Pros.
New tecnology tree. Spartans are kinda cool. Interesting canpaign.

Cons.
You can't play as any of the new factions in the grand campaign. You have to download a mod to play as the new factions in custom games. The new unit roster is extremely small. Very expensive (15 euros)

Basically Sega is a money ♥♥♥♥♥

This is a good DLC. It is a REALLY good DLC if you like Ancient Greeks, hoplites and what not. This DLC takes place during the Peloppenisian Wars, and it allows you to take command of four major Greek city states: Sparta, Athens, Corinth and Thebes. It's good stuff.


Now-on an aside: I don't understand all the hate for this DLC. Ever since Rome2 first came out, members of its community were complaining, and BEGGING C.A. for "Greeks with corinthian helmets", and "an expansion based in the Peloppenisian War." So when C.A. releases this-what do these same idiots do? They complain about " lack of unit variety". What did they expect-ALL of the Greek cities used basic army formats.


So don't listen to all of the idiotic, "thumbs down" reviews. This is a good expansion, and it is worth the money.

I, like many people, was VERY excited for this DLC!!!!! But I'm sad to say, at this moment in time, it’s not really where I had hoped to see it.
ISSUES
-Campaign imbalance
About ten turns in Thebes and their little league swept Athens and despite the game saying there is a penalty for taking capitals, they received no such diplomatic penalty for taking Athens!
It seems that one faction will always just sweep, way too early in the game.
-Lack of custom battle support/Historical Battles
I would love to take the few things i do enjoy of this DLC in to multiplayer or evenjust custom battle, but we don't get such an option. Furthermore, there has been a complete absence of Historical battles in this DLC, which is just plain lazy when you consider they've been included in all past DLC campaigns. (Xangelo7)

-Battles
In a DLC revolving around hoplite battles, I really hoped they would bring back good hoplite mechanics like Rome 1, but I found no such luxury, it’s still the mess that is base game hoplite phalanx. Other than this, it’s actually not too bad in battles, if you’ve played the base game, you know what you’re getting into, like it or not.
-Factions
I can certainly see how 4 playable factions in going to get pretty dry, at a time where you have unique city states far and wide, it would’ve been nice to explore the different cities and carve their destinies out yourself, but instead we're left with 4 factions who lack very many unique units. I understand the military structure of the time meant very similar armies as far as unit style, but visually they could’ve made unique hoplites for each faction?
-City models
Despite recognizing that Athens had a very unique city design in the campaign map, It's battle map is 100% recycled from the base game, which is pretty lazy on their behalf, furthermore Sparta has walls, which some people won't mind, but I'm sure others won’t be too pleased to see that. To make matters worse, this walled version of Sparta is ALSO just a recycled map from grand campaign.
-Buildings
There is no new buildings in this DLC, furthermore, there is less buildings for these factions than there was in the base game, which is disappointing to see. More structures to reflect the golden age of Greece would’ve been nice.
GOOD THINGS!
-New Map
The new map is very detailed and is a very nice reflection of Greece and the eastern colonies!
-New unit looks
Despite not having unique looking hoplites and shields for each city state, they certainly look of the classical era, and ill credit them for that.
-Calendar
Both the game speed and the many calendar events are interesting and very fitting, it certainly is classical Greece.
-Naval Combat
The naval combat seems a touch more refined, and with the transport nerf, it’s finally starting to find its role in Rome 2.
Persian invasion
-This is a pretty cool new feature, and when combined with worrying about civil war and your conquests, it means there is a lot of threats in your campaign to watch for.

All in all, it’s not too bad, but I certainly don’t think its 100% ready, a lot of elements come off as kind of lazy, and its disappointing to see that, hopefully after a few patches the DLC will be a touch more worthwhile. That’s just my opinion as someone who LOVES Hellenic factions and has played quite some time in the game!

Let me begin by saying that I have put in well over 200 hours into R2. I experienced some of the issues others had, but was still able to garner a good experience from playing. I objectively read the forums of the rants and raves from both sides and saw validity in some of the things both parties had to say. For me...Rome 2 ended up being a great time and CA has been good about patching and updating the game. I have held off on buying much of the DLC for the simple reason that much of it didn't really add appeal to teh game for me personally and so I held off. This DLC caught my eye and with the potential of Attila on the horizon...I pulled the trigger and paid 13 bucks and change for WOS. I have to admit...I am dissapointed with it.

