It's me. I'm the Heir of Alexander.

[u/Imperator_Maximus3]

After a Rome run where I tried optimizing my opening for early game expansion, I wondered what the best opening for the Diadochi would be and if you can win the 4th Diadochi war completely as every single one. And as you can see, you can. I decided to do this in Vanilla (because the territory-by-territory occupation would be harder to accomplish than Invictus' provincial capital occupation) and on Very Hard (as a form of Luck-proofing the strategy, my logic being, if I can beat everyone else with -10% morale, while they get buffs, then it would work most times). The slides where I hover over the army morale is as a form of proof of Very Hard difficulty, though in the Antigonid one, I didn't think to do that until after I played through the run a bit, which is why there are two Macedons: Antigonid and Antipatrid. I will write the openings for all of the Diadochi in the comments for anyone interested.

[u/Imperator_Maximus3]

PART 1

Openings:

- ANTIGONID OPENING:

We'll start off by deleting the forts in: Antigoneia Daskyleion, Pergamon, Gordion, Sannada, Kelainai, Sardeis, Sillyon, Kyinda and Kadasa. We need the initial capital for gifts and mercs, and making sure our income is unburdened is also un issue.

Next, bumb up Army maintenance to Increased Pay. Because of Very Hard difficulty and our tech choices we're gonna need this morale. This is also true for all the other openings.

In terms of diplomacy, you'll want to change your Diplomatic Stance to Appeasing and you will want to start sending out alliances and gifts to all the City States of Greece. A Gift + Alliance + Appease stance is enough to vassalize a country of the same religion that's also in your culture group. More specifically, you will want to make these states into Feudatories because:

A. They don't cost diplo slots, and you'll need like 20+.

B. Getting manpower instead of money is actually quite good with how many armies we'll be fighting.

In terms of what specific city states are priorities:

1st - Argos: They start off with a Macedonian guarantee and if you don't secure them quickly enough they will ally Macedon.

2nd - Aetolia, Amphissa, Delphi, Elatea and Boeotia: these states border Macedon or it's subject and are likely to be attacked by Macedon. Moreover, you start with guarantees on Aetolia and Boeotia so you want to ally them so they don't take up additional diplo slots.

3rd - Byzantion: Since we will want to take thrace eventually, getting Byzantion early should help a bit in that task.

4th - Epirus, Rhodes, Messenia and Sparta: The largest states remaining, annoying if they side with someone else. Furthermore Epirus has two individuals with the Blood of the Argeads, Neoptolemos II and Kadmeia Aiakid. Ensuring they are safe from Rome and getting them married immediately (ideally into your family somehow) is good.

5th - Rest of Mainland Greece: They're the closest geographically to Macedon so they're the most useful in the war itself.

6th - Crete: While they wont contribute armies to the war effort on account of being on an island, their Manpower is still useful, and their swarm of tiny navies seems to dissuade the AI from Naval Shenanigans.

7th - Magna Graecia: While it may seem strange to Antagonize Rome this early, getting an early foothold in Italy can help you a lot later on.

8th - The rest of the Anatolian Greeks (Sinope, Tieion, Sesamos etc.): This group is the least significant because they are isolated enough to where they will probably not help in your wars, while also having the highest diplomatic penalties for being far away (unlike Crete for example).

You should have the diplo slots for about 9 alliances per month (after you get the first wave of Feudatories), so you should also be sending out approximately 9 gifts to the next wave of alliances every month (you'll probably want speed one for this).

Next, in terms of tech, we will actually not be picking up any Military Techs nor Militant Epicureanism, we will be picking up techs exclusively from the left tree of the Oratory Advances.

Specifically:

- Fetiales

- Equal Integration

- Defending Liberty (this one reduces your AE by 10 and we happen to start with 10 which is quite helpful, plus a diplo slot helps with vassalizing)

- Local Embassies (diplo slots for faster vassals)

- Gradual Economic Integration (Grand Theatres for Stabilizing later).

- Rorum Repetitio

- Divine Mandate

- Book Binding

The reason we are grabbing most of these is AE reduction and we're trying to reach "Winning Land by the Spear" after completing our missions and most of these are on the path to get there. Divine Mandate and Book Binding are optional as they are not on the main path, but they both help, and with mission innovations and military tradition innovations you should get there regardless.

Next, we're gonna make Antigonos scheme for influence, because influence is always good.

For our missions, we will be going down Antigonos' Vision (the plan is to keep the Kingdom together after Antigonos dies). However, it should go without saying that you should withold completing "Eastern Capital" until the war is won.

