Awesome GameSpy Update!

[yin26]

Sorry if this is old news, but I was out of town for a while...all I can say to Brian and the team is that these items are some of EXACTLY what I was hoping you'd do! Bravo!

http://www.gamespy.com/previews/march02/riseofnations/

• Unlike most, your culture's borders will be clearly marked on the map, and they affect gameplay. You can only build civic buildings near your town center, and you can only build military buildings within your nation's borders. How do you expand? One way is by building additional towns. Another is by building up your nation's level of civilization and culture. A better civilization will begin to swallow up more of the map, ideally safeguarding more important resources within its borders.
• But the attacker is not without advantages; you can "take over" an enemy city by attacking it to reduce it to zero health. Then, as long as you have more military units present then the defender, the city -- and all the economic and cultural buildings around it -- becomes yours. Because of these changes, borders tend to shift realistically across the map during gameplay, and battles tend to rage around key economic cities that are often blasted but rarely destroyed.
• And yes, you really can play it on your lunch hour. Playtesters so far are able to go from the Stone Age to the Information Age in roughly 56 minutes, so you'll really get to feel the march of time.
• Combat is also refined to add a level of strategic depth. All units have a front, flanks, and a rear.
• Oh yes, you can also research nuclear weapons. With these you're looking at a whole screenful of decimation. Careful, though -- if too many nations fire nukes, the game is declared "Armageddon" and everyone loses.(!)
• In Rise of Nations, knowledge is a resource that is collected and spent, just like wood. To harvest it, you'll need to create a university and send your citizens there (you'll see them sitting in row upon row of tiny desks, listening to a lecturer.) Knowledge will help you research new technologies or create specialized units. For example, researching and building a nuke will require a huge expenditure of knowledge.
• "Oil is the grease of the modern age, uh, literally," Reynolds quipped. It also adds a twist to the latter parts of the game, since oil resources aren't even shown on the map until civilizations advance enough to need them. Suddenly territories that looked useless early on will become hotly contested. Sometimes oil reserves can only be found at sea, where they have to be harvested by offshore platforms, "finally giving you something substantive to do with your navy," Reynolds pointed out.
• The most useful of the special units, though, is the general. Creating a high level general is an immense benefit to your forces -- his "Rally" ability will make nearby units fire faster and withstand more damage. He can also call a "forced march" which will allow a group of infantry to run forward in formation almost as fast as cavalry. Most intriguing is his "ambush" ability, which can temporarily render his nearby soldiers invisible. Just when you think you're in the clear and you're about to start shelling the enemy capital, a wiley general may suddenly appear to lead a charge to your flanks!

[yin26]

While I had been taking a rather passive but positive view of the RoN effort, I now see enormous potential in this game design! I swear, though, if I lose my job because of playing RoN too much, I'll start a class action lawsuit!

[ixnay]

Wow, this game is starting to sound like it has some excellent potential. If they have until next year to balance and fix it, I would expect that this game could be fantastic.

[chronocrator]

Oh yes, you can also research nuclear weapons. With these you're looking at a whole screenful of decimation. Careful, though -- if too many nations fire nukes, the game is declared "Armageddon" and everyone loses.(!)

The secret is to build up enough nuclear weapons so that they could almost cause Armageddon and launch them all at once. There won't be any nuclear retaliation since your opponents wouldn't want to destroy the world, would they?

Seriously though that description seems more civ-like than I expected. And with so many promising 'classic' RTS games coming out soon that's good!

Still I'd really like to know a few things, like how that zero-health-city exactly works.

[MarkG]

whenever yin gets excited i get cynical

Originally posted by yin26

• Unlike most, your culture's borders will be clearly marked on the map, and they affect gameplay. You can only build civic buildings near your town center, and you can only build military buildings within your nation's borders...
  

