RoN Expansion

Sorry about the previous post, I got distracted and had to say something. Now, on to what I really wanted to write about today (or yesterday, before I actually had to do work at the office all day). I don't know if you've played the new expansion to Microsoft's Rise of Nations or even the original itself, but Thrones and Patriots is an absolutely great game.

As a review, the original Rise of Nations game, by Microsoft and Big Huge Games, is a real time strategy (RTS) game that is a cross between Risk and Microsoft's Age franchise. In the Thrones and Patriots expansion, the developers added 5 individual campaigns to go along with the overwhelming Conquer the World campaign, and each of these is extremely fun to play. I've already played the North American conquest campaign as the Americans, and now I'm playing the Alexander the Great campaign and it's absolutely a blast.

The beauty of each of these "mini" campaigns is that within the campaign itself, the missions can change. For example, the standard mission is to build up an army and defeat the other team(s) on the field of battle within a 90 minute timeframe. While that's fun a couple of times, having to do it 10-15 times as part of a campaign gets old. Mixed in with these are other missions as listed below:
- you start out with 15 or so mercenaries and have to collect a set amount of resources within a 15 minute timeframe to complete the missions.
- you have to defend your capital for 90 minutes or take out the enemy similar to the standard mission.
- diplomacy related missions where you have to make peace or ally with one of many nations during a mission in order to conquer another.

Also new in this expansion is the addition of generals you get from winning certain battles or conquering other nations. These generals are played like the cards and you get their use with their special abilities during one or two missions. In addition, you can allow a nation to be subservient to you instead of wiping them out completely, and this choice will affect how the campaign plays out going forward.

All in all, these changes plus the addition of new nations like the Americans make Thrones and Patriots as good, if not better, than the original. If you're a RTS fan who played the Age games and Sid Mieir's CIV series, Rise of Nations is a must play, for hours and hours and hours.