Tips for Epirus campaign please.

[Ygraine]

Hi.

I need some tips from people with experience on how to successfully survive as Epirus in the beginning of the campaign. So... Starting in a war with Sparta, Athens usually follows suit just a round or two after - then at some point Syracuse and Rome declare war as well. The battles mainly occur in Greece and occasionally Rome tries to take Apollonia. I haven't had an issue repelling the Romans so far, but the damn greeks... With the slow army replenishment and the fact there's two of them against me - I can barely keep up. They keep spamming new stacks and my troops are barely having time to replenish in-between battles. How do you guys manage with the replenishment in this mod?

Every time I try to go for Athens, Sparta comes and helps them with like two armies - it's just too much to take on alone. I manage to get a defensive alliance with Macedonia and have them denounce both Sparta and Athens, joining my war - but they're busy with Tylis up north and don't really send any help. Ardiaei are my allies too, but they don't help either - good terms with Carthage and trading, but obviously they have their hands full with their own problems.

Right now I'm fielding a full stack and roughly a half second one (mostly pikemen, some hoplites and lots of javelins, all veterans by now) - and I get around 1500-2000 per turn - but it's not nearly enough to deal with that damn spam the AI keeps sending my way even if I usually defeat them over and over again.

Help!

[Mihail]

Use your starting money wisely and try and pull off Athens or Rome, since you have a default cultural aversion to other greeks so it may be harder to win Athens over, my suggestion buy off Athens/Rome, incase that won't work invade Athens ASAP and recruit mercs you need to do it, once that's done, you'll find defending athens is far easier than those towns you start with.

[Ygraine]

You start with 5000 denarii/gold/whatever and everything seems to cost a lot more in the mod. If I send them a large gift, and they still attack me next round - I'm basically dead since I will barely be able to afford any troops for myself (and won't be able to build any buildings either). Will one gift even be enough? Have you tested it per chance?

[Mihail]

I haven't played as Epirus before admittedly, but I have used the method I've described to avoid wars that are bound to start such as the Seleucid and the Ptolemy wars(among others) with great success, but doesn't necessarily works every time, Use that 5,000 gold to get any agreement you can, non-aggression, trade, military access as cheaply as you can on whoever you want Rome or Athens, this will increase their opinion of you if they accept, this will allow you to ask for more agreements, another good choice especially on Rome since they start off at work, is you can ask to join their war, then start buttering them up with cash to get more agreements with them.

If you manage to get some decent agreements with them, their chances of declaring war on you goes down quite a bit.

[Aleksander the Average]

use diplomacy and your trade resources before doing anything else to get some cash. you can also try to separate the antigonids from sparta through diplomacy.
if all else fails, try yuko's historical development submod.

[Joseph The Great]

I am currently in the middle of a H/H Epirus Campaign, and it has been going well. It is always heavily dependent on how the dice is rolled as to who declares war on you, but I spend all my money and went straight to Sparta. I recruited as many generals as possible to use in each battle. Sometimes three generals in a battle. These troops were key as I chose for them to be the Lancer type cavalry.

Then, I made my armies heavily based off pikemen. Greek Choppers, the mercenary elephant I started with, and the Calvary from the body guards were the flanking forces.

Crush Sparta right away. I invaded in the first few turns. As soon as possible, take Athens. After this you will be heavily on the defense from attacks by Macedon. Pikemen will clog the streets of your settlements, and again, flank the heck out of em.

Ally with Macedon;s enemies, and once you force Macedon into a crushing defeat, you can start building up your troops and investing in buidlings.

Syracuse declared war, but I kept Apallonia with at least 7 troops to dissuade attack. Kronoss did as well, but I kept my troops moving around to scare em off UNTIL I could make an attack and force peace.

That's all I can say for now. It's a damn good campaign really! Good luck.

[Irishmafia2020]

I got frustrated with Epirus a well - within 5 or 6 turns you are facing Athens, Sparta, Illyrians, Romans,Syracuse and usually one or two other random tribes... the worst part about it is that you probably have to capture Pella and unite the province of Macedon in order to have any real chance against the Greeks...

