History VideoGame / RiseOfNations

* SkillGateCharacter: Coincidentally, both of the playable nations in the Cold War campaigns are this trope, being appealing to newer players but easily exploited in higher level play.

* AdvancedMovementTechnique: Raiding, or small-scale assaults on civilian units in order to disrupt the opponent's economy. Ranged cavalry is most specialized in this, as they can run alongside these units while attacking them, and steer clear of enemy barricades and armies with their inherently high movement. Single infantry units are also capable of this, and in the Ancient Age (where cavalry isn't available) are the only option. This technique requires intense micromanagement, and is primarily seen amongst skilled players with intimate knowledge of the {{metagame}}. Towers are designed to curb this technique, not only being cheaper, quicker to build, and available earlier than forts; but also allowing for research on anti-raiding technologies, attrition (wearing down enemy units on home soil without a supply wagon) and militia (allowing citizens to fight back against raiders).

* EasyModeMockery: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]; the description of the "[[HarderThanHard Toughest]]" difficulty considers it "a sparring partner for the tournament level player or [[YoureInsane the mentally deranged]]".

* RedIsHeroic: The player is always red in single player mode. The enemy army is usually blue, with additional colors being added in for multiple factions. This gets a bit weird in the Napoleon and American-side Cold War campaigns, and the New World scenario when playing as the likes of the French or Americans, where the normally blue but colored red French and American armies fight the normally red but colored blue British and Russian armies.

* RedIsHeroic: The player is always red in single player mode. The enemy army is usually blue, with additional colors being added in for multiple factions. This gets a bit weird in the Napoleon and American-side Cold War campaigns, and the New World scenario when playing as the likes of the French or Americans, where the normally blue but colored red French and American armies fight the normally red but colored blue British and Soviet armies.

** The Lakota have the most unorthodox playstyle of the available nations: they produce food from individual civilians and cavalry units, rather than agriculture; have invisible borders; and can build anywhere outside of enemy territory.

* MechanicallyUnusualFighter: There are a few unique units that go beyond having simple stat bonuses:
** The Spanish and Persian heavy infantry lines obtain the capability of fighting from range prior to the Enlightenment Age.
** The Chinese obtain gunpowder infantry in the Medieval Age, earlier than the Gunpowder Age.
** The American marines automatically entrench themselves when stationary without the need for a general.
** The Dutch get caravans, merchants, and supply wagons that can fight back.
** The Persians and Indians get war elephants that don't replace units at all. They're effective against crowds of infantry while being vulnerable to anti-cavalry weapons.
** Some of the Conquer the World campaigns have unique units that aren't available anywhere else. Examples include the Napoleonic Imperial Guard, Colonial American Ironclad, NATO Humvee, and Soviet Nuclear Submarine.

* TacticalRockPaperScissors: ''Rise Of Nations'' plays this trope absolutely straight; it's practically CripplingOverspecialization. Several combinations abound but here's a general example: Light Infantry ➞ Heavy Infantry ➞ Heavy Cavalry➞ Light Cavalry ➞ Light Infantry, with a mix of Archers, Machine Gun Infantry, and Ranged Cavalry thrown in the mix. For the water, Heavy Warships beat Light Ships, which fend off Fire Ships or Submarines, which destroy Heavy Warships. Better write that down. The entire web is about as convoluted as {{Franchise/Pokemon}}. On the other hand, this tends to break down to a degree if one side is an age or so ahead or behind technologically. See RockBeatsLaser above.

* AmericaIsStillAColony: In the "New Wold" campaign, the players can deviate from history quite heavily, including the European colonial powers (especially Britain) keeping the United States from gaining independence.

* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: Food, Stone, Wealth, Metal, and Knowledge, specifically. Unlike other games, there's limits to how quickly each resource can be gathered or produced; making a bunch of Farms early on in the hopes of becoming an economic superpower will fail without Commerce research or Wonders to increase those limits.

* AttackAttackAttack: The tactical offensive campaign mode. It starts with a large amount of your troops landing in a completely hostile territory without any backup. Then, you must capture every single city in the map with the forces you have at hand.

