Look at the balancing headaches that arise from the triumvirate of Starcraft races and you’ll come to appreciate just how difficult it must have been for the developers to create 13 varying civilizations for the original Age of Empires II. The Conquerors takes things a step further with five completely unique civilizations that fit into the collection of races perfectly. The Huns’ most distinctive trait is their lack of housing. Widely a cavalry civilization like the Persians or Mongols, they take on the role of nomadic raiders, able to raise armies without needing a single home and specializing in hit-and-run tactics. Their unique unit is the Tarkan, a non-ranged cavalry with bonuses vs. buildings. In contrast, the Aztecs and Mayans have no cavalry whatsoever and utilize Eagle Warriors in the place of Scout Cavalry. The Aztecs have a Jaguar Warrior that excels against other infantry units while the Mayans have a plumed archer that reflects their ranged unit focus. The Spanish are a monk-and-gunpowder society and have two unique units, the Missionary (a mounted version of the monk) and the Conquistador (a mounted hand-cannoneer). Koreans get the armored Turtle Ship and devastating War Wagon and their general theme is defense and naval superiority. Because of the extremes the new civilizations take on, they provide a lot of replay and almost entirely new playing styles for online and campaign play.

Beyond just adding the new civilizations, The Conquerors adds four non-unique units and 25 technologies. Each race gains a unique technology trained at the castle that compliments their specialties and aids the overall balance of the game. Seven other technologies are available for all, some such as Parthian Tactics and Bloodlines merely bolstering stats and others like Caravan and Herbal Medicine increasing the usefulness of other aspects of the game like trade or garrisoning.

Some of the new techs like the Hunnish Atheism, which doubles the time it takes for a relic/ wonder victory and makes spies/ treason cost 50 percent, can actually modify game strategies completely. With the exception of the petard, the new units are basically upgrades of the old. Hussars are improved light cavalry that can actually be fairly formidable in combat, though their low attack mainly confines them to scouts. Halberdiers are improved Pikemen and provide a necessary defense against the new Cavalry-intensive races like the Huns. The Eagle Warriors, usable only by Mayans and Aztecs, are basically retooled scout cavalry and fill the same role with similar strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the petard brings back the delight of Warcraft 2’s goblin sappers and dwarven demo teams as you watch them gleefully charge into a building carrying a load of dynamite with far too short a fuse. None of the new units seemed to really change the feel of the game much or mandate new strategies, yet they do well to flesh out some holes in the ranks and compliment the excellent balance changes made by The Conquerors.

Tweaking the statistics of existing units in an RTS always risks the unbridled fury of ten thousand gamers fretting over having to actually adapt to new tactics and message boards filled with death threats of the various programmers involved in making the patch. What pleases one gamer is guaranteed to completely ruin the lives of a hundred more when it comes to balancing in online games. Fortunately, most fans will agree that Ensemble and Microsoft may live another day as the changes in The Conquerors were well thought-out and make a definite place for every unit within the hotkeys of one’s army. The majority of adjustments deal with improving the offensive power or lowering the cost of various units that don’t see the battlefield often enough. The Britons, Byzantines, Chinese, Goths, Teutons, Turks and Vikings were tweaked to further refine the already meticulous equilibrium AoE2 brought. The developers deserve credit for being sensitive enough to the AoE community not to do anything too drastic but still demonstrating they are aware and concerned of how to make the game a more enjoyable experience for all.

America is a civilization of 7-11s, Wal-Mart superstores and paying $900 for a PS2 on eBay.com instead of waiting for three hours in line to get one for $300. Rise of Rome tapped into the love of convenience by adding unit queuing to the original Age of Empires, and the result was more time to focus on battle strategy. The Conquerors goes further still and takes away monotonous micromanagement tasks that are more periodical clicks than strategic maneuvers while also improving the intelligence of some units. At a mill, farms can now be queued up to automatically replenish when one goes dry. After creating a mine, mill or lumber camp, villagers go right to the task associated with it without any prompt from you. Siege weapons no longer require the close monitoring for friendly fire, as they’ll only attack automatically on safe locations. There are a few general UI changes like being able to assign one color to all friends and all foes or the changing of all chat messages to the player’s color. All in all, The Conquerors allows a greater focus on the elements of an RTS that make the genre so addictive while still maintaining the need for micromanagement and skill.

