A good, but not necessary, expansion. Still worth the buy, though.
When you open this up, you think of how great the Roman and Carthaginians will be. Well, to tell you the down-to-earth honest truth, they are the same as everyone else except for the new Roman architecture. But if you want some nice campaigns, as well as some new units to use in your new campaign you hope to put up soon, I would recommend snatching this on eBay or whatever. Now, if you want to continue playing online and get new maps and stuff, you should get this. An Rise of Rome map won't open up on the original Age of Empires, and even IGZones has a database of only 10 players on their Age of Empires lobby. And I will bet a million dollars 70% of them are noobs. Although, maybe I should take that back, because most noobs will buy the gold edition, more likely. :) Either way, Rise of Rome maintains a fair database of users, so you are more likely to find someone of your level there. And the new historic campaigns on the Punic Wars and stuff will leave you occupied.
Anyways, I would recommend buying this if you want continued online play and map-downloading/making.