At the start the game plays very much like the Age of Empires series with you starting off with a few citizens which you can set to gather wood and other minerals which can then be spent on building up your army or spending on technology.

When you have enough resources you can expand and build more cities to expand your nation. The game takes place in many time periods starting with the medieval age where your army consists of horses and and swordsmen right up to the modern day with tanks and planes fighting it out.

A nice original feature that sets it aside from all its rivals is the national border system. Once you overrun a rival city (or vice versa!) the coloured borders move giving a good indication of whether you are winning or losing.

The audio in the game is superb with realistic battle sounds and notices. The graphics are also quite good on higher spec machines although there are a few frame rate issues.

Overall: Rise of Nations is great fun and has enormous replayability. A must for every RTS fan!