Total War: ROME II - Daughters of Mars

Daughters of Mars is a unit pack DLC for Total War: ROME II, released in 2014. That framing matters: this is not an expansion, not a campaign overhaul, not a balance patch. It is a collection of female combat units - warriors pledged to deities like Athena, Bellona, Andraste, and Mars - slotted into the existing ROME II roster for a handful of factions. If you were hoping for new mechanics, revised tech trees, or any change to the strategic layer, look elsewhere. What you actually get here are visually distinct units with their own recruitment requirements and stat profiles. For players who care about army composition variety on the campaign map, there is some marginal value. A unit roster with more visual and statistical options is always better than one without, and Creative Assembly has generally delivered clean model work in ROME II's unit packs. On the battlefield, these units behave according to the same engagement logic as any other infantry or skirmisher class, so veterans will feel at home immediately. Whether they shift the meta in any meaningful way is a harder question, and the honest answer is: not really. The Mixed review score at 59% positive from a modest review pool tells a clear story. The objections tend to cluster around historical accuracy debates and the perception that unit packs represent paid content that arguably could have shipped with the base game or a major DLC. Those criticisms are fair. If you are the kind of player who treats ROME II as a modding platform - and there is an enormous mod ecosystem that makes vanilla look thin by comparison - you will find that the community has produced comparable or more expansive female unit content for free. That context should weigh heavily in your decision. For newcomers arriving at ROME II now, the more important purchase priority is the Emperor Edition or one of the faction-expanding DLCs like Hannibal at the Gates or Caesar in Gaul, which add full campaign maps, new factions, and rebalanced mechanics. Daughters of Mars sits at the very bottom of that priority list. It is the kind of DLC you grab during a deep bundle sale to round out a collection, not something to seek out deliberately. Strategy depth lives in the campaign layer and the AI's ability to pressure you through multiple fronts - this pack does not touch any of that. Bottom line for the spreadsheet-minded: the cost-to-content ratio here is poor compared to other ROME II expansions. If you are building a complete ROME II setup and already own the major DLC, it adds visual variety without breaking anything. Otherwise, the mod workshop offers a more compelling path to roster expansion at no cost.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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