Rise of Nations is so awesome that real-time strategy game enthusiasts should break out the champagne. The developers, Big Huge Games, cherry-picked the best ideas from games such as Civilization and Age of Kings. Then they mixed them all up and added their own secret ingredients to make a delicious five-star meal.
Like in most real-time strategy games, you collect resources, build up your economy, attack and repeat. Rise of Nations covers the time period from the ancient world to the modern world, so you'll start off with spears and finish off with shells, assuming you live that long.
Experts love the challenge of rushing their opponents, but newbies usually cannot handle such aggressive tactics. Rise of Nations tries to temper the rush by adding in design ideas that slow down play. For example, you cannot build your own towers in an enemy base. Your civilisation must expand to take advantage of the special rare resources spread across the map.
Each country may have valuable minerals or other resources. You can also buy resource cards which may give you a temporary advantage during a battle.
Invading enemy territory is serious business and your army will slowly suffer from attrition while in enemy territory. You can avoid this if you bring along supplies.