Macedonian Steamroller

[Gunzak]

I started a new Macedonian campaign last night and I am surprised at how fast they can expand. I laid siege to Athens on the first turn and fought back an invading army from Epirots the same turn. On turn 2 I conquered Athens and began moving to Sparta. By turn 4 I conquered Sparta and moved all my troops north to attack the 2 Epirots cities. I destroyed a 600 man army of his then destroyed an 1100 man army when I took his first city then quickly laid siege to his second. In under 3 years I knocked the Epiros and Greek forces off of the main land and within 1 more year I invaded Rhodes and knocked Greece out of the game. Epirots was attacked by Rome and became a vassal state of theirs.

I then moved all my troops against the remaining rebel territories in my lands and quickly conquered them. Unfortunately I am no longer able to expand as I bled all my cities white by training as many troops as I could as fast as I could. I am now building happiness buildings, growth buildings and ports and have a massive surplus of cash every turn. If I continue to expand it will have to be with mercenaries for now but they can be disbanded in cities and then retrained into native forces if needed.

What I find funny is the only faction that would ally with me, besides Selucid which started as ally, was Spain. The Gauls (Both factions), Romans, Epirots and Carthage all refused. I haven't moved a ambasador to Getai yet as his amry was destroyed while taking two rebel territories and hes no threat to me. There is still a buffer of rebel states between him and me, which im leaving, and I have a spy in his territory watching to see if he builds another force.

My next expansion plans are to take the rebel city below me, he has 10 units, and I am training troops in Rhodes (My only real city with population left) to attack it. Then I will move troops west and go for Rome while they are still weak. Rome still has descent forces but still has several rebel territories left so I am hoping he will bleed himself dry attacking them which will leave Taras (Epirot vassal state of Rome) and the southern Italian cities available for attack.

[teh1337tim]

word of advise,
DO NOT GO FOR ROME UNTIL AFTER 220BC
You need to wait for MARCH OF TIME when rome builds a large palace in any of there cities so u can get reforms for Makedonia Reformed Heavy Phalanx and seleukid gets cataphracts ETC

[Chaotix]

Nice. I had a similar plan for my M/M Makedonia campaign, except w/o the mass recruitment, albeit it took me a couple turns longer. Here's my advice:

Definitely take Serdike, Tylis, and Byzantion to the north and east if you haven't yet- there's nice mines in all of them. I also highly recommend capturing Illyria for it's wealthy mines, but it'll probably bring you into a Romani war. The Getai lands also have mines in them. All of this will make you very rich, and from there you can go after Ptolemies or Seleukids, depending on which one hates you. Anatolia is a gold mine as well. Like tim, I would advise against taking Roman lands before you get the March of Time reforms, because if they don't have their original cities, then you can't get it. By the way, what difficulty are you playing?

[TWFanatic]

I am having a similar experience with the Sweboz. With nothing but rebels for miles around, it is not hard to conquer a massive area of land in a short period of time.

[Gunzak]

Well I took the rebel city below me and while doing so Getai attacked me. I easily repeled them and decided I would kick their ass for invading. I made two huge stacks of troops and steamrolled their ass and took all four of their cities and destroyed their faction by 256 BC. I am now laying siege to two rebel cities and I invaded Italy and destroyed Epirot's last city, Taras, so I have now knocked three factions out of the game. I have not attacked Rome and will take your advice and not do so. Rome is currently at war with Carthage and Gaul so they are pretty tied up and thier forces are pitiful. I have two spies in Italy, one in north and one in south, and they have few troops and most of their cities are either undefended or have a max of one unit. I could plow through them rather quickly but again I will wait for a palace.

Once I destroy the two rebel cities, one to my east and the other just north of Rhodes I will finish off the rebels to my east and take the last two rebel cities there. One is lightly defended after another faction attacked twice and lost. I will then take the three rebel cities to my north west towards Italy and Gaul and just put in a large number of defenders and continue to build up my cities.

By recruiting three large armies my cash on hand went from 70k down to around 10k but I have an income of over 10k a turn right now so I don't really care. Once I take the last two cities I am currently sieging my income should go up dramatically when I disband all my mercenaries and missile cavalry. I made a ton of cavalry and used them to finish off Getai which out in the open was a complete joke. He would charge into my phalanx line and my mass cavalry, 8+ with general, would sweap around behind him and devestate his forces every battle. Some times his forces would route before my cavalry even had a chance to flank him.

So currently its 252BC and Hellenen, Getai and Epirots and destroyed, I have conquered several territories, am laying siege to two more and my income is greater then 10k a turn.