[LawL_LawL]

Capturing Pella seems to be ideal as solidifying control over a province as any faction brings benefits. Being that you will only control Macedonia for a while, having just the one province means no Edict management either, and on that note having the edict for Macedonia certainly also helps in keeping one alive by making food and happiness less straining on your already low building slot allotment. Bread and Games Edict of course, the rest are pretty underwhelming to have on for long periods of times unless the province is very highly developed economic powerhouse, in which case the Tax edict can make it overflow in money output.

[Agrez]

Attack Rome as Pyrrhus did and let them take larisa its easier to defend appolonia then take brundisioum and then andvance to ROME!!!

[Ygraine]

Thanks a lot guys. I managed to survive after restarting the campaign 4 times by some input from your posts and also sheer luck I suppose. Now my borders look like this (Thanks Macedon for joining my league!):


My only gripe is that after I finally defeated Sparta and Athens (those cheeky bastards) the game has so far been a tad too easy compared to the really steep curve at the beginning.

[Irishmafia2020]

Nice job... restarting is probably the best advice I could have given you anyway! I might try Epirus again after seeing this!

[LawL_LawL]

This was the perpetual problem I found playing anything but Legendary. After you stabilize things with early acquisition of provinces and your armies are established, the AI rarely has a chance to get back into things until late game when only larger factions remain for the most part. And at that point the player is almost certainly better off than the AI in most regards.

The only way to prevent this is to incrementally increase difficulty and see where the plateau is highest and most likely to provide an enduring challenge for you.

[bebop77]

You might wanna consider spending that starting money on mercs (veteran hoplites) just before the early crucial battle (just be sure to disband them before the end of turn). It helped me in my campaign early against athens and sparta. (also worked for Luisitani and cantabri early expansion). Also as people already mentioned getting trade agreements and generally developing relations is essential.

[LawL_LawL]

You might wanna consider spending that starting money on mercs (veteran hoplites) just before the early crucial battle (just be sure to disband them before the end of turn). It helped me in my campaign early against athens and sparta. (also worked for Luisitani and cantabri early expansion). Also as people already mentioned getting trade agreements and generally developing relations is essential.

Oh one-off purchases of mercenaries are always really useful, the smaller your own armies are the more pivotal they can really be to early clashes.

As for trade, I always send my starting spy (or hire one if lack thereof) to navigate the coastlines of the map in their entirety. The income provided for a while where you get the benefits of pretty consistent per-faction tariffs in the early stages of the game where there's an abundance of potential trade partners each not amounting to very much income from the trade flow they provide. As the game goes on a lot of these guys will disappear due to conquest but in their place usually your trade network fills up with more resources changing hands so your net income doesn't fluctuate too much as long as you work to maintain as much trade as possible. Inevitably some areas you simply can't trade with anymore as their rulers decided they want to declare war on a nation thousands of kilometers away, but you can't really help that part.

[Maxmoaz]

I'd want to try to ditch Hellas in general, get Brundisium and turtle the hell up against Spartan and Roman armies in defensive battles using Pikeys. I'd carefully go out of Brundisium to get a smaller settlement. I'd send my Spy around the world for income from trade to field my armies from Brundisium.

[Ygraine]

Yes, I noticed that using mercenaries then disbanding them before ending the turn is a nice way to boost your troops in situations of need.

On another note in regards to Epirus - does any one know what building is needed to train Molossian Dogs? (I was gifted the DLC on Steam) I haven't been able to find them yet so far in the Epirus roster - but I haven't researched all tiers in military yet either.

[Mihail]

Yes, I noticed that using mercenaries then disbanding them before ending the turn is a nice way to boost your troops in situations of need.

On another note in regards to Epirus - does any one know what building is needed to train Molossian Dogs? (I was gifted the DLC on Steam) I haven't been able to find them yet so far in the Epirus roster - but I haven't researched all tiers in military yet either.

No idea, but I'm guessing exotic animal trainer or something.

[LawL_LawL]

This seems to indicate Epirote dogs are not yet on the menu for your generals as there is no listed building that provides access. The lack of requisite buildings being displayed here as well seems to indicate they've not been included in DeI.

Though I remember there being a brief discussion on dogs and some of the BoW removed units. And I'm pretty sure war dogs in general were identified as being still in the mod and not leaving any time soon, so I wouldn't be doubtful that they'll be ported over for DeI use not long from now.