Rise of Nations

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Rise of Nations

Developer(s)	Big Huge Games
Publisher(s)	Microsoft Game Studios
Designer(s)	Brian Reynolds
Latest version	02.04.04.2903
Release date(s)	May 20, 2003
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: T (Teen) USK: 12+ PEGI: 12+ OFLC: G8+
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Media	1 CD-ROM
System requirements	500 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, 800 MB Hard disk space, 16 MB GPU, Windows 98
Input	Keyboard, mouse

Rise of Nations is a real-time strategy computer game, developed by Big Huge Games and published by Microsoft on May 20, 2003. The development of the game was lead by veteran Brian Reynolds, of Civilization II and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. New concepts, taken from turn-based strategy games, have been added into the game--including territories and attrition warfare. Rise of Nations features 18 civilizations, playable through 8 Ages of world history.

On April 28, 2004, Big Huge Games released Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots, an expansion pack. Later, in 2004, a Gold edition of Rise of Nations was released, which included both the original and the expansion.

1 Overview
- 1.1 Multiplayer
2 Gameplay
3 Units
4 Tournaments and Rankings
5 Reviews
6 Awards
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Overview

Fundamentally, Rise of Nations is similar to many real-time strategy games. The player starts with a base, dispatches resource-collecting workers, creates factory structures with which to build and strengthen their army, and attacks the enemy's army and settlements.

Rise of Nations employs the concept of "territory," as employed in Civilization III; the area near the player's settlements is considered their territory, and no other players may build within it (though, conversely, the player cannot build outside of it). A nation's borders can be expanded by (among other things) the creation and expansion of cities, so that one's power becomes based in that of large economic cities of great importance to one's victory or defeat, and later technological advances cause enemy units to take damage while within enemy territory. Because cities are so critical to gameplay, they are not destroyed when attacked, but rather converted to allied control. The side controlling them, however, can raze them in order to prevent their capture.

Citizens (resource-collecting workers) in Rise of Nations don't remain idle after creation until orders are given to them; rather, after a brief pause, idle citizens look for any nearby construction sites, unoccupied resource gathering sites, or damaged buildings and automatically move to build, gather, or repair there. This option can be disabled if desired. All resource patches in Rise of Nations are infinite, unlike the finite amount of resources found in, for example, Starcraft's single-player campaigns; the main limit is the player's maximum-collection-rate cap, which must be upgraded via research.

Each of the 18 civilizations in Rise of Nations has its own set of unique units (e.g., the Japanese have the superior Samurai as their heavy infantry unit) throughout the ages as well as a unique graphics set within their respective culture groups. Rise of Nations uses a hybrid 2D/3D engine to render buildings, but a 3D engine to render units, terrain, and special effects.

There are six resources in Rise of Nations, three of which (Food, Wood, and Wealth) are used to build new units (a fourth and fifth, Metal and Oil, are added when the player reaches the Classical and Industrial Ages, respectively). The sixth resource, Knowledge, is different from the others. Knowledge is generated by Universities, which house 7 scholars apiece. However, each one of the player's cities can only have one University. Each type of unit requires only two kinds of resource, and each copy of a specific unit costs more to build. Both these concepts—resource diversity and "ramped-up" unit cost—along with the fact that units are also deliberately designed in a paper-scissors-rock weakness system—encourage the player to create diverse, well-balanced armies.

Like in the Civilization series, any nation can be played during any age, despite that, historically, the nations may have come into existence or been destroyed at extremely different times in history. Some unique units are based on predictions of what may have been, if certain nations were not destroyed in real-life history. For example, the Native South American nations (Aztecs, Maya, Inca) have some unique units in the Modern and Information ages, which resemble Iberian-South American guerrillas of real-life history. The end conditions are also made to be historically neutral, in that one can win the game by a capital capture, territorial superiority, researching four dominating technologies, or the usual wonder and score victories.

A single player campaign, Conquer the World, is included in the game. It is comparable to the game Risk, except that attacks on enemy territories take place during in-game battles, which can last as long as 2 hours, depending upon the scenario. The control map is about the same as Risk's, but luck isn't as crucial. Also, the player will need to increase territorial strength on their territories and engage in diplomacy with other nations.

