Rise of Nations

[Neroon]

Anyone tried this? All the magazine reviews are positive, but I've seen some bad player reviews. Bad, as in it's only fun for two weeks.

[Dregor Thule]

Two weeks? Trying to stay interested for two days. It's got all these tech upgrades, but moves at a Warcraft pace, so you don't really absorb everything and it's just a lot of required clicking that doesn't feel like it means much. Might be for some people, but I'm kinda disappointed. Was hoping for more of a grander scope in the strategy department, closer to a Civ game.

[Xouqoa]

I like it. *shrug*

Offers a few more features and strategies than previous RTS games. (National Borders, Auto Assigning civilian/laborers off the top of my head)

I should buy it, I guess. Been using a copy I downloaded to check out.

[Lexien]

I should buy it, I guess. Been using a copy I downloaded to check out.

oMg yOU tHIEf!!

[Shanter]

We just played this game at a lan party this past weekend, I thought it was a lot of fun to play. But the downside is all the upgrades/expanding/building/attacking/defending all at the same time. Though it was a 4v4, there really was no other attacking besides nuking before we quit. Been playing with the conquer the world a little bit, kinda fun.

[Akaran_D]

I love it. See, I'm an avid Age of Empires fan - I played it for a good year or two before I came in to EQ. I didn't realize this was produce in part by MS until I saw the intro, but within 3 minutes of plunking down I realized that my impression of RoN from PCG was incorrect: This isn't Lords of the Realm 2 on crack, this is Age of Empires 3.

The skill trees are pretty damn in depth, but it doesn't take a genious to figure them out. Commece is necessary to trade between cities (this game forces you to build out town centers, only calls them cities and limits your food production to a max of 5 farms per) to gain wealth (gold) and to set up merchants (special resource collections agents) while Civics is necessary to build more cities (1 civic upgrade = 1 extra city) and the Military upgrades are a flat out necessity to up your population cap. The only major downside to thise are the secondary buildings you need to bring up - like a university, which serves no other purpose to generate Knowledge (which you need for every "major" resource upgrade past tier3) and then instead of building just one and staffing it, to get Knowledge comming in at any decent rate you need to build 3 to 4 of them.. 1 per city.

Speaking of resources, this is where the game shines. No resources are depleteable. However. Each resource building (lumber camp, mine, farm, university, oil well) can only support a set number of villagers depending on how big the resoruce is you build them nearby (except for Farms - Farms only support 1 citizen at a time, period, sorry, come back later). For example: On your left is a fairly big forrest in your city's borders. On your right is a small mountain. Whereas the big forrest would have room for up to 10 lumberjacks/jills, the small mountain may only support 3 or 4 miners. Universities, however, work wherever they sit. Oil Wells do the same.. fairly difficult to move those around, naturally. There are also secondary resources for which you need to build Merchants for to sit down and harvest. On other thing about resources is the fact that they are collected automatically, and are fed right into your global resource limit.

The game is OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS more detailed than I just let on, and I will be honest with you - the combat engine is a mild nightmare. They designed this with the true chaos in war in mind, and they deffinately succeded.. gone are the micromanagement days of "force all archers to immedately execute a soldier"... it is really best just to let your troops fight on their own.

[Fesuni Chopsui]

I bought it last weekend...enjoying it so far, although my boredom is starting to click in heh