26-06-2003 22:39									#1
	RON Clone Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I just got my August CGW issue, and I noticed something odd in the reviews. It was an ad with the text

quote: North Africa, 1942: French soldiers scorched Axis troops with blistering flamethrower assaults

(no game was mentioned). I turned the page:

quote: Stalingrad, 1943: Russia bombarded the invaders with the Katyusha launcher's hail of rockets

I'm starting to think "Ok, an ad for RON". A couple pages later, I read that this is a new game from "the lead designer of Age of Empires and Empire Earth" and with the description "From the Middle Ages to WWII, command the deepest RTS in history".

Is it just me, or does that sound like a total rip-off? Someone should tell Rick Goodman he's too late

	26-06-2003 22:42									#2
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Are you surprised? RoN is just an EE/AoE clone. A better one, albeit, but still a clone.

	26-06-2003 22:54									#3
	Suffering from ads?

Not really. I was, however, hoping that these people would have some honor left...

	26-06-2003 23:30									#4
	Increase Your PM Length

RoN isn't a clone of EE. Its just not close enough in game mechanics and graphics to be considered clonish.

Same genre though. But hey- its all opinions from here on out.

	27-06-2003 01:10									#5
	Get a bigger avatar today!

RoN was a message from god, materialized through the head of byran reynolds. EE was just a reverse clone. they found a zygote of RoN and ripped off what they could devise from it. that was a sin. life begins at conception. they killed they zygote. bhg went out of their way to recreate the zygotes natural environment, and raised it like they should have. thats why it took so long.

	27-06-2003 02:02									#6
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and cloning is against god's will (tm)

	27-06-2003 02:16									#7
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

If RoN is a clone of AoE then Zelda is a clone of PacMan.

	27-06-2003 03:43									#8
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EVERYTHING is a clone of PacMan . . .
power-pellets, resource management, think about it man . . . think about it!

Last edited by Andrew_Jay on 28-06-2003 at 08:35

	27-06-2003 06:08									#9
	Increase Your PM Length

RoN is a lot better than EE or AoE.

	27-06-2003 07:11									#10
	Tired of ads?

Sounds like they are working on an AoE III if it's from the middle ages to WWII...

RoN covers a much broader range of history than that

	27-06-2003 19:57									#11
	Got spare money?

i believe this is the game...

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/empiresdawnofthemw/

	27-06-2003 21:01									#12
	Put an end to popups!

oh please, have you guys played EE recently? Sure, a few things are changed, but it's still the same sh1t! RoN is much better though.

	27-06-2003 22:39									#13
	Increase Your PM Length

So just because another historical RTS game is made and is based on history (the same place that RoN got it's ideas) it's a clone?

	28-06-2003 01:04									#14
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Well, it's coming out soon after RON, by the designer of AOE, has the same premise as RON, and contains similar units. They even look the same.

	28-06-2003 01:52									#15
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Yeah, those Empires: Dawn screenshots look pretty nasty though. MMORPG-style sparse low res texture graphics are not what I'm looking for in my 3d games.

	28-06-2003 02:06									#16
	Remove this text

That game looks more similar to the graphics of Warcraft III than anything else... but those screenshots are ellusive as they were all apparently taken in the cinematics display.

	28-06-2003 04:04									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Seems to me to be more like Age of Mthology really, what with all those activated abilities and all.

	28-06-2003 08:40									#18
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Well if it's comming out shortly after RoN that would mean it had to go into production shortly after RoN did, and nobody probably knew what RoN was when it went into production, so it's certainly not an RoN clone.

	28-06-2003 15:05									#19
	Re: RON Clone Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by MattH I just got my August CGW issue, and I noticed something odd in the reviews. It was an ad with the text (no game was mentioned). I turned the page: I'm starting to think "Ok, an ad for RON". A couple pages later, I read that this is a new game from "the lead designer of Age of Empires and Empire Earth" and with the description "From the Middle Ages to WWII, command the deepest RTS in history". Is it just me, or does that sound like a total rip-off? Someone should tell Rick Goodman he's too late

That's bull. Empires: Dawn of the new world is just the successor to Empire Earth, which was released two years ago.

The plans to release a "Empire Earth II" were supposdly already there when EE came out.

So if there is a rip-off here, it's RoN. (from EE).

However, RoN contains certain features which make it quite original, so I personally don't see it as a ripoff.

	28-06-2003 21:36									#20
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yes well its pointless who is cloning who or ripping off whoever. All RTS is a clone or ripp off Dune 2, and even that is a rip off of other less known and less popular RTS. and RTS genre is a rip off of, older semi real time PC games. The CTW in RON and stuff like Total War is exactly the same idea and gameplay as this really old PC game I played almost 20 years ago called Centurion. and that game has a more sophisticated diplomacy then RoN has or even alot of TBS (it had like almost a roleplaying conversational style diplomacy). PLus it had attack formations, attack maneuvers and the battle part of it was real time.

	29-06-2003 01:14									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

From what Ive read, the new EE will be more like Warcraft3 in that it has a dumbed down economic system (they removed a resource-metal), and every unit has special abilities to micro.

It's almost certainly an attempt to cash in on Warcraft3's immensely popular model. For experienced gamers it may seem like yet another step backwards for RTS.

	29-06-2003 21:22									#22
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Actually, Pacman is a much better game...

	01-07-2003 14:16									#23
	Put an end to popups!

"War is exactly the same idea and gameplay as this really old PC game I played almost 20 years ago called Centurion. and that game has a more sophisticated diplomacy then RoN has or even alot of TBS (it had like almost a roleplaying conversational style diplomacy"

You just reminds me of Centurion. It's only needs only 2 disks then and runs very well on my 286.

Games nowadays runs on 2 Gi computer and gameplay is still the same.

Sad

	01-07-2003 15:27									#24
	Got spare money?

hi,

My old Apple from around 1987 had this cool game called something like Global Conquest or Strategic Command or something like that that was really similar indeed. It's just the graphics are better now.

The only really new thing with RoN is the border concept and that you can win a conflict without committing genocide. Oh, and the hotkeys for almost everything (except merchants, fisherman, towers, and forts).

Where RoN lacks is in the senario department. In Age of Empires you can create goals by placing flags on targets or capture and hold enough relics... all in a graphical interface. But there is nothing like this in RoN... all that can really be done is make a map and share.

Sure RoN is a nice game but throw in a goal oriented scenario maker and we'll have a great game that would be a 1000 times more playable as you could download the different scenarios. Then you might play the game for a year, like I did AoE CivI and CivII, and get your monies worth. But I would not put RoN into this category.

dutcheese

	01-07-2003 18:35									#25
	Tired of ads?

Hi, dutcheese

In spite of that, are you planning on writing any scripts for Ron?

Peter

	01-07-2003 21:42									#26
	Suffering from ads?

hi Peter,

yep, i guess so... i really like a game i can tinker with. sometimes i tinker more than play and my wife calls me crazy.

i've got something in the works that should be out shortly. most likey a basic release at first with an expansion later depending on the reviews.

dutcheese