General Thoughts:
I finished the Ionian Campaign just a few minutes ago and I have to say I thought it was really fun, although very one-sided. I completed it in 4 hours and 35 minutes and completed all but 3 objectives: take Pylos, destroy 50 Athenian triremes, and take 3 Euboean cities. The new auto-beaching thing makes naval invasions a lot easier because now I can just pause and click each unit onto land without maneuvering my triremes. This is good since most of the campaign is about moving your troops around by ship to cause rebellions. However, the only challenging objectives I had were taking Sestos and Abydos. All the other cities were under-garrisoned and posed no threat. There was also very little action in retaliation from Athens until I took Sestos, Abydos, and Byzantium. On the other hand, the objectives and their rewards flowed nicely with one another. Dealing with Iasos and its rebellious Satrap really did lower Persian hostility. Helping the refugees did as well, and having 3 cities rebel at once to your cause is gratifying to see. Especially since I only start with 1 city. This campaign is like a bridge between the Philip Campaign and the Archidamian Campaign in that you start with one city and grow your "empire", but there aren't any tutorials and the growth is more rapid.
Feedback:
The objectives were just too darn easy IMO. Take a city's defenses down by 100 and it rebels to you is too quick. I know it's probably historically accurate, but at this point HA=too easy. The resistance put up by the Athenians was almost nil which doesn't make sense because losing those cities should incite a large counterattack. I would suggest doubling or tripling the amounts for certain cities (Byzantium and Athens for sure). A longer campaign would be more satisfying. Completing all the objectives would have taken another half hour (except destroying 50 triremes, the AI barely had any). So it's still a very short campaign and I'm sure you guys will add more to it as time goes on. What I liked was implementing diplomacy into the objectives. The truce with the Persians was nice especially after I took care of Iasos and that guy in there (I can't remember his name off-hand) I know it's the first time tested, too so I'm trying not to be super critical :P It was a fun campaign.
Bugs:
The repeating alert noise caused by triremes still happens. It stopped when I took the troops off so perhaps they're related. I don't mind the homeless messages all that much so I didn't DL update #9. I also noticed the path-maker made my triremes go through a very narrow pass when two inches away was open sea. Perhaps it would be possible to give preference to more open areas over tight squeezes.
There's probably more that I forgot about while writing, but overall it was a very fun and worthwhile campaign :)
