The Penicle of Real Time Strategy
Since StarCraft was unleashed upon the world the RTS genre has been getting larger and larger, and the properly named BigHuge Games has delivered the biggest. Rise of Nations (RoN) delivers a deep RTS that can be played in so many ways.
The reason RoN manages to pull this feat off is because it simply combines the best part of other RTS games. RoN borrows tech tree of Age of Empires, the gameplay of Empire Earth, and just to make everything seem right a little StarCraft.
RoN lets you choose to play as one of eighteen societeies through the past 2,000 years of human history. This combined with the many modes of play such as Conquer the World, an Axis and Allies like Turn Based Strategy, and your basic quick play skirmish with many ways to alter gameplay.
One neat twist RoN has is an innovative War-Peace-Alliance status system that manages nations status to one another on the fly. That one little function alters gameplay majorly allowing trading, the anexxation of territories, and unique manipulation on the battlefield.
Amazingly no matter what "Age" you are in, be it the classical age or information the gameplay stays balanced and quick. Toss in some detailed real-life military units and you have yourself a fantastic RTS. But in the end the beauty of RoN is the idea of never having to have to build one military unit and still have a chance at winning the game.