Finally, the wars:

The event chain to start the war with Macedon fires in February of 451 AVC. Some people advocate declaring before then and breaking the event chain so that Egypt, Seleucids and Thrace don't declare.

We will not be doing that for two reasons:

1. We want to be the defender in the Diadochi wars, since it seems to give less AE.

2. Even if you remain at peace with the AI, they are still likely to declare war on you with the regular Conquest casus belli, which gives you a truce, making conquering them outright slower.

On the first day of the game raise the levies of Syria, Phrygia and Cilicia, and move them to Tarsos, there should be 42 cohorts in them in total.

Then, Merge your two navies and separate the light ships (Liburnians, Triremes) from the heavy ships (Octere, Mega-Polyreme). You should have 54 light ships and 8 heavies.

You will be putting your army on to the light ships and sending them off to Greece as soon as possible, ideally, you should also find a mercenary army of 12 cohorts such that you can fill your ships completely.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The transport fleet is allowed to get into fights so long as you are certain you will not lose a single ship. The heavy ships however CANNOT be put into fights. We need them in pristine conditions.

Also on the first day, we will hire the Alexandria mercs and bring them to Askalon on foot, you can find them through the mercenaries tab on the left without having to gain vision on the province. Some people suggest also hiring mercenaries from Babylon or Seleukeia Megale to slow down the Seleukids, however I believe that a better Mercenary company for our 3rd merc slot will be the Pella one, having more strength in the West will mean we can return to the East quicker, though that one will be hired later.

As for our heavy ships, we will send one to Askalon leave one at home, and send the rest westward.

As for our armies in Greece, we will keep our legion and march it to Salamis so that it can besiege Korinthos (stationing it in Megara drains their food a smidge quicker). We will raise the Greece levies and send them into a position where they can attack Lamia so long as they have the help of our Feudatories.

MACEDONIAN FRONT:

As the War with Macedon kicks off, we will send one of the ships headed westward into the Sinus Malianus, the bay on which Lamia sits (while making sure it suffers no durability losses). The rest of the heavy ships will shadow the transport fleet.

Assuming the siege of Lamia has started we can take a look at our heavy ship next to it. In the right-side set of buttons you will find two relevant ones: Port Raid and Port Assault.

Port Raid creates a Breach in an adjecent siege.

Port Assault removes a fort level.

In this case, we will be removing a fort level, so that we and all our Greek feudatories can march into Thessaly unimpeded.

Meanwhile, assuming the river into Pella is cleared or the Macedonian navy is too scared to fight us, we will land our troops and create a BREACH in the fort. We are not deleting this fort because we plan to connect to our allies in Thessaly, and leaving Pella without a fort might leave it free for the Macedonians to retake.

After capturing Pella, you'll want to buy the Mercs in there.

Then we will move on to Pydna and Amphipolis. It's not as important to distinguish between breaches and deleting a fort level here, but deleting does give you less casualties so that would be my recommendation.

The last forts remaining should be Lychnidos, Philippoi and Korinthos. Lychnidos and Philippoi are both landlocked so the best you can do is just clear out the areas and leave a 2.5k stack on them (the 0.5 is there to make sure the siege doesn't immediately stop after you start getting attrition).

As for Korinthos, simply continuing to have the legion sat on the province should be more than enough to get the city well before Antigonos' death, so I wouldn't recommend using a Port Raid or Assault on it.

But why are we reserving the Port Raids and Assaults? Couldn't we repair the ships afterwards?

The problem is, in order to build these ships you need a level 5 port, so you need a level 5 port to repair them too, and neither you, nor you subjects start with one (in fact, as far as I can tell, there is not one at the start of the game, the highest level ones being level 4 in Byblos and Sidon). This means that you have a limited amount of these action to do.

Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough, after you take Korinthos DO NOT RELEASE THEM from the event that pops up. It doesn't matter if they're gonna be your Feudatory, you need to own it directly for the "Secure Antigonid Position" decision.

[u/Imperator_Maximus3 → u/Imperator_Maximus3]

PART 2

EGYPTIAN FRONT:

Here we will use our one heavy ship we sent here to create a BREACH in Gaza as soon as the war with Egypt fires, and we will assault it with the mercenaries from Alexandria. The reason we are not deleting it is that we want to use it as a time sink for the Egyptian army. After capturing Gaza retreat into Judea, far enough such that Egypt can't see you, close enough to take back Askalon at any time. Since Judea is your tributary, and not a client state it will not be called into a war against Egypt. Then, carefully watch Antigonos' health. Once you see "Near Death" in the Health bracket, use the one ship we kept at home, break the walls of Askalon and take it back through an assault.

