Empire Earth II

[Melbosa]

 Although the first one can be considered one of the lengthy, tedious RTSes ever released as a Epic game (maybe even more so than Civilization, although I don't know if you can go that far), I think they may have a hit with the sequel.

From what I've been reading, looks like they have again added lots of ages to game play.  And may races to play as.  But what they lacked in the first one for polished game play, they have fixed (I think - have to play really to find out) in the sequel.  Age balancing - seems you can use units up to 2 ages prior to your opponents and still be effective - looks to be a nice addition.  And the ability to place reasonable Handy-Caps to players in a MP situation (Game God vs Newbie) to change resource and unit production time frames, may really make this a decent MP for LANs and for all skill levels.

Also I have read, but not quite sure how they work yet, about the Diplomacy vs War Planner uses in MP, and will definately be looking to find out exactly how each plays a role.

Check out an overall round-up of this sequel here: http://archive.gamespy.com/landing/empireearth/