Epeiros

[Cyrus]

It must be just me (since i keep seeing screens of people succeding) but i can't seem to get past the first 5 years when using epeiros. I take pella and occasionaly thessalia, but can never seem to kill the romans or even emigrate the army of taras into greece......
It's a shame, 'cause they seem like a very interesting faction, especially due to havin indian elephants in europe, so i was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on this.
thx in advance

[A Very Super Market]

What tactics are you using?

You can forget about Taras, at least for a while.

[Cyrus]

Well i never fought any feild battles, just seiges, and i usually send in my elephants, ram the gates while archers\slingers\skirmishers distract the enemy.
But why should i give up taras?

[A Very Super Market]

Didn't you say you wanted to abandon Taras?

Never mind, but why are you losing?

[Cyrus]

No, i said i can never do anything with it.
But usuallly it's because of 3 factors: rome,elephant upkeep and maks. everytime i take demetrias they have this fullstack thats coming right at me.
How do yall usually play?

[A Very Super Market]

Okay, my point about Taras is.

The Romans won't invade you anytime soon, except in Taras. Forget about it. The Maks threaten your capital.

Try and ally with KH, to divert some maks, but I think your elephants can deal with them.

[Cyclops]

I played a campaign with Epeiros recently and found it enjoyable, with cool units and a decent strategic challenge, but not really difficult enough (on M/VH).

First turn I shipped the armies from both western cities to Kalabria where they defeated the Roman stack beside Taras. Do not try to fit both stacks on one ship, they will not have enough move points. One ship for each stack, and disband all your ships once the troops are ashore. That will free up some dough for your long nosed friends. Oh and start building barracks in Taras, and don't stop until you can recruit elite Tarantine cav (or "Quentins" as they are sometimes known).

I stormed Pella with elephants in the lead. I feel free to plough them in there, as you need to take Pella fast with few casualties to your line troops.

If you lose some Elephants, well its reduced upkeep. If they go beserk, make sure they go beserk behind enemy lines. That said, I haven't had an elephant "go red" on me yet.

That army swung south to beseige Demetrios. if you sequence the unit moves correctly you can rush it on turn 1, but its a hard fight and looks like a blitz which I choose not to RP. You'll have a hard fight to take the place (on turn 2 if you choose to storm, or whenever a relief stack shows up) but the Maks are generally quite interested in squashing the KH and its reasonably straightforward to take and hold Demetrias. Once you have the mines in Pella the economy is set.

A decent force in Taras (in my case 2 Illyrian cav, 1 Tarantine cav, 2 generals plus line troops) can match the Romans, and if you want to win there then send Pyrrhus and his elephants to join them (build a cheap ship for a short trip over the sea, then disband it again).

Even with gentle RP, severe stack limits and mandatory troop mixes, the Romans went down faster than the Maks. I retired the campaign in favour of a Syrakusan migration RP, very satisfying indeed.

[antisocialmunky]

You aren't playing VH battles are you Cyrus?

[Tolg]

You can reduce the upkeep of your elephants significantly if you rely on Pyrhus' magical powers: Let your enemy kill some of your elephants. After the battle Pyrhuss will automatically use his wand to transform some of your archers into elephants. And since the upkeep for the elephants is the same as the upkeep for the archers on their backs you'll have a much lower upkeep without weakening your army.


But of course that's cheating so you shouldn't use it. Though it's not like you could do anything against it (other than making sure that your eles stay alive).

[Cyrus]

You aren't playing VH battles are you Cyrus?

No, i'm playing h\m.
And thank you for all the advice, the only flaw i see is that after i take demetrias the maks and romans sort of collaborate and beseige at the same time demetrias and capua(if i expand in italy)\taras(if i don't) with a full stack. Now that is a difficult battle......
I just thought of another strategy, tell me what yall think: i either migrate all my troops to italy and forget abot greece, destroy ambrakia and epidamnos for the imediate money and go for italy. Or alternatively i destroy and migrate from taras and forget italy.
EDIT:sorry Tolg i only now saw your post and am afraid i have no idea what you are talking about.

[Subotan]

I just sit tight in Taras and spam Levy Hoplites/Mercenaries if I'm desperate. It is possible to hold.

[Tolg]

There's a bug with the number of soldiers within a unit of elephants: The number displayed on the unit card = the number of elephant guides (and thus the number of elephants) + the number of archers on the back of the elephants.

If your eles suffer losses during a battle this number is reduced by 3 (1 guide + 2 archers). In the next battle however the engine will first generate the maximal number of guides (and thus elephants) and then put the archers on their backs.

The impact of those archers is rather limited, yet they have the same upkeep as a guide (with his elephant) meaning that the upkeep of the unit will be reduced significantly while your fighting power stays almost the same.

