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A good progression from Age of Kings II My two eldest (9 & 7) were addicted to Age of Kings so I got them this for a birthday. Age of Kings has not been used since. The key advantages of this game over AOK are: a) Much less micro-management. The kids often played AOK in deathmatch to avoid all the 'citizen work'. In RON the citizens will 'find something to do' provided you have mines / farms / forests for them. And these things DON'T RUN OUT so the constant 'find a mine' problem has gone. This makes the citizen side far more manageable, especially for the younger one. b) National boundaries. Such an obvious concept but it greatly enhances game play. You now 'own' territory and need to expand the territory you own. c) Research bands. The research restrictions in AOK are primitive, in RON there are many more things to research and a much more intricate way of doing it, yet many of them are in the library which makes it easy to find. Also there is now the concept of knowledge so you can increase your rate of research. d) National differentiation. Whilst the nations were distinct in AOK the differences were fairly minimal. In RON the differences between the nations are huge, this expands the 'come back and try again' capability significantly e) The tutorial is superb, took my 7 year old from scratch to 'very good' without daddy having to spend hours (actually this may be a bad thing :) ) f) The campaign. Ok, think the RISK board game, but with a real battle instead of a dice roll. A marvellous blend of stategy and tactics. Again enhances the 'come back again' factor g) Graphics. I thought AOK was good, this is almost like watching a movie. The only downside is you need a 16MB graphics card, so one of our PCs can't join in the fun. h) More realistic, you cannot 'explode' a single city as much, there are ways of 'enhancing' productivity i) Greater span of time. Goes from classical to modern age, as my children have learnt a lot of history from RTS games the broader span has broadened their education! Downsides: i) WAY too addictive ii) Needs 16MB graphic cards iii) Really needs more than 256MB of main memory (it DOES run, but having upgrated to 512MB it now runs reasonable) Bottom Line: Should you buy this? a) If you like AOK then YES. b) If you have bright children 7+ and would like a computer game to tax their brains. Yes, I would probably recommend it rather than AOK because of the tutorial and the lack of micro-management c) I like CIV and other SIM type simulations. Hmmm ... probably not, whilst there IS a mode for non-combative play the result is a little like buying a big-mac and taking out the meat ...