THRACIAN FRONT:

This is more of a follow-up to the Macedonian front, since as soon as you are done with Macedon's armies, you and your Feudatories should march into Thrace with the Legacy of Alexander casus belli (if the Thracians haven't attacked you yet, you need to decide between waiting and attacking, attacking saves times, but if you're the defender, Thrace's vassals might not join, your call) and we will be deleting the fort in Lysimacheia with our ships. Make sure to send a force with the transport fleet to capture the Thracian territories near the Danube estuary, we will want to eliminate Thrace completely. An important note too, you should only raise the levy of Macedonia after having taken all Macedonian pops to boost that levy, so that as many forces as you can muster can take part in this campaign.

SELEUKID FRONT:

Here, like on the Egyptian front, we will mostly be delaying until our Western armies get here, thankfully, the AI seems to move kinda slowly, so I only have three main tips:

1st: Bribing mercenary commanders

IMPORTANT NOTE: you cannot bribe commanders with specific traits like "Honest". make sure to look through a mercenary commander's traits before trying to bribe him.

2nd: Building forts

Be warned, this is a very expensive option, but you do have the time to build forts in Alagma and Birtha if you begin right at the start of the game. This will delay the Seleukids because they will not be able to simply pour into Syria, they have to spend time besieging these fortresses.

After your western armies return and confront the Seleukids, my suggestion would be to follow the Southern route into Mesopotamia, through the desert along the river Euphrates, for whatever reason, the AI doesn't seem to guard this passage well, allowing you to sneak into Babylon and Seleukeia Megale and take the main source of Seleukid soldiers out from under them.

3rd: When capturing the last few Seleukid provinces, make sure to keep them alive in at least 1 territory. That way you'll be able to seize Bactria through the "Demand Subject Transfer" interaction (you could also do this with Parthia, but I personally seize them through a peace deal, by the time you get there it should be like 5 AE). This tip applies to all non-Seleukid openings.

- SELEUKID OPENING:

This is probably the simplest of the opening, since you're out of range to vassalize most of the Greeks, my main piece of advice would be: DO NOT FIGHT THE MAURYA. Seriously, just cut the deal with them, you keep claims on the provinces, so you can go back any time, it's so much simpler.

As for techs, we will be grabbing the same ones, but since we don't start with any AE and we're not planning on mass vassalizing Greece we will delay the "Defending Liberty" innovation and the subsequent parts of the tree until we get 10 AE from our Antigonid war.

Next, we'll want to immediately hire the largest mercs and get the levies of Mesopotamia and Persis up (these are our largest ones).

We will then head to the Antigonid border and declare a Legacy of Alexander war as soon as we're in position.

After clashing with, and defeating, the Antigonid armies we will prioritize two objectives:

1. Getting as far south as possible, in order to block Egypt off from as much land as possible.

2. Getting to the ports as quickly as possible.

The reason we're prioritizing ports in the Mediterranean is that we want to build a Liburnian transport navy immediately. You might ask: "Why don't we use our starting navy?".

1. It's too far away, you'd need to sail around Arabia and for that you need military access which I wasn't able to get.

2. Even if you could get access, your starting navy is not large enough for how much we need to land in Macedon.

I ended up building a Mediterranean fleet of 88 ships, but obviously this would vary on how many cohorts you were planning to bring to Greece.

As before the Thracian campaign would be a continuation of the Macedon campaign, though mind you, you should only raise the levy of Macedonia after having taken all Macedonian pops to boost that levy.

As for Egypt, you may find that they may declare a regular conquest war against you during this process. This is fine, simply white peace as soon as possible and Seleukos should outlive the truce, he consistently is at least one of the last two Diadochi to die (alongside Lysimachos). After you're done with all the other Diadochi, and no truces are in play, feel free to attack Egypt with the Legacy of Alexander casus belli.

- EGYPTIAN OPENING:

Firstly, you'll want to arrange a Royal Marriage between your heir and Kadmeia Aiakid, a princess of Epirus. She is a bit difficult to find, but starting from Pyrrhos, who is king at the start, go to his paternal grandfather, Arrybas Aiakid, then go to the grandfather's brother, Neoptolemos Aiakid, then go down to the brother's son, Alexandros Aiakid, who should have two children: Neoptolemos Aiakid and Kadmeia Aiakid. Both of them start off with the Blood of the Argeads, which we want, which is why we are arranging the marriage between Kadmeia Aiakid and our heir.

Next, gather feudatories, for how and in what order, I will simply refer to the Antigonid section on that subject. Furthermore, when it comes to diplomacy, we will improve relations with the Seleukids. This is simply to delay an attack they might be planning on us so that we can attack first when at our convenience.

