Different, but the same

Civ III is pretty close to the ultimate open-ended strategy game (at least by today's standards), so how do you improve on perfection? You don't - you add bells and whistles, but discriminatingly so to avoid going over the top.

The most interesting part of the game is the actual conquests. These are specific scenarios from critical points in time where different nations have specific goals to achieve within the allotted time. There are multiple victory conditions, and depending on the nation you can have time either work for or against you thus creating a whole new dimension to the Civ experience.

In the rise of the Roman empire, you have to crush your enemies to secure your expansion. In Mesoamerica, you're either a European nation trying to get a foothold in America, or one of the native tribes trying to fend off the invaders. In WWII - my favorite - the focus is NOT Germany, but the Pacific island warfare that forces you to construct a new, much more mobile type of army.

As for the bells and whistles I mentioned, there are a slew of new civs to play - with their own special units and qualities. Some are pretty questionable, such as "enslavement" and "human sacrifice", but it is a key part of the game and fits into the historical concept. Ignoring these details would be like excluding the role of submarines in WWII out of fear some moral guardian will accuse the game of having "phallic imagery". There are new buildings, wonders, government types and technologies to research. Simply put, there are a lot of new factors to consider, but everything is well-balanced and make for interesting play.

Of course, when you get tired of the conquests, you can go with the standard open-ended, random play game where you start from scratch. The one downside here is that you don't have a map editor to create your own maps, but you have to rely entirely on the computer generating decent maps randomly. This is annoying since you usually haven't unveiled enough of the map to determine whether the map is good or blows until you've already sunk and hour or two into the game.

As before, the computer AI can be pretty stupid and routinely mismanages its cities. The difficulty is mainly about how much handicap (extra resources) the computer players get that you don't, but once you've severed your opponent's traffic routes and cut them off from key natural resources, you can easily crush them.

I once defeated the computer playing on Sid level (the toughest) not because I was good, but rather because the computer insisted on sending 2-3 units at the time against my well-fortified fortresses instead of building up a morotting army that would just wipe me out in a single blow. After a while *I* had a huge army, while the computer was weak from cranking out hundreds of units that became instant cannonfodder, which led to a disappointingly easy victory.

Still, this is a top-notch expansion pack for newbies and hardcore Civvers alike.