An expansion pack, Thrones and Patriots, was released on Apand made small improvements to the original game by increasing the number of playable nations to 24, adding 4 new campaigns, and adding governments.

The leading designer at Big Huge Games for Rise of Nations was the veteran Brian Reynolds of Civilization II and Alpha Centauri. Rise of Nations allows a player to lead any one of 18 civilizations through a roughly historical time frame from Ancient Age to the Information Age. Many of these ideas are taken from turn-based strategy games, including territory, attrition and a much improved economic system. It was an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary step in the genre, keeping a similar structure to existing RTSs (like Age of Empires) while introducing many novel and innovative concepts to the genre. Rise of Nations is a real time strategy computer game, developed by Big Huge Games and published by Microsoft on May 20, 2003. Template:If defined call1 Template:If defined call1 Template:If defined call1 Template:If defined call1 Template:If defined call1 Release date(s)

Rise of nations game engine