Reviews / previews
Brian Reynolds, the man behind Sid Meiers last two hits (Civilization II and Alpha Centauri), decided that hed like to see a Civilization-type game done in real time. The result is Rise of Nations, in which youll take a small country from the Stone Age to the Information Age in the space of a real-time strategy game.
In Rise of Nations, youll control one of 18 civilizations (Aztecs, Bantu, British, Chinese, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Inca, Japanese, Koreans, Maya, Mongols, Nubians, Romans, Russians, Spanish, and the Turks), each with their own signature units and special abilities. A clearly defined national border will show you where your influence ends, but youll be able to establish new cities and towns to expand your lands. Multiplayer games will enable you to go from the Stone Age to modern times quickly.
Not a big fan of micro-managing every tiny, little detail in an RTS setting, Reynolds has taken a lot of aspects typically found in strategy games and simplified them. Peasants straight out of training will wait around a few seconds, but if you dont give them orders, theyll go to the first place theyre needed. This will keep you from having to micro-manage which peasants build, which perform repairs, which mine gold, etc. Resource gathering will also be streamlined; resources will be infinite from within one single source (mines for gold, mountains for stone and metal, etc.), but each source will only be able to support a certain number of workers, so if you want to gather resources more quickly, youll have to find more sources. These things will lead to less time worrying about small stuff and free up more attention for the demands of running a large nation.
And these nations will get large. In most RTS games, you have a main base and a couple of smaller outposts, but in Rise of Nations, youll establish multiple cities in the interest of growing your empire. Each city will push back your nations border a certain amount, enabling you to encroach on someone elses land. This will lead to border disputes and outright war as players try to keep their country and resources.
Combat will be different from many RTS games, as well. Formations and tactics are very important in Rise of Nations. If you can flank your opponents forces, youll gain a great advantage since units are more vulnerable from the sides or from behind. The vastly varying tech levels mean you might face down bombers with your pikemen, or you might get nuked while youre researching flintlock pistols.
Rise of Nations motto is History on your lunch hour, so you can bet the action will be both strategically correct and fast-paced. In a recent brief play session, it took less than half and hour to get from the Stone Age to the Industrial Age, so you can look forward to spanning the centuries without spending almost as long to play.-- 0 / GamePro
Billed as a real-time Civilization, Rise of Nations sets itself to face down the hordes of historical RTS games dotting the PC landscape. Its armed with enough innovations to bridge the RTS and empire-building genres, though, and that could be enough to set it apart from the rest of the pack.
Rise of Nations biggest draw is that it will charge through the entirety of human history from beginning to present, spanning eight distinct ages of human development. The game will also be in real time, so your nation will hammer through age after age in record timebefore you know it, your archers will be commandos and your trebuchets will be tanks. Therell be 18 nations to choose from, each with its own unique set of advantages, and each nation on the map will have a border to expand and multiple cities to establish and grow.
Whats more, developer Big Huge has tossed out the most annoying bits of the average RTS. In the preview build, new units found something to do if they didnt get orders, resources never depleted, and rally points drew new recruits right into battle, leaving you to manage your nation with ease.-- 0 / GamePro
The historical RTS market became an overcrowded mess yeeeears agoyet somehow, Rise of Nations manages to stand out in the sea of bloated clones. Why doesnt history repeat itself?
Ascendance of Countries
The biggest difference between Rise of Nations and the 18 million other historical RTS games out there is that RON takes about a half hour to bang through the entire research tree. The rest of your time is spent in a massive tangle of hi-tech, high-speed chaos as missiles bombard you, bombers barrage you, and hundreds of little samurai-turned-flamethrower commandos get lost in the shuffle. Speed and madness is the name of the game, at least in the multiplayer mode.
The single-player Campaign works a lot more slowly and unfolds like a game of Risk with full-blown RTS battles in place of die rolls. Its a great twist on the usual story mode, but the first time an enemy reattacks a territory you just conquered, dj vu strikes, and Rise of Nations biggest weaknesslack of varietybecomes obvious. Every nation is the same, except for some bonus modifiers; there really arent that many units; and in the end, you wind up wielding them as a jumbled horde.
RONs presentation is strictly standard: The graphics and sound have been surpassed by games like WarCraft III, and the game knows RTS PC controls were perfected long agoall the good ideas like idle worker buttons have been incorporated, and dragging a selection box handily nabs only armies, not peasants.
Emergence of Sovereignties
Rise of Nations strives for simplicity over complexity and speed over drawn-out tactics; it addresses the fact that most gamers get really sick of RTS battles before a victor can be named. A minor jolt to a dead horse, sure, but enough to coax out a couple more breaths.-- Evil Star Dingo / GamePro
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