Rise of Nations

Solveig and I have been Age of Empires fans for as long as the series has existed. (I know, I know, the game is published by Microsoft and won't run on Linux, even under WineX. So sue me.) However, as much as we both love the game, it’s age has been showing for a while. AOE is great game for those who are new to real-time stragegy games, but it feels a little simplistic.

For some reason, we haven’t been all that excited about the latest installment in the AOE series, Age of Mythology. All I can say is that playing with gods feels like it goes against everything that was fun in the original AOE. I’ll pass, thanks, and you can give the gods to the same people who are addicted to cheat codes.

Enter Rise of Nations, which the Chaudhri boys have been recommending to us for almost two months. With the arrival of my new laptop, Solveig and I now have two machines that meet that hardware requirements. So we downloaded the trial version of RON and wow! We’re hooked. Forget AOE, forget AOM, I’m headed to Micro Center today to buy the retail version of this game in order to feed our new addiction.