Illyrian Levies do have precursor javelins - get them in the rear of engaged infantry and they can do work. Agrianian Axemen need to be a melee unit first and a skirmish unit second - 120 men per unit, dense formation like Karian Axemen. That would raise Epiruses capabilities significantly. Totally agree on Shield Wall for Samnites. They are underwhelming.
i use Levies as a screening force mostly myself, let a Barb Sword Line Hit em (protect them with Slingers to keep them alive from slingers/archers) and then move your foot troops in as soon as they get charged so you deny them a charge on your guys.
Matt Foster I have done terrible things no man should do and seen things no man should see in the darkest, dankest, Doritoest corners of the Rome 2 database.
I love Epirus. It's one of the only Hellenic factions that has elephants. Their pikes and shock cav aren't a joke either. Definitely one of the more difficult factions to start with though, I've had to restart my campaign more than 10 times before I got the ball rolling. Through some luck, maneuvering, and diplomacy, I was able to stop the war with Syracuse and Athens and make them my defensive allies, destroy Sparta and Rhodes, then let Syracuse be destroyed by Rome before making Rome my client bitch. Currently I'm trading with about 75% of every other faction and 50% are allies. Again, very hard starting position but it is doable. The world will bend knee to Pyrrhus.
Freddie Mercury same marched to athens destroyd their army in the field, right as i was going to siege the city, two spartan armys decimted my depleted army, Phyrrus fell that day:(
Hey Heir!! You should do formation focus, different formations with variations of different armies (sword spams, skirmisher heavy armies, and cavalry heavy armies). Love the vids!
I'm starting to notice a bit of an interesting pattern here that barbarian swords are so OP in the "end game" patches of Rome 2. In the beginning it was the cultured factions such as Rome and the Hellenic factions including Egypt and Baktria, but now that Atilla AKA the Barbarian Invasion of Rome 2 is coming out... I mean do you see where I'm getting at here...
war dogs, i use them to 1. deal with Meatshield men, and 2. they just get right in the way if a Unit tries to charge (since they can inflict some damage and trying to walk through/run through them hurts the unit)
Epirote seem to be a fan favourite amongst players with a interest in ancient history without a focus on Rome, I know I like them a lot. I was surprised when I played Europa Barbarorum and this new hellenistic kingdom popped up on the map fitting perfectly in between Rome and Makedonia. They have this nice mix of hellenistic, illyrian and italian troops. Seems like the Thorakitai is missing from their Rome 2 roster unfortunately, they were awesome in EB & EB 2. Hellenistic Legionaries with spears. They don't have any Hypastistai either? No Shield Bearers? I notice a lack of quality heavy infantry. :/
+angelowl89 Have to say that I strongly prefer factions with a rich diversity of units that allow different playstyles. Although sometimes an overspecialized faction can be interesting as well, the Sweboz/Suebi seem really fun in Rome 2 since they got all the extra units.
Is it just me or do Socii Extraordinarii have the exact same stats as Mercenary Samnite Warrior? I've noticed that it's true for Merc Italian cav/Socii Equites and Merc Italian swords/Socii Hastati so it wouldn't surprise me that much I suppose.
I like Epirus, its one of my favorite factions in Rome 2 although they sucked originally when they came out before the roster boost. Regardless their got good all round units in my opinion and before elephants got nerfed it was always a pleasure bringing them in a battle to an unexpected person who had no idea that any greek state could use them :D
I find it weird that Royal Peltasts and Hellenic Royal Guard cost more or almost as much as Hellenic Royal Cavalry. Weren't cavalry units always more expensive than infantry historically?
In the most cases, training cavalry troops was much more expensive than raising footmen. In this particular case, i assume the Royal Guards and Royal Peltasts were armed by the Royal Armory instead of using their own equipment, which leads to a massive cost increase. Furthermore i think of them as a standing army, while hoplites were taken under arms only in war times. There is also a huge difference in the amount of men serving in each troop, which explains maintenance differences, for example in wages.