Is it broken..no....does it have many bugs....no....problem is....it just doesn't bring anything to the table. It's a tad bit boring to be honest. Now...for some, it will be a fresh introduction to Greek culture...but it just doesn't offer much to me. I felt like I was playing the same game...I wasn't immersed into the Greek mythos like I expected. Maybe I was expecting too much, but 13-15 bucks is alot to pay for DLC. Will I buy Attila when it comes out...yes. I almost pulled the trigger on preordering, but I think I will wait for reviews now. I have always supperted Creative Assembly, but I think they need to take a look at their marketing strategy and decide how they want to pull themselves out of this "lull" in quality.

I am not bashing...just hopeful and want them to succeed. We all know what they are capable of...lets hope Atilla can bring back the mojo...:)

forget what the haters say about this DLC. This is historically accurate, what do people expect the same kind of unit variety as normal rome 2? NO this is just focused on the famous Peloponnesian wars. So expect large hoplite battles with limited unit rosters TRUE TO HISTORY. Th e DLC adds 4 new factions. Pre-Rome Atheni, Pre-Rome Sparta, Boition league, Korinthian league. the sparta and atheni factions rosters ae quite different from the standard rome 2 rosters in that they have new units and reskinned old units from base game. For example Marines feature heavily in the DLC. no longer are Marines classified as hte same type of unit as in rome 2 when they are on ships. The campaign is amazing and has plenty of new wonders and an entire new tech tree. Greece is very mountainous expect hilly battles!.

THE BAD: the new factions are only avalible through campaign officially. however MODS unlock them for custom battle. interesting to pit ancient ancient sparta against rome era sparta XD.

MUST HAVE MODS FOR THIS DLC:

You must have the custom battle mod in th workshop for this. so you can play as the new factions, similar to how there was a mod for imperator augustus to unlock the 4 roman factions.

MINOR FACTIONS MOD. this mod is simply awesome. this expands the DLC an insane amount by adding over 28 minor factions to be playable! such as hellenic barbarian thraike (thrace/oddrysian kingdom) Persian Empire, Ancient Macedon and even the horse lords of thessaly. This is very fun as lots of the minor factions that were unplayble now made playable have unique units. dont worry about getting steam rolled by the AI most of the minor factions start off with great positions and perfect points to craft an empire. i mean hey? i played as Knossos (crete island) in normal rome 2 and conquered an empire stretching from britain to baktria! its entirely possible!


Thats it! this campaign is a hell of a lot more challenging then the other DLC campaigns and feels a bit like Shogun 2 because of the whole civil war thing and vey tight spaces. War will always be on your doorstep, unless you play as Melos the minor faction who start in the middle of the aegean sea perfect for taking Atheni colonies

Ok lets start with this DLC, the last dlc of rome 2 total wars, the game that many of its fans got angry at first when they played the game. The dlc is not bad at all. By getting this dlc you get big maps, greeks regions,new greeks factions,new events, new units and other stuffs that im gonna explain a bit more about them. you can start the campaign with 4 greeks faction.

One of the bad things about this dlc is you cant play as persian however they have a great role in gameplay of campaign, but thanks to modder because of making a Persian and other factions playable in game. There are a also so many mods that can improve your Campaign gameplay such as new units reskins, new factions, less agents and....

Some people are cry and whine about lack of unit variation, but remember, this is accurate historically, the greeks were constantly fighting eachother and they didn't all have completely different armies.

Campaign gameplay is pretty good, however sometimes become imbalance. playing on very hard or legendary difficulty make the game impossible to finish which i really liked it cuz i usually play on hardest difficulty. The big challenge is specializing our armies into either better hoplites, cavalry or ranged than your opponents. The campaign itself also has some cool mechanics like the festivals and the suddenly-persia-war-declaration.

some other things are just enjoyable in this campaign. for example there are a lots of Ancient greek games that happen every few years such as Olympics games, Pythian games, nemean games and others which are really pleasant. also the campaign has some new events that really good during gameplay.

Now its time for pros and cons from my opinions:

PROS:
.Ancient Greek setting
.Some new units
.New Tech Trees
.New factions
.New seasonal events, The new Seasonal effect they put into this campaign are great. Winter makes a huge difference on your economy and army mobility
.Panhellenic Games and Festivals ( which i loved it )
.New maps
.Persian invasion
.Peloponnesian War
.Greco-Persian Wars
.some new really amazing wonders
.ships have finally a really good function and are not totally useless

now we come to CONS:
.NO historical battles which is really bad and just show how lazy CA is
.Not too many new units for some people who might not like it
.Lack of custom battles support but still you can get some few factions by mods
.Lack of Persians armour design. Dariush the great and xerxes looks like a nomadic farmers :/

and thats it for cons! the dlc is pretty good tbh. I dont know why some people didnt like it and just hate it. This is a good DLC people! It is a REALLY good DLC if you like Ancient Greeks, hoplites, SPARTA, Peloponnesian War. Good campaign in almost every aspect. So forget what haters say about this awesome dlc, you should really have to try it by yourself and dont listen to those ungrateful fans.

you can wait for sale or buy game anytimes, Its your money and you have choice but i will highly recommend this dlc, you won't regret :)

9/10.

