How to win the first battle against Archelaus in Mytilene

[Amphisbaena]

How to win the first battle against Archelaus in Mytilene? I decided to sneak into the port, with the help of Geminus, the captain from the start of the game. In the fight, I have to optional goal to kill Archelaus, and I must reduce his forces to 5. However, these forces seem to be infinite - the reinforcement counter starts at 4, drops to 1, and then resets to 4. Archelaus seems quite difficult to kill too. In my latest attempt, I have retreated onto a building in the far right corner of the map. All the friendly Roman soldiers have been killed, and I keep being rushed by Greek soldiers, which I pick off one by one. This has been going on for half an hour or so, until I saved the game and gave up for now. How to end this fight?

[Sticky Wicket]

This is an interesting fight.

Archelaus is quite vulnerable to fire, generally I found the best way to take him down is with archers. There's a lot of sneaky cover around that middle section you can use to keep attacking him with fire and barbed (+bleeding) arrows and stay in cover. He wont come down from that building unless your forces get too close, so the fool will just pass out from DOT effects.

I also found its best to use the rest of your forces to push forward up the map & help the friendlies stay alive to deal with the reinforcements that mainly come from the North East and North corners. As you say you can get overwhelmed with reinforcements if your not there to take them down quickly.

[ChairmanMeow]

The easiest way is to just keep pushing forward putting your non shielded characters into cover so the archers on the roof dont get any good shots off then throw pilum at archelaus to shred his armor and kill him if you dont have any pilum theres a barrel of them near where archelaus spawns and dont forget that Syneros triarius class can also shred armor

[dnttrip789]

I just bum rushed him and killed him first.

[Amphisbaena]

This fight actually turned out to be quick and easy. I rushed my two heavily armoured characters towards Archelaus, deflected his attacks, grabbed a pilum each from the barrel, and shredded his armour until my attacks actually began to cause damage. Syneros also helped with this. Archelaus went down in a few turns without causing any significant damage at all. Once he dies, the battle is won.

[tostito675]

Yep, pretty much what everyone already said. Go straight for Archelaus. I actually prefer to attack from the main gates, your generic troops will keep the enemy tied up, you just have to destroy one barrier on the right and go up and over the rooftops right to him. I prefer that because the path takes you past 2 pilum barrels so you can arm up everyone and just gang bang him. Plus Syneros' armor shredding.

[Hospy]

I ran away from him and just killed his troops. Try to drop a bunch of enemies at the same time to hit the requirement to end the battle instead of letting him get more reinforcements.

[Snefru]

Others gave solid strategies for winning the fight. I’m a fan of killing him by rushing and swarming him. I personally found it easier and quicker while experimenting with mechanics that early in the game.

However, killing him fit my roleplay decision more importantly. So even if ended up being slower and harder I’d still gone that way after trying both.