[Prince Toad]

Well, Creative Assembly has released a new expansion pack for Rome: Total War. This one centers around Alexander the Great's earth-shattering conquest of Persia, the superpower of his time, as well as some outlying Indian states. The map shifts far to the east to match his exploits, stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. There are over 60 new units, according to the site; there are also six historical battles, which must be unlocked sequentially. To get it, you download it from the site for 15 bucks-- good deal, if you ask me, especially since Rome is by far one of my favorite games.

I only got it tonight, so I don't have much personal experience with it. I beat the first two historical battles, Chaeronea and the Granicus River, and those were fun. Supposedly, the campaign is extremely difficult, which should be interesting. I've noticed that the AI is smarter in combat-- they'll block up chokepoints, for instance. Between the overwhelming superiority of Persia, and the improved AI, I'm hoping for a real challenge... the original and BI were not that difficult. (Although, I did keep battle difficulty on normal, because it doesn't change the AI, just the enemy's stats. But I did eventually put campaign difficulty up to Very Hard so I'd be fighting bigger armies, and that made the game more fun.)

I'll probably update this as I play the game. Has anyone else gotten it? Thoughts?

edit: Well, first update. I beat Halicarnassus, which was hard as hell. Freaking Persians come from everywhere, and hit you hard. It took me two tries to figure it out. Basically, I hung back and chased away their horse archers with hypaspists, archers, and javelinmen... between all those units, and their random light cavalry that fly out of the woods without warning, the situation managed to sort itself out. Kinda. Alexander had to deal with some of their light cavalry later on. Then they sent out their general and heavy Bactrian cavalry, but they weren't too tough with my phalangites and Alexander. Eventually, I had some hypaspists try to put up ladders... they made it most of the way and then sort of didn't feel like it anymore, so they just got killed by the archers on the walls. So I had a phalangite unit put up those ladders, and another unit put up ladders on the other side... it took three or four of them to take the walls, but it wasn't much of a problem and I had three basically full units when it was done, plus two medium-strength ones and two beat-up ones. After that the Persians were dumb enough to send some of their Greek mercenaries against my phalangites in the narrow streets, which didn't work out well for them. I had to deal with that a few times on the way, but when I eventually made it to the town square, I'd more or less won. It was just a matter of riding down the unit of archers they had sitting there, then flanking and crushing the remaining spearmen. The last unit was one of those damn horse archers that cause so much trouble early on... they couldn't do anything but watch as my phalanxes lowered their spears and advanced... they were all duly impaled. Issus is up next. Haven't seen the battlefield yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

edit: Okay... Issus is utterly impossible. I have 600 men to defeat 2100 Persians. Not even 600 tough elites, either. 240 relatively inexperienced phalangists, 70 of Alexander's personal heavy cavalry, 70 random other heavy cavalry, and some crappy hypaspists, archers, and javelinmen. I have to cross a river and defeat a Persian force three times my size (200 of them are slingers that start on my side of the river, and are easily dealt with via cavalry charge) with a tiny, poor army. Alexander does kick serious ass, but he can't do it all by himself, and none of the other units-- not even the phalangists, which are supposed to be the backbone of my army-- are reliable. Gah.