Though Creative Assembly is currently working on Medieval 2: Total War, the next chapter in its acclaimed strategy series, it apparently doesn't mean the end of Rome: Total War. Creative Assembly is also putting the finishing touches on Rome: Total War Alexander, the second expansion to 2004's hit strategy game. This bucks the tradition of having only one expansion pack for each Total War game. Needless to say, Alexander's announcement was an unexpected surprise for fans of the series. There's a catch, however. Alexander won't be a traditional expansion pack that's sold at retail. Instead, it'll be a downloadable add-on available only through the Internet.

　　Get ready to conquer the ancient world, which in this case is Persia and India.

　　As you can probably guess from the name, Alexander covers the exploits of legendary historical figure Alexander the Great, conqueror of the ancient world. As such, this expansion takes place a couple of centuries before the campaign game found in Rome: Total War. Alexander adds four new factions, from the Greeks to the mighty Persians (the superpower of their day), as well as India and the barbarian tribes. In all, there are more than 60 units that are representative of the era, from hoplites to the Persian immortals.

　　The single-player campaign looks to be exceptionally tough and a fitting test for Rome fans. Your goal is to basically crush the Persians and make your way eastward to India in less than 100 turns, which means that you'll have to keep moving to maintain momentum. But from what we saw, this will be difficult, since you have to deal with a huge Persian army on your front door right off the bat, as well as some annoying enemies north of Macedon. If you manage to bust out of the Aegean (which doesn't look to be easy, considering the presence of the Persian navy), you're in a race to conquer cities eastward. You'll need to rely heavily on mercenaries, since you don't have much time to develop cities and churn out armies, not to mention march them to where Alexander is.

　　It doesn't appear that the non-Greek factions will be playable in the single-player campaign, especially since that could introduce balance issues with the Persians starting out with such a large force. Still, we'll have to wait and see for the final version of the game before we can say for sure. In addition to the single-player campaign, Alexander will feature six historical battles that cover the history of Philip II of Macedon (Alexander's father) as he battles the Greeks and Persians. These battles unfold in a campaign setting that imparts some history lessons, and these are quite pleasant to listen to, actually. This is probably due to the fact that noted British actor Brian Blessed is handling voice-over duties. However, you'll also probably find some of these to be difficult, since these battles also re-create the situations that Alexander and Philip had to deal with. Often outnumbered by rival armies, they had to use tactics and a keen understanding of each unit's strengths and weaknesses to prevail.

　　Multiplayer is still limited to battles only, so don't get your hopes up about any kind of multiplayer campaign. Still, the expansion will at least add some new features to multiplayer skirmishes. You can now set up two-versus-one and even three-versus-one matches, so if there's a friend of yours who's a pro at Total War, you can try and gang up on him. Naturally, you'll be able to command different factions in multiplayer as well, so you can get your hands on Persian immortals and Indian war elephants. Then there's a last-man-standing mode, which means that the winner is the sole-player who manages to survive all the carnage.

　　Battles can degrade into a tactical mess, but true generals find a way to rally the troops and accomplish the mission.

　　From a presentation perspective, Alexander doesn't look like it introduces any graphical enhancements. The expansion still looks and feels very much like Rome: Total War, but with new units and armies. Still, the graphics seem to hold up well. Perhaps the biggest change visually is the strategic map. While in Rome the map covered the whole of Europe and North Africa, the map in Alexander starts with Greece in the west and stretches east toward Persia and India. Like we mentioned previously, the audio is about the same, only now with the Hollywood-quality voice-overs provided by Blessed.

　　Alexander looks like it'll have the prerequisite amount of new content expected for an expansion pack, though the good news here is that it carries a price that's half that of a traditional retail expansion. Alexander is scheduled to be available for purchase and download through Sega at a price of $14.95.