That is, if the enemy can find you.

In the campaign missions, this isn’t too difficult. The enemy soldiers either travel in clumps, scripted to do particular things at particular times, or they trickle out in tiny bands to harass you while you burn their city to the ground. But in the skirmish game, the terrible pathfinding means that if you don’t mind babysitting your troops, you have an unfair advantage over an enemy that will get stuck in mountain passes or move single file through the gaps between buildings. And that depends on whether or not the AI decides to put up a fight. More often than not it will focus on grabbing gold mines – a sensible strategy considering how expensive everything is, but a strategy that depends on being able to defend those far flung mines from marauding slingers and clubbers.

The naval warfare shows the same promise that it did in the original game, but with the same idiotic decisions to make boats nearly impossible to sail in a straight line for long. Ships get tangled up on islands or bump into fleet mates, making them easy pickings for a trireme with a grapple hook. All the potential of ramming and boarding is lost when the wind spins your ship around and you need to adjust on the fly.

With so much interesting stuff going on in the RTS world, it’s really a shame that some people will pick The Spartans up because of either a low price or they like the theme or they like the artwork. This is a bad RTS and a bad bargain. Not only have things not improved from Ancient Wars: Sparta, things have barely changed at all. There are a few neat ideas in this template, but none are carried far enough to count as truly interesting and all are saddled by poor technique.

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