A bit of help with Eprius?

[retep219]

Well, anyways, I just got Europa Barborum, and I decided to try out Eprius as my first faction. I'm a decent player at vanilla, but the Romani/Quarthadist just did not appeal to me. Eprius has its victory conditions in lands I normally like to expand to and, so far, a decent unit spread. A few questions:

1. The Epirus tech tree. Are the higher levels of military complexes worth it? What units do they provide? Do the unit types change as you cross the map? What does the "Recruitment of foreign natives" thing do?

2. Epirus units. What is a good army look like? What good units will I get? What should an army look like.

3. Do the Makedonian homelands work for me, or should I destroy them?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

1- In the homeland areas for Epeiros, it is very valuable to upgrade your factional MICs (barracks), you'll get your elites on the fourth or fifth level. The Thorakitai is pretty good and can be train in many Hellenistic regions on the fourth level.

The other MIC, the "'Recruitment of foreign natives' thing", is the foreign MIC. This building is needed to train units in foreign areas, ie non-Hellenic units. It is almost useless in your homeland, but necessary elsewhere.

2- Epeiros had pike armies, though Pyrrhos was known to mix a lot of non-pike heavy infantry into his main battle line.

3- Always destroy governments when you take a town, always. Just tear them down and build your own.

[raenor]

Epirus is one of my fav factions to play. It was the first faction I ever played in EB back in 0.8x cant remember which one exactly.

Usually when I start a campaign with them is to destroy everything in Taras and give it to the Romani, try and trade it for ceasefire/trade rights/minai. This is easier to do seeing as there is no FM there anymore. I also disband my navy and the Illyrian cavalry in my two mainland cities. Keep the elephants for now, they are very useful for taking down wooden walls early on.

I also take Pella in the first turn using the elephants. After that you need to consolidate the rest of mainland Hellas. To do this effectively you need to destroy the Makedonians field army, if you are good at field battles then this shouldnt be too much of a challenge, though if you are worried you can either try and trap them in Demetrias (sp?) or if you're lucky get them to siege Pella with your army inside. Once you have taken Demetrias and destroyed the Makendonian army you can probably disband your elephants as they are a big drain on your economy.

Some campaigns I get lucky and I see the Maks and Koinon duke it out for a few turns and reduce each others armies a bit before I have to tackle them.

As for armies MAA said it well, basically a successor army but with a few more heavy inf than the rest. Usually my armies consist of a solid core of phalanxes, usually Phalangitai Deutoroi (sp?) as their AoR is widespread, a few Pezhetaroi and one or two Chaonion Agema. Then I usually base my flanks on Thorakitai with one Theurophoroi (sp?) on each flank for flavour and to envelop the enemy. As for cavalry I quite like Thrakioi Podromoi (sp?) and also the Lonchorphoroi Hippeis (sp?) as they are fairly cheap and a very sexy unit. For missiles I just use a mix of slingers/archers, whatever the best you can get your hands on, recruit the Cretan mercs as they are the best archers around for you.

As for regionals good places to get decent ones close to you are the two regions above Pella and Byzantium, Serdike and argh I cant remember the other one, starts with a T! Anyways either of those are good places to pump out regionals for your armies.

Other than that just remember to destroy the foreign Govts when you take a town like MAA said and build economy buildings to make more money, mines are a must, always build the 1st tier mines everywhere you can!

Good luck with your Epirus campaign they are a great faction to play, lead Pyrrhus to the victory he deserved!

[gamegeek2]

Got a good Epeiros campaign going, see 1.1 AI progression.

Take out Makedonia and KH mainland provinces ASAP. After that, consolidate your empire and expand northward into the Thracian and Illyrian provinces, which are packed full of mines and excellent Thracian regional units. Scourcouw is particularly valuable, build a Lv. 4 government there.

The Mines in Pella and Dalminion are particularly profitable, though many other mines in the general area are above average in production. All mines are good anyways. Build them, set up a good trade network, and you'll be swimming in cash soon enough, able to finance many fullstacks.

[retep219]

Thanks a lot for the advice, guys.