I bought this on sale for 50% off, if you are considering buying this WAIT FOR A SALE!! You do not want to be paying $15 for this. This is way too incomplete for that much money.

Now, to start off - I will say that I did have some fun with this campaign - I do think it could be worst but nonetheless I really can't reccommend it. It's just way too shallow. I'll explain.

Basically, here are the reasons why this Campaign has/had potential to be fun:
*Ancient Greek setting
*Hoplite battles
*Nice map
*Neat seasonal events


Now, here's why this Campaign is an unfinished rip-off:

*First DLC campaign pack to not feature historical battles, yet has the same price as them.

*Claims 50 new units, this is a hilariously bad lie. And the Unit diversity in this campaign is a joke. Every faction except Sparta has copy+paste hoplites, light hoplites, picked hoplites, and militia hoplites. Sparta has essentially the same thing except with different names and cool Spartan unit skins. Every Greek faction has the same 2 cavalry units to choose from except the Boetian league who has 1 more which is just a slightly buffed hippeus. The only unique thing Athens has is marines for navy. This creates a boring situation where basically once you've played one greek state you've played them all, with Sparta being the only remotely different faction.
This is made worst by only having 4 playable factions, but the AI Factions have essentially the same 6 copy and pasted units Corinth has, which is to say no unique units, just 4 different grades of hoplite, 2 cavs, and a few ranged unit options. The one and only exception to most of this is Persia, who has a unique unit roster and is diverse and different from the other factions by quite a bit but is unplayable(why??) so it hardly matters.
Now I haven't brought up mercenary units, which does provide *some* diversity but only some, because there aren't very many mercenary options. And for some reason these mercenary units aren't part of the rosters of the lands they're from. Kretan Archers aren't found in the roster for any of the factions in Crete! This is just lazy.

*The AI for the campaign map isn't good and things aren't set right. Athens doesn't know what it's doing. And the game is supposed to be set up so that there are bad consequences for taking a major faction's capital. However this does not stop the AI from conquering Athens and when said AI does this it doesn't suffer from any diplomatic penalty with everyone. It basically just affects you which is silly.

*Historical Inaccuracy. For one, there's a historical Athenian Admiral who is in Corinth's navy. Sacred Band is absent from the game but for some reason Theban Hippeus makes an appearance. All just lazy stuff.

This campaign had very little effort put into it and is charging the same price as the other DLCs. If you haven't been convinced to not buy this you should wait for it to be on sale so at least you can keep some dignity.

Yes, overall I would recommend this campaign to others, but do your homework before buying.

If you were to ask WoS what its profession was, it would tell you that it is a baker, or a potter, compared to Grand Campaign, or one of the other add-ons like Hannibal at the Gates which in my opinion would shout "Harooh! Harooh! Harooh!"

WoS puts a magnifying glass over Ancient Greece, and let me say the campaign map itself is really cool and fresh to play on. The starting positions for all the factions are pretty much right on top of each other, but theres plenty of room to grow without upsetting your important neighbors if you strategize.

A new element is that you are penalized for capturing the four main capital cities: Athenai, Sparta, Thebai, and Korinthos, which changed up how I normally play Rome II because instead of steam rolling through capitals, you have to throttle the life out of enemy factions by stripping them of their minor cities. Of course, what you will soon find out is that the AI factions can conquer the capital cities with no penalty, which kind of bugged me a little. I wished CA would have figured out a way to give the AI the steep penalty.

WoS armies take longer to muster, since each turn is technically only a month. So expect cheap troops to take two turns to muster, and your better troops to take four turns. This may frustrate players trying to expand aggressively quickly, but this adds a new layer of strategy to Rome II, since full 20 stack armies can take 12+ turns to build sometimes.

As for battles, I agree with reviewers who say that the unit selection is pretty bland or transparent. You basically get 4 different levels of hoplites with slightly different stats, some archers, javelins and some calvary. It took some getting used to in order to play these battles compared to the regular game, since without sword units in Greece to cut through hoplites, hoplites wittle each other down slower than grass grows. I admit, I find myself playing most battles on triple speed, because the length of the combat wears off after playing more than 3 battles in one sit-down. I do like how this forced me to play a little out of my comfort zone. I actually had to strategically use peltast troops now and try to position them in the flanks of the units, as these can easily help route units. Positioning of your units matters even more since the game takes away the rock, paper, scissors effect created when sword units are in play. The heavy horse calvary can also help if you charge them into the back of a hoplite unit, but you have to babysit them because they very quickly get slaughtered. I am playing WoS on Legendary and enemy units typically refuse to break until almost the last man as long as they have friendly units nearby, so this puts horses for the most part in skirmisher-hunting-only duties.

