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Got it last night. I was thinking $15 was too pricey, but then again, i spent that exact amount on lunch with a female colleague just that day. So why not?

My overall impression is good. The map is smaller but somehow I found it more immersive than Rome 2 standard. Perhaps it was the long break I took from the game, but somehow the sounds of everyday life we hear from here and there, the changing of seasons (1 turn = 1 month), the flavour text, they all fit. Ancient Greece comes alive before your eyes and it just feels so good. Upon clickng on a settlement for the first time we get historical information about it from the advisor. Now that's something that makes it even better for me.

I don't even need to lead battles to enjoy it, the strategic and diplomatic aspects of the game are what I enjoy most anyway. I didn't have much time to play, but I do have a gripe with it. Athenai has been set up as this garand "villain" of sorts. Having direct ownership over some key settlements, it is pretty much stated that we need to make leagues and allies and coallitions and whatnot to try and contest their hegemony, particualrly their incredible navy.

I was like "OK, so here's the plan. Make a fleet, make a land army of elite units, sail for Athens, capture outlying settlements, go for the Coup-de-Grace and capture Athens."

I went for a tier 3 barracks which was completely unecessary, since I can recruit Spartan Hoplites and Helot Archers from a tier 2 one. I did make a big fleet. FYI fleets offer a lot more value in this campaign as I'd say 70% of the settlements are coastal. The low movement speed and horrid combat stats of transports also play a key role in incrasing the value of warships.

Anyway, by the time I was ready to go and fight my arch nemessis for the dominance of Hellas, the Ionian Leage had gutted them. Lol. I found a starving Ionian army in Athens. I conqured some settlements with my fleet and then got oblitherated by two stacks of ships from an enemy coallition I had paid no heed to at all. My land army was stuck somewhere around Athens due to losing a lot of movement points embarking and while at sea (which is a good thing IMO, I still remember how stupid it felt at Rome 2 release when my legions could basically walk from Rome to Carthage at no extra movement cost)

Anyway, it is then when I had to stop because it was already 3 AM, and I will start a new game and have plenty of time to play during the holidays.

But please CA, when you set up this grand conflict between major players in the region, make sure they are actually powerful. This reeks of 1 province African minors destroying Egypt and Carthage in the main campaign.

And why was the Ionian league starving? It had 6 or so settlements!

As a side note, this campaign will make for a killer sucession game.

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Honga.net has the unit stats up.


Basically only a few unique units for Sparta, unique Persia roster, Thrace very Thracian.
The other Greek factions have exactly same roster except for only 1 unit in the other 3 playable factions.

All the Greek factions get:
Picked Hoplites (Royal Spartans for Sparta) for General

Archer
Javelin
Slinger
(Helot variants for Sparta)

Heavy cav
Light cav
(+Theban cav for Boiotians)

Picked Hoplites (Royal Spartans)
Hoplites (Spartan Hoplites)
Light Hoplites (Periokoi Hoplites?)
Militia Hoplites (Skiritai & Spartan Youths?)

Armored Marine Trireme for Admiral (Spartan Marines for Sparta)
Archer Triremes
Javelin Triremes
Light Marine Triremes
Armored Marine Triremes
(Sparta only gets Spartan Marines Trireme & Archer Diere)


Same group of Mercanaries available everywhere
Agranian Axes
Rhodian Slingers
Cretan Archers
Thracian Peltasts
Ionian Cav


So not much in the way of variety in unit types.
Which is pretty much correct historically by my understanding.

But kinda boring as hell which is why I've always been pretty luke warm on the idea of Peloponnesian War as a Total War setting.

I had really expected them to manage a bit more unit variety than this.
Might be good/new skin variety & I haven't actually compared stats so it could be that there is variance in quality between factions?


Map looks to be more complex than the previews seemed to indicate, most of the islands are separate regions.
Persia has quite a lot of land on Asia Minor, as does Ionian League.
Could be interesting how they play out, whether passive or aggressively involved & how much scripting of Diplomatic status between the Greek factions goes on.

