Rise of Nations

The Good
The idea that you have actual cities rather than a collection of buildings is very neat. Being able to capture and plunder his caravans and cities, really adds realism in this admittedly best RTS to come out since Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, (except for Age of Mythology;) The use of borders and attrition damage give you more of a feeling of ruling a real empire. Add to this some real nice graphics and buildings, and it's truely a delight to look at. It also has a slew of civilizations, just like Age of Kings.

The Bad
Unfortunately, it hasn't learned from the mistakes of other recent RTS games cough Empire Earth cough.. like in EE, the planes circle overhead in large sweeping arcs like big buzzards. It's not as bad as other ones though, as the planes are faster and refuel quicker. Nuclear weapons also make the game less fun. You can just nuke the other guy's capital, killing most of his economy, and essentially greatly setting back his civilization. The maps are also pretty small, so you probably won't be able to get more than 5 cities. Also, this shares one other trait with other not-as-good-as-age of empires-games. It spans a far too long time period. AOE is probably about 300-400 years. Empire Earth and Rise of Nations and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World span 1000 years or more. This means in RON, you will find that you've advanced to the Modern age, and now need oil to build anything wort building, although you have great food and wood economies. it just makes your economy a pain.

The Bottom Line
Although better than other recent poor RTS, it falls short of being better than Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings