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Solver
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Apolyton Duke Of Something
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Latvia, Riga
Sep 2000
time: 07:18
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Yesterday a link was posted to a Russian preview of RoN. I have translated that one. Here it is.
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Name: Rise of Nations
Platform: PC
Genre: Strategy
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Big Huge Games
Just like many of us, developers often spend their free time playing games. However, they can also afford thoughts like “Yes, that’s a great game, but I know I could do it better”. That’s exactly how creation of Rise of Nations began – that’s the game that Big Huge Games developers are currently working on. As they confess, they’re trying to combine the unlimited possibilities of turn based strategy games and the fast developing structure of RTS, mixing them in such a proportion, so that it would present interest to fans of both TBS and RTS. In any case, that’s a difficult task, but the developers under guidance of Brian Reynolds (Civilization co-creator) hope that the formula they have found will bring them success and will give the gaming world a new masterpiece.
“We know that, working on an RTS game, we’re making a game in which only certain properties are of value”, Reynolds tells. “But we didn’t just take and get out whatever there was out of RTS. No, we have done careful selection for each element, and, in my opinion, we took the best that there is to be borrowed from RTS”. “What we really wanted to accomplish is taking the RTS basics and sum them together with some turn based strategy elements. We want the people to play for an hour, but still see how their empire develops.
In any case, before you create anything at least similar to an empire, you’ll have to go a long way, in beginning of which you have to build a small village. That will be the center of your future and empire, and will also determine your boundaries. The latter are very important in the game, for enemies can not build military structures on your land, and they also determine what resources will you be in charge of at the beginning of your empire’s lifecycle.
Rise of Nations, just like any other RTS, will posses the element of resource division, but there’s one important difference compared to other game of the genre – it’s controlling natural resources. “All the resources never run out. But to control a resource, you will have to control the territory where it’s located. That is, if you want to produce food, you need lots of free space to build your farms on, but in the same time, your farms will be productive forever”, Reynolds says. And, if you need more of a certain resource, you’ll need to figure out something more cunning that just sending more woodcutters to the forest. For instance, you want to increase effectiveness of woodcutting, by building a lumber camp, doing an upgrade of it or just finding another forest to use. For gold you will need to build new cities or make the existing ones more complex, to increase the trade value of your empire. All these vile things with the resources exist for the soil purpose of causing a conflict (not necessarily a military one, though) between opponents (as you develop, you will certainly face the problem of resources at some point). Besides that, while being bothered with the resource problems, you must not forget about the political part of the game (it’s not as simple as it seems).
While it might seem that Big Huge Games developers want to give Rise of Nations an unseen before strategic depth, they just want to give the game as many elements as it needs to interest you, but not to fear you. So, besides the new concepts in resource management Rise of Nations gives you a couple of new things that should deal with your headaches normally caused by RTS. One of these is the smart-peasant system. As Reynolds says, the peasants will automatically look around and find something that they could take care of, no matter whether it’s resource gathering, building construction or repairing a damaged infrastructure. They just will find something to do and will get to work with it. You still have the ability to control any single peasant, but later, when the game becomes real global, you’ll give a high value to the intellect of those peasants.
In the same way other elements were worked one. Rise of Nations tech tree is made up so that you won’t be forced to research technology and think of development plans a thousand years ahead, however you’ll still have to make some crucial decisions. As Reynolds tells, we’ll have to decide in what way we will be moving through the ages, as well as decide in what area (if you want, several of them) your civilization will be specialized at. As always, you can be a merchant, a scientist or a militarist. And, of course, your choice will continue to matter for the entire game.
As the distance between empire’s boundaries gets smaller, you will get new diplomatic habits that will let you get out of any situation peacefully, or, at wish, declare war on anyone, with or without a reason. Several ways of diplomatic situations exist in Rise of Nations. For instance, you may want to start a game with a setting that all nations are hostile by default and alliances can only be made by cooperation of two nations. Allies are allowed to see each others territory, trade with each other and move forces through the allied land without the fear to be punished for being too nasty. Of course, in such games you always have the option to pledge an alliance, get all you can out of it quickly and declare war with the same speed. That’s what Reynolds had to comment on such a playing manner: “And the more time you spend allied, the more resources you’re going to need to declare war”.
