Haha I totally picked it. This is good news because most of the Eastern/Greek factions so far have been quite large starting factions and I always find it nice to start small and build the empire the way you want it.
I think another reason for the day 1 DLC is from a marketing perspective. They want to make the DLC seem user-friendly and easily accessible to people so they buy future ones. A lot of people are turned off by DLC because they see it as annoying or unnecessary and I think this aims to change this. I personally like DLC (although many people don't) so long as the base game is complete and stands on its own. Releasing DLC that should be part of the base game is a no-no IMO but I'm happy to support developers that continue to show commitment to their product and release new things.
I don't think they will release a Greek alliance anymore. There's word that there's 117 factions across 180ish provinces (regions?), which means it's similar to Shogun where lots of clans own one territory. So it's very likely that there will be individual Greek states like Athens or Corinth and that they are strongly aligned to each other at the beginning.
