With Rise of Nations, you can play for a host of different victory conditions, such as Barbarians at the Gates: all other nations attacking only you double resources and one later technological starting age for yourself no rushing permitted for the first fifteen minutes and a huge map of the Himalayas and a playing time limit of two hours. It can be argued that you're really not playing against anybody else in them, except yourself. Sure, there has been a similar of even greater variety of options provided in games like Patrician 2 and Europa 1400, but these aren't traditional RTS titles. Multiple playing and winning conditions are an aspect of Rise of Nations that really does it for me. Starting Out RTS: Let's consider the options. Of course, if another voice calling itself 'MadCow' should interrupt and start sobbing about shards of glass, run like hell. And since 'Barry' and 'Brenesal' don't state those perspectives clearly, let's call them 'TBS' and 'RTS.' Just recall that they're both me, limited to comments on Rise of Nations, and everything should be fine. So with your permission (which you can email to IGN, along with a request to Steve Butts that he take pity on my dotage and treble my wages) we'll treat this review as a dialog between the two voices in my Cro-Magnon skull, each giving its own perspective. Computer games have been credited at times with causing everything from kleptomania to black masses, but I never thought I'd become the PC poster oldster for Multiple Personality Disorder. At least, that's the way a part of me looks at it, because these two inner voices representing my enthusiasms for RTS and TBS games down through the years are now passionately disputing all matters relating to Rise of Nations inside my head. Rise of Nations is a sort of halfway house in many respects between the RTS and TBS genres: while all players (whether AI or human-controlled) move at the same time, the ability to pause and issue commands before restarting time/actions effectively creates a turn in two discrete phases.

Instead, I bring this dual focus up because I wish to draw your attention to a dilemma. I don't take this little trip down Recollection Road to proclaim any special authority or knowledge about these game genres who could? Maybe Sid Meier, Chris Crawford, or another of the small handful of developers that truly built the computer gaming industry. By contrast, I distinctly remember giving a glowing recommendation in a PC Games issue of 1992 to Westwood Studios' Dune 2, the first major release real-time strategy (RTS) game. My turn-based strategy (TBS) reviews date back to the late 1980s.

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