The game starts in 359BC when Philip II of Macedon takes the throne from his infant nephew. He is a young man full of ambition, but Macedonia at this period is a backwater, a relatively poor region on the edge of the Hellenic world with a weak economy and mediocre army. The future isn’t auspicious, but Philip has a dream to unite all of Greece, in order to push the Persians from Hellas for all time. A dream he would follow until his death…

Players can choose from among 30 playable factions, including mighty Sparta, Boeotia (Thebes), or Athens; ambitious Macedonia; slowly declining Achaemenid Empire and its power-hungry satrapies; to several smaller Greek city-states and groups of semi-nomadic societies living on the outskirts of the Hellenic world.