izigame.me

Positives: Ethiopia & Diplomatic Quarter district
Negatives: Unbalanced and OP Secret Societies
I would not normally rate DLCs, but I felt like I should rate this one so Firaxis Games can hear my complaint. I love Ethiopia as they give you a new way to play focusing on hills and generating a huge amount of faith. I also love the new Diplomatic Quarter district as it assists defending your empire from spies and gives you some nice bonuses from city states and a nice helping of diplomatic favour for being peaceful and cooperative (need to fix the buildings clipping through each other that seems to appear early in the game.) These are brilliant editions which I'm happy I've purchased and received.
However my disdain for the Secret Societies is over whelming. I know it's an optional game mode which does not need to be played, but it's still content that I purchased through the New Frontier Pass so optional or not, I was still made to buy it. Although getting 4 early government titles is great, it makes the game go too quickly and can be too powerful in the early game, but these 4 free titles are implemented to give you enough for one of the four new secret societies and then three more for their later promotions (which you spend immediately on other governors, and then you would complete the circle by promoting your secret society with the regular governor titles from the Civic tree). The biggest issue with this game mode is the secret societies themselves which take over the game rather then adding to it.
The Hermetic Order's (Alchemists)unique Ley Lines are so sparse and far and few between that there is no reason to go for it; in all my three game as them you only get 1 ley line next to each capital and the occasional desert filled with 7 on the other side of the world. You can only really save-scum this society to see the ley lines and make up your mind whether they are actually worth taking.
The Owls of Minerva (Guild/Illuminati) are probably the most tame/balanced society only getting two extra government policy slots, the possibility for additional trade routes and then bonuses to defensive spies (with a very late game bonus to successful offensive spy missions, but comes too late to actually use).
The Sanguine Pact (Vampires) don't really get any real bonuses other then up to four unique vampire units and their unique vampire castles. Both of these you can up to 4 (one for every 2 eras) and the castles are very cool mechanically, but the vampires are annoying to babysit (harder and more tedious to level up then getting a recon unit to level 3) but then an absolute pain to deal with as they can destroy everything too easily when trained up properly and can't be can't be defeated without retaliatory conquest.
The Voidsingers (Cultists) are the most powerful of all, giving you no real choice as to which to choose as you always want to go with this one. They get they get a unique monument replacement, the old gods obelisk, from turn 1 of the game generating you +4 faith which is enough to kick start your faith economy which then allow you to buy settlers for more obelisks and then rinse and repeat. Add holy sites and a faith-based pantheon to the mix and you simply can't loose as when you reach the Medieval era you then get insane amounts of gold, science and culture equal to 20% of your insane faith on top of your existing commercial hubs/harbours, campuses and theatre squares letting you run away with the game. (This gets even worse with Ethiopia who gets almost the same ability which stacks with this, but is also ridiculous for any other faith bonus Civs such as Russia, Arabia, Poland, India and Brazil)
So all in all; I do recommend this DLC for Ethiopia and the Diplomatic Quarter. But the large looming shadow of a game mode which could of been so good, but instead was a wasted opportunity, is a disappointingly large proportion I and many others will ignore the existence of.