Review Machine: Pentium 4 – 2.0 GHz512MB RAMNvidia 64mb GeForce 4 TI 4200The games of the Age of Empires series were the last strategy games I thoroughly enjoyed and played often. I picked up Civilization III and liked the ideas, but I’ve never been much of a fan for “Turn Based Strategy”, or TBS for short, and the overall gameplay didn’t really impress me. However, I was glad to see several of the concepts, such as the ability to build new cities and unique wonders, and the idea of having a national border. The developers of Rise of Nations, Big Huge Games, came up with the perfect idea. They added a few TBS concepts into Rise of Nations, a Real Time Strategy (RTS) to create an incredibly deep strategy game that combined the finest elements of past strategy games into one masterpiece. Rise of Nations doesn’t introduce anything new into the world of strategy games, nor does it set any new standards. It is, in essence, a melting pot of ideas used in other games. Your national border line, for example, is a line that will move further out (or closer in) depending on the amount of cities, forts, and other structures in the area is surrounds. Enemies who enter your territory without a supply cart suffer what is called attrition damage; their health bar slowly decreases until they either die or leave your territory. Another nice concept included in the game is the ability to build different cities in your nation. Creating new cities expands your national borderline and increases your wealth production as more trade routes open up. Capturing enemy cities is one of the main goals on the battlefield when conquering other nations.An intelligent AI complements the plethora of units as the game progresses through different ages. Each nation has five or six unique military units, along with influential special abilities only offered to that specific race. Each one of the 18 different races to choose from provides a different experience, and depending on your style of play, it is important to choose one that will go well with you. An abundance of maps and victory conditions also makes each and every game unique in itself. Even though they don’t change the playing conditions in any way, they add some change for players who get sick of the general “destroy everyone” mode. For instance, the “Musical Chairs” victory setting causes the players with the lowest scores, the weakest players, to be eradicated at certain time intervals throughout the game.The game involves a great deal of strategy, particularly when it comes to military action. Since you receive attack bonuses when flanking the enemy or attacking from the year, the placement of your troops on the battlefield is vital if you would like to win battles. Also, certain units are perfect for attacking other units, while others, even when there is a greater number than the enemy, are likely to be slaughtered. Furthermore, there are a lot of different troop formations, each used for different purposes and tactics. A neat addition to battles is Generals, who affect any units within their radius. For a small cost, Generals can entrench their troops, have them ambush enemies (makes your troops invisible for a small period of time), among other options. A unique method of gameplay is the Conquer the World campaign with the game. It’s a bit longer, more deep alternative to the normal skirmish play. Going along the lines of the board game “Risk”, you choose a race and start off in its historical location. Using your armies, you conquer other territories until you have conquered the whole world (hence the name). Depending on the size of the territory, how many armies the enemy has in it, etc., there are a number of different victory conditions to conquer the territory. Bonus cards can be obtained by conquering certain territories, as well as new special resources. The graphics aren’t jaw-dropping, but they are adequate and get the job done. Each unit is pretty detailed, and resembles its specific race well. Shorelines look nice, and the birds in the air add a nice effect to make world seem more “alive”. In game sounds are lacking in quality and realism, but it’s nothing that will turn you away from the game.Rise of Nations is not without its flaws, however, but what game is perfect? Every game has its faults, but Rise of Nations’ are far and few. First, I would’ve liked to see more diplomacy options (Civilization III, anyone?), rather than the basic ally/enemy/neutral and tribute options found in Age of Kings. The game, even with 3D graphics, only supports 2D gameplay. The zoom feature, which gives you only three zoom levels, is adequate but leaves more to be desired. Setting aside these minor flaws, Big Huge Games managed to pull through to make on hell of an RTS. All in all, Rise of Nations should appeal to almost any RTS fan, as well as some fans of the TBS genre. Complete with online gameplay via GameSpy and an incredibly small learning curve, newbies and veterans of the genre alike should find it thoroughly entertaining.