It's impossible

[rolypoly]

I don't know what's up with this game, it backstabs you any chance it gets. I'm trying to kill Bardylis and now the Atheans have landed in ships in the middle of my empire and took all my towns!

How is this even possible to win? Should I just change to "Easy" ?

[Roundpixel]

that is not a bad suggestion

[Trev]

Originally posted by Ivan The Kozel:

I don't know what's up with this game, it backstabs you any chance it gets. I'm trying to kill Bardylis and now the Atheans have landed in ships in the middle of my empire and took all my towns!

How is this even possible to win? Should I just change to "Easy" ?

Nah definitely not impossible. While you could change it to easy, I feel you'd get more satisfaction atleast trying to beat it on normal mode.

First off I wanna say you absolutely WILL restart probably several times out of frustration, so don't feel bad. A key part of this game is the fact that at most times you will have several enemies on your front that you need to worry about keeping at bay. You can never expand to far in one direction without making sure your borders are secured elsewhere or else the enemy will get you.

Make sure if the bulk of your offensive forces are somewhere else, you keep a couple units back home to defend/clean up against raiding parties. Early on, this is quite difficult I agree, do to the fact that your funds are low and you probably don't have the manpower to support a large army.

That's why early on it's important to expand slowly. As for Bardylis, I remember at one point I took some of my forces and moved them back towards Pella to counter Athens raids.

Athens- they will be a thorn in your side for the majority of the game, as they have colonies spread out across most of the map and can practically send raiding parties to whereever you are. Luckily about the hegemony A.I is that they're very predictable. Once they attack you a couple times you'll know the exact place they'll come, and usually what season. You can then know when to counter them. If you have anymore more questions feel free to ask.

[kkfouts15]

Changing to easy to help get a hang on the ropes will be better. As for how to handle that, you have to understand that you are constantly at war with several factions, your boarders will be tested consistently by land and sea. It's a pain, but it is manageable. As stated above, the AI is rather predictable. From experience, a Pelagast(?) unit and a common spear unit can defeat most of what naval raiding parties come for me. Make sure your boarder towns have some units to maintain the area. Expansion has to be slow and steady, too forward too fast will break you. You'll have to restart or reload, I know I did. Just keep going man, you'll breakthrough at some point.

[rolypoly]

I finally managed to get past this phase by disbanding that stupid siege unit you get during the tutorial and instead spending that money on getting defense garrisons for my coastal cities. Now I'm progressing pretty well. Thanks for the tips all!

[Trev]

Also I've learned sometimes it's best to keep your troops inside your city at times if an enemy is raiding and just let them exhaust themselves. The A.I in this game will rarely be able to succesfully siege a walled city that has an adequate garrison/food storage. If anything they'll just get battered down by the defenses, and or run out of food before retreating back to their city.

Most times all the A.I do is try and capture your mines and burn your farms, so I sometimes just let them do it then send out a couple nearby units to clean up the damage afterwards.