I could have far more territories right now but I have spent several years just building up my cities to increase happiness, population growth and income. Every city I have that can make a port has one and Rhodes has a level 2 port. I am also building stone roads, one complete and 2 more almost done, wherever I can to move troops around even faster.

[Maion Maroneios]

I'm also having a great time with my Makedonia campaign, though through my numerous campaigns I have learned many nifty tricks to avoid bleeding my population dry from the start. I also prefer, slow and steady expansion in order to build up good infrastructure early on.

The year in my current campaign is now 252BC, already 20 yeras into the game, and have unified all of Hellas minus Rhodos (which I'm besieging now), along with the 2 northern rebel cities of Serdike and Tylis, as well as Dalminion, Taras and Rhegion. I am now able to train Pezhetairoi, Thorakitai, Prodromoi, Hetairoi Aspidophoroi and Hoplitai who make up my 1 army besieging Rhodos. What I do is mostly just sit back until I unify Hellas, build forts in the northern border to revent any Getai scum from invading and then all of a sudden explode with 2-3 very good armies, conquering all in my path.

Hope you have lots, lots of fun as I do,
Maion

[Gunzak]

The main reason I went low on population is I almost always massacre every city I enter to drop population down and get lots of cash. This way I can buy more troops immediately and I only need a very small garrison so the rest of my force can proceed to the next target. The problem with this strategy is cities with very little population for several years. With the addition of doctors, sewers, traders and other growth buildings they go up pretty quick.

As for military buildings most of my production centers have level 3 recruitment centers and armories and a few have level 4 recruitment centers. All of my frontier cities also have levee recruitment buildings but I only build levees if they are missile units and it would take too long for my regular units to get there.

Once you knock on Greeks, Getai and Epirots there is nothing around but tons of rebel territories so you can expand rapidly and there are no other factions to challenge you. Sweboz if way off to the north, Gaul is fighting Rome as is Carthage, I am alied to Seludid from the start of the game and the last faction, forget name, is far to my north east and just lost two sieges to a rebel city thats three rebels past me. I sent out lots of spies and there are no other factions within a few years march from me but Rome and like I said they are at war with Carthage and Gaul and most of their cities are undefended.

[teh1337tim]

On the the 2 cities thats in the mountains north of byzantion and pella, build type 4 goverments and build to lvl 5 local MIC
that will give u to numerous units suchas triballi warriors, thracian elite falxmon?, etc etc all elite infantry units that can bassically make an imitation legion along with thorikita,theuropheia and peltats

side note
how do u enable thorikita for makedonia? i never found out how to

[Reverend Joe]

Search the "Unofficial Modding Projects" forum. I posted a thread asking about that a while back. It's fairly easy.

[satalexton]

imho the maks don't need the thorakitai =/ they have better d00ds like the agrianikoi

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Agrianians do fit a totally different role than Thorakitai. The EB team finds the Maks to be too conservative to employ Thorakitai.

[teh1337tim]

actually i thought thorikita was left out due to the adding of the hysteroi pezhetairo and bcuz of stablity and ctd issues etc, hence why seleukid doesnt have hysteroi pezhetairo, it got the thorikita somethin instead

[Maion Maroneios]

Well, I have anebled Thorakitai as well as a number of other units, such as Elephantes Indikoi, Elephantes Kataphraktoi Indikoi, Thorakitai Agematos Basilikou, Klerouchoi Phalangitai (regional barrackses, not just native), Hellenikoi Kataphraktoi and Baktrioi Hippotoxotai (which I named Hellenikoi Hippotoxotai, following MAA's idea).

The idea was that, if Makedonia would conquer a large part of land and form an empire, they would open their minds and adopt different tactics, as well as reform their militaru to some degree. Of course I don't use many of the above units until I meet certain conditions, like using the AS unitsonly when I take a good chunk of their empire and such.

If anyone would like to know how I did these things, it's very simple and I can explain it to you if you pm me.

Maion

P.S.: Answering to teh1337tim, the Hysteroi Pezhetairoi represent a reformed Makedonian unit upon coming in contact with the Romans during the Macedonian Wars. No other Successor Kingdom has them, because they didn't reform their military in such a way (they sort of adopted Roman tactics istead of reforming their kind of useless pikemen, at least the Seleukidai did for sure) so, naturally, they don't get the Hysteroi Pezhetairoi. As for the Thorakitai, the reason they don't have them has already been stated by CN. It has nothing to do with CTD's, as I have the Thorakitai added to my roster and haven't experienced absolutely no problem whatsoever.

