The expansion adds four new playable civilizations, including the Romans, as well as new units, map types and minor improvements to the game.

Upon release, The Rise of Rome was commercially successful and received positive reviews from critics, with praise directed to the expansion's inclusion of features and gameplay mechanics beyond the expected addition of new maps.

[14] Studio co-founder Tony Goodman stated that the proposed expansion was pitched to Microsoft and accepted on the basis of the original title's commercial success.

[10] A goal of the expansion was to implement "small but significant" adjustments based on player feedback to improve the balance of the game and reduce the gameplay emphasis on rushing to the next age.

[27][28][29][30] The expansion entered second place behind Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator on ELSPA monthly sales charts for computer games in the UK in January 1999.

[31] Shelley considered that Rise of Rome to be a commercial success,[14] with Goodman remarking that the expansion was "the most profitable game that Microsoft had ever published".

[34] Jason Rich of Game Week similarly stated that the expansion expanded the overall strategy of the original and provided players with "added control and more capabilities".

[36] Elliott Chin of GameSpot, meanwhile, observed that whilst the units and technologies "have their uses" and responded to balance problems, they were "highly specialized or expensive to research" and "impotent" outside of that context.

[39] Elliott Chin of GameSpot found the campaigns to have "interesting premises", but considered them to be "unusually short", lacking end cutscenes and featuring objectives with "tedious" difficulty.

[35] The Rise of Rome received retrospective praise by critics during the release of its successor's expansion pack Age of Empires II: The Conquerors.

March Stepnik of PC Powerplay felt the expansion was "exemplary", highlighting the "well-conceived" new missions and "significant" gameplay enhancements.