What happened? Rise of Nations was great, but now...meh

[J_C]

So, I have to admit, that one of the my favourite RTS games of all time was Rise of Nations. I just loved how they combined some aspects of Civilization with the gameplay of Age of Empires.

The last time I played it was after its release, almost a decade ago, so I was happy to grab it on Steam, when the HD edition came out. I started it, got the usual nice feelings about it, but during the Alexander campaign, a meh feeling got over me. Sometimes I even got frustrated.

The reason for this is that the gameplay is all about spamming the most units as fast as possible, because the AI does the same, and it sends them to me wave after wave. And to keep up, I have to do the same.

Anybody else gets a similar feelings when playing an older RTS games? That's all these games have to offer? No real strategy, just build the same buildings and start spamming units?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

just build the same buildings and start spamming units?

Sounds like a RTS to me.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Rise of nation was always shit. Poor man's Empire Earth with the shittiest risk gimmick added on top. Someone thought about mixing Total War, Age of Empires and Empire Earth but failed at every aspects that made these games great individually.

 

[J_C]

Rise of nation was always shit. Poor man's Empire Earth with the shittiest risk gimmick added on top. Someone thought about mixing Total War, Age of Empires and Empire Earth but failed at every aspects that made these games great individually.

I actually never played Empire Earth, but I have it on my GOG accunt. Can you give me a few points about why is it better than Rise of Nations?

What I 100% agree with is that the risk "campaign" is pretty meh, I would have liked a proper campaign a lot more.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The gameplay is a lot more complete with more complexity and features. It's got city buildings element too. The campaign and units are funny and you even have magic cool powers to use which adds up a lot. You can also design your own civs with it's specific strength for which era you prefer. Rise of nations manages to be much more bland despite a similar setting. The gameplay of Empire doesn't constantly devolve into endless trash wars of attrition. Empire Earth is a lot more about building a civilization across the ages where Rise of Nations is an even worse Age of Empire 3 with more ages and an idiotic tedious risk map added on top.

I feel bad for you that you fell for an HD remake. I did the same thing with Age of Empire. HD remakes are not worth it, this should be said more often.

 

[J_C]

Thanks, I will definitely give Empire Earth a go sometime later.

 

[DeepOcean]

Never liked Rise of Nations, it played more like some unfinished mod for Age Empires.

 

[Perkel]

Thanks, I will definitely give Empire Earth a go sometime later.

I tried EE1 and it was piece of shit. Sounds fun but in gameplay it is retarded brother of AoE.
Mind you i love slow paced base buidling games.

If you want something slower paced but still with kind of economical progress i would suggest:

- Earth 2150 with expansions packs. RTS with 3 different factions, you have base and you have tast to collect resources and leave planet. So you can build stuff etc or save money for escape. You have one home base through all of your missions.
- Warzone 2100. Similar as above. You have your base from which you take various missions.
- Battle Isle - Andosia War. Now this is where home base element really is what makes the game. Game is turn based rts. Unfortunetely there is no realtime between battles so you will have to fuck around with turns even when you don't fight though reserch and building is real time (and will take you forever to do stuff).

There was also one other game but i don' remember its name. It was kind of medievilish with fantasy elements like Angels and Demons. You also had main base but most of the time you spend on various missions. Fuck i can't remember it's name...

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Game is turn based rts.

Then it's not an RTS you genius

 

[Average Manatee]

Then it's not an RTS you genius

Real Turn Strategy

 

[Perkel]

Then it's not an RTS you genius

Huh. heh.

Well i always considered it turn based RTS because it handles battles in turn based combat and rest in real time like research and production.

Calling it RTS or turn based game is not right alone imo.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

I played Rise of Nations to death but it was never anything more than AoE really. Even though you advance through ages, your tactics never really change and it's all about building a bigger blob than your enemy and micro it in and out of combat efficiently.

It's kinda fun in itself but gets boring after awhile.

