Rise of Nations

"Let All the World Tremble Before Me!"

Real time strategy games are a dime a dozen these days and most of them aren't anything special. If I'm being perfectly honest, the genre is oversaturated to the point that most of them are just regurgitating the same things over and over. True innovation is something that's rarely seen in the genre. Rise of Nations is something quite unique, mixing the basics of RTS games with several layers of added complexity in order to create a game that is refreshingly new.

Being that Rise of Nations isn't the run of the mill real time strategy game, some explanation is required to clarify just what it is. In a nutshell, Rise of Nations feels a lot like a Civilization game specifically tuned and geared towards military conflicts. Truth be told, this comparison to Civilization is not without merit as the lead designer behind the game was also part of Sid Meier's illustrious team for several years. There are many elements that greatly resemble those in Civilization games, from the concept of national borders, tech ladders, ages and other assorted nuances (all to be discussed in due time). But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, Rise of Nations is a game about using brute force rather than negotiation or cunning to get what you want.

But before getting into any of that, players will have to choose from eighteen different nations, from past and present including the Aztecs, British, Egyptians, Germans and the Romans among other less famous empires. Each of these civilizations has its own set of bonuses to differentiate it from the others. These bonuses are rarely radical and aren't enough to throw off the balance of the game but they alter the way you'll play in subtle ways. For instance, the Germans have access to granaries and lumber mills from the get-go, which increase resource production, whereas other nations have to do some research to get these buildings. The Aztecs have great plundering skills which allow them to gain numerous resources by killing enemies and razing buildings. In addition to this, each nation also has a handful of unique national units that can be built. Again, these don't throw the balance, but they usually are a tad bit better than the generic units.

After choosing a nation players will be able to delve into the game's complex campaign mode, appropriately called Conquer the World. Conquer the World mode plays out on a Risk style map of the globe, with distinct territories and opposing nations. From here, players will take their chosen nation and invade territory and conquer other nations with the intent of eventually gaining dominance over the entire world. Naturally, the other nations aren't just going to sit back and let you take everything for yourself, so they will aggressively conquer territory as well. Once all the unclaimed territory has been conquered, the real action begins as you'll have to declare war on other nations in order to continue on. Naturally, other nations can also declare war on you and it's not uncommon to find yourself engaging an enemy all across a continent. Thankfully the game does try to keep things from too out of hand by allowing each nation to only attack a single territory per turn. Aside from political maneuvering, there are also numerous other aspects to consider. Conquered territories can be reinforced, making it harder for invading nations to conquer them. Also, each territory has its own set of bonuses, such as rare resources or supply depots. Depots are probably the most important aspect when deciding what to attack, as conquering that territory will give you another army to use. This basically means you can divide your forces and attack opposing nations from multiple fronts. Once players are finished strategizing at the macro-level, it's time to jump right into the heat of the action with the actual battle.

Battles unfold in typical RTS fashion with players constructing buildings, gathering resources and building up an army to attack the enemy with. However, this description only applies in a general sense as Rise of Nations is quite unique in how players will approach these elements. Each battle starts by giving the player a city and a library to get started with, and these two buildings end up being the most important in the whole game.

The city is fairly unique for an RTS game. While nearly all strategy games have a building that serves as a hub, the city serves a more complex and less obvious purpose. In addition to building citizens, who are used to gather resources and build structures, the city also influences national borders. Like Civilization, each nation has an area of influence on the battlefield. At its most basic level, this mechanic determines how effective military units are. Should they enter into the opposing nations borders, they'll lose combat effectiveness and suffer attrition damage, which simulates their being removed from supply lines (though this can be countered by building supply wagons to accompany invading armies). Naturally, it's wise to expand the borders by any means necessary to give your troops as much freedom of movement as possible. Eventually players will be able to construct numerous cities and create trade routes between them, which will bring in the wealth resource. Cities are ultimately the deciding factor in any victory, as the player must capture the enemy capital to achieve victory. This is done by laying siege to a city and capturing it with infantry after its health has been depleted. At this point, all territory under that city's area of influence becomes void. After this, an assimilation timer starts counting down and once it hits zero the captured city becomes the players' as well as all non-military buildings. Because of this, protecting your own cities and not allowing them to come under attack is tantamount to victory. However, cities can be reclaimed during the assimilation period so all is not lost if a city falls.

The library is also an integral building. Here, most of the major research is done. This research falls into several distinct categories which each have an important use. Military upgrades allow a nation to build military fortifications to build units with, as well as increasing the unit cap. Civics expands national borders and allows players to build more cities. Commerce upgrades increase the resource acquisition rate cap, allowing players to gather more resources quicker. Finally, Science opens up most unit upgrades as well as other research that can be performed at select buildings. Should you research enough of these upgrades during a single scenario and you'll be able to advance the Age for the duration of that battle, giving you a temporary advantage over your opponent (until they inevitably do the same to level the playing field once again).

