Domain Name Com's Rise of Nations

Rise of Nations

Domain Name Com's - : Rise of Nations

- Good for rushers but a couple of major flaws
Opinions on these games vary, but that is what reviewing is all about. I think one reason for this is the type of game an individual prefers. In an RTS, there is typically a couple of different basic strategies:

1) The Rush
Players are aggressive in the early game and attack enemies as soon as possible.

2) Defensive (or Turtling)
Players concentrate on building a large economy, strong cities, and huge armies before engaging in battle.

I personally am more of a fan of the latter strategy, but Rise of Nations seems to have been designed more for the rush player in mind. The fact that you can't build walls is one example of that. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed RoN, but felt that the game could have been more satisfying for the defensive-minded players without sacrificing the game's flow.

One particular good feature are the dynamic boundaries. For those who have not yet played RoN, this means that everyone has territories with distinctive borders which can be expanded as you develop near them. You also have advantages when fighting inside your own borders. You can eventually push your borders against the enemy's borders and even collapse theirs against them.

Now, the two things I consider the worst features of the game:

1) Automatic morphing of land units into sea transports.

The fact that you don't need to bulid any shipping ports and transport ships to get land units over the oceans is a major boo-boo. When you instruct a land unit to move to a location divided by water, the unit will automatically turn into a boat, float across the sea, and revert to its original unit. This pretty much kills the sea-based warfare in my opinion. True, the units, when crossing, can't defend themselves and they're weak to attacks, but in a large game with many players, it is often way too easy to have them slip across the ocean undetected.

2) Nuclear Weapons

This feature just sucks. When you've worked so long building up a great army and people start launching nukes, you can bet the game is over. As if it weren't bad enough that they are so destructive, the game designers must have felt they needed to incorporate their own political agenda into the game with the "Armageddon" rule. Too much nuking will suddenly end the entire game an nobody wins. This makes it a complete waste of time.

One final complaint is that it is far too easy for some players to advance far beyond others in age so you end up with soldiers with muskets battling helicopters and battleships. The strange part about this is that many times the weaker force will triumph. There needs to be a method to better balance the transition of ages. I would suggest that perhaps with the first player crossing into a new age that everyone else goes too, but the players who are doing better are rewarded some type of bonus on a sliding scale, as a reward. Perhaps extra resources or units.

Other than those last few gripes, I would have scored Rise of Nations a five.

Rating:

- Worth getting
RON is a fun game that I played for over 2 months (not everyday of course). If you like Command & Conquer or Lords of the Realm, you should like this game. They have similar fighting scenarios and I like these type of games. I prefer C&C, as far as defending your territory, over this game.

Positives:
1. Very addictive and challenging enough to keep you playing for awhile. Very challenging if you play the harder difficulty, especially defending your territory.
2. It's fun seeing the changes and enhancements through the ages.
3. It has a really great learning tool...I never even needed the instruction booklet, which is rare with complicated games like these (great for kids).

Negatives:
1. I wish the game forced you to stay in an age longer, thus seeing all the maximum achievements of that age. They should create a larger variety of soldiers/weapons within that age and require longer playing times to move on to a new age. The better you accomplish the required goals, the faster you'll move on to the next age. The current method requires you to move faster to the next age, otherwise you'll be way behind and be left as a dead carcass by the enemy.
2. Lack of walls to protect your territory better.
3. The 'Risk' map is a good concept but you should be able to attack anywhere as long as you own that country, they force you to have an army in the attacking country. If you ally within anyone, they can take over most of the world and you still win, so if you want to take over the world on your own, don't ally with anyone.
4. Citizen total is too low (200) and unrealistic.

Overall....it is worth getting and a fun game.

