Hello everyone!
I would like to congratulate you on an amazing mod! This is what Rome 2 should have been!
I am currently wrapping up my first campaign as SPQR on medium/medium and I found it, well, easy. Even with moderate amount of roleplaying (following the cursus honorem, only fighting defensively with praetors and invading ONLY with currently active consul leading the army) I still managed do steamroll Italy into Sicily into Carthage into rest of Africa from one side and Cisalpine into Translapine on another simultaneously. Now I'm about to massacre the Greeks with 5 full stacks of Polybian troops and achieve all victory requirements.
I intend to try most factions eventually, but I would like to try a Hellenistic faction second. Possibly on hard/normal so that the Eleutheroi are a bit of greater threat (do I understand correctly they actually actively assault and besiege you on hard?).
What would be the best faction to begin with to get a good feel for the "Greek" side of things? I read the manual on Koinon (THE Greeks), but their reforms seem extremely confusing with having kings of various cities moving about and all the sympolite this and that governments! With Rome it was so easy, Italian gov in Italy and allied oligarchy/democracy into province once the first client ruler dies of natural causes everywhere else. So who do I play next? Macedon? Pergamon? Ptolemaioi? Seleukids (seems scary too)?
Thank you very much for your replies!