When Brian Reynolds, the designer behind Alpha Centauri and Civilization II, founded Big Huge Games in 2000, he set out to create a real-time strategy game that combined the epic scope of Firaxis' acclaimed turn-based strategy games with the fast pace and excitement of real-time gameplay. That project, Rise of Nations, has come a long way since then, and we recently had a chance to speak with Brian Reynolds about the final stages of the game's development and what it has to offer that's unique among real-time strategy games.

Also, starting today, 500 lucky GameSpot Complete members will be selected to participate in the beta test and will receive a CD so they can start playing Rise of Nations immediately. If you're a member, you can sign up for the beta right here.

GameSpot: Thanks for taking the time for this interview. Could you give us an update on what aspects of Rise of Nations' development the team is working on at this point?

Big Huge Games is now putting the finishing touches on Rise of Nations.

Brian Reynolds: Right now we're in "final polish" mode--all that's left to do is fix all the bugs, be sure that the performance is good on all the systems we run on, and finish up any final gameplay balancing that we think is necessary. It's really the most fun part of the project, despite all the extra hours, since most of the time we're playing the game to help find the remaining issues.

GS: Looking back, what would you say has been the most challenging aspect of Rise of Nations' development? Balancing the different nations? Making the game accessible for new players?

BR: I think the most difficult work was toward the beginning, where we had a lot of different ideas about how to bring new concepts into real-time strategy and we had to figure out which ones would work and which ones wouldn't. For example, we thought national borders would be an interesting idea, but we didn't know if it would work in an RTS or not. We had to try them out, and then we had to figure out what set of rules worked best with them and made them most interesting.

GS: On a related note, Rise of Nations really does seem to be intended to appeal to a wide variety of potential players--die-hard real-time strategy fans, turn-based strategy experts, and even beginners who don't always have a lot of time on their hands. Would you say that the game might be more attractive to a certain audience than another?

BR: One of the things we've always tried to do in our games is provide players with a ton of options, so each person can customize the game to play the way he or she wants to. In Rise of Nations, we have all kinds of game modes, optional rules changes, player preference options, and map types to satisfy just about anyone who likes strategy games. Do you prefer a long, drawn-out game with a strong defensive tilt? Set "no rush" rules, where attacking is not permitted in the early stages of the game, and then modify the costs of technologies to be expensive so you spend more time in each age. Would you rather have an all-out slugfest? Increase the speed of resource collection and begin in the Industrial Age so you can immediately begin with airplanes and tanks.

GS: When we last spoke, you used the phrase "world history over lunch" to describe Rise of Nations' multiplayer games, meaning that multiplayer games could be started and finished within 30 minutes to an hour. Could you explain how Big Huge Games ended up paring down such a seemingly complex game to fit within this time frame?

The game runs from the classical era to the modern age.

BR: A big focus of the development has been to get rid of micromanagement wherever it rears its ugly head. Your citizens find ways to make themselves useful instead of standing around after completing a building. Units going across the ocean automatically create their own transports instead of having to be manually fumbled onto ships. This way, the focus of the game is on making the big decisions--when to expand your national borders, where to mass your troops, and what wonders of the world you should build to complement your strategy. Since you are usually only looking at the big picture, the game can easily be played in under an hour.

We've also carefully paced the game so that in your standard 30-to-60-minute multiplayer game you get to travel all the way through human history, from ancient times to the information age. All RTS games feature "upgrading your units" as you go--we just offer more dramatic upgrades (such as retraining your javelineers with muskets) that often change the game tactics significantly. So the flavor of the game changes as you go from early times to later times, which we think makes it that much more exciting.