COME GET SOME, YOU A.I. CONTROLLED HAS-BEEN!
In contrast to multiplayer games, which will again be touched upon briefly in the next section, in the single player environment you have “Conquer The World” at your disposal. Here, a player is allowed to have a strategic map, e.g. that of Europe with a campaign starting in Greece and looking towards the south of Italy. You can demand some tribute, food, or the territory itself in exchange for forgoing an invasion… at least until the next turn. You would then play the scenario on a standard map in that territory on real-world looking terrain; if you win, you are informed via message boxes accordingly. Along the way you can see other civilizations rise and fall. You can move into unclaimed territory or attack directly into another empire's realm.
WHEN YOUR COMPUTER RUNS OUT OF NEW MOVES
As far as multiplayer games go hotseat, of course, does not apply. Modem-to-modem, local area network (LAN), and Internet matchmaking via Microsoft's The Zone will provide you with means of finding others to play Rise of Nations with when the computer ceases to be a challenge (or if you're finding it too insulting to your status as a human being to be thumped by a manmade machine).
ET CETERA
Music and sound effects are naturally apart of the complete RoN experience. These, as with art, are still in the development phase (at least, at the time this pre/interview was originally conducted). The game is already quite stable with some more balancing to do, but even at the beginning of August the BHG team is getting into the final design. There are still some components undecided, but there are prototypes making the rounds.
Speaking of the BHG team, there are 27-8 individuals working full-time on the project. A further breakdown for you: around 7 programmers, 4-5 designers, 13 artists, a few producers and a few others still assigned to various tasks. Counting playtesting, art and programming interns this tally rises to 35-6. The Art folks are busily clicking away at texture, animations and 3D models whilst their programming colleagues are focusing on graphics technology and artificial intelligence (AI) moulding; one of this sub-team is dedicated solely to terrain graphics, another on scenario editors and related tools and the like while Chief Engineer Jason Coleman is settled into his role on networking, multiplayer and other communications components of Rise of Nations. Lastly, don't forget about the designers scurrying around to balance the game, create scenarios and “Conquer the World” content and other general tweaking to ensure everyone is more or less on the same page at the end of the gaming development day.
A short aside: different civilizations develop different armaments in the game. In other words, nation designated colours will not be the only means to distinguish one empire's units from another. Further, there are no 'secret upgrades' that are not reflected by the graphics engine. You can relatively quickly learn how to identify and defeat not only opposing armies, but also army types (and later, naval and air units).
Rise Up: Reynolds On RoN 