[mcantu]

EB is much more fun if you take things slow and give the AI factions time to develop their infrastructure and armies...

[Maion Maroneios]

EB is much more fun if you take things slow and give the AI factions time to develop their infrastructure and armies...

Certianly, but that is what we are saying. You first unify Hellas, then slowly build your own ifrastructure and prepare you mighy armies for conquest.

Maion

[satalexton]

and add_money slave,40000 50 times every few turns to make the Eleutheroi send stacks of 1337 troops at you =P

[Maion Maroneios]

Yeah, cool. By the way, I tried it yesterday and it didn't recognise the command. What exactly do you have to type? Is it: ''give_money slave, 40000" with the comma between slave and the amount of mnai? I typed it without a comma and it didn't work... I really want to see the Indian rebels becoming a mini-superpower afetr some time hehe

Maion

[satalexton]

"add_money slave, 40000" works for me =/

btw, watch out...the Baktrios WILL eventually take the Hidus and since those cities will be so well built and etc, they'll explode into blue death all of a sudden w/o warning. Same goes for the Getai as the rebels are of the same culture and they share buildings. Strange that it doesn't happen to the Luso tho, must be the swaths of Dunaminica that Numantia pumps out...

..or yea...don't agitate Satres by ending a turn with an army at his border...and keep cities near him well garrisoned......i learnt that the hard way and actually lost patavium when all my armies are too far to come back in 3 turns...

[Maion Maroneios]

Aha, I see. I'll make sure I won't make them too rich, just some cash bonus once in a while. When I'm done experimenting with that, I might even create a small script which will give tem money, without having to bother with the cheat all the time. We'll see...

Maion

[bovi]

They already have a script that gives them money. You could modify that.

It's been carefully balanced so that no factions ever "sleep" (never even try to expand from their single province), and yet the freemen will create both units and buildings throughout the game, but this balancing was done somewhat before 1.0 was released, and many freemen garrisons have been modified since then I think, so it is likely out of date.

[Maion Maroneios]

Aha, I see. Could you pelase point out where exactly I should look to modify this? Thank you.

Maion

[Allhopeforhumanity]

word of advise,
DO NOT GO FOR ROME UNTIL AFTER 220BC
You need to wait for MARCH OF TIME when rome builds a large palace in any of there cities so u can get reforms for Makedonia Reformed Heavy Phalanx and seleukid gets cataphracts ETC

What happens if by 250 BC Epiros has already conqured Rome and nearly pushed the romanii out of Italy?

[Hax]

NO march of time.

Unless the Romani suddenly make a comeback.

[Allhopeforhumanity]

Perhaps ill have to take rome and then gift it to the romanii... stupid epiros ruining it for everyone lol.

[Gunzak]

I decided to start a Greek campaign after reading people were having a hard time with it. At hard/med I have massacred Macedon in a few years and the Romans not only kicked Epiros out of Italy they have actually sent troops into Greece by way of ships. Epiros has 2 cities, im leaving them alone as a barrier to Rome and they are allied to me, and Macedon is down to 2 cities but I am about to take their last city in Greece leaving them with their last city in Selucid territory.

I don't really like the FM troops type as I prefer cavalry over infantry but the FM spartans did some heavy damage against Macedonian cavalry. So far my biggest killers are the Creetan Archers. During city battles its rare thet they don't kill anywhere from 60-150 plus enemy.

This time I have zero problems with popluation as I don't enslave or massacre any cities I take but my progress in capturing territories is much slower then it was with Macedon. It really sucked having negative income for the first few years and not being able to purchase any units, buildings or retrain. I disbanded my navy after moving all ym units from the southern rebel city on the first turn but that barely helped. It wasnt until I conquered two Macedonian cities that it turned around and after conquering my third I have zero problems now.

If Macedon had gone for me instead of fighting with Epiros things would be different though. I am sure I could have held off his first wave attacking Athens but he could have sent an entire army against me a few turns later and with negative income I would not be able to train replacements and he would have wiped me out.

[bovi]

Aha, I see. Could you pelase point out where exactly I should look to modify this? Thank you.

Maion

Search for add_money.

[Maion Maroneios]

Ok, thank you bovi. Here, have a balloon

Maion

[tls5669]

Elite phalanx's, nice hoplites, nice skirmishers, great calv. Get Tylis, or Sirdike for Thracian troops, and watch out. You could even take Crete for Cretan bows, and your covered.