I decided to start up a new Philip campaign (gold edition) a few days ago, after reading the Rome announcement. I still love this game, and even though I've played through the campaign a couple of times, I still find myself enjoying it a lot.

I have my own preferred order of conquest, at least in the early game, where I usually start with Eordea, Elimea and Heraclea Lyncestis, then move south through Olooson and take northern and western Thessaly. Then I take Methone and Pydna, as well as the cities south of them along the coast to Thessaly. Then I move into Chacidice, although staying south of the mountains, and stopping before reaching Bisaltia and Amphipolis. Then I take the last Macedonian towns to the west, and move into Paeonia. After that, I usually have enough men to comfortably start attacking on several fronts. Sometimes I go for Illyria, other times I start moving south or east.

Anyway, I've been wondering to what extent this is historical. In what order did Philip do all this stuff? If anyone knows I'd be interested to hear. It would have been nice if a rough timeline was included in the in-game manual. Maybe this could be included in Rome?

After temporarily dealing with the threats to his kingship, making truces with the Illyrians and Paeonians and convincing the Athenians and Western Odryssians to withdraw support from their respective pretenders, Philip's first target was Paeonia. The Paeonian king Agis had died, so Philip moved in and subdued the whole country before turning to the Illyrians, who still controlled the western Macedonian cities. After driving the Illyrians out, defeating Bardylis in one large battle apparently, he attacked Amphipolis. Of course historically Philip had control of eastern Macedonia, so there weren't hours, I mean years, of fighting to get there. One of the reasons Athens had made a truce with Philip previously was because Philip had pulled Macedonian troops out of Amphipolis and dropped his claims to the city, so Philip was basically back at war with them. So he took Pydna and Potidea, Athenian controlled cities, handing Potidea over to the Chalcidian League to improve relations with them. After this Philip became directly involved in Thessaly, intervening after the assassination of Alexander of Pherae. The rest is history. Hah.
Here's a link to the whole text of Diodorus Siculus, probably the most extensive source on the period: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/16A*.html

Thanks a lot. That's exactly the sort of info I was looking for.

I just now opened the pdf manual, and to my great shame, it actually contains a timeline. I don't know why I thought it didn't. :)