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The map is strategically challenging due to the way movement points work. The Ionians are the hidden power of the region, similar to RTW launch Adriaei.

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Myth, how is the unit variety to your liking? I know there are a lot of complaints about this and I imagine that its a quick fix using mods, but what are your opinions on it?

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Poke poke poke poke.. row, row, poke poke... You'd think someone back then figured out something that works better against masses of spear armed people than... n+1 people armed with spears.

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n + 2 people armed with spears ;)

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And some unmanly missile/cav here & there.

Specifically the value of the Peltast against unsupported Hoplites was one of the key military lessons of the war.

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I haven't built all buildings yet. Got a visitor so I won't be able to play until Saturday/Sunday. I would say it is lower than R2TW standard overall, but Sparta has decent cavalry now so the fation itself has been made more diverse. I want to see if Royal Spartans have a limit on max unit numbers. Also I haven't seen if Heroes of Sparta are in the game.

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What this campaign really needed was more factions on release. I think with the zoomed in campaign map you could have some intense head to head campaigns with friends/foes. With only four factions, and ones that are all neighbors, to choose from it gets kinda boring fast. The campaign had some serious potential. I think they could have added unit variety by including "hero" or just named units for the factions as well having the ability to turn units into heroes for their actions on the field. I think that kind of setup would have worked perfectly for this campaign.

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Agreed. Thankfully it seems like most of that can be rectified by modders, considering they made all factions playable in the GC and added named units as well.

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To be fair, they are close by but separated by choke points and other factions. The unplayable factions are no pushovers either.

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Athens gets slayed in about 10 turns in every game Ive played with them. Then there is Sparta, Korinthos, and Boiolation League start the game practically in a military alliance with everyone around them. You are then rapidly stuck with two options. Diplomatic penalties for slaying your fellow greeks or spend the entire game with your empire fractured.

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"“A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line.” - Plutarch"

The Greek answer to the increasing scale and organisation of warfare throughout the 1st millenium BC was the Hoplite. Citizen warriors, they were trained at the expense of the state, though like the Republican Romans, hoplites provided and cared for their own weapons and armour. Good armour and weapons were expensive, so the majority of hoplites were drawn from the middle classes of Greek society.

While styles changed over time and richer citizens had access to more decorative and protective brass armour pieces, the typical hoplite was clad in in linothorax and helmet, and carried a spear in his right hand and a hoplon shield in his left. This offered him and the man to his left protection, creating a defensive wall in the closed ranks of the phalanx. Hoplites also carried a short sword, which might be adopted in the crush of extended melee.

The finest veteran hoplites were chosen from the ranks and formed units of their own, to be deployed where they might swing the tide of battle. To be a Picked Hoplite was a great honour that came with a great responsibility: to succeed in battle where others would fail.

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Funny how in the actual game, throwing missiles at hoplites is exactly the kind of thing you want missile units to do to waste their ammo.

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Also the only proper Peltasts are Thracian/Thracian Mercs.

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I find the agent spam is still as annoying as ever, the campaign as a whole though has been rather fun so far. It's 430BC and I'm being attacked everywhere by Sparta and their allies. My Athenian empire is sprawled out all over the map and I've lost at least 4 settlements to Sparta or one of her allies.

In short, I find this a rather fascinating campaign primarily because I'm losing it. My strategy at this point is to retrench to a core group of settlements and expand out from there (only not take the home city of the main combatants if I can remember which those are, that should be listed in the campaign objectives given what I understand to be a severe diplomatic penalty if you take them).

This is proving to be another enjoyable DLC for me, and as expected infinitely more entertaining than the GC which I consider easily the most boring thing CA has ever created.

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Which is how the Peloponnesian war went. Athens over stretched it self and got smacked down by the other major poleis led by Sparta.

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Yeah, but in 10 turns?