In numbers:

1st battle:

number on the unit card: 36 (upkeep: 3250)
elephants: 12 (upkeep: ~1083)
archers: 24 (upkeep: ~2166)

two of your eles are killed:

number on the unit card: 30 (upkeep: ~3070)
elephants: 10 (upkeep: ~1023)
archers: 20 (upkeep: ~2046)

2nd battle

number on the unit card: 30 (upkeep: ~3070)
elephants: 12 (upkeep: ~1228)
archers: 18 (upkeep: ~1842)

Sry for not making my point clear. ^^'


Also: Give up Taras. If you want to defend both, Italy and Greece, than I'm not surprised why you don't have any success. You can take it back later.

[bobbin]

I just thought of another strategy, tell me what yall think: i either migrate all my troops to italy and forget abot greece, destroy ambrakia and epidamnos for the imediate money and go for italy. Or alternatively i destroy and migrate from taras and forget italy.

I'd go for the second option as it means you won't run into the romans for ages and so can focus on the maks (also you recruitment options are better in greece).
Get an alliance with the KH and it should be easy enough to destroy the maks and then the greeks if you feel so inclined. Also i tend to disband the elephants and and ships at the start as they are very expensive and the money could be better spent elsewhere.

[Cyclops]

... disband the elephants ... the money could be better spent elsewhere.

Heresy! Long live the Elephants!

My elephants were going strong 40 years into the game. The went everywhere with Pyrrhus, until he died of old age and then they were inherited by his son Ptolemaois. They fought innumerable battles as the ultimate weapon, mowing down lines of triarii off my spearpoints like a giant spatula scraping paint off the side of a house.

I think they were up to 3 silver chevrons, so they didn't seem to accumulate much experience for all those fights. Maybe I held them in reserve more than i recall, but they were there with the faction leader on the active front every time.

They are almost worth it for the fear factor alone: their massive charges into enemy elite cavalry is odds-reversing, campaign winning stuff and the bonus ram duties are just icing on a big grey wrinkly cake.

[A Very Super Market]

African elephants seriously suck.

That is all

[Husker98]

African elephants seriously suck.

That is all

I agree and so do the Carthaginians i have yet to see them use one unit in my Romani campaign.

[Cyrus]

African elephants seriously suck.

That is all

Not if you are stupid enough to let them near your almost depleted velites and they go berserk on your line.....
Anyway thx all for the advice guys, as soon as i get my install up and going i'll do what yall say, any more suggestions?

[Sygrod]

To answer the first post.

I have had no problem with the early years. I use the elephants as battering rams and open doors, then as archer platforms against non-missile units. I also discard quite a few units initially and recruit as many slingers as I can queue up before I run out of initial funds. 3 or 4 slinger units can hold Taras against any roman army, as long as you use other tricks and techniques to lure them close to towers and mop up with the cavalry unit there. They are also used to good effect against the Makedonians as you steamroll them. Keep your field army in Hellas as strong as possible and use phalanxes as mobile walls with slingers behind and some cavalry and possibly elephants to mop up. In the beginning, use defense and whittle your enemies down.

I advice against giving up ANY territory. Hold Taras in the beginning and go after the Maks with a vengeance. Kick them out of Hellas altogether. They can sit and stew in Ionia. As you do this, the Koinon will join up against you. Use your main army to wipe them out in Hellas as well. Attack a city with few defenders and use the elephants to assault right away. Take it and wait for the enemy to attack you. Sally and drive them off. Aim to kill their expensive and good units first. The slingers are good at that. Kill FMs as much as possible to deny them "free" cavalry and bonuses. Once you are in control of Hellas, you can send the elephants and some better units over to Taras and go after the Romans. Once you are in control of several Mak and Koinon cities in Hellas your finances should improve. recruit as many slinger units as possible. They are good at mowing down roman armies.

[Cyrus]

Well i followed your advice and now i control pella,demetrias,corinth and taras (plus my original epirote settlement) the maks where destroyed as i killed theyr last FM in corinth, although they still had the 2 islands.Anywho the greeks beseiged corinth two turns after i took it so i'm now beseiging athens. Once i ve taken all greece, what do yall suggest i do? should i just defend taras or go into italy; or go into Getia?

[bobbin]

You might want to have bit of a rest and build up your economy but if not I'd suggest expanding up to the danube as this gives you an easily defendable border with the getai who most likley won't attack you for a while, you could go into getai proper for their mines but recruitment options there are awful so i tend to leave it until later.
Also capture southern italy and sicily as this will give you an excellent base to invade the rest of the western mediterranean, you'll probably need two armies for this as the romans will always be sending stacks your way.