 

[Telengard]

Older RTS games are purposefully run by a formula (which you have just recognized), and that formula is: build all the buildings ASAP, then spam the best unit available until enemy is dead. That was the intended gameplay. A few such games use Rock-paper-scissors units to force people to take more variety into the field, but that's more favored by later RTS devs. Only sim-style RTSs actually have any real divergence in unit types which require any kind of tactics to beat.

Outside of the sims, RTSs are won at the resource gathering stage, not in the field. They're a test of efficiency and attention to detail, not tactics and logistics. Once the efficiency puzzle is figured out, the RTSs don't involve the mind much, just reflexes and command and control of the big picture. And that's all they ever were - besides being pretty and actiony in what had until then been a static and pixellated turn-based world.

 

[Johannes]

Older RTS games are purposefully run by a formula (which you have just recognized), and that formula is: build all the buildings ASAP, then spam the best unit available until enemy is dead. That was the intended gameplay. A few such games use Rock-paper-scissors units to force people to take more variety into the field, but that's more favored by later RTS devs. Only sim-style RTSs actually have any real divergence in unit types which require any kind of tactics to beat.

Outside of the sims, RTSs are won at the resource gathering stage, not in the field. They're a test of efficiency and attention to detail, not tactics and logistics. Once the efficiency puzzle is figured out, the RTSs don't involve the mind much, just reflexes and command and control of the big picture. And that's all they ever were - besides being pretty and actiony in what had until then been a static and pixellated turn-based world.

Rise of Nations came out in 2003.

By that time we'd had Starcraft, AoE, Total Annihilation... Games with very involved tactics and maneuvering. And the strategy/economy in them isn't simple as you describe either, but you have a ton of different ways to optimize for different timings depending on what you see the enemy doing.

 

[Telengard]

AoE is won almost entirely at the resource gathering stage, to the point where you can guarantee the first person to shift Ages loses, unless they're bum rushing a weak player. Effeciency is all there is to AoE. Total War has way more things you can do on the tactical map than most RTS games, but it is won on the strategic layer, and is all about mining resources (people are resources too). The RPS tactics that most RTS games use these days help alleviate single unit spam, instead replacing it with blobs of a few elite units, but in almost all RPS RPGs, the more efficient builder wins due to larger blobs.

A few sim-style RTSs have been available since the rise of the genre, but outside of them, tactics are rarely required. In fact, lack of tactics was one of the early selling points of the entire genre. Action. Fun. Destruction.

 

[Hellraiser]

RoN used rock/paper/scissors...

Also the unit spam was kind of the point of RoN. It is a macro-oriented RTS, you focus on the economy and production and just set rally points at whatever point is optimal. Then you watch as your blob clashes with the enemy blob until one gains the advantage slowly capturing more territory. Kind of like in SupCom. Or more recently, Grey Goo.

Either that or I played too much Zerg in SC2 on battlenet and now it warped my view on RTS playstyle.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

RTS are won with keyboard piano and deeply entrenched reflexes. That's how it evolved because a growing amount of no lives are steering capitals toward competitive focused games, and any more casual approach is disregarded. This is why we will never see RTSs the like of the first stronghold ever again. Instead they released one recently where they tried to turn it into a competitive PVP game.

It's like real time City builders. They are either Ultra complex simulations for no lives or casual shit like the new Sims City. There's no middle ground anymore like what the Sierra games did. Fuck this polarization and fuck this gay earth.

 

[Tigranes]

AoE is won almost entirely at the resource gathering stage, to the point where you can guarantee the first person to shift Ages loses, unless they're bum rushing a weak player. Effeciency is all there is to AoE. Total War has way more things you can do on the tactical map than most RTS games, but it is won on the strategic layer, and is all about mining resources (people are resources too). The RPS tactics that most RTS games use these days help alleviate single unit spam, instead replacing it with blobs of a few elite units, but in almost all RPS RPGs, the more efficient builder wins due to larger blobs.

A few sim-style RTSs have been available since the rise of the genre, but outside of them, tactics are rarely required. In fact, lack of tactics was one of the early selling points of the entire genre. Action. Fun. Destruction.

