American Conquest was released earlier this year, and even though it is a great strategy game, it met with little fanfare. Part of this could be blamed on its setting, as American Conquest takes place in the Americas during the 16th to 18th centuries. It's a time period that hasn't been heavily explored by real-time strategy games, which is rather unfortunate since the history is interesting. American Conquest: Fight Back is a stand-alone expansion pack that returns to the same setting. Unfortunately, it will probably be overlooked again. As before, however, the strategy, combat, and even history lessons are excellent.

Once again you receive a history lesson before each mission.

The core mechanics of the game haven't changed, which is a good thing. The unique RTS elements found in American Conquest are a refreshing change of pace from other real-time strategy games, though they're reminiscent of Ensemble's Age of Empires series. As in most RTS games, there is resource gathering and base-building in American Conquest, but AC's got its own spin on them. Resources are practically infinite, but you need to protect your workers because the enemy can easily capture or kill them. You can build a base, but each subsequent building of the same type costs you more resources. So if you want a third fort for building more troops, expect to exponentially pay more resources for it than you did for the first one. The buildings themselves are relatively weak. They'll go down after receiving a few cannon volleys, or they'll catch ablaze after a few fire arrows. The enemy can also capture buildings by sending troops into them.

Both of these aspects mean that you need to protect your base from all angles. It's very easy to take advantage of an unprotected enemy flank by sending a cavalry into someone's base to capture their entire workforce. Fortunately, troops build quickly. You can have hundreds of pikemen, musketeers, archers, and other warriors in a matter of minutes. This leads to perhaps the greatest part about American Conquest: Fight Back. You can field armies of, literally, thousands of individual troops. The resulting battles can be spectacular, even if the graphics engine isn't exactly state of the art.

Trying to control thousands of troops in the 1700s was surely no easy task, and the same applies to Fight Back. If you expect to win any large-scale battles, you'll need to organize troops into formations by using officers, drummers, and standard bearers. Not only do they move and take orders as a single unit at that point, but the units get a combat and morale bonus. Morale is important because troops will run away and become uncontrollable if it drops.

Soldiers can join formations to become better organized.

The combat can be realistic and exciting, which may come as a surprise when you consider the weapons of the time. It's hard to suppress a smile when you see dozens of enemy warriors drop from a single volley of musket fire. Cannonballs ricochet off the ground and tear through formations like a hot knife through butter. If a lot of your troops die, nearby friendly units tuck their tails between their legs and run away. Generally, the game has everything you'd expect from combat of the actual time period.

Fight Back adds five new factions to American Conquest: Germany, Russia, Alaskan Haida, Portugal, and the Netherlands. As in American Conquest, differences between the similar factions are negligible beyond graphical origins. The real difference lies in the types of factions. There are two main types of factions: Native American and European. The Europeans employ military might with their cannons, guns, and massive warships. Native Americans don't have the same technological and military might as the European factions, but they can win by sheer force. Their units are cheap, and hundreds or archers will surely overrun a much smaller force of gunmen.