Rise of Nations, made by Big Huge Games (official webpage of the game)
Here are a few features that make that game a very special one:
- Large choice of nations to impersonate. Each civilisation has its own special bonuses.
- Journey through 8 consecutive ages (starting with Antiquity, ending up with Information Age)
- Notion of territory: buildings influence boundaries and entering enemy or neutral territory with your military units harms them
- Notion of cities: each town can only have limited amount of each buidings. To expand you need to construct other cities, use trade caravans between them, etc.
- Diplomacy (of course), but with scaled levels: War, Peace and Alliance
- Improvements available through research in 4 categories available at a library: Military, Civic, Trade and Science. Research items and new ages are unlocked progressively depending on your levels
- Resources: Food, Wood, Mineral (Age 2+) and Oil (Age 5+ if I remember well?)
You do not gather resources from limited stocks which exhaust, but the number of civilian affected to each kind of resources modifies a collecting rate. A greater rater replenish faster your available stocks, but need more people (and population is limited by both Military research level and a maximum number). In addition, the maximum reachable rate is determined by the Trade research level. When the maximum "Trade capacity" is reached, you have to do some research to unlock greater rates of collecting resources. - Wonders: Some famous buildings (Statue of Liberty, Versailles, Kremlin, Angkor Vat, etc.) which cost a lot can be built. The provide the nation which owns it with special bonuses. They are unique: first built, only served, the other players can't have access to it anymore, and if other similar wonders were being built, the buiding is cancelled.
- Large choice of map types randomly generated following the wanted size (depending on the number of players, up to 8 or 10, can't remember)
- Large choice of victory conditions: Conquest (capture the enemy capital), Wonders (gaining wonder points through wonder construction or enemy wonders destruction), Territory (taking control of a pre-determined percentage of the map's surface), etc.
Focus on the Coop mode: In multiplayer, several people can control the very same nation. It's the only game I see featured with that great stuff. - Campaign for the control of the World: Single player campaign which mixes real-time strategy with a turn-based strategic map on which pawns representing your armies can be moved to control neutral territories or attack other countries. Conflicts are resolved by real-time battles.
The game has an expansion, Thrones & Patriots, which only adds civilisations and map types to the already great game.
I would enjoy playing it with you anytime