First Impressions

[Veho Nex]

My personal rundown goes like this;

The good:
-A lot of people are complaining about compatibility but in my own experience the only lag I get is in battles with 10,000 men or when I'm streaming on vh graphics or higher.
-I enjoy the look and atmosphere of battles. Ive had more interesting fights against the AI in this in hard than on legendary and I think I might stick with that.
-My favorite part of the game at this moment are the combined naval land battles. The management can get a bit much when both fights are going at the same time and naval battles are a bit wonky but the tactical level it brings to the table more than makes up for it.
-The campaign AI has actually caught me by surprise a few times when it moved a large stack by my armies to besiege one of my vulnerable cities or attack me from behind.
-The campaign map is massive. When i first started I was shocked when I first moved the camera to the edge of the map. You can go pretty far east and north which would allow for some crazy empires
The Bad:
-The research trees are way to small for the scale and scope of the game. When I go from hastati to first cohorts by turn 20 I feel like I'm teching faster than anyone can keep up. With the ability to just keep researching into higher tiers without having any requirements allows for one to max out the military by turn 50 and work on economy after that.
-Spartans are all but unkillable. I understand they are a warrior elite, but, when a unit of war elephants hits them from behind while they are being worked over from the front by Macedonian pikes and they still come out on top with minimal losses it just makes you go batty.
-Some factions dont have enough unit diversity while others, e.g Rome/Carthage, have way too many. I hate to say it but Rome's 60 different auxiliary units get kinda old fast.
-Naval battles are odd. Maybe I just dont understand how they work or ramming doesnt do as much as it should. Either way they are weird.

The Ugly:
-Factions are missing units that they should be able to make. Athens, despite showing in the in-game wiki, has no ability to make low level melee ships. Their Assault Diremes - Militia Hoplites don't exist in any area except for the wiki.
-The battles are a blob of units looking at each other with 1 or 2 of 160 attacking at once. I don't understand how the units die so quick when so few on either side attack.
-Turns take too long to complete.

All in all I'm enjoying the game but I'm definitely waiting for a patch or two before I will recommend it.