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Spartan is a historical strategy game from the UK developer, Siltherine, which gives the player the chance to lead their faction to glory in ancient Greece, against a backdrop of expansion and city state rivalry.

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Spartan is set to recreate ancient Greece in an epic fashion with both turn base strategy on an empire level and real time battles. The player will be allowed to choose one of hundreds of city states from around 400BC including the famous Sparta and her rival Athens and lead them to greater heights, surviving disasters, uprisings, conquering your neighbours, fashioning alliances and withstanding the expansion of the power hungry Roman republic to the west, and the powerful empire of Persia in the east.

The grand campaign in Sparta features over 100 nations on an accurately recreated Greece and what is now western Turkey, including all the important cities of the time. The game can be divided into two sections, a top down 2D empire view where you direct movements of various armies, manage diplomacy, trade, research and decide what to build in your various cities. The second part to Spartan is the real time battles, new to Spartan however is a 3D battle engine with pan- able camera so you can really admire the moment two opposing armies engage in a titanic battle.

The music in Spartan suites the theme very well, its slow paced but feels right and changes to reflect more action packed scenes such as the fights your bound to get up to in Spartan.

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The graphics on the empire level, are impressive, they are a detailed 2D affair with various terrain features such as woodlands, marsh lands, shrubs, coasts, hills and mountains all represented in a bright vivid array of colours with each city for the time dotted about on the map accurately representing where they actually were, inside each city you decide what to build and you can even see your villagers going about their daily routines, tending to the farm fields, mining marble, chopping trees or marching in precision in military barracks.

On the empire level you can manage diplomacy, which this time round in Spartan is much more advanced allowing for alliances, trade negotiations, flattery of the rival leaders and also the darker side of diplomatic missions, steal resources, plant spies and informants, be outwardly hostile to a rival ruler, introduce disease and various other acts of treachery. Interestingly you can decide to eject foreign diplomats in a variety of ways, from straight forward commanding a diplomat to leave, to imprisoning them even to killing them in gruesome ways.

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Also you can direct how your civilization will progress technologically by pursuing several different research goals, you can decide to be purely militaristic and direct most of your research into military pursuits, or rather focus on your economy and research better farms and mines, or even a mix of both, its very open ended for what the player wants to do.

From the empire view you tell which city to build what and manage your economy, in Spartan there are nine different resources, these are Gold mainly used for making temples, food which is essential, its needed for both producing certain troops and sustaining armies in the field, Iron which is needed for special projects, Building materials which is needed to actually build structures, Horses which is needed for cavalry troops, Marble which is needed for various structures, Copper which is important for building heavy infantry such as Hoplites, wood which is needed for skirmishers and archers and finally silver, which is needed to pay your troops and is influenced from tax.

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The level of strategy is immense in Spartan, even troop movements to city management can be as important in the long term as military engagements. Different troops can traverse different terrain more efficiently than others, archers for example can move across woodlands well, but heavy infantry struggle whilst horses move farthest on flat plains. Managing your cities needs to be a careful consideration also, some cities can only grow so big so you'll need to decide whether to build military facilities in various cities or consider specialising in building economical facilities such as farms.

The AI in Spartan is formidable and will offer a challenge on higher difficulty levels, it will meet your armies out in the open if it considers you a threat, it will take over cities if it feels it needs and will engage in covert actions with its diplomats.

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The battles in Spartan are open to much more strategy than earlier Slitherine titles and still remains unique, unlike most other strategy games in Spartan you decide on troop layout what formations and so on and give them orders such as charge, hold, outflank, envelope then you watch the fight take place, if you decide the battle might not be going your way you can decide to live and fight another day with the inclusion of a much requested retreat function. Due to there being a new 3D engine, you can really admire the battles that take place between hundreds of units in a fairly detailed environment that recreates the terrain on the empire view where two armies meet, so if you met in a forest near some swamp land, there'll be mainly forests with a little bit of swampland on the battle map.

On that note different units have to be used in different ways, light infantry for example are no match for heavier infantry such as Hoplites in the field but if you position your light infantry in rough terrain such as a forest they will perform much better in a fight than heavy infantry in the same terrain, because rough terrain breaks up Hoplite formations.

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In Spartan there are ten different ethnic groups spread out amongst the different factions in the game, these are Spartan, Dorian Greek, Ionian Greek, Aeolian Greek, Macedonian Greek, Tribal, Pirate, Roman, Eastern and Persian. Each faction has different benefits and some unique units, for example the Spartans specialise in Heavy infantry and attain Spartiates who are unrivalled in close quarter fighting where as the Persians have brilliant combat archers in the form of the Immortals. Most of the Greek factions you'll find are better at melee where as the Eastern factions are superb bowmen and deal serious damage to anyone who cannot reach them quickly enough. If your able to win each fight your troops will gain valuable experience, which will radically, toughen them up to be even better soldiers, as you would expect.

All the controls in Spartan are done via simple clicks with the mouse, from ordering units to charge, setting formations, dictating foreign policy and stating which city to build what.

To top all of this of, there are 12 maps, 3 tutorials a huge grand campaign, low system requirements and even an option to use the new 3D battle engine or stick to a 2D view and multiplayer for 2 people via game spy.