Rating:

- A good progression from Age of Kings II
My two eldest (9 & 7) were addicted to Age of Kings so I got them this for a birthday. Age of Kings has not been used since. The key advantages of this game over AOK are:

a) Much less micro-management. The kids often played AOK in deathmatch to avoid all the 'citizen work'. In RON the citizens will 'find something to do' provided you have mines / farms / forests for them. And these things DON'T RUN OUT so the constant 'find a mine' problem has gone. This makes the citizen side far more manageable, especially for the younger one.

b) National boundaries. Such an obvious concept but it greatly enhances game play. You now 'own' territory and need to expand the territory you own.

c) Research bands. The research restrictions in AOK are primitive, in RON there are many more things to research and a much more intricate way of doing it, yet many of them are in the library which makes it easy to find. Also there is now the concept of knowledge so you can increase your rate of research.

d) National differentiation. Whilst the nations were distinct in AOK the differences were fairly minimal. In RON the differences between the nations are huge, this expands the 'come back and try again' capability significantly

e) The tutorial is superb, took my 7 year old from scratch to 'very good' without daddy having to spend hours (actually this may be a bad thing :) )

f) The campaign. Ok, think the RISK board game, but with a real battle instead of a dice roll. A marvellous blend of stategy and tactics. Again enhances the 'come back again' factor

g) Graphics. I thought AOK was good, this is almost like watching a movie. The only downside is you need a 16MB graphics card, so one of our PCs can't join in the fun.

h) More realistic, you cannot 'explode' a single city as much, there are ways of 'enhancing' productivity

i) Greater span of time. Goes from classical to modern age, as my children have learnt a lot of history from RTS games the broader span has broadened their education!

Downsides:

i) WAY too addictive
ii) Needs 16MB graphic cards
iii) Really needs more than 256MB of main memory (it DOES run, but having upgrated to 512MB it now runs reasonable)

Bottom Line: Should you buy this?

a) If you like AOK then YES.
b) If you have bright children 7+ and would like a computer game to tax their brains. Yes, I would probably recommend it rather than AOK because of the tutorial and the lack of micro-management
c) I like CIV and other SIM type simulations. Hmmm ... probably not, whilst there IS a mode for non-combative play the result is a little like buying a big-mac and taking out the meat ...

Rating:

- a Video Game with out the Repetitive Boring Work Involved
The best part about this game is that the programmers took out a lot of the repetitive work you will usually find in this type of game. For instance... the workers will automatically gather supplies or build buildings, your troops will line up efficiently with a click of a button, and research is done very quickly. This allows you to get right into the action.

An earlier reviewer complained that it is hard to defend your city. In most games like this you can always set up enough trenches, look out towers, walls, etc; that you do not have to worry about the defense of your territory. Not worrying about defense is unrealistic.

This game is turn based with real time battles. The turn-based part of this game looks like a game board from Risk. When you attack or get attacked then the game turns into real time where you fight the battles.

Graphics look good when you are zoomed all the way in, but I rarely find myself zooming all the way in to admire the graphics. You need to be zoomed all the way out to watch the progress of your territory and armies. So the beautiful graphics are just a waste of computer power and result in slower load times.

I rated this game 4 stars because of the superb programming. I did not rate it 5 stars because the turn-based part of this game is not that deep so everyone's strategy will be pretty much the same. Playing with the same strategy over and over again will result in this game getting old with a couple months of playing.

One last thought; if you're a fan of Sid Meier's Civilization this game's turn-based play will disappoint you.

Rating:

- Good But with some Problems
First I would like to say I really enjoyed this game. Graphics are good and so is the actual gameplay but there are some annoyances.
I like to be challenged. so I always play on "toughest" mode. But it is increadibly annoying when all the nations gang up on you. They attack you from all your fronts, someone will attack be sea, the other attacks by your west flank, and anoothe attacks by wour east flank. I usualy like fighting it out to the death when I am ganged up on in mist other games, like Age of Empires, but this game lacks the ability to make a solid barrier.
I am really anoyed by the lack of walls, trenches, so on, because you can never really slaim whats yours. You never have that added protection, the enemy can just waltz righ through yoiu city and capture it. I really dont like this because I dont think that Defending a city should be as hard as attacking one. When your defending you should have the advantage because you can slow down the enemy, but thats no true in this game. Also the lack of walls combined with national borders has made the game unrealistic. When I would play Age of Empires I would biuld a staging point for an attack, close to the enemy city, fortify it and build barracks and stables, then I would attack and continuualu reinforce my attack with fresh troops. But you cant do that in this game. That is a Real annoynce to me.
Another thing that is anoying are the "National Borders" and "Atrittion Damage", both of these are really anoying because they make logistics a big concern that I personally dont want to deal with.
All in all this game was enjoyable even though it has it draw backs.

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