I had a game where I was playing against a guy using one of the all cavalry factions and had an army of just lancers. I had one unit of levy pikes and just kinda set them out in front of the rest of my army and put them in phalanx and they ended up getting over 100 kills just out there by themselves with no support from other units haha, my opponent kinda just charged his calvary straight at me and didn't micro much it seemed but they can be useful then haha
RU-vid isn't a zero sum game, or at least the way that Heir and the TW RU-vid community seems to operate. It's great to see all the differing opinions and ideas.
i think if i see many more of these video's where my favourite faction (Rome) is slaughtered then my heart might actually break (a bit melodramatic but oh well). They also have me questioning if Rome's even a power faction any more.
I did my own comparison with creten archers and cimerian heavy archers and the cretens won it 8 out of the 10 times, i played both factions 10 times each to make it fair.
I thought the Seleucids or Massilia cause they have decent melee infantry compared to Bactria.If Pontus was considered hellenic faction as it should be i would go with Pontus.My personal favourite is Epirus tho.
Sparta has a great army though it can be predictable. It's very underrated by most (but overrated by newbies). Athens is also very underrated too, and Egypt is good. But my personal favourite is Sparta (not because of the 300 movie its bullshit)
HeirofCarthage btw pikes are not useless. u just need to know when to active the pike formation or not.some let the pikes active since the start of the game! thats bad
they need to have more expensive pikes handle their pikes better, like put their spears down faster, and the phalanx should increase the chance to deflect missiles
Priximus225 Heir is probably going to do them last or later than all the other factions. To quote his exact words on the previous Epirus FF, "Yeah, I mean, I may have a *Slight* bias towards them."
The Roman player was such a noob. Painful to watch. What a waste of cav, plus charging spears with Triarii? And to top it all off his legionaries didnt get off a volley....they just walked into the charge.
5:42 "[...] if you are playing on a map that offers a choke-point; *_such as maybe a siege-battle or something like that_* [...]" - something like that? - what else is there! - and don't bother mentioning the handful of rivers that often offer multiple crossings at once... Most of Rome 2 maps are totally blant. They don't offer any bit of interesting terrain in which to utilize some holding-out power of units like pikes. On the other end of the spectrum, horse-heavy factions get the shaft, too (btw.: the Macedons (which includes Epirus) were famous for their cavalry; I don't get it why poor horse-civilizations like Rome get anywhere near that; it's ridiculous!); a people like parthia badly suffers from a "go for a casualty-rich draw" sort of option for battles; attack, kill as much as makes sense military-wise and retreat to keep all your forces for the next round - then rince + repeat. That's how Parthia for instance hampered Roman troops hard. But when you have a chain on your leg saying "you have to fight this out till the bitter end", having lower numbers + being restricted to horses only (which can be countered with a variety of units) you are basically screwed (unless they add, as they do, a lot of unusual foot-units to mildly atone for that sort of thing) Imagine a TW-Rome2 where different peoples would have different options of how to engage + end a battle. Suddenly balance wouldn't depend solely on complete rosters. You wouldn't need to give barbarians access to siege-weapons or any nonsense like that (ridiculous!) because they could hit you hard with guerilla-tactics (+ big unit sizes in horde-formations)! (note: it should also depend on the region; germans for instance should be able to retreat faster into woods, whilst step-factions would have that benefit in open terrain (because: horses)) - it could make the game so much more interesting and diversified... and finally give us some terrain with which to work with. having up and down slopes here and there, and a rock at some rare occasion just doesn't cut it when it comes to interesting, diversified battle-sites...un-do the whole, annoying dumbing-down of what should be a very demanding, tactically focused game! Speaking of which: can anyone see on first glance, what region a certain map is in? - they all look the same... no matter if you are fighting in some notoriously rocky region or not. It's all one blend of boringness...