* RedIsHeroic: The player is always red in single player mode. The enemy army is usually blue, with additional colors being added in for multiple factions. This gets a bit weird in the Napoleon and American-side Cold War campaigns, where the normally blue French and American armies fight the normally red but colored blue British and Soviet armies.

* CheatersNeverProsper:
** Sure, you can use cheat counters in the main campaign... if you are okay with being labeled [[EasyModeMockery "(Your name) the Cheater"]].
** The Armageddon counter prevents players from using "cheat nuke" a hundred times... not to mention you actually have to get your troops to capture the city even after it's been nuked. Although, anyone who actually needs more than 2 or 3 three nukes should be non-existent... Especially given that the counter allows for over 15 nukes, each of which can completely destroy EVERYTHING in an entire fully zoomed-out screen.
** Perhaps partially subverted in that literally every cheat is some variation of "cheat <whatever effect you're looking for>".

* BarrierMaiden: The whole point of the Supply Caravan unit, which serve no function other than to ward off the effects of attrition on your forces.

* RedIsHeroic: The player is always red in single player mode. The enemy army is usually blue, with additional colors being added in for multiple factions. This gets a bit weird in the Napoleon and Allied-side Cold War campaigns, where the normally blue French and American armies fight the normally red but colored blue British and Soviet armies.

* ShoutOut: The Russian Information Age infantry, the Shock Infantry, is the spitting image of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'''s Conscript.

* WashingtonDCInvasion: If the player as the Soviets launch a conventional attack on the US capital territory (Eastern Seaboard), the scenario that plays starts with the Soviets having seized control of New England up to Hartford (even if you attack from the south). The win condition is the capture of Washington.

** In the New world campaign, it's possible for any of the european nations, the native tribes, or the United States to conquer both North and South America.

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: France having the "power of the leaders" and their special units being horse grenadiers ? [[UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte Now where did we see that ?]]

* RussiaTakesOverTheWorld: The expansion campaign ''Thrones and Patriots'' has a UsefulNotes/ColdWar campaign where you can diverge heavily from history to ensure that the Soviets dominate the globe.

* SchmuckBait: During the pacification of Greece in the Alexander campaign, upon defeating Thebes and Athens, your advisors remark that Sparta looks quite beefy and may not be worth the effort. They instead recommend that you make peace with them and doing so will end the mission immediately. If you choose to fight, they reiterate that this isn't a good idea and a few minutes later, the game asks if you ''really'' want to go ahead with it, even giving you a "don't say we didn't warn you" if you insist. Thing is, if you listen to your advisors and choose peace, then every single battle ''for the rest of the campaign'' will see whatever enemy you're fighting getting Spartan reinforcements just a few minutes into the battle, with the game explicitly rubbing it into your face every single time that ''"perhaps it was a mistake not to crush them earlier"''.

* TacticalRockPaperScissors: ''Rise Of Nations'' plays this trope absolutely straight; it's practically CripplingOverspecialization. Several combinations abound but here's a general example: Light Infantry ➞ Heavy Infantry ➞ Heavy Cavalry➞ Light Cavalry ➞ Light Infantry, with a mix of Archers, Machine Gun Infantry, and Ranged Cavalry thrown in the mix. Better write that down. The entire web is about as convoluted as {{Franchise/Pokemon}}. On the other hand, this tends to break down to a degree if one side is an age or so ahead or behind technologically. See RockBeatsLaser above.

** AmericaTakesOverTheWorld[=/=]ChinaTakesOverTheWorld[=/=]JapanTakesOverTheWorld: Each of these is possible in one or more of the campaign modes.

* GoodBadBugs: Failing (or resigning) a scripted scenario in one of the unique campaigns and attempting to attack the same territory reverts the map into a typical "Conquest" skirmish. This may come in handy for [[ThatOneLevel scenarios that may prove to be daunting otherwise]], such as the Samnite War in ''Alexander the Great''.

* SweetPollyOliver: Before the Modern Age, send some male scholars to partisan duty.

