When I some months ago Microsoft had released Age of Empires and later then his younger brother AOE-Rise of Rome, my dreams about the real good strategy came true. Third series of Microsoft`s released strategy start in dark age and finished in post-imperial age. There you can use many new kind of weapons, new map types from really small to really huge and much more variants of terrain, you choose one of the nineteen civilization, chose population limit 50 - 200, but differently from AOE I, you must chose only one way how to achieve conquest. It's because the developing more than one type of weapon or kind of weapon is expensive. For example, if you build strategy on monasteries and improve your monk`s as much as possible, then you have not left enough gold to reaserch any other different weapons {e.g. siege onager`s, bombard cannon`s...}. My impression: The best real-time strategy, how I ever played. Map editor included. Supports all multiplayer variants as before.