Strategy games rise of nations

But for now, as far as we're concerned it actually makes a pleasant change to have an RTS that doesn't force some hastily contrived plot upon you. Which means for once we don't have to moan about it either. A primary reason to say 'no' would perhaps be the visuals, which were ropey even back in the day the day in question being one in Beyond this however, Rise Of Nations remains an eminently playable experience.

In describing the game to a layman you might say it's Civilization but an RTS that looks a lot like Age Of Empires but also has a Total War-style strategic map - but you'd honestly be doing it an injustice.

You can get lost for hours in its empire-building and Risk aura, meaning that even if the economics bits can get a little overbearing, it still comfortably holds its own these days. In addition to wrapping up all the historical eras in one product, RoN improves on those games in significant ways.

It's also a streamlined response to rival Empire Earth. Stretching from the beginnings of civilization to the Information Age, history here is divided into seven eras. And though there are fewer unit types overall, each nation has multiple uniques.

The system for advancing eras is at once more sensible and elaborate. Acquisition of resources is less frustrating. Resources never deplete. Gold is now called Wealth. And a new Knowledge resource is a factor in advancing through both research and eras. The game scale is different. The exclusion of walls is the most obvious evidence of this.

You can build towers and redoubts for defense, but your territory cannot be connected up with masonry. It's nations now, see, and what you have instead are national borders -- which auto-adjust depending on what you've built. Other details folks might miss can be chalked up to this scale change, some not. The visuals are tops, to be expected considering the publisher. Some of the unit behaviors at times may have you sitting back to watch -- in particular the flight operations of the air bases are visually logical and aerial dogfights verge on the spectacular.

Where this game really innovates is with the campaign game. This gives the most interesting and unique experiences yet in a RTS game, and one of the best long-form solitaire features in any genre. It's significant because it may redirect wayward game designers back to devoting some more effort to dynamic campaigns. Here you have a Risk -type world map with major geographic zones.

Your goal is to take these territories from the other civilizations through various means, including diplomacy. The game progresses through the ages, devoting one or more game turns to a series of dynamically generated battles set in the current era. The battle generator accounts for the terrain, allies, reinforcements and other factors.

Some generated scenarios are elaborate minute conquest missions while others may be short skirmishes or defenses to be finished in 15 minutes. Between battles you can do some diplomacy, shift your armies around, etc. And before engaging in some you are prompted to play "cards" you've earned in your past victories. The cards can bestow special powers or resource boosts. As for multiplayer, RoN plugs into the GameSpy opponent matching service with a well-designed client.

Notable among hosting options is a set-up preference that can suppress "rush" strategies as well as options for pauses, and "cannon time" a chance for the player to put the game in super slow motion for a time.

RoN on GameSpy is sure to be a high traffic area. Creating scenarios unfortunately shakes out as one of the product's few shortcomings, for now. The scenario editor does not make some significant attributes available nation name! There is a trigger language -- a real scripting language, not a point-and-click macro interface -- whereby scripts can be written in a separate editor that's comparable to a professional IDE Integrated Development Environment.

But more documentation is needed for this to be approachable by the average gamer. Developer promises more will be made available soon.

Rise of Nations is a worthy product with far more assets than shortcomings and a campaign game that will keep you playing. People like to build their military buildings near the border, and an observation tower can give you some warning if someone is trying to build a city or fort near your border. If it is not destroyed, it also helps in battle by illuminating spies.

As an added bonus, when you get to industrial, you get AA upgrades free. And the observation towers are much cheaper than AA. Scouts are your friends. Upgrade the scouts and have a few standing around hismilitary so you can see what he is up to. Almost noone keeps their military hidden, so this lets you know what you are up against so you can prepare. You can also use them to take out generals before they become a problem. Alt-click is a siege attack. Learn it and love it. When you attack a fort, just take the whole mass, alt-click, and watch the enemy break against your formation.

Spies are great in this situation. Even good players who bring scouts tend to leave them behind when trying to attack siege with their horses. It's a good way to beef up your cavalry.

Every civ can raid decently. There's a big argument about whether you should use the Cav-Archers or the Heavy Cav to raid. I prefer Cav-Archers. The best is to go around the side, nail some peasants or caravans, and then hightail it out of there. You can usually hit them a couple times before they get towers up or station counter-raiders near their peasants.

I feel that mixed-armies are more important here than in other RTS's. In RoN, I tend to have 3,4, or even 5 unit type armies. I always have a general or 2, Supply Wagons, Spies, and scouts as well. A general plan is to have siege for the buildings of course, Heavy Inf to protect the siege, Heavy Cav as a Mr.

Fixit solution, Light Cav to get to their archers, Siege, and supply, Archers to handle Inf protection, and sometimes Light-Inf if I know they are going to be heavy into Archers. Even so, I tend to pick 1 type as my backbone, and then the other go into support roles.

Everyone should be building at least 1 wonder and probably 2 in longer games. The Collossus is truly awesome. Also, when you see someone else putting up a Wonder, then you know where they have lots of almost certainly unprotected peasants running around. You can really ruin a guy's day by wiping out the entire corp of Wonder-builders. Egypt is a Wonder-spammer. I would suggest that if you are playing against Egypt, that you try to get raiding capability as soon as possible.

If you see him doing a wonder in the first age, then you know: a lots of expensive civvies are there and b He has dumped a ton of resources into the wonder. If you can, start building the wonder yourself while raiding. It will really piss him off. Mongols are a 1 note civ. They rush-raid. It is all they can do. Get 2 towers up, A few archers by each city, followed by 1 heavy inf to protect against the expected light cav, followed by light cav.

It's a little expensive, but when the Mongol's do their rush-raid, they completely screw their economy. You just have to defend a little bit and you will almost always win.

Use Garrisoning as an offensive technique. You can pop units into buildings and have them pop out the other side. Rise of Nations Free Download. Click on below button to start Rise of Nations Free Download.

It is a full and complete game. Download Will Start Automatically. Amazing real time strategy game. Considered as one of the best real time strategy game of all times. Got 18 different civilizations playable through 8 different ages of world history.

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