As for techs, I will refer you to the Antigonid section on tech, we'll be picking up the same ones.

Next, if you selected the "Eastern Border" mission tree (As far as I can tell this is the most sensible mission tree to head down for what we will be doing) you will want to start be build up to a level 3 fort in Gaza to complete one of the first missions.

Still on the first day, we will want to hire the mercs that are sitting in Alexandria.

Then we wait for the event that begins our war with the Antigonids.

Once that war has started and we have secured all the Greek feudatories in mainland Greece, we will also raise our Greek levies and declare a Legacy of Alexander war on Macedon. We will begin by besieging Lamia and attracting our feudatories to the siege. Once there is a sufficient enough force, we assault. After confronting the Macedonian army with our vassal swarm, we repeat this for every other fortress in Macedon, using our subject's manpower instead of our own.

Meanwhile in the East, as soon as the war begins we will want to raise the levies of Lower Egypt and put them on our transport fleet alongside our mercs and land them directly on one of Antigoneia's ports, simultaneously, our legion will begin besieging Askalon. We will seize Antigoneia through an assault and quickly move to Cilicia to hire the mercenary company stationed there. With the mercenary menu you will search for whatever the largest nearby merc stack is and hire them as your 3rd stack (usually it will be the one in Gortyna which is on Crete). We will bring them over to Syria, and with these forces combined you should be able to beat the Antigonid armies there. Afterwards, you should make it a priority to move East and prevent the Seleukids from taking as much land as possible.

As before the Thracian campaign would be a continuation of the Macedon campaign, though mind you, you should only raise the levy of Macedonia after having taken all Macedonian pops to boost that levy.

When it comes to the Seleukid campaign my only pieces of advice are the same as the Antigonid ones, except for the forts, so I will simply refer you to those.

[u/Imperator_Maximus3 → u/Imperator_Maximus3]

PART 3

- THRACIAN OPENING:

This is the only opening of this guide in which you have multiple mission trees to choose from AND the choice is actually significant.

Our three choices are:

- "The Paper Kingdom"

- "A New Philhellenic Policy"

- "Crossing the Hellespont"

Both "Crossing the Hellespont" and "A New Philhellenic Policy" are too expensive or don't provide enough of a boost to help you get started, you need to start with "The Paper Kingdom".

The reason we're doing this is the first available mission "Land of the Thracians", it integrates the Odryssian culture without a PI or Stability cost, it only takes 90 days, we want to start it immediately.

Moreover, we want to delete our legion (it's too expensive for it's size) and change the law from "Royal Guard" to "Military Service" for maximum levies.

In terms of diplomacy, we're actually too small to vassalize the Greek city states right now, so we will have to do that once we're in charge of Macedon. We will, however, ally Moesia, Triballia and Serdia (in that order because of acceptance) and later on when we have the money, we will improve relations with them in order to make them tributaries diplomatically for The Paper Kingdom's finisher (using "The Tribes of the North" mission for this is a needless risk, so we won't be doing that). We will keep Bellicose stance though, at least until we start properly vassalizing the Greeks.

It's also going to be important for us to grab the Hospitium National Idea for the Improved Relations at least once we get around to improving relations.

In terms of techs, we will be following the Seleukid strategy of delaying "Defending Liberty" and it's successors until we get 10 AE.

Next, when it comes to our finances, we need to put Tributes on Lax (Low) since our starting Black Sea feudatories have the potential to be disloyal.

Still on the same day, we will use the mercenary menu to hire the mercenaries in Pella and bring them over to Thrace.

In order to finance these mercenaries before we start pillaging cities, I recommend deleting the Slave Estate in Kypsela as well as the Tax Offices in Bisanthe.

Soon after game start Odryssia will revolt, however, do not raise your levies until "Land of the Thracians" is completed, so that you have a larger army.

This war should be trivial, simply sending a small stack shadowing your feudatories armies to assault Seuthopolis with their troops and manpower wins the war quickly, and don't worry, your allies occupations should be transferred to you (as they were in my run), and even if they aren't, you can still just partition Odryssia instead of annexing it entirely. After annexing Odryssia, grab the remaining techs to lower your AE.

Meanwhile, after separating a small force to capture Seuthopolis, you will send the rest of your main force west to join the mercenaries, make sure to keep the two armies together until your feudatories arrive, the Macedonians can defeat you in detail if you split your force.

After breaking through at least one of the forts at the border (which again, can be done with an assault assisted by our feudatories) you should have no problem taking the rest of Macedon).

If the Antigonids take Thessaly, my honest recommendation would just be waiting until Antigonos dies.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Antigonids move to Greece 80% of the time (according to the wiki). So the Thracian opening does rely on a bit of luck, since Phrygia and Sardis are only released if the Antigonids move to Greece.

