Power Grid Expansion: Italy/France

Power Grid France/Italy is a double-sided board featuring two new maps - France and Italy - along with a few rules tweaks for Power Grid.

France
* Paris is divided into three separate cities with a connection cost of zero between them, but connection costs out of Paris can become very expensive
* Uranium starts cheaper than in the base game (representing France's willingness to invest in nuclear power) making nuclear power stations more desirable
* The pace is quite brisk and there are usually plenty of open connections (not much opportunity to block effectively) so it's quite forgiving of mistakes

Italy
* Fuel is more expensive at the start of the game
* Cities in the North of the country are cheap to connect, but connections in and to the South are very expensive (this feels very similar to the East-West divide on the USA map)
* This map is tight with the expensive fuel and connections leading to many tough decisions - becoming reliant on coal/oil or being forced (via blocking) to connect North-South will likely lead to losing the game
* The shape of the map means that it plays quite well with fewer players (3 or 4) since it's hard to corner a cheap area of the map and networks are forced to overlap

+ The rules additions are very minor - you don't have to relearn the game, but they do force you to try out new strategies
+ High quality components
+ Cheap

Certainly not essential (Power Grid is great without it!), though the France map is better to learn on than either Germany or the USA.