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Sorry if this is old news, but I was out of town for a while...all I can say to Brian and the team is that these items are some of EXACTLY what I was hoping you'd do! Bravo! 
http://www.gamespy.com/previews/march02/riseofnations/
http://www.gamespy.com/previews/march02/riseofnations/
- Unlike most, your culture's borders will be clearly marked on the map, and they affect gameplay. You can only build civic buildings near your town center, and you can only build military buildings within your nation's borders. How do you expand? One way is by building additional towns. Another is by building up your nation's level of civilization and culture. A better civilization will begin to swallow up more of the map, ideally safeguarding more important resources within its borders.
- But the attacker is not without advantages; you can "take over" an enemy city by attacking it to reduce it to zero health. Then, as long as you have more military units present then the defender, the city -- and all the economic and cultural buildings around it -- becomes yours. Because of these changes, borders tend to shift realistically across the map during gameplay, and battles tend to rage around key economic cities that are often blasted but rarely destroyed.
- And yes, you really can play it on your lunch hour. Playtesters so far are able to go from the Stone Age to the Information Age in roughly 56 minutes, so you'll really get to feel the march of time.
- Combat is also refined to add a level of strategic depth. All units have a front, flanks, and a rear.
- Oh yes, you can also research nuclear weapons. With these you're looking at a whole screenful of decimation. Careful, though -- if too many nations fire nukes, the game is declared "Armageddon" and everyone loses.(!)
- In Rise of Nations, knowledge is a resource that is collected and spent, just like wood. To harvest it, you'll need to create a university and send your citizens there (you'll see them sitting in row upon row of tiny desks, listening to a lecturer.) Knowledge will help you research new technologies or create specialized units. For example, researching and building a nuke will require a huge expenditure of knowledge.
- "Oil is the grease of the modern age, uh, literally," Reynolds quipped. It also adds a twist to the latter parts of the game, since oil resources aren't even shown on the map until civilizations advance enough to need them. Suddenly territories that looked useless early on will become hotly contested. Sometimes oil reserves can only be found at sea, where they have to be harvested by offshore platforms, "finally giving you something substantive to do with your navy," Reynolds pointed out.
- The most useful of the special units, though, is the general. Creating a high level general is an immense benefit to your forces -- his "Rally" ability will make nearby units fire faster and withstand more damage. He can also call a "forced march" which will allow a group of infantry to run forward in formation almost as fast as cavalry. Most intriguing is his "ambush" ability, which can temporarily render his nearby soldiers invisible. Just when you think you're in the clear and you're about to start shelling the enemy capital, a wiley general may suddenly appear to lead a charge to your flanks!
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