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Rather like that age-old wargame, chess, real-time strategy games abstract the nature of war, reducing the deadly action and the huge industrial investment into a contest that can be decided in a half-hour multiplayer match. But Empires: Dawn of the Modern World decidedly heads in the direction of historical specificity. The latest game from the designer of the original Age of Empires and Empire Earth isn't a reinvention of the traditional RTS formula, but it has the particular distinction of having nine civilizations that play in radically different ways, each with unique special powers, units, and economic traits. Focusing in on five war-torn periods from the time of medieval knights through World War II, Empires provides a look at how military tactics changed in the centuries leading up to the modern era, and the resulting action can pack a lot of units into fierce combined-arms battles. Simply put, there's a lot for RTS fans to like in Empires.