A nice map of my suggestions.


This also makes a very nice european empire as your entire land border is defendable from river crossing.

[Decimus]

You could use your elephants to take over most of Greece, and then replace them with some Phalanx/Hoplites.

[Tiberius Claudius Marcellus]

My tactic for winning with Epiros on H/M was to merge all the field armies in northern Greece and assault Pella - you should attack first turn since your elephants can break the walls. Keep your elephants alive, since you can take several cities this way. Leave Pyrrhus' son as the governor of the city and continue smashing mak armies with what's left of your stack. Again, elephants will beat down stupid palisade walls w/ ease and crush any armies out in open battle.

As for Taras, do NOT abandon the town. Use your fleet to transfer all units (except for 1 garrison each) from Ambrakia and Epidamnos over to the Italian side and either get them inside Taras or hammer/anvil the Roman army led by Scipio and crush them. You will have to fight a battle of attrition with Rome for a bit; but once the Maks have been rendered impotent and you will have had time to build up Taras' MIC's you will be able to win as long as you don't have any Pyrrhic victories.

As far as middle game play, I spam Phalangitai Deuteroi and Toxotai. Full stacks of those (usually 15 infantry, 4 archers, and 1 FM) are more than enough to annihilate any and all opposition. When necessary, send two armies and allow the AI to control your reinforcements. You will suffer higher casualties than if you played them yourself; but by zerging the enemy AI you can't lose unless you are incompetent.

My western border provinces in Northern Italia and Southern Gaul are always Type IV governments so that I can raise full stacks of native, easily-replenishable troops to defend against the unceasing Lusotannan/Arverni/Aedui/Sweboz assaults. I never bothered razing all of their cities to prevent them from attacking because I despise fighting in the cold, forrested north. Tree battle ambushes are ridiculous to fight with my computer specs.

Phalangitai Deuteroi carried me all the way to Babylon; but when I had millions and millions of Mnai, I would spam a stack or two of ultra elites. I even fielded a 20 unit stack elephants just to be ridiculous. They completely slaughtered 5 full stack Ptolie armies (separately, of course) within about 10 seconds of the beasts hitting the enemy lines. But, I had to kill them off because they were a massive drain on my treasury.

As you grind away at the AS, send a couple stacks down the Nile and raze every single Ptolie city there is. Destroy any and all monuments, wonders, and buildings that you can for the money and to make them impotent. Then lower the taxes to low and abandon it. The city will rebel back to the Ptolies; but will revolt from them when they are unhappy about no structures, insufficient troops, and taxes higher than "zero". Do this once every 10 years (or whenever they start spamming full stacks at you again) and you will have smoothe sailing.

[Cyrus]

Well i personaly think that's kinda cowardish......
And anyway i'm still stuck in the middle, with greece continental conquered exept thermon and beseiging chalkis, the maks are dead, the KH arat a ceice(sp) fire with me and are beseiging halicarnassos, i've recreated the corinthian league and placed all settlements south of demetrias as type IV gov. i only use them to recruit hellenic type armies, pyrrus is attacking a roman army in taras and getting ready for the invasion of italy, i plan to take his grand son and conquer some thraician settlements, but unit's upkeeps are sooooo high, i can hardly feild a complete army of mid lower troops, and to think that athens was able(witha much smaller empire) to rase armies of 20 thousand men, that's the only non hardcoded ahistorical important thing in EB and it kinda suks.
What would yall suggest, should i just use taras as a fort to prevent roman invasions and take pyrrus into thrace or take bits and peices of it and attack italy?

[machinor]

I always try to hold onto both Taras and Hellas. I usually stop mein Hellas-steamroll after I have conquered Pella and Demetrias. I ally with KH and get a ceasefire with Makedonia. Then I have them fight it out in Southern Hellas while concentrating on gaining a foothold in Italy. I hate steamrolling since the massive cash flow you get when you control all of Hellas takes the fun away for me. I try to keep KH alive and kicking as long as I can. I still end up owning all of Hellas sooner or later. But that's usually when the Seleukids come knocking on my door across the Bosporus. When the Seleukids are powerful and declare war on me, then I'll need every penny, so I don't end up having a treasury the size of of a minor city. If the Seleukids get their asses kicked, then I intervene in the Kyrenaika, marching upon Alexandria.

