Occasionaly I also gift money and cities but only the natural diplo way - no console here :-P

Today I had a major battle near Sardike.Epirotes had a full stack with a good mix for that type of terrain (woodland).On the other hand I had a strong army with KH phalangitai. Thorakitai, KH heavy peltasts, some merc peltasts and some Hippeis.In charge was my new general talent Koios Athinaios.Despite having the edge in the pre-battle calc (8:5) I suffered a terrible defeat! I thought of putting the phalanx in the center as a rock and manoever on the flanks with the mobile thorakitai and peltasts in order to encircle the enemy.I was wrong !!! The Epirote general somehow made the pahalanxes break formation, thus being inefficient.Then he made a charge through my thorakitai (27 defense, spearmen with shield) and made them route on contact !!! I was wtf, watching my beautiful army becoming dead bodies.

That defeat tought me some lessons though.
- The phalanx needs micro-management or else its not worth it.
- Thorakitai despite the stats are not reliable or so I believe.Standard hoplite are strong defensive units, because they seem to use something like shieldwall from BI.
- I need cavalry.The Epirote had in his third row, 3 units of cavalry and that was the final blow.
- Last but not less, I wont take the calc seriously again :-P

Speaking of gangbanging.In minor asia I am in a situation where -lol with me here- Ptolemaioi backstabbed on me and allied with Seleucids !!! Two vast empires in a joint war against a newly founded nation :-P
Needless to say while Seleucids are thin on resources, because I 've kill thousands of them, Ptolemaioi bring a LOT! Now that is a real situation! :-) My main battle ares with them is around Ipsos, which struggled to pacify.

I am on the process of eliminating Macedonia as I besiege Byzantium, their last city.One more turn to surrender.

I want to say again the battles in EB are thrilling.I 've played literally hundreds of battles in RTW/BI vanilla yet the feeling here is different.It is exciting.I can not believe such an old game had such a potential.If only the CTD problems were not there.But hey ctrl-s isn't that hard :-)