Ancient Wars: Sparta

Ancient Wars: Sparta (Войны древности: Спарта) is a real-time strategy computer game released in April 2007. It was developed by World Forge and has been published by Play Ten Interactive. The distributor is Eidos Interactive.

Gameplay
The player has the ability to research and create weapons personally to equip his warriors with. This, however, makes each unit relatively expensive. But the player can also steal the opponent's weapons when his warriors die and leave their equipment on the battlefield. The player's workers can collect them. Collected weapons have no cost when building a unit using that weapon.

There are three types of infantry. Light, Medium, and Heavy. Light infantry (psiloi, kara warrior, nubian mercenary) are lightly armored and fast. They are ideal for being ranged units. Medium infantry (spartiate, noble, mighty nadsez), are medium armored and are good as both ranged and melee. Heavy infantry (hoplite, immortal, Pharaoh's guard) are heavily armored and slow, but are deadly when used as melee.

All infantry (excluding heroes) are built either at the barracks or archery range. Before building a unit, the player must choose which items are to be equipped to that unit. There are 8 slots for customization, and a variety of weapons and shields. Most have to be researched before equipping them to the soldiers.

The game consists of three campaigns centerd on the ancient civiliztions: The Spartans, The Egyptians and The Persians. Each campaign for every nation is divided into nine missions.

The Spartan campaign

The story starts with Pausanias(relative of Leonidas king of Sparta) who goes after Leonidas to help him battle the Persians. After the two meet, Leonidas starts telling the story of how he became king with the help of his uncle Demeratus. This is sort of an chunky introduction to the game and the real story. After the story, Leonidas dies in the battle of Thermopylae and Pausanias takes over the battle with the Persians.

The Egyptian campaign

The leading role for is campaign is played by Inaros who has had his lover taken away by a Persian leader and tries to conquer her back along with the liberation of his people from the Persian empire.

The Persian campaign

Starts with the story of the two sons of Darius (Xerxes and Artabuzes) fighting for their ascension to throne after their father died and let Xerxes as legitimate ruler (thanks to the influence of the now ex-king mercenary Demeratus)