All the adjustments to the game are nice enough, but the real persuasion to own The Conquerors is its four campaigns. With more variety and trigger-driven storytelling than the original single-player missions, the new scenarios break the monotony that deters many people from ever finishing the single-player modes in RTS games.

Attila the Hun’s campaign takes place around the decline of Rome and begins with his succession to leader of the Huns. It’s up to the player how to wrest control of the reigns of leadership from his brother, Bleda the Hun, in the first mission of the campaign. The rest of the Hun missions are fairly straightforward melees against Romans and other barbarian tribes yet move at a quick enough pace to not seem tedious or repetitive. My personal favorite was the El Cid campaign, which involves the hero of Spanish history and his tragic rise and fall. The first scenario begins with a small tournament and then involves the rallying of troops from local villages and encampments. Nice little trigger-driven details keep it from falling into the "gather resource, click button to make cavalry guy many times, lather, rinse, repeat" pattern. Mission one of El Cid has a small group of serfs loyal to the local king, your ally. Walk over to them with the El Cid unit and they’ll recognize him as a champion of the people and lend their farms to your cause. Walk on their farms with a non-Cid unit and you’ll be cursed at by them each time until finally being declared an enemy by the disgruntled serfs. The rest of the missions all involve storytelling as well as strategy with mission two requiring you to stop a civil war and number three detailing Cid’s exile from his homeland.

The Aztec campaign begins innocently enough with a simple gather-the-relics type mission but explodes into a desperate defense of the South Americas from the invading Spanish. Utilizing the new jungle tile set and rife with the new distinctive buildings of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, the overall atmosphere is pleasantly different. The fight against the Spanish and their native allies culminates in a final battle that history has already decided but your skill stands a chance to rewrite. The final campaign is a scattered collection of battles from different time periods and between different parties and each fight has a short voiced introduction. From the assassination and avenging of Lord Nobunaga, to the battles of Hastings and Agincourt and the settling of the New World, the Conquerors Campaign explores the possibilities of historical battles not touched upon by the full-length Age of Empires campaigns and provide fun, if not too rewarding or captivating, quick games.

I’m almost getting tired of listing the overwhelming number of additions this expansion pack brings, but it should be said that the campaign editor is also enhanced, allowing the creation of more excellent campaigns for those into the single-player quests.

Random and multiplayer games get a boost in the form of new gameplay modes, new map types, and a major improvement in AI player control. King of the Hill and Defend the Wonder are game types that should be instantly familiar to most RTS fans and involve all out battles over a small parcel of land. Wonder Race, the third mode, is an oddity that likely won’t see too much online play but still provides something very different, and Ensemble should be applauded just for throwing it in for those willing to set aside the bloodshed for a moment. Wonder Race has no combat. The goal is to be the first to finish building a wonder. Ultimately it becomes a game of who has the best build order and isn’t really the stuff memorable gaming experiences are made of, but it’s obvious they didn’t skimp on anything else in order to add the mode in. Many new random map settings have been created including Arena, Ghost Lake and the Yucatan Peninsula. It’s really up to the online community whether or not to embrace the new map settings but they make a good inclusion assuming you can find games with them. There are also real world maps that sacrifice some of the randomness to make the area vaguely resemble one of many real world locations.

For those cursed with eternal lag, single-player standard games with AI team-members now are closer to the feel of online play. AI players can be commanded through the chat window to perform simple tasks such as "Attack on my signal," "Build a navy" or "Give me lumber." Sadly, the AI players don’t really perform well in the new gameplay types no matter the difficulty, as I found by playing King of the Hill and capturing territory in the beginning of the game only to not see the enemy make even a single attempt at gaining control of it back.

The length of this review and the fact that it’s an expansion pack I’m reviewing should make one thing painfully obvious: There’s a lot in this little add-on. Ensemble Studios has set extremely high standards for other companies hoping to suck a franchise dry by appending successful games. So what’s wrong with it? If you like Age of Empires II, basically, nothing. The graphics look a bit dated by now but if you’re a fan of the original you definitely won’t care. The gameplay might be overall the same, but that’s a plus in the eyes of most strategy gamers. Ensemble and Microsoft likely could have gotten away with adding a lot less in this pack and still having it sell fairly well because of the loyalty already won by the quality of AoE2. Fortunately, they took a serious look at what could improve one of the finest RTS titles and fit it all into one upgrade that will fill your historical strategy fix all the way till an Age of Empires III.