* ArmyOfTheAges: Largely averted thanks to the game's rather smooth unit upgrade system, but it can quite easily happen if several players on the same team are at wildly different points along the march of history and staging a coordinated attack.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Mostly averted, actually, although this might also be due to the fact that, if the enemy is overwhelming you, you can change difficulty settings from the Pause menu. However, this is played straight when an AI player gets a missile online -- it knows just where your Cities and Barracks are when human players wouldn't. And whenever you fire a V2/cruise missile, the AI '''always''' knows where it targets and sends the troops away from the target.

* CosmeticallyDifferentSides: Subverted. Since the game is a historical RTS, there's a decent bit of variety; each nation has unique advantages and disadvantages alongside units which are significant enough to seriously influence playstyle. Units are ultimately mostly similar but their special units and bonuses definitely pushes individual nations towards particular playstyles. Aesthetics-wise meanwhile, there are subtle visual differences even among nations belonging to the same cultural group; the standard Industrial Age infantry units for the Germans wear gas masks while the Japanese's Modern Age fighter plane is clearly a Zero.
* CrosshairAware: The target of a nuclear missile is shown on everybody's minimap. Most units are too slow however to actually avoid the blast if they are anywhere near the center of the blast. Deployed artillery is completely screwed regardless.
* DamageIsFire: However, the fire itself is fairly understated, and it's almost Damage Is Smoke that's more appropriate, in terms of the animation.

* FirewoodResources: Mostly, just applies to the icon for wood. Workers are shown moving small logs while logging camps (which must be built near forests) are seen moving around large logs and lumber.

* FrontlineGeneral: The General is a support caster unit and can't actually fight so you'd best keep him slightly back from the front lines, but he has to be close in order for your troops to benefit from having him around.

* MoreDakka: Stock in trade of the Machine Gun line of units, which specialize in mowing down infantry at the cost of having to deploy like an artillery unit. Their Information Age incarnation takes the cake by using a [[GatlingGood chaingun.]]
%%* NoFairCheating

** There are two types of defeat in skirmish and the "Conquer the World" campaign - the normal sort, when your opponent simply wins, and the Armageddon defeat, involving a nuclear holocaust.

* NuclearNullifier: The SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) renders the builder unable to be attacked by nukes. However, it also sets the Nuclear Winter Counter to 1.

** Averted for units of the same category. More advanced units are almost guaranteed to be superior to their less technological versions, eventually leading to CurbStompBattle situations in your favor if you're moved up the tech tree enough... except for naval units, which inexplicably gain relatively minor increases in stats, even with the transition from [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen wooden]] to metal ships.
** However, played straight for hard counters if the circumstances are right. You can still have the situation where a spearman beats a tank, because Heavy Infantry is the hard counter to Heavy Cavalry. On the other hand, motorized vehicles are [[RealityEnsues more likely to gun down any approaching spearmen]] before they get the chance.

* SemperFi: The Americans' infantry units from the Enlightenment Age on are various incarnations of the United States Marine Corps.

* SlapOnTheWristNuke: Averted, for the most part. A single nuke can level an entire city and its surroundings, while the Information Age thermonuclear variant can obliterate ''everything'' onscreen. If the explosion still looks small, then that's because of [[UnitsNotToScale disproportionate unit sizes]].

* UpdatedRerelease: Rise of Nations: Extended Edition, released on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} in June 2014. In addition to including the ExpansionPack content and being compatible with modern operating systems, nearly all the graphics got some serious spit and polish and Internet steaming options were built in.

* WorkerUnit: Actually called citizens.
* YouHaveResearchedBreathing: Even if you are in the modern age, you will still have to research things such as crop rotation or medicine as if they are totally unknown to your civilization. However, some researches are cheaper if someone else on the map has already researched it. Also, Science research lowers the cost of other types of research.
* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas

** In the New World campaign, the native American nations will start with this as the only tactic available to them, since unlike the European colonist they don't have access to gunpowder weapons and only have their larger population as an advantage. But eventually, [[TookALevelInBadass they will get access to gunpowders weapons to level the playing field]].

** Researching the NearFuture technology ArtificialIntelligence reduces all your units' creation time to zero, allowing you to [[WeHaveReserves instantly spawn entire armies if you have the resources]].