While there are only three proper civilizations, Ensemble routinely boasts of nine, which isn\'t far from the truth. Favor is the hardest to come by for the Norse, who are only rewarded with it while their units are actively engaged in battle, though this is mitigated by the powerful gifts that their gods can grant them in return for the bloodshed. They come in several sizes, and each increases the rate at which favor is gained, up to a limit of five monuments. The Egyptians are required to build monuments, statues that take both time and resources to construct. By the end of the game, however, throngs of supplicants can generate favor at a breakneck pace. The Greeks must devote villagers to pray at temples, which slowly builds favor and is initially very costly as those workers must be fed and are needed for other tasks. The three major civilizations gain this favor in different ways. In addition to the more standard resources of food, wood and gold, which are necessary for a healthy economy, divine favor has been added to the list. Players will once again be able to take the helm of a civilization and carefully mold it into an empire, as Age of Mythology is an RTS in the classic sense: Managing the virtual economy is of prime importance - above and beyond the tactics needed on the battlefield. The gameplay is nearly the same as that of previous outings, except that faith, rather than being an abstracted process of priests converting units over to a side, is a concrete and wondrous thing to behold. In many ways, the material is now even more accessible than it was before. Indeed, due to the vagaries of Hollywood, the general public often knows more about the mythology of antiquity than it does of the actual history involved. The public agreed, and casual gamers who had never even heard the name Warcraft before were playing their first RTS.Īge of Mythology is a return to the roots of the series. This wasn\'t necessarily because it was the best game of its time, though it can certainly stand proudly among them, but because of the historic familiarity and warmth it brought to the table - both of which were largely missing from previous offerings. Though I\'m a veteran of the many titles that are often hailed as the originators of real-time strategy, Herzog Zwei and Dune 2 among them, it wasn\'t until Ensemble Studios and Microsoft teamed up for Age of Empires that I truly understood the potential the genre had. Recommended: PIII 800, 256MB RAM, 32MB video memory Minimum: PII 300, 32MB RAM, 3D video card, Win 9X/NT/2K/ME/XP