The CONQUESTS expansion pack for Civilization III can be looked at two ways - a souped-up version of the classic PC strategy game, or as an overpriced and underachieving CD-ROM patch cynically masquerading as a whole new product.
Rocket ship half full: CONQUESTS addresses brings many small but much-needed improvements to the Civ III engine. For starters:
It is now possible to move large groups of units as a stack rather than individually - this is a huge benny for gamers who got fed the F up with the "one at a time" system on the original Civ, which could make gameplay extremely tedious when big armies were involved. There are also added commands for the units - "explore", "sentry" and so on. Certain units also get an upgrade. Armies, for example, can attack twice a turn and move much further, much faster, than previously. Primitive artillery units are more accurate. Workers can construct outposts and barricades in addition to fortresses.
There are a fairly number of new elements to the game itself - extractable resources such as stone, sugar, citrus fruit, silver, olive oil, are added to your resource base, new terrain features (wetlands, active volcanos, etc.) appear, and several dozen new combat units of both the civ-specific and general type make an appearance. Certain aspects of the graphics are also improved, and there are some new musical scores. You now have scientific Leaders as well as military ones. There are many new wonders and city improvements, new civ characteristics and two new different forms of government - feudalism and fascism. Finally, there are numerous new civilizations to play - Mongols, Spanish, Celts, Scandanavians, and so on.
The big tweak, of course, is the "Conquests" feature. This has eight or so prepackaged and highly detailed scenarios from different time periods - "Rise of Rome"; "Napoleonic Europe" etc. - that allow you to take various historical eras and see if you can do better than Caesar, Hannibal, Tojo or Wellington did. Several of these scenarios are highly addictive and feature add-ons like locked alliances, multiple civ-specific units, and victory conditions that force the player out of his or her strategic comfort zone. The game's AI, while not threatening Brainiac by any means, is also somewhat improved.
Rocket ship half empty: CONQUESTS is really two games. The souped-up Civ III and the Conquests, and for reasons no one seems to be able to explain, the features of the two do not necessarily carry over. For example, in "Rise of Rome" the Roman player has three different types of legion and his galleys can take four units or an entire army. If you play Rome in the regular game, however, you get only the generic type of legion from the original game and your galleys are the old, lame two-seater. Having multiple civ-specific units is the order of the day in Conquests, but they don't exist in regular civ. Also, many of the civs in the Conquests feature (Prussia, for example) do not exist in the regular game. This is a giant tease, and makes the transition kind of a letdown.
The new game also has some of the old, annoying habits of the original. Raising the difficulty level doesn't make the AI more intelligent, it just makes your own units perform more incompetently. Preposterous outcomes to engagements still occur constantly (regular spearmen defeating elite Roman legions; whole full-strength armies being wiped out by a single ordinary enemy unitl; unarmed troop carriers sinking cannon-laden ships of the line, etc.). Naval warfare before, say, the age of the steam engine is still an exercise in mass suicide, and the computer is extremely reluctant to let you sink ships that carry enemy soldiers. Negotiating economic deals is much harder than before, and peace negotiations are a nightmare even when you are kicking the hell out of your opponent.
Overall, I would say that CONQUESTS, while smoothing over many rough spots in the old version, should come with the following warning to gamers: it IS worth having, and for Civ III addicts probably even qualifies as a must-have, but not necessarily for the full asking price, and only if you understand that you are not getting a new game so much as an improved version of a classic.
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