skirmishers use them well preferably, the first tech you are going to dish out in turn 5 is the first siege, so you can get ballistas and a huge advantage, even 2 units will make a severe difference for your survival rates

I dont see much the benefit of those elephants, for some they are the heart of your army, for me they are just some mamals that cost too much and are easily killed with the excess of skirmishers that the AI recruits, so yes I disband them after making use of them in the first 3 turns off course, because in the end after the first 4 turns its not the ability to dish how many units per turn, its the ability to keep recruiting at least 4 units per turn that will be the difference of your survival

one tactic that you may want to try is to go for rome instead, go with all you got and conquer brundisium, next turn get the other roman town in magna grecia and move up, abandon for sparta and athens those 2 towns in greece, after you solidify just go and crush those puny greeks

[Xuande]

So how is one supposed to get Epirus off the ground? It seems like being Mr. Pacfist doesn't stop the known world from DoWing you, and little Athens outnumbers you from the very start....

Do I sit defensive and just let them slam armies against me and hope they get whittled down?

Thanks in advance for any tips.

I played Epirus with patch 3 (which by the way downgraded the performances of the game on my computer...).

You start being at war with Sparta. Athens and Macedon should declare war on you soon after, since they are allied with Sparta and are Greek factions (and as Epirus), you get a diplomatic penalty with all greek factions. So ther is absolutely no way you can keep a pacifist strategy with Epirus, especially since the "AI" tends to form non declared coalition against weakened states. Moreover, Rome hates you from the beginning. So they'll attack you too.

Here is what I suggest :

1/ Focus on military research (technology).
2/ Immediately attack the Ardiaei (northwards), blitzkrieg style. They are at peace with you, but if you wait, they'll join the others against you. Defeat them and transform them into a client state. They'll guard your northern border and distract the romans for a while.
3/ Recruit large armies and reinforce your navy in Apollonia (to prevent any roman naval invasion).
4/ Recruit a spie and use it against the Athenians around Larissa. Try to convert the enemy agents to your cause.
5/ When Sparta invades, concentrate your force and destroy their army. Do not auto-calculate battles as this will cost you your elephant unit.
6/ Use the Apollonia army to invade Sparta while the smaller Larissa army guards Larissa against Athens and Macedon.
7/ Once you got Sparta, if Macedon hasn't betrayed you yet, try to negotiate a non agression pact with them and then concentrate all your forces against Athens.
8/ After Athens has fallen, you may march your troops against Bruttium. You should be exhausted by now. So just plunder the city, let it rebel and leave. It will serve as a buffer state between you and Rome.

And then it's up to you. Anyway, playing with Epirus is hard. You have to win lots of battles early on. And at first, you'll spend most of your time marching and conter-marching against countless enemies. Make sure you finish off their armies, and entice their agents to switch sides, for they will paralyse if you let them act.


PS : Regarding elephants. I don't like them either. But since Epirus has some I use them early on as a substitute to cavalry. I hide them in the forests (!), use my skirmishers in order to draw the enemy hoplites towards my line, immobilise their hoplites with my own line in phalanx mode. I use Pyrrhus's special abilities to inspire my troops (so that they hold the line) and scare the enemy and then let my elephants come out of the forest behind the enemy. It works decently well.

Usually, I loose these elephants once I start to auto-calc in meaningless battles. Too bad ! I once had a battle with a gigantic gallic army (3 + stacks of elite units) and these beasts might have saved the ass ass of my veteran but isolated hoplite army.

[Naked Emperor]

Let's see, Rome, Carthage, Macedon, Syracuse and the Greeks all hate you because of your past wars against them. 272 bc was the year Pyrrhus died and he had pissed of all these factions. So it is no suprise they will pile on you.

I think the best strategy as mentioned is offensive blitzing Hellas and Macedon, when you have those 2 provinces you should be pretty secure. And go for lvl 2 barracks asap for decent pikes.

[AdDa090]

There are two ways to go with Epirus imho;

1) Blitzkrieg Athens/Sparta, with the sole intention being to take Sparta and Athens, completely abandoning Apollonia and Larissa if you have to. If done right you eliminate Sparta and Athens, and you have basically a new starting position (Hellas instead of Macedonia), if you're lucky you may still have Apollonia and/or Larissa as well, which is just an added bonus.

2)Migration Campaign, take your armies and move somwhere else, away from all the hellenic factions that hate you and will declare on you. For me I decided to go for a second try at Italy, wiping out the Romans and Etruscans very early.

It is basically impossible as Epirus to have a pacifist campaign.

[Archerm16]

My friend since you opened war with Athena and you were onthe defensive so pull your armies back home to defend against all other enemies and keep defending until Athena attack’s you thencrush their armies completely because it well be hard for them to rebuild theirarmies so their capital will be weak for short time at that time you’ll have toattack and take their land and then turn to Sparta and do the same thing withthem .
After that don’t stop for anything because build your empire

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

Well, I took all your comments into account and tried to marry all your tips best I could, and you know what, it all worked out well. I just knocked Athens out, while maintain Larisssa and Apollonia, AND pulled off a major diplomatic feat by keeping Macdeon liking me more than her Athens client. They never defended Athens, and didn't care when I took them over.

It was quite a protracted campaign though. It took me 10 years just to take Athens, from constantly having to meet armies in the field, getting armies stranded, pulling back, regrouping, refreshing, so on and so on. But I took them over, now Sparta is by herself.

I have very lucrative tradee agreements with numerous minors and majors. Rome, though it hates me, will not attack me. I also have in my control the one small settlement above Apollonia. Things are turning out well now. Normal campaign difficulty, hard battle difficulty, it's quite fun.

[karamazovmm]

yep, epirus is quite rewarding, the start is actually hard, because you need to be very aggressive

[GenTiberius]

Cool, I noticed other posts, but still felt the need to counter, or rather correct, some of the things you said.

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

Cool, I noticed other posts, but still felt the need to counter, or rather correct, some of the things you said.

of course you did. hope you feel better.

[GenTiberius]

of course you did. hope you feel better.

Satisfied, yeah.

[Slaists]

Try Epirus on the old good RTW 1 mod EB 1.2 It's a fun campaign until you grow to size of 20-30 regions.

[Zantesuken]

I think most are correct in saying that it is an aggressive campaign. As for me, I did what Karamazavomm did - band together your two armies, grab as many mercs as you can afford and march into Sparta. It's tough, but on Very Hard I managed to win those crucial early battles and took Sparta on turn 2. Using spies to divide the enemy and then cavalry to decimate them is the way forward. Athens came attacking turn 3 and by turn 4 Athens was mine. By this point, as many will point out, Rome will DoW. However, they were occupied with the Etruscans and with Carthage so I saw little aggression, I don't know how representative this is.

From this point I'd say you have two options: attack Macedon or attack Magna Grecia and Italia. In my game, Macedon was playing peacefully and Rome was weak, so I went for Italy. Again, spies and cavalry are you friend. Further, the greek navies are their greatest strength after the phalanx - use it. Ballistae ships are unlocked from a very low tier tech and will win you both naval and coastal siege battles with ease. Syracuse, Knossos and Rhodes should all be easy pickings.

Then, well, the game is wide open. Consolidate, tech up and wait for opportunity. When a neighbour becomes weak, attack; when they are strong, encourage trade. From a purely theoretical standpoint, either moving up into Germania would be good if you took Macedon, whereas if you took Italy heading into Africa makes most sense. I'd avoid getting tangled in Asia Minor for as long as possible. The later you can leave kicking that hornet's nest (Seleucia, Parthia, Qidri being notable factions in many of my playthroughs) the better.