Welcome to the World of Aio, which is similar to our world in geography only. It is peopled by three races: the Vinci, who are the masters of steam and clockwork devices (their units have the look of having being pulled from the blueprints found in Leonardo Da Vinci's workshop); there are the Alin, who dwell in the deserts and are masters of elemental magics - they can conjure elemental beasts as combat units; and then there are the Cuotl, who dwell in the jungles and harness the power of the sun.

The game is largely based on the existing Rise of Nations game engine with a few tweaks. As we have come to expect from Big Huge Games, the campaign is excellent with the initial scenarios used to introduce most of the game concepts. At its heart it is a strategy game that relies on you building a base/city and producing units to take on your opponent.

The subtlety, however, lies in managing your resources, your research and city improvements to improve your armies. The central point of the game are your cities. It is in effect one game object to which you can add additional structures to enhance its influence. Add an additional military district and you increase the amount of units you can have; add a merchant district and you can support more trade ships. There is also a palace district which, when built enhances the effects of the other two. Each of the races of Aio also has unique districts it can build.

This city and district concept is very easy to work with, and although it may not suit the micro-manager fans of the genre, it does take a lot of the work out of managing your cities. The only structures you can build outside of the city districts are a research facility, barracks, mine, heavy unit factory and an air unit building. There is also the ability to construct defence turrets. These all have to be built within the sphere of influence of the city. All of this will be very familiar to players of the original Rise of Nations.

The main source of gold income is from trading, while the main resource used for building is Timonium (a type of blue crystal). Apart from your opponents' cities there are also neutral cities you can conquer or buy out to form new cities. All of this is pretty much standard fare for the genre, however the real fun commences when you start building units. Initially you have the basic foot sloggers, but you are soon sending mechanical spiders, impossible-looking clockwork men and whirlybird fliers into battle.