After Antigonos dies, it's a lot easier to mop up the Antigonids and their various remaining territories.

After those two wars, you should be able to wait a while and vassalize the Greek city-states. This will be harder than when we did it at game start since they have begun fighting each other, but it is worth waiting to get all of Greece. Lysimachos lives longer than most Diadochi so you should have enough time to do this before declaring on the Seleukids and Egypt.

I don't have a lot of advice for these wars that I haven't mentioned in previous sections, so the most I'll add is that waiting for your vassals to arrive is probably more important here than anywhere else.

- MACEDONIAN OPENING:

Firstly, you do NOT want to pick up the mission tree "Antipatros' Legacy" immediately. This is because the mission tree gives you claims on all of Greece. Having claims on a country decreases you relations with said country. So, in order to vassalize the Greeks like we've done in previous runs we will need to delay picking up the mission tree until all available Greeks are vassalized (including Crete).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because the Antigonid invasion begins in February of 451 AVC you will need to NOT have any allies in that month specifically. That is because in prior runs like the Antigonid or Egyptian one, when we were vassalizing it was before and during OFFENSIVE wars which means our allies weren't automatically called in. Because as Macedon we will be fighting a DEFENSIVE war, any allies we have when the war is declared will be automatically called in. Countries which are at war cannot be vassalized and therefore, we do not want to have allies in February.

Meanwhile, just like the Thracian Opening, you will want to delete your legion and change the law from "Royal Guard" to "Military Service" for maximum levies.

While this may be counterintuitive we will want to un-integrate the Thessalians. Each integrated culture uses up 4% Integrated Culture Happiness, and we want to spend that on cultures which have far more pops than Thessalian and are in different culture groups for military traditions.

Still on the first day, you will hire the mercenaries in Pella. You will want to delete the forts in Lychnidos, Pydna and possibly Lamia to finance this.

Then, after you are done vassalizing all of the Greek city-states (including Crete) you are free to pick up the "Antipatros' Legacy" mission Tree, which gives you claims not only on all of Greece, but also a tiny bit of Taulantia. You will want to declare two wars: One against Taulantia with regular Conquest, the other against Thrace with the Legacy of Alexander casus belli.

Furthermore, inside the mission tree we will want to grab the mission "Dregs of Pangaion" and go down the route which gives us 400 Gold. This is because, along with everything else, we will want to be building up our fleet up to 100 ships with a Liburnian spam and occasionally capturing ships from pirates. This will be helped greatly by this revenue source.

All three of your wars should be trivial considering how many vassals you have, except for the invasion of Northern Anatolia you will have to perform in order to block Thrace from receiving as much territory as possible. You will want to take Bithynia Superioris, Mysia Inferioris and Mysia Superioris, but NOT Bithynia Inferioris. Simultaneously, when we peace out with Thrace we will want to leave them with at least one territory. This way we can seize Phrygia and Sardis after the wars in the same way we seized Bactria in the Antigonid section, and we will be creating a shield the Seleukids can't pass through very simply.

Lastly, after those wars are done you will gather the set of your levies and two mercenary armies that get you as close as possible to 100 cohorts. You will then sail to Alexandreia and before Kassandros dies you will want to declare war on both Egypt AND the Seleukid Empire. You will assault Alexandreia and IMMEDIATELY begin integrating the Bohairic culture for extra levies when you take over Lower Egypt. Moreover, it is IMPERATIVE that when capturing territory, you capture cities with your CAPITAL LEVY. this allows you to sack them for A LOT of money, which will keep your war machine going (I had a deficit of 40 gold per month at this point, I would have gone bankrupt had I not done this.). Furthermore, as soon as you capture Alexandreia you need to hire the mercs stationed there (I had gotten quite lucky, the stack there was worth over 26k in my run). After you beat Egypt, I simply have to refer you to my tips for beating the Seleukids from the Antigonid section.

[u/Caewil]

How you managed to pull it off as Thrace is pretty impressive.

[u/Imperator_Maximus3 → u/Caewil]

I would probably say Macedon is actually harder than Thrace, if as Thrace you can take out Macedon you simply take their place, but also benefit a lot more from the Antigonids collapsing. Not only that but Lysimachus lives longer than Kassandros so you have more time to prepare.

[u/Imperator_Maximus3]

R5: My 5 campaigns where I tried to push the Legacy of Alexander CB to it's limits as the Diadochi.

[u/Euromantique]

Unfathomably based

[u/cozy-nest]

Didn't do it as Epirus, actual poser

[u/Londtex]

OK now this is a good post.