In any game that spans through thousand of years of human history, the ugly problem of balancing units always comes. For instance, musketeers can meet tanks on the battlefield. That’s what Reynolds had to say about solving such problems in Rise of Nations: “We haven’t seen such battles too often. And if the happen, it’s pretty bloody and the game ends real fast. Of course, it’s fun to get a century ahead of other civilizations in your technology, but you won’t see to many spearmen vs tanks battles, the game process just won’t let it happen.
Overall, the game has eight ages, starting with Antic and up to Informational (is it Digital? – Solver). And before you can advance from one age to another, you’ll have to expand your empire enough. When construction of a village has been finished, you may build any number of economic and civilian buildings, such as storage pits, temples and many others. Of course, all the construction will be strongly limited to a certain radius, and as your population and cities grow, new buildings and upgrades will become available. For example, to reach Classical Age, you’ll have to research to advances – it’s up to you whether be they war technologies, or rather civilian and commercial achievements.
As you move through the ages, you’ll eventually gain the ability to specialize in four areas, of course, not without advances. Civilian advances will help you expand borders and build more cities. Commercial ones will allow you get more resources. Scientific advances will improve communications, as well as increase the speed of any further advances. Here’s what Reynolds has to say about these values: “This is some sort of an investment you make in your people’s future. But in any case, you’ll get back more than you originally paid”. As for military advances, they will increase attack of your units and will let you construct some more units, including more advanced siege weapons and fortifications.
Taking enemy cities with military will, without a doubt, be necessary throughout the game, but it will be something more than moving your forces to a certain place and automatically gaining control over enemy buildings. “You can choose to first bombard the city, using cannons or siege weapons and then get your infantry in. The city will fall to the one who has more infantry nearby”, Reynolds tells. With control of the city you can also use all of its advantages, but you will have to increase defences, in order to be prepared for revenge.
Rise of Nations will also present a single player mode, containing 5 historical campaigns, which include individual storylines and series of objectives to complete. The DeathMatch mode is also being planned, to be played on a randomly generated map. Of course, Rise of Nations will also provide multiplayer support, letting you choose one of eighteen civilizations and battling online in one of the ways that RTS let you do it. Big Huge Games believe that a number of variations will make online play livelier, and might even prevent wrong usage of certain game elements by players. For instance, the “no rush” mode will prevent you from attacking others until everyone reaches a certain technological level. This is the perfect choice for gamers with little experience, and makes online play fun to all.
One of options that you’ll use during both single and multi player modes is increasing screen size that will help you plan development of your empire. When you are using this viewing mode, the camera will show a completely 3D modelled ground, to make it easy for you to determine in what direction is it best to settle next. This will also give a better look at borders, so that it will be possible to spot enemy approaching your land.
As developers say, Rise of Nations certainly won’t be lacking units, even at this phase there are 168! You’ll have to pay special attention to two of those – General and Scout. General can increase attack of units in several ways. He can hide your forces and lay traps, the General also has an ability to put back to battlefield the units that decided to desert during a battle. Also, this will allow marches through greater distances. Scout is one of the most useful units in the game, and he’ll be improving during all the process. In the end, the Scout becomes some kind of a Special Forces, being able to infiltrate enemy cities, place bombs and steal resources. Spies won’t be the least important too, because they will help you infiltrate enemy libraries and steal their technologies.
At this point is seems that Big Huge Games is thinking in the right terms about balancing the Rise of Nations gameplay so that it would interest us, but wouldn’t completely overwhelm us with news. Currently the developers are ending the phase of debugging and refining game components, and they’re also reviewing unique bonuses of each of eighteen civilizations present in the game. In fact, the game is already working, but the developers don’t yet plan to release Rise of Nations before year 2003.
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17-04-2002 21:33
. It's my pleasure.
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