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So, it's 429BC, I've been busy mostly losing settlements to the Sparta alliance, but I've also made some progress returning the favor, so we are at a bit of an impasse, one though I feel with time I can break open.

Take a look at this picture though and see if you can identify what the real problem is looming on the horizon:

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So, am I the only one playing this then?

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Coming back to R2 after a long hiatus, still playing around with EE GC and the Augustus campaign. Just haven't gotten around to WoS yet. Will probably do so before Attila comes out. Looks fairly interesting.

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I'm enjoying it, playing as Athens is rather challenging, bit like stepping into a Realm Divide situation from turn one, only with a couple allies of your own (just the closest people nearby and even right by your capital are after you from the outset).

What my picture above shows is something I suspect prove a problem soon, while the Greeks are sparring with each other diminishing themselves the Persians have shown up on scene (orange above) and are rolling over the map currently (that expansion took place over like one year). I'd heard people say they won this w/o ever seeing them, I don't see that being a problem, but actually the reverse because I suspect the units they field aren't going to prove easily dealt with by what I've got.

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I assumed that was Persia over in Asia. Obviously not having played WoS, I have no idea whether that's a problem or not.

I'm certainly no expert on the period, but from what little I've read, one might expect a significant proportion of Greek mercenary infantry among the Persian order of battle. Apparently they started doing this pretty regularly not too long after the Marathon-Plataea period, at least in that part of their empire. In other words, the Persian armies might not be THAT much different from your own (assuming CA's representation is historical...which is a big assumption).

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That's potentially good news then, I suspect before this campaign is over I'll get the opportunity to inspect the makeup of the armies they field rather closely on the battlefield.

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Persian unit roster http://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/...=pel_persia&i=

Looks like the classic Greek vs Persia sort of thing:
Persia has pretty weak Spear/Melee infantry but should be able to afford lots of it.
Lots of Cav, lots of Missile & probably better than the Greek cav/missiles.

Greeks get tough Spear Infantry but not much else & probably will have smaller numbers.


So sit in the open & get missiled to death, same if you chase them around the map.

But if you can bring them to close combat the Greek infantry should win handily.

There are no Mercenary Hoplites.

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When has TW AI ever been able to handle a tough strategic situation well?

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Persia is supposed to be Wrath of Sparta's "oh shoot they are getting too strong we should slow them down" faction. It only attacks after a certain level of imperium.

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Hmm, well, they certainly aren't waiting around in my campaign, I'm not that high on imperium. And Persia is busy attacking as you can see by the map turning orange, so when you say they only attack after a certain level of imperium is that against the human?

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Btw, I'm starting to make some ground in my campaign finally. I decided to say the heck with the diplomacy penalty and started after some capitol cities near Athens that were causing me no end of grief, I figured what difference does it make if I take a server diplomacy hit from someone I have every intention of wiping off the face of the earth.

Got a question though, I think since the last patch maybe the corruption is out of control, it's running like 50%, and no matter what I'm researching it doesn't appear to be making much of a dent. Is corruption the new squalor that you're just stuck with or has anyone figured out a solution to this?

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I've noticed the same thing about corruption with EE, both in the Augustus campaign and even more so in the GC. I've hit as high as 78% corruption in some recent games, despite going quite high in the legal tech tree. I used to get Economic Victory somewhat regularly, but not since EE came out. Must admit I haven't really tried to do so yet and I'm sure it's do-able with some dedicated effort, but a 90,000 income seems rather daunting.

Edit: also occurs to me that an Eco-Victory would be quite difficult to obtain in Augustus anyway, due to the "Number of Trading Partners" requirement. Seems like mid/late-stage Augustus campaigns devolve to fewer available factions on the map to trade with. Which makes sense, with the various Roman factions starting with so much territory (And Antony/Lepidus, unlike Octavian, seem to do a pretty consistent job of keeping themselves more or less intact as long as the player doesn't mess with them).

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