I really like the idea of the threat of Persia looming off in the distance but I feel they could be stronger. I played through one campaign as Korinthos, and within a handful of turns since Persia "activated" Sparta and some other factions had entirely wiped them off the map. I am currently playing again as Athenai and although Persia has not activated yet, I am hoping I get to actually fight some Persians.

I like the little tweaks to the buildings in cities and the skills of generals. I like how docks contribute to your food total, and that it just seems like food management is much easier in WoS. I like how the general's skills increase attack, defence, and ammo supply of their armies.

All the factions use the same research tech tree, but I like how they set it up. The military tree is based around hoplites, naval, and missile branches.

It is not dramatically better, but I feel like diplomacy makes a little bit more sense, since I feel other factions have a higher chance to trade with you. It makes sense that the other factions would consider trading goods if it benefits themselves too, instead of refusing because we are neutral and not friendly.

Naval battles are better with WoS update. Attacking a unguarded fleet of transports is easier thanks to the fact that transport boats can no longer ram you back. Theres something really special about sinking a fleet of 20 units with less than 10 naval boats.

Overall, I recommend this to any Rome Total War II fan looking for something slighty different. I was fine with the price for what you actually get, and seeing as how i have dumped probably 20+ hours into WoS, and Im only around half down with it, I think the cost for it was worth it.

WoS is not a game changer by any means. If you played Rome II and you dislike it, do not dust it off to play this. However it deserves to be called a fair addition for those who are looking for more to do in TWRII.

To quickly summarize:

Buy this now if:
* You love TWRII and want more of it.
* The idea of a full campaign featured around Greece interests you.
* You are looking for something to do before Attila comes out.
* Small tweaks are enough to satisfy you.

Buy this on sale if:
* Reading other reviews and doing some homework, you feel you do not want to spend the full price.
* You have not yet played Hannibal at the Gates or Caesar in Gaul.
* You own the Greece Faction pack for grand campaign.

Skip this one for now if:
*The idea of much slower paced battles sounds bad to you.
* You are expecting/want a super cool diverse greek roster between the playable factions.
* You are looking for new factions to play in Grand Campaign (Since WoS does not add new factions to GC)
* You can not properly hold a shield.


7/10

What hurts this DLC most is the bland armies that each faction produces. All factions except Persia and Sparta, have the exact same roster, fielding just 13 units including naval units. 4 types of hoplites, 3 missiles, 2 cavalry and 4 naval. You don't recieve the factions for multiplayer either, they are locked to the campaign only.

The culture system has been removed creating more dull campaign gameplay and agents become extremely powerful after 80 turns, with most nations fielding as many 10 star agents as possible constantly slowing your armies to a stand still.

Wait for mods to diversify the armies more, adding more diverse hoplites that will increase the enjoyment of battles.

Check out my video review for every detail this pack has to offer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC11O-3XAxE

Not what I expected.

I always assumed there'd be some overlap with this and the Greek States DLC (which already gave you Sparta, Athens, and Epirus). But the overlap is tremendous, to the point that the rosters are virtually identical to what you already have if you got the Greek States DLC. Sure, there's a new unit or two on each roster, but the rosters are virtually unchanged... except they actually lack some units from the Greek States DLC (i.e. pikemen, notably, though this is likely to reflect the time period being hundreds of years into the past from the Greek States DLC).

And the new sides? Can't play them in custom battle, only in WoS campaign.

Overall, it's not a bad campaign thus far, and the long time it takes to recruit units means destroying an opposing army is actually an accomplishment for once (every other campaign the AI can get a whole new 20-stack in as little as 4 or 5 turns depending on how many mercenaries they take). Really, there's some nice tweaks and interesting rule-changes (like having to NOT take enemy capitals of major factions, since it causes a large diplo hit).

But it's a bit of a shock to have nothing new for either Custom Battle or the Grand Campaign when every other campaign DLC added such things. Plus, the claim that there are 50 new units is, uh, not exactly true: if you own the Greek States DLC, you already can play with most of the units that this adds. Sure, if you don't own the Greek States DLC, then the units are sort-of new... I say sort-of because you still played *against* those units in past, even without Greek States DLC.

Really, it's not a bad campaign at all, and I would recommend it for that alone except that I feel like there needed to be more explicit mention, on the store page, that the '50 new units' are only new if you didn't own the Greek States DLC.