[edit] Multiplayer

On its multiplayer standpoint, Rise of Nations has been plagued by connectivity issues on the error-prone Gamespy matchmaking services.^[1] The interface is sticky and unresponsive, frequently causing the game to lock up. The host may also randomly drop from created rooms for no apparent reason.^[2] There is also no support from Gamespy for any of these problems involving Rise of Nations. For these reasons, Rise of Nations has not been able to garner a widespread online community for a game of its critical acclaim. It is not known if these problems are unique to Gamespy servers hosting Rise of Nations, or to Gamespy in general.

On Mac OS X, Rise of Nations uses GameRanger as a matchmaking service. Like many other games on the Mac, they are incompatible with their Windows counterpart; and can only be played with other Mac versions of the game.

[edit] Gameplay

A screenshot from Rise of Nations.

Gameplay focuses heavily on creating a balance between a heavily aggressive and militaristic attack and developing a strong economy and center of production. Players who develop a balance tend to be better than players who focus specifically on one or the other.

Because every unit in the game has its counter unit (for example, pikemen kill knights), and terrain and military tactics matter, a keen sense of generalship is required to make the best use of one's army. With sufficient skill in creating proper unit distributions in an army and fielding that army, it is possible to defeat a numerically superior enemy in Rise of Nations.

In a manner similar to chess, slight strategic mistakes early in the game can turn into major tactical problems later on. For example, a poor and hasty placement of a city in an empty piece of land when some more reconnaissance would have shown a superior wood placement site can lead to severe wood gathering problems later on since a lumbermill must be built within city boundaries.

It is common to find a shortage of resources early in a game, but usually, as the game continues, the gather rates rise and these shortages disappear.

[edit] Units

There are more than 200 different types of units in Rise of Nations, ranging from the Ancient Age Hoplite to the Information Age Stealth Bomber. Most military units are created from either the barracks, stable, siege factory, docks, airfield or fortress. Unit types such as Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry and Ranged Cavalry are upgraded as the player advances through the ages. These upgrades usually represent revolutionary changes in their particular field. For example, the Arquebusier of the Gunpowder Age becomes the Musketeer of the Enlightenment Age, representing the great advantage of flintlock muskets over the earlier matchlock muskets and showing increased attack power and reload speed. Also, each nation gets its own set of unique units. For example, the Greeks get the Companion cavalry, the Russians get the Cossack, the British get longbowmen, and the Germans get the Tiger and Leopard tanks.

Because of the wide variety of units in the game, players have the opportunity to create an army customized to their tastes. Most units have a cost that is roughly equal to that of their peers. Additionally, most units use only two resource types, making creating diverse armies easier and almost required. Terraced costs further contribute to the incentive for a diverse army, as each additional unit a player creates of a single type will cost more.

[edit] Tournaments and Rankings

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Please help improve this article by providing context for a general audience, especially in the lead section. This article has been tagged since March 2007. (help, talk)

Rise of Nations uses an ELO rating system to rank players - in brief, this system is based on a mathematical formula that determines how often players win against other players to give a rough estimate of skill.

_FSF_Zornmeister with the help of _FSF_Fedomar and _FSF_Grenadier launched the Masters of RoN Community League in November 2004 creating an arena for all the clans of RoN: T&P to compete for glory and recognition. Notable clans that signed up for the first season included Anarchy Unleashed, Kings Royal Guard, Roman Units, and Caesar. The first season passed by with much hype bringing RoN players closer together and causing many to aspire to one day play in the league.

Season two would eventually start bringing new heights of competition into the league never before seen in the community. So many new clans signed up to compete the league had to be split up into four individual divisions these being: Premier league, 1st division, 2nd division, and 3rd division. Masters of RoN closed down after 4 successful seasons and a short venture into BIg Huge Games next online RTS "Rise of Legends".

In 2004, there was also a world-wide online seeded single-elimination tournament named "Expanded Hostilities" hosted by MrFixitOnline wherein participants could only use a single civilization throughout the tournament. The tournament's victor was TWC_Mulfar. There have been many other tournaments hosted by AoI both as biweekly regular tournaments and as special larger tournaments.