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FiringSquad: Do you lay out the rules before the start of the game, or do they mostly develop organically as the game is being made?

Brian Reynolds: We come up with ideas. Doug and I come up with brainstorms about ideas that’d be cool to try. We pull out the one’s that didn’t work or I’ll think of some way to make them better.

FiringSquad: Do the brainstorms come before you code?

Brian Reynolds: No. I started coding Rise of Nations before we even had a contract to make the game. I got going on some of formation rules. (laughs) Some of that code is still in there for the troop formations and stuff. Within a couple months of when we started we had prototypes where you could move little troops around that looked like circles and squares. We get something running really early and then throw stuff in, and see what works. You throw a bunch of stuff in and then you separate the stuff that doesn’t work. The rest of it starts to gel.

FiringSquad: Can you give us an idea of something you cut out?

Brian Reynolds: Yeah, the idea of having different kinds of terrain that affected farming. We wanted like ideal terrain for food, other terrain might give you wool (which was an early and now removed resource). It didn’t add extra personality to the game… it just added complexity.

FiringSquad: And that would dramatically affect where you placed your cities. It might become an extra chore, having to scout around for the food and farm squares you needed.

Brian Reynolds: Yeah. Here’s a better example. It’s something we put in, then we cut, and then we put in again. And that was attrition!

(Attrition is a concept where, if you don’t take along a supply wagon your units take damage when they’re within enemy borders. It has a dramatic effect on how war is waged in the game, and it’s one of RoN’s most compelling new ideas.)

Brian Reynolds: Part of the problem was we hadn’t come up with supply wagons yet. We didn’t have it turn on gradually and we had no feedback for it. Nobody liked it so we though, “the heck with that, let’s take it out!” Later on some artist hadn’t heard we cut it and he made some little red glow things to go on units feet (to show attrition damage) and at that time we were working on the Nation Powers and we wanted to use attrition to simulate the Russian winter. That visual cue, and some other ideas made it work. In fact, a lot of what became Nation Powers were ideas we had cut (laughs). So attrition just came back as the Russian power. Everyone loved that and so they all wanted to play as the Russians all the time. So we gradually worked it back into the game. We realized that once we added the visual cue and an unmistakable audio cue to it, it glued together a number of concepts in the game that weren’t really happening at that point. For example, supply wagons. Originally they just healed people. That was too powerful. When we hit on the idea that it protected you from attrition damage it really worked. It really emphasized the national borders. It made it feel it (national borders) had teeth to it. It also affected the game styles. Having attrition damage meant we could have what we call the “Severe Tire Damage Attrition” which we use in the Assassin game or in a peace game, where you get severely punished for crossing that border. It made the diplomatic portion fit together. So that’s one rule that really had a rocky road to it but now it’s one of my favorites.