Right now on my campaign:

I played med/med because I'm a total EB noob. I took Pellas with my elephants, disbanded them, and then marched south to Demtrius. Took it with some help from my spy...=D. Then, the Konion Hellion decided to bottle up the passes north of Athens, preventing me from getting to Attica, Euboea, or the Pelopennusus. (sp?) So right now I've just besieged Athens. Speaking of problems:

1. I really can't afford to replace any gov. buildings.
2. I can't retrain troops using Makedon buildings, we do not share barrack MIC's. (Though we do share foreign native MIC's, so I can atleast make and retrain those hoplite thingies)
3. I can't make elephants (Ok...just kidding. When can I make more of these though?)
4. Italy. My army is just sitting there, looking useless, because the Romani do nothing and I couldn't afford to keep my fleet around. Should I just ignore it and leave until later?
5. Those MIC's are too expensive. For that matter, all trade buildings are too expensive. At least I'm not in debt...yet. (2 denarii, with a profit of about 400 a turn) I hope Athens and Euboea will get my some money...

[Maion Maroneios]

Glad to hear you're having fun

1. Then don't, at least not until you get some decent income
2. You already figured that out, so destroy every Makedonian MIC, but not the native ones
3. Well, you actually train them. Anyway, you have to build a lvl 5 MIC, IIRC (the highest one)
4. I don't quite get you. Do you have an army sitting there and not knowing what to do with it, or is there a Romani army that looms outside of Taras? In the first case, just leave enough for a decent garrison and disband the rest. In the second one, train some units to do the same and let them come
5. If you start making money, you'll have no problem with building costs, believe me. When you conquer southern Hellas, you will soon swim in money

Hope this proved helpful,
Maion

[retep219]

An Italien clarification:

I have a fairly worthless army and a level I MIC in that Italian city. Sitting right on top of me are three pedites extrodenarii and a couple of triarii who are content to do absolutely nothing. Needless to say, I have no idea what to do. For one, why are the Romans just sitting there?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

As far as money goes, when playing EB you'll need to disband some/most of your armies/navies or conquers several settlements right off the bat. If you don't plan on holding Taras or invading Italia soon, that would be a good place to disband troops at.

[retep219]

At last, Sparta itself has fallen and I am left with no rivals in Hellas proper. My plan now is to consolidate my holdings by taking Euboea and Thermon, then to conquer the east coast of the Adriatic Sea and invade Italy from the north. A few final questions:

Are the Getai a threat? Should I worry about them?

Is my "plan" half-decent?

How strong are the Romani, anyways?

[gamegeek2]

Ally with the Getai. They've been my BFF since about 260 at this point in my campaign...

[Conradus]

Ally the Getai, but I'd advise to keep some rebels between you. The AI tends to attack the human player if they border, even if allied.

The Romans are quite strong, but a good phalanx/heavy infantery army coupled with heavy cavalry to charge them from behind should easily dispatch them.

Conquering Rhegion might also be usefull if you can build stone walls there. Easy to defend then.

[machinor]

I usually conquer Italy from the South (if I'm Carthage or Epirus), since the cities down there are bigger and more lucrative (especially Taras, Rhegion and Syracuse) then the poor mudholes in the North. Apart from that you get some quite nice local units in Southern Italy, like Samnites, Lucanians and Campanian Cavalry. When combined with your factional phalanx troops you got yourself a fine versatile army.

[raenor]

For some reason I usually always head east whenever I play the Hellenic factions based in Greece (KH, Mak, Epirus).

Generally this is to let the Romani get the March of Time off (though I cant remember if Epirus get anything for that) and also because I like to fight the Romani later on when they can give you a good fight, Its nice to fight them when they get the Polybian reform.

If I do go Eastwards I sometimes still take Taras (if you lost it) and Rhegium, though later in the campaign, both are in good positions for trade and Rhegium has mines. I also usually take Siciliy and try and get ceasefires with Romani and Carthage after. When conquering the East I take all of modern Turkey and down into the Syria and then on to Egypt, makes for a very nice Empire with great trade. Plus that way you get some epic alliances against you, say Egypt + Selukia + Pontos, which makes the game quite challenging if you can only support 2 or so proper field armies.

Anyways, have fun and good luck.