History is a fine thing, and the source of much inspiration in the gaming world. But game designers do not like boundaries on their creativity, and unfortunately history is constrained by that most ubiquitous of kill-joys, reality. Fortunately for us, Studios opted to do what is routine for all good storytellers - they stepped out of reality, and decided to make some shit up. Drawing on the well-established mythos of three distinct cultures, Ensemble have created a real-time game that is not too radical a departure for traditionalists, but is at the same time innovative enough to keep things fresh and compete with releases like Warcraft 3.

There are three main civilizations to choose from - Greek, Egyptian, and Norse. Each of these may pick one major deity from the pantheon as a patron, and this determines certain abilities and units available to the player. Further specialization is achieved through the selection of a new lesser deity to support upon advancement through the tech levels. Control and interface layout is becoming well established in the RTS genres main game franchises, and so those of you who've played previous Ensemble games will immediately come to grips with the controls. It is an intuitive system, and even newcomers will have no problems picking up the basics, although it takes a little bit of perseverance to become familiar with its intricacies. Other features that are similar to previous games include the resource collection, and the basic mission structure - although there is more variety this time round - more later. Necessary resources include gold, wood, food and favour, which replaces stone. Favour is required to perform miracles and summon myth units and heroes, and is gained in different ways depending on your current civilization. The Greeks assign peasants to worship at the temple, the Egyptians build monuments to the gods, while the Norse must gain favour through battle.

A variety of traditional-style units are available to each race, with the addition this time of mythological units and heroes. Mythological units are powerful creatures based on the civilizations respective mythos, and are summoned from the temple. The also differ from normal units in that they incur a favour cost upon summoning. Hero units are more powerful still, and represent something of a halfway house between the all-importance of heroes in Warcraft III, and the situation in previous games where unique units were mere token additions. Hero units in AoM are very powerful, though not battle-turning in their own right. The Greeks can summon a finite number of heroes famous from their mythology, such as Ajax, Jason and Heracles. The Egyptians have two hero varieties - the Pharaoh and the priest. Only one Pharaoh may be summoned at once, and if he dies he is replaced by a successor. Multiple priests may be summoned, and must be replaced at the temple upon death. The Norse can summon innumerable helsirs, spirits of warriors slain in battle and destined to fight forever in Valhalla.

The hero units constitute one of the main differences between the civilizations. The Norse are limited only by their resources in how many heroes to summon, but the helsirs are correspondingly less powerful. The Egyptians' Pharoah is powerful, but only one is available at any time, while the priests are unlimited but are not really an offensive unit. The Greek heroes are all powerful, but each one is unique, and in total they can summon perhaps seven or eight heroes. If killed, the Greek heroes resurrect themselves where they were slain as long as friendly troops are in the area. This does mean, however, that an important hero is effectively stuck in limbo if he dies deep in enemy territory.