Weak stuff

Knee-Deep in the Chinese

Combat is the usual precise house of cards where you have to balance each unit’s strengths against its weaknesses. The click factor can be fairly high, although proper planning will drastically reduce the amount of chaos you’ll have to deal with during battle. Knowing what every unit can do and scouting your enemies before building an army is imperative. I learned this the hard way in my second game, when my heretofore invincible German Tiger tanks encountered a bunch of wimpy looking British helicopters en route to blitzkrieging London. Needless to say, every unit has its Achilles Heel, and tanks don’t much care for helicopters. Yet even though there are a lot of combat considerations to keep in mind, you don’t need to be constantly poring over at the manual as a menu box shows you what’s good against what whenever you click on a unit. I never had to go hunting for information of any sort. All of my questions were instantly answered, via either a quick click or a glance to one corner of the main screen. At the same time, I never felt overwhelmed with extraneous data. The only drawback is that some events are announced with a little more oomph than is necessary. While it’s nice to know that the Japanese have just finished building the Kremlin, this bulletin doesn’t need to blanket the center of the map in the middle of my battle against the Aztecs.

Hard bargainers

Bleeding me dry

Finally!

There are some weaknesses in the overall package, though, that don’t show up when you’re knee-deep in conquering the Chinese in skirmish Quick Battle mode. Most glaringly, there is no proper campaign. In place of the usual scripted campaigns, Rise of Nations features Conquer the World. For all intents and purposes, this is a special mode of play that is a lot like Risk, right down to bonus cards. You guide the fortunes of a nation on a global map, choosing each turn whether to go to war, fortify your existing provinces, or simply wait. Deciding to do something typically involves moving an army into enemy territory, whereupon you’re presented with a random scenario to play out in the standard interface screen.

All Fine, All Good

Which is all fine and good, I suppose, and you can insert all the usual great things that people say about dynamic campaigns here, but I found most of the scenarios dull. Much of the complexity of one-off scenarios is drained so you can meet simple objectives, like taking an enemy city in 90 minutes or holding out against enemy attack for 12 minutes. These goals don’t feature a lot of room to maneuver, so there isn’t a focus on diplomacy, or any other intricacy prominent in skirmish play. Also, you advance very slowly, often remaining in a single Age for an hour or more. Yawns all around, unless you get off on building the same three or four units ad nauseum.

An Egyptian Eiffel Tower

The Chinese Kremlin

Versailles in Luxor

Multiplayer mode is another sore thumb, of sorts. Rise of Nations uses GameSpy Arcade for setting up online contests, and this doesn’t cut it today. No offense to GameSpy Arcade, as it is a pretty good matching system, but we shouldn’t have to wade through lists of prospective opponents of similar skill level and interest. Like so many other recent strategy games (WarCraft III, Age of Mythology), you should be able to automatically get into a game by clicking a couple of buttons. This is a real annoyance, although there are so many people playing the game online right now that you should be able to find competition just by buzzing your gaming friends.