Gameplay Part Deux

Crying Over Copenhagen

City development is another reason why national development seems natural and unforced. Instead of simply building wherever and however you please, Rise of Nations forces you to construct separate cities within strictly-defined national borders. Structures are also limited in each city. You can’t have more than five farms, for instance, and your scholarly endeavors must be confined to a single university. Commerce is also boosted by having caravans ply trade routes between your cities. To have a healthy economy, you have to trade, and to trade effectively you have to have at least three or four cities spreading around the wealth. These factors force you to spread out as quickly as possible, so you can establish an interconnected system of settlements and expand your civilization gradually, in a way that seems awfully organic for an RTS. Every city ends up with its own character, too, a realistic touch in a genre where we’re used to building up an anonymous main base with a bunch of equally nondescript ancillary military complexes dotted around the map. They even have to be seized and assimilated by enemy forces, not simply razed or conquered. This can lead to emotional attachments. I haven’t been this distraught over losing computer-game cities since my Empire Deluxe marathons back in university. (Empire Deluxe in college? How are they treating you at the retirement home? -ed.)

Medieval task force

Not a fair fight

Right in der Fuhrer's face

This system also encourages intelligent gameplay. You cannot get lost in Rise of Nations, because there is a straightforward chain of command pushing you from one step to the next, all linked to the national borders/city-first concepts. In order to build cities, you have to collect resources. So you’re forced to create mines, lumber yards, oil rigs, and so on. You also have to research Civics technologies, as there are strict limits on the number of cities you can handle, so you get familiar with the tech tree and its importance to the grand scheme of things. National borders encourage you to build at a sensible pace. You cannot cross a border without declaring war, an act that can be costly in the early stages of a game. This alone can make you apply the brakes. And units suffer serious attrition damage when they invade enemy territory without the assistance of supply vehicles. Although there are many ways to play Rise of Nations, all of these ways involve strategizing. Going pell-mell into a tank rush from the word Go will get you murdered again and again. You can’t fool around with the artificial intelligence here, either. It plays exactly as it’s billed in each of the six difficulty settings, giving you breaks and screwing you to the wall where indicated. Moderate and above will provide just about anyone with a challenge, although you can expect the odd miscue such as computer nations ignoring valuable resources at all levels. I watched nations ignore caches of gems and pools of oil right next to their capital cities.