[Slaists]

It must be just me (since i keep seeing screens of people succeding) but i can't seem to get past the first 5 years when using epeiros. I take pella and occasionaly thessalia, but can never seem to kill the romans or even emigrate the army of taras into greece......
It's a shame, 'cause they seem like a very interesting faction, especially due to havin indian elephants in europe, so i was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on this.
thx in advance

Over the last few days I have played a couple decades of Epyros: a very fun campaign (at least at the beginning). Here are a few thoughts from my campaign:


TURN 1

1. In the first few years: forget about positive cash... The treasury WILL be in red.

2. Given #1 I realized I should use my starting cash to hire extra units on the first turn: since I wouldn't be able to do so until getting out of the negative cash flow problem.

3. Given #1: I disbanded my starting fleet sparing one vessel for transporting troops. In the first turn, I placed that ship in the most advantageous position to transport my coastal troops into Southern Italy. I do not remember if I succeed to transport them over in the first turn or the second.

3. One needs to be brutally efficient with Epyros. But then again: one CAN be brutally efficient thanks to Pyrrhos and his elephants. The task for the first turn: take Pella. Elephants can knock the gates down and soften the residing general after Pyrrhos with his cavalry have taken care of the Macedonian acondistas and slingers (dangerous for the ellies). After that: I enslaved the treaturous Macedonian scum! On the same turn, I queued up an hoplite unit in Pella and moved Pyrrhos' army (everybody) towards Dimitris as far as his remaining moving points allowed. I moved the other Epyros' army (cavalry + general) as close as possible to Pyrrhos.

TURN 2

4. Macedonians attacked Pyrrhos near the beach. Thanks to elephants adn Pyrrhos' own body guard unit the Macedonian army was destroyed... Dimitris fell and was speedily enslaved on the same turn. Any remaining cash after erasing the treasury debt was used to hire extra units. I used my diplomat to ask Macedonians for a ceasefire and trade rights. Since they're busy with the Greek Alliance, they agreed. After taking care of business in Dimitris Pyrrhos merged with the cavalry army and moved due West.

5. By this time, the Romans were besieging Taras. My sea-born army from across the straights attacked the Romans from the rear and duly destroyed them in a pitched (the Roman army has triarii units in it) battle. (It could have happened on the third turn though: I do not remember clearly anymore).

6. The ship moved back across the straights to pick up Pyrrhos and his army.

TURN 3, 4, etc.

7. Pyrrhos crossed the straights and moved up the Italian coast, becoming filthy rich enslaving Romans and establishing petty client kingdoms (fastest and cheapest occupation governments) one after another... The world was his oyster from that point on...

MANY TURNS LATER (around 240 BC)

Pyrrhos is pushing 80 but all of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica + Segestia is his... By this time, the Greek alliance has destroyed remaining Macedonians and are eyeing Epyros' Greece possessions. Time to return home...

[Gourmet]

Ahhhhh ... it is good to see capable Greek Emperors bring their upstart ambitions to the ancient world. I wish to add to this mix of victorious Greek banter with my own tales of heroic Epeirote conquests. Dine yourselves on as much bread and drink as you like and carefully observe the exploits of Emperor Gourmet.



This is the extent to which the Aiakides family has expanded and even now, the Greeks march to secure the Mediterranean. Soon, we Aiakides will follow in Alexander's footsteps enslave the petty Seleukians and Ptolemaioi that inhabit Alexander's rightful empire ...

[Rilder]

If it was me playing that save it would of took at least 50-75 years to get that large. :p

[antisocialmunky]

It took 48 years.

[zig_zac]

Hello. I am quite new to this game, but just started to play Epeiros on VH/M. Must say, what many others say - there's no need to abandon Taras. I left upon the walls of Pella just enough troops to take it, which is simple, as there's no phallanx there. Elephants an most of army went from the beginning to Italy, and Pyrrhos just after taking Pella. I didn't take Demetrias, or go further to mainland Greece, as I would have to fight against KH and Makedonia. Now they take care of each other nicely. And elephants just plow through fearful Roman infantry, which allows to take one settlement from Romans every turn or two. Also it's good to build phallanx with starting money, as simple phallangitai deuteroi can stop elite roman troops.
I've now only two elephants, as they finally run amok thumping some consular cavalry, but it saved the day in battle, and I took Roma next turn - winter 271.

I actually regret I've lost my elephants, as I have some profit (edited: I wrote here 9500 minai, which was just because of heavy demolishing after taking Roma) and 13000 in treasury. I can afford them for sure.

But one thing worries me - namely lousy forms of government Epeiros has (baring the first form). I even think of building a lot of allied city - form 4. Which one do you build in Italy (or elsewhere on subjugation resource?)

[Blxz]

You revived a 2 year old thread to ask an almost non-related question. In regards to governments though, I build Type 2 on almost all subjugation resources. Unless I know there are better regional troops in a specific area. But I tend to play games as 'pure' as possible. So a greek faction uses almost purely greek units. Its your choice, but you might want to check the recruitment viewer.