Rise of Nations

So, my most recent rush of purchases included Rise Of Nations + Thrones (as well as Rise of the Middle Kingdom and Beyond The Sword, but that's stuff for other threads...), and I've been enjoying it thus far.

It's like Age of Empires with more timeless objective and interface, and since Age of Empires is one of those games I casually enjoy I fit right in on this one. The wide range of units and playable races is really cool and makes playing and makes planning armies very interesting.

On the other hand, so far I'm only kind of enjoying Risk Conquer The World mode and feeling kind of disappointed with skirmish mode. I definitely like the gameplay and the means of expanding and developing, but the perma-war and apparent lack of diplomacy in single battle (after the tutorial implied it was a universal mechanic) kind of takes away an element of options and development that I was really looking forward to. Looking it up, I hear there's a way to turn on diplomacy for single battles - but I can't find it so whatever.

Also, the music is great. There's this one song that I think is from the Classical era that I've been going nuts trying to find.

edited 4th Oct '13 5:12:38 PM by KnownUnknown

I played a ton of this game back in the day, probably one of my favourite strategy games ever, and maybe the only strategy game where i could actually beat my brother when we played. Versus AI i liked setting the starting and ending ages to be more restrictive sometimes because i found there was a lot more to do in the ages when you aren't forced to be constantly rushing through the tech tree, and you get to play with some of the sweeter unique units more (fire lances!). The game was also really cool for its quite complex rock-paper-scissors of unit counters, rushing out an army of one unit type almost always led to horrible pain.

edited 4th Oct '13 6:44:14 PM by MrShine

Ok Rise of Nations is now on Steam.

Tell me are there plenty of multiplayer matches?

This is my favorite RTS game of all time. Granted I haven't played too many of them, but this one just felt right. I'm not sure why it works, but it does. I'm getting this as soon as Steam puts it on sale.

I bought it today.

Reasons being that I want to be one more the multiplayer pool.

Tell me how it runs, I'm interested in knowing if it's a similarly (crappy) port like Age of Empires II was or a much better job with actual improvements.

Well my card is a crappy Ge Force GT 420.

Still it does get a good framerate most of the time. Except when there is a bunch of stuff on the screen then the framerate kinda drops.

Oh and there is a minor 2D graphical glitches, where the library progress color on the top of the screen is not properly aligned with the underlying graphic.

Aside from those issue I'm trying my best to beat the A.I. faster and faster times, and at higher difficulties. I never got up to normal when I last played this game 10 years ago.

Oh and there are a few multiplayer games but I don't think I'm ready for them yet.

edited 14th Jun '14 7:23:31 PM by Worlder

Multiplayer is sparse.

Apparently, there are complaints of connection issues some of which I personally experienced.

It is rather a shame we can't see the amount of ongoing matches which would give an indicator as to the health of the multiplayer based on at least one metric.

I've never actually played Rise of Nations if I'm honest. I played Rise of Legends but that's about it.

I'm hoping it'll go on sale during the Steam summer event, is it worth getting?

Well multiplayer is kind of like the stock market in one aspect.

If enough people don't think it is worth it, then could potentially cause a negative feedback that would then snowball.

I haven't had any issues with the single player even though other people have had them. What percentage of players with issues vs those without issues I don't know.

edited 15th Jun '14 9:44:55 AM by Worlder

Doesn't sound like it's worth it then, especially since I still have the original disc plus the Thrones and Patriots expansion.

If there's one thing I love about this game, it's the music. So many awesome tunes to build a civilization to.

Though this one is my favorite song overall, this one is my favorite "things are about to go down" song:

And I swear the sounds of this song remind me an old game - I think it was a DOS or Windows 97-8 game, but hell if can remember what the game actually was. <shrug>

edited 15th Jun '14 9:38:09 PM by KnownUnknown

Man I finally won a multiplayer match, although I kinda of felt carried.

Okay so I was the Dutch and my other two teammates were Japanese and Lakota. For the entire match, I didn't engage in combat. I was just the economic support snuggled deep in between my two teammates. I regularly gave them huge gifts for them to build their armies and so they can focus on microing.

I preordered this game on Steam as well, despite having a retail copy. Whenever I tried installing by retail, the installation would just stop.

Is there any new content in the Steam edition?

You know I really hope that this game rises out of the 400 or so active player count ATM.

Got it and did a quick bot match. Still fun even though I'm terrible at micromanagement. Someday I'll have to try and get better.