Sparta 0-50 turns on Hard - Guide

This thread is to tell you how I decided to do it and the rationale behind it - It is definitely not a definitive guide but I wanted to put what I had found down on for reference

1 - Lets look at the start

Where do you start?

Somewhere shitty is the short answer, on first views I was thinking - wow, I can't even get a region up and running!
The main issue is that there is no easy capital to take which means ZERO TRADE
To the east you have Athens - allied with Macedonia which means if you take either capital (Athens or Pella) you are boned... joy
To the North you have 2 Epirius towns you need to take (you start at war)
To the far north is Pella and Macedonia

What do you start with?
tiny place that recruits spears and slingers

What are your army options?

Not a lot - Spears... spears... or spears
The main issue is DPS - you have no damage really, spears can stand up to anything but the reality is they do very little damage, you want to rout units and win battles then spears are not your boys.

The way I decided to proceed was Javelin (throwing spears for a change!) - they are scouts, flexible and even though their range blows they can seriously hurt spears. Which is what you will be up against early doors and beat skirmishers, I ran and at turn 50 are still running 50% spears and 50% javs. Pelasts destroy other ranged units and their fire special is also pimp morale busting awesomeness

I am open to opinions but using hoplites to hold the line and javs for killing was the best I could manage. take their skirmishers out with javs and a little cav (pelasts have great armour/ defence) while you engage their melee with spears then use your javelins in the rear and flanks for dmg and routing. Basic basic stuff

Cavalry... don't hope for much - your cav take kill skirmishers and make a good rear charge on an unit already tied up with your spears but thats about it

Essentially - if you don't like javelins and spearmen - play another faction!

What can you tech to?

I felt this bit was interesting, to get spartan hoplites (Spears) and peltasts (best javs) you don't have to go far... but to get to anything in the top tiers you have to go miles so thats out of the question.

How I tackled it was
What I need - Spartan hoplites and pelasts
What will give me dmg bonus' - workshop to smith = 10% dmg and the start of the seige line for balistas
What will hold me up if I do not have - construction chain

That all sounds crap - what is in your favour?

Some people like spears!

The big bonus I think you have as Sparta is everyone is Helenic, you can march on and your provinces will sort themselves out, not holding armies back or having to build loads of dignitaries or + happiness buildings while converting

Once you get Athens and Pella you will have a shit load of gold because everyone will trade with you

2 - How I did it

step 1

- Tech up to hoplite barracks
- move your sparta army and merge with your other army so you have a general sat on his arse and 1 army. Your army sits on the boat crossing to get up to Larissa
- Recruit 50/50 spears and javs/slings for 2-4 turns
- spy to Larissa

Side note - you have to kill Athens and Macedonia at some point - do not join them in wars

Once you get Larissa open enough to take it, charge up there and kill it(bring Athens if you can)
spy to Apolonnia

CAREFUL - Epirius have a decent army and even a unit of Elephants so pick your battles and regen your units
CHAMPIONS - they are amazing, when time/money allows - make one and chuck into your army for training Bonus'
UPGRADES- I went spear dmg and ranged dmg wherever possible with morale when not - dmg is the weakness in the spear army I felt needed sorting, also your starting spears will rout at 50% strength ish so you need morale+++

Next target Apolonnia, Ideally you want to take it easily and sit there smashing Epirus when they attack
I had 15ish units and had taken a few Epirius attacks before I moved on Apolonnia because I couldn't get a decent timing with his armies

At this point I had 3 towns with hoplite barracks in sparta and skirmisher barracks in Larissa - essentially spartan hoplites/Pelasts are what you want - get them asap.
I also had a small holding army of 3/3 (whenever I do this I mean spears/javs) to cover my towns when army was marching

NOTE - as fun as characters are - don't spunk your funds on ops until you are at the end of your turn and sure you cannot use the 500g better elsewhere.

Step 2

Here is the crux - you need to take Pella and Athens, carrying on up the coast spreads you too thin and trade = money so I decided to pounce (note - if you are lucky someone else will take Athens and you can liberate it)

I took everything had down to Athens and smashed it up = macedonia at war
Next I left my holding army south of Larissa to cover and rocked up to Pella, I was already at war with Macedonia anyway so...

Once you have Athens get trade up, it will give you muchos cash and enable you to raise a second army of decent level

Step 3 - consolidation and expansion
How you get to the end result doesn't matter and will vary depending on step 1 and 2 and who you are at war with

Goal 1 - sort your provinces out

- Pella for me had barracks for hoplites and pelasts and a smithy for 10% dmg and 5% armour
- Sparta and athens had +income buildings and excess food

Goal 2 - take the area north east

Now I did this on 2 games and it went differently each time.
- First time round they were 80% hellanic at the 2 central ones were owned by the double knife guys and I was at was with Tyris due to them invading Athens (which I liberated) so I rolled around the coast Antheia and Odessos and took dignitaries to the central area
- Second time the light blue ones attacked Navissos and me so I rolled north there and to Navissos and Pulp first

Both times I had the entire peninsula around turn 40

CAREFUL - some citied will have building you need to convert to make use of which means.... MONIES
NOTE - I had a champion in both big armies
NOTE - When you start this phase you will notice the first army starts to suck as its made up of starter units and the newer pelast/ spartan spears will be your main

Whats next?

I would take advice on this - I decided to complete my Athens region which involved a big battle and a lot of turns because the north and east guys were non agression pacts and trading partners - by 50 I had done this, taken Rhodes and was fighting to complete that area. On reflection I think striking north up the west coast of greece or taking the rest of Turkey would have been a better move


Conclusion
Sparta is no where near as flexible as Rome where you can have awesome spears or swords really early... but also go heavy cav (btw I think this is garbage, whoever heard of Romans winning wars with cav?) They are mainly strategic and getting ahead in tech and trade will win more than careful tactics imo.

Thanks all and good luck

For your armies, Heroes of Sparta general, rest are all Spartan pikes and sometimes artillery mixed in. From what I've seen this thing can mow down everything.

If that works for you chap

Arty is good - gets kills but in battles I have had what do you do vs all the slingers you come up against? arty cant kill enough
given the choice against 6 spears+ 6 slingers I would prefer 6 spears and 6 javs to 12 spears.

You have to win the skirmisher war and as nice as arty is, you need more dmg. pelatas will beat any skirmisher and when they have won they will rout any engaged enemy spears... javs in the back scare them

are you playing on hard? spears and arty sounds odd. I use arty as support but the kill ratio vs spears is poor in my calcs. I experimented against a friend when the coop synchro broke and he thought it was funny to use 10 fixed balistae and my 1 unit of spartan hops I was scouting with made it to his line with over 50% left

1 general, rest Spartan pikes (Note: the sarissa, and the good spartan pike) You spam them, missiles won't do much and you swarm the enemy.

The ai spams slings but pikes will only lose a few men.

Just had a play around with it
Yep - you are right you can do it easily spamming spikes and I had less deaths by 20% by spamming spikes and way easier to do a charge of everything

However.... It was way quicker and more fun to run with my stack, personal preference but most importantly its way cheaper to recruit (33%) and upkeep (nearer 50%) to split it. enemy stacks routed way easier, slings didnt need chasing all over the map etc etc. peltasts are great imo but each to their own

You could counter the slingers pretty fast with good management of a small number of cav and the pike spam.

Plus even then the enemy would be outnumbered in infantry and in Rome 2 it's all infantry with cavalry doing little amounts; mainly chasing pesky skirmishers.

Though in SP I wouldn't suggest spamming pikes and such as it's simply no fun and no variance in tactics except for run in a huge line and destroy everything.