

Through the accumulation of prototype units and/or general purpose unit upgrades they can bolster their standing army while building Research Labs which upgrade to custom utility buildings which get very useful in the late game. Combining the culture of Renaissance Italy with a Steampunk aesthetic, the Vinci are technology purists who start their matches with footsoldiers supported by clockwork robots and finish with massive machines of war, ranging from large tanks to a giant spider-like robot called a Land Leviathan.

Legends isn't a terribly ambitious product, but it's still very fun to play and has more strategy than many give it credit for. Gone are the non-military win conditions, the emphasis on research, the proliferation of resources and the large roster of playable nations. Gameplay-wise, Legends isn't expecially similar to Rise of Nations despite using its name as a prefix: Nations imported a lot of ideas from the 4X genre, a lot of which Legends discarded in favour of fast-paced RTS combat and resource competition, taking a lot of its ideas from StarCraft. Giacomo thus sets out to defeat them in turn, but things go decidedly bad for him in the process. At this juncture it turns out that the Doge was merely a pawn of more powerful and terrifying entities, whose technology was also responsible for the corruption of said genie. Giacomo begins a quest for vengeance against the Doge and finally has his revenge, though not before getting caught up in a struggle with mysterious creatures made of glass, which ends when Giacomo and his allies find their leader, a corrupted genie, and bring him back to the side of good. On his way to recover a mysterious artifact for study, his brother Petruzzo is killed by the Doge, an archetypal Evil Overlord who wants the technology for himself. The campaign follows the adventures of an inventor named Giacomo.
