Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome is one of the best expansions I have ever seen on a strategy game. Still, as much as I like it, it has both strong and weak points. I'll start with the positive stuff about it.

First, the artificial intelligence is greatly improved over the first game. No longer do the settlers get confused over which storage pit to go to if there is something like a cliff in the way of the "closest" one. Now it judges the distance as actual travel distance rather than "as the crow flies" like in the first release.

Second, a player can now set the "production" structures to build more than one item at a time whereas before you could only tell the game to build one thing and had to keep coming back to it in order to start making the second one. Yes, they are still only constructed one at a time, but you can tell it that you want ten of them and it will keep going as long as you have the required stone, wood, food, gold, and population space until it has created all ten of them for you.

Third, the graphics are much improved. Better detail to the men, buildings, trees, animals, and just about everything else gives this expansion the look and "feel" of a completely new game.

Also, I love the new sounds that come with the game. The music is of higher quality and the sound effects are more "real" than before. A++ grading curve for the sound programmers for this part.

Last, but not least, is the fantastic detail to historical events! While playing any of the set games, I have a good idea of just where to go and what to expect from the computer players because each mission starts out historically accurate as far as the position of each faction or tribe is concerned. The maps are true to form with the way things were for the time period the game is set in, thus giving the player an idea of the difficulties the real Romans had while building that Empire.

Now for the bad thing. Actually, there isn't that much to say that is bad about this game. My biggest beef about it is that the difficulty level has been wimped out. In the first game, I would get my butt stomped while playing on easiest, never mind what would happen when playing on the harder levels. I was forced to be very careful and save often until I found out just what to expect from the computer players and how to counter them. This new release makes the easiest level a walk in the park! Now it could be that I just know what I am doing now or that I have become a superior player of the game itself or even the fact that I am very familar with Roman History, but somehow I just don't think so.

Regardless of this one minor flaw, or perhaps in fact of, I would have to tell anyone who asked me about this game to buy it. No matter how you look at it, this is a great addition to your library of games.