- Good...but so close to being great.I'm not a big fan of strategy guides. They tend to be written as if talking to a 3 year old. However I was so in love with Rise of Nations to get my fill I needed more info on the game and this manual provided it. It incorporates all aspects of the game from multiplayer to the CTW campaign. The writer does a great job interlacing all the rare resource info, wonder info, unit info to specific civilizations in order maximize the efficency of your play. Great tips like how to "Age Jump" as well as perform hit and run attacks with light calvary ar invaluable in disrupting AI and Human opponents. What I really liked was the fact that he used his experience from playing only on the toughest difficulty levels to provide only top notch strategies.
I do feel there were a few aspects of this book that hindered it's drive to being a great strategy guide. The military chapters are very broad. Very few specific general tactics are described. The ones he does put forth are extremely helpful but it would have been nice to see charts or details on what he felt armies should be comprised of at different unit totals. Unfortunately we just get a broad stroke over that topic. It would have been neat to get a solid of idea what he felt the perfect "raiding army" or "seige army" should be comprised of.
My second complaint (if you can even call it that) is more info on building your nations. While he explains very nicely about city placement and the benifits of placing mines and mills in certian locations I would have liked a more analytical view of where to place buildings within the city to provide better defense/offense so on and so forth. I guess its just a minor complaint.
The highlight of the book is probably his explainations of using the functions that a lot of people overlook like the use of spies, commandos, militia, and early scouting techniques.
Overall a fantastic book, I highly reccommend it.
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