The Ages, an in-game representation of mankind's stages of development, play an interesting role in Rise of Nations. Throughout the course of a campaign game, the Ages will shift from the earliest periods of mankind's existence all the way to the modern Information age. Though players can temporarily advance an Age by researching at the library, it happens permanently every three turns or so on the world map. Predictably, each Age advance changes the way the game plays out. A Javelineer unit eventually becomes an Arquebusier (a seventeenth century rifleman), who in turn becomes a modern infantry unit. Cavalry units will eventually transform into motor vehicles and tanks. Entirely new strategies come into play as the Ages advance and towards the end of the game players will finally be able to access planes, bombers and even intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Like most strategy games, resources are very important. Unlike most, Rise of Nations has a lot of resource types to gather, six to be exact. Food, wood, metal, oil, wealth and knowledge are all resources that players must acquire. However, many of these come into play later on in the game. For instance, oil isn't even a factor early in the game as you'll be building cavalry and infantry units. It isn't until the latter portion of any campaign that you'll start to see oil fields. Gathering most of the resources is pretty straightforward for the most part. Food can be gathered by building farms or fishing, wood is gained by harvesting forests and metal is found near mountains. Interestingly enough, none of these resource deplete as you gather them. Citizens can harvest from a forest all day and never actually chop down a tree. This is pretty nice because some of the battles can stretch on to the point that you might otherwise run out of resources. Wealth and knowledge are the black sheep of the bunch and take a little more effort to acquire. Wealth is gained by creating caravans to travel between cities. The gold accrued from their trades will be added to your treasuries each time they stop at a city. Knowledge comes from scholars, who reside in Universities. Knowledge is primarily a resource used for research.

Though six resources may seem like overkill and a lot to keep tabs on, it really serves a purpose. Each unit usually only requires two types of resource to create, and it's usually pretty varied. What this does is create a situation in which players will run out of one or two resources if they build one unit type. Basically, this means you'll have to build a diverse army. That's not to mention that the cost of units increases as you build more of them.

Even if this were not the case, building a diverse army would still be the key to victory. Rise of Nations uses a counter system with its units, so each unit is strong and weak against certain types of enemies. Unlike other games that attempt this, the counters in Rise of Nations are pretty logical. For instance, cavalry don't do so well against pikemen, but can slice through archers with ease. And unlike other games, the counters don't entirely negate a unit's ability to deal damage against a unit type it isn't specialized against. Archers may be weak against cavalry, but they can still wipe out a few stray units.

For all that, the actual combat in Rise of Nations isn't as strategic and demanding as one would expect. The game encourages diverse assault forces, and so long as you've done that and built a decent number of siege units, most enemies fall with relative ease. That's not to say that you won't be given a fight (especially not on the higher difficulty levels), but winning doesn't require the player to use much tactical sensibility.

Thankfully, not every battle scenario is the same. How each battle plays out depends on a couple of factors, such as whether or not the territory has been conquered by another nation or if they have an army present at the location. For unconquered territory or territory without an army, victory is usually as easy as storming an enemy encampment with your assault force. If you're attacking an enemy capital, you can expect a long, drawn out battle as you try to overwhelm the enemy.

There is one final wrinkle to the game in the form of bonus cards. After battles, the game sometimes awards the player with cards that can be used before each battle and give out different bonuses. These can range from extra soldiers, resources or even the ability to gain another nation's unique abilities (awarded after annihilating said nation). Each card can only be used a single time, so it's wise to use them when expecting an especially hard battle.

Rise of Nations is certainly no slouch in the graphical department. Simply put, the game looks great. Buildings have a stunning amount of detail, and you can even see the different stages of construction complete with scaffolding and cranes. It's also very cool to see how they change as the Ages progress. Units are also pretty easy to tell apart from one another, and their animations are excellent. Horses rear up and siege units must be disassembled before moving and reassembled after arriving at their destination. After the advent of gunpowder, you'll even be able to see little puffs of smoke after guns are fired. The maps also look great, and there are quite a few terrain types from the meadowlands of Europe to the deserts of Africa and the jungles of South America.

The maps themselves seem to be randomly generated, which is a plus for replayability. However, they all feel quite similar because of this, and are predominantly made up of flat land. It's possible that this contributes to the fact that the game doesn't require much tactical know-how, because the game rarely alters the terrain in a way that would make the player alter their tactics. For instance, artificial barriers such as water or mountains are rarely used.

The audio is nicely done for the most part as well. The music is fitting and the game makes good use of a variety of sounds to let players know what's going on. For instance, there are special sounds for when research is complete, a building is finished, when an Age is advanced or when units meet enemies. All of this helps keep the player informed of things that are happening, which is a big help because there's usually enough to keep in mind without keeping tabs on how far along research is. The battle noises are also generally very good, but there's an unfortunate annoyance to be found. It seems as if the game only plays one or two instances of a single sound even when it should be playing more often. For instance, in the later game when all your infantry will be using guns, the game doesn't actually play gunfire continuously. And if you've got numerous artillery units shooting, it only plays the sound once or twice, without layering it. This was really irritating because half the fun of sending out a legion of heavy guns is hearing the noise they make.

THE VERDICT
Rise of Nations is an excellent game with a ton of replay value, as well as unique and complex but still intuitive and easy to learn. The borrowed elements of Civilization remain surprisingly strong even when taken out of their native surroundings and add a whole new level of depth to the staid RTS tradition. Oddly enough, the only fault I can find with the game is that the actual fighting feels a little too straightforward but this is, admittedly, a very minor issue. All in all, Rise of Nations is a must have game for any RTS fan.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/09

Game Release: Rise of Nations (US, 05/20/03)