For all you money lovers, there is an economic race where each player tries to see who can get their financial markets to reach a certain level. This is similar to a technological triumph which tests how fast a player can reach an exact level of scientific development, usually (hence, default) the Information Age. If you find yourself crunched for time, why not give the time limit game a spin. Whoever has the highest score at the end wins, and depending on your fancy this can be measured by a variety of scoring mechanisms including military and economy. If you thought these options were unconventional, be prepared now to redefine your concept of unconventional.
"Assassin" is a free-for-all-game where four or five nations start from the outset as allies. Instead of conducting 'normal' diplomacy where a group can gang up on one to kick them out and so on down the line, instead each player is assigned one civilization that they can attack. The choice from here is two-tier: go on the offensive to commence your mission in earnest or go on the defensive in response to whomever is attacking you. More often then not you might find yourself fighting both types of wars simultaneously. The others will not be sitting back with half-smiles as they will apt to be engaged in skirmishes of their own. Moreover, if you capture that opponent's capital you get all the spoils of his or her empire. Needless to say this promotes a lot of action and aggression even early on. Team modifications are permitted to allow the pre-assignment of allies by the player(s) themself(selves).
There is also "Team Diplomacy" to consider. In this circumstance, a team of players that consist of a couple of major coalitions and sandwiched in between are a few neutral nations that you can try to make deals with, offer tribute to be your friend and even try to get them to attack somebody else. This resembles the 20th-century Cold War between the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact with the Non-Aligned Movement (NMO) observing events unfolding from the sidelines.
Lastly, here is an introduction to the "Barbarians At The Gate" game. In the classical sense, you are Rome where every other nation in the world is allied against you (although you can choose to be any RoN supported nation you want). You can even start out at a different age than everybody else but with what is like having the barbarian hordes coming at you from all directions and you're needing to hold them all of simultaneously for an extended period of time, it is apt to be a hectic endeavour. Speaking of time, there is a limit to their assault: if your nation can live to see to the end of this countdown, then you as the defender win – otherwise, at some point, the offensive force has taken the ultimate upper-hand and eliminated you. Yes, there is a reason why the term "barbarian" is used in this context. There is no other type of barbarians to found in Rise of Nations. Reynolds summarizes the team's thought process in making this decision.
"We found that just losing to things that kind of appeared randomly on the map made people mad [..] We found most players didn't like that very much, at least in the real-time environment... We do a lot of testing and we get people in that like these sort of games... and see what works and what doesn't because there were all kinds of things we could have brought over from turn-based [strategy] games and all kinds of things we could have kept from real-time [strategy] games, and some of them worked and some of them didn't".
Reynolds then cites national borders that have been discovered to, in addition to being an enjoyful element in the mix, resolve some of the inherent issues that have been traditional to real-time strategy games.
As has been previously mentioned in other previews, there are eighteen nations included in Rise of Nations – if and when an expansion pack is produced, more may be added but that is jumping the gun a bit at this point. In any event, each nation has its own special ability… unless you decide to nix them.
Rise Up: Reynolds On RoN 