As someone who was pretty competitive at at least one Age game, I'd say this is a bit of a simplification, at least because resource gathering is connected to combat decision making intimately. Above the noob level, games are won in terms of (1) what tracks you build your economy for, and how flexible you can be in your resource gathering; (2) your reflexes / multi-tasking ability in all areas as a basic metric of efficiency; (3) quick decision-making about army composition, movement, positioning.

That said, my own comments make you at least 80% right. For one game which tried to really emulate actual armies in a RTS setting, I'd point to that lovely, lovely yet slightly demented game, Cossacks. Your cannons will take 20 seconds to swivel the other way, and you will be lining up your men into position before battle (or while being shot at).

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Age of Empire is really about the capacity to micro your groups of units and understanding the broken pathfinding collision system. That and resources + multitasking of course.

But you can lose an entire army even to the units you should be able to counter just because they didn't attack properly during the engagement. Age of Empires 2 generally devolved into early infantry wars anyway, pick the goth, the first one to get a catapult out wins. That or you were a pro and could rush the ages with the huns and spam cavalry archers.

 

[Johannes]

AoE is won almost entirely at the resource gathering stage, to the point where you can guarantee the first person to shift Ages loses, unless they're bum rushing a weak player. Effeciency is all there is to AoE. Total War has way more things you can do on the tactical map than most RTS games, but it is won on the strategic layer, and is all about mining resources (people are resources too). The RPS tactics that most RTS games use these days help alleviate single unit spam, instead replacing it with blobs of a few elite units, but in almost all RPS RPGs, the more efficient builder wins due to larger blobs.

A few sim-style RTSs have been available since the rise of the genre, but outside of them, tactics are rarely required. In fact, lack of tactics was one of the early selling points of the entire genre. Action. Fun. Destruction.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Of course when it comes to total newb games, the guy with the efficient build order wins. But as soon as both players are halfway competent you can't really outmatch your enemy by just being simply superior in initial build - then your micro in the battles, picking your battles, mind games, and your base management / tech choices can all decide the game.

Here's a random AoE2 game from youtube. You can imagine the game going very differently with minor changes to the players' strategies.




And wtf are the "sim-style" games you talk about?

 

[Destroid]

RoN was a lot of fun multiplayer, dunno what it was like vs AI because playing RTS vs AI is dumb.

 

[naossano]

I thought Age Of Empire was mostly a battle of ressources, making as many villagers as you can, claiming as much god mine/forest/etc as you can early on, and kill as many enemy villager as you can, before the enemies decide to send his big army agains't you. Then, the outcome of the big battle depend on how you played the first half. First one to empty its pool of ressources lose.

 

[Johannes]

I thought Age Of Empire was mostly a battle of ressources, making as many villagers as you can, claiming as much god mine/forest/etc as you can early on, and kill as many enemy villager as you can, before the enemies decide to send his big army agains't you. Then, the outcome of the big battle depend on how you played the first half. First one to empty its pool of ressources lose.

It's a good enough game that it can't be simply reduced to "it's mostly about X" in a sensible manner

 

[MilesBeyond]

To be fair, comments like this:

I thought Age Of Empire was mostly a battle of ressources, making as many villagers as you can, claiming as much god mine/forest/etc as you can early on, and kill as many enemy villager as you can, before the enemies decide to send his big army agains't you. Then, the outcome of the big battle depend on how you played the first half. First one to empty its pool of ressources lose.

Are, in my experience, pretty representative of what the game is like at the amateur level. Hell, that sentence pretty much sums up every LAN party I went to fifteen years ago. There's a lot more to the game than that, sure, but not everyone's necessarily gonna experience that

 

[L'ennui]

There are flanking bonuses in RoN. Generals that provide passive bonuses to nearby troops and active abilities that can be toggled. There are spies that can bribe enemy units. There is supply and attrition.

Fuck off you plebes. RoN is too good for the lot of you.