• classic tbs
  
  

  But the attacker is not without advantages; you can "take over" an enemy city by attacking it to reduce it to zero health. Then, as long as you have more military units present then the defender, the city -- and all the economic and cultural buildings around it -- becomes yours.

  yet more classic stuff (if this was a tbs)
  
  

  And yes, you really can play it on your lunch hour. Playtesters so far are able to go from the Stone Age to the Information Age in roughly 56 minutes, so you'll really get to feel the march of time.

  i think we'll have to actually live this experience to judge it(havent played empire earth).
  
  

  Combat is also refined to add a level of strategic depth. All units have a front, flanks, and a rear.

  now that sounds interesting
  
  

  Oh yes, you can also research nuclear weapons. With these you're looking at a whole screenful of decimation. Careful, though -- if too many nations fire nukes, the game is declared "Armageddon" and everyone loses.(!)

  like when you leave a game out of boredom cause of too much pollution?
  
  

  In Rise of Nations, knowledge is a resource that is collected and spent, just like wood .... For example, researching and building a nuke will require a huge expenditure of knowledge.

  does building the second nuke cost the same as the first one?
  
  

  It also adds a twist to the latter parts of the game, since oil resources aren't even shown on the map until civilizations advance enough to need them. Suddenly territories that looked useless early on will become hotly contested.

  eeer like civ3(except from the sea part)
  
  

  The most useful of the special units, though, is the general. ...

i wonder if there is some limit on the number of generals you can have based on the number of cities

[yin26]

Hey, click-fest RTS is in desperate need of heretofore 'TBS' elements. Of course I noticed some of the similarities ... but nobody has made them work yet in an RTS. If Brian can, he's gonna really make an outstanding game.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by yin26
Hey, click-fest RTS is in desperate need of heretofore 'TBS' elements. Of course I noticed some of the similarities ... but nobody has made them work yet in an RTS. If Brian can, he's gonna really make an outstanding game.

ok good


now, can you please remove the quote tag from your signature? it's really confusing, one might take it for part of the post

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by yin26
Sorry if this is old news, but I was out of town for a while...

It's quite rare to be able to tell something first...

all I can say to Brian and the team is that these items are some of EXACTLY what I was hoping you'd do!

Yes, it looks good - I'm also waiting for RoN

• And yes, you really can play it on your lunch hour. Playtesters so far are able to go from the Stone Age to the Information Age in roughly 56 minutes, so you'll really get to feel the march of time.

Well, maybe I'm a too hard TBS-player when I ´really think 56 minutes to be a way too short of a time for a good game...

The list is very good, I would just like to add two things more to the list

• There is a way to reveal the map in lategame
• RoN is a semi-RTS, like EU.

Semi-RTS is very good news to me - this way I can at least somehow apply my TBS playstyle.

(Btw. X-Com Apolyctica is a good game that had both TBS and semi-RTS in it.)


P.S. What's up with your sig Yin?

[Leonidas]

In addition to what yin26 has provided, here are a few other worthwhile tidbits:

* Attacking another nation isn't a trivial matter of flooding it with your units. For one thing, once you cross into another nation, your military units will suffer from attrition (slowly losing health and combat effectiveness.) Resourceful players can counteract this by sending out supply wagons to reinforce the troops.

* There are eighteen different nations available to the player. Each has a distinct (and sizeable) advantage, so as to "suggest a couple of cool strategies" for each one, as Reynolds put it. For example, if you attack the Russian nation, you'll find that your troops suffer an extremely high attrition rate in enemy territory -- you'll suffer through the same Russian Winters that defeated Napoleon and Nazis alike. Every nation also has a couple of unique military units, most of which change over time to ensure that everyone has a couple aces in the hole no matter what era players are in.

* Combat is also refined to add a level of strategic depth. All units have a front, flanks, and a rear. Even infantry; in fact, infantry units are depicted in groups of threes, so you can clearly see which way your troops are facing. This isn't just a matter of graphical splendor. You'll be able to line your troops up in formations, and attacks from the sides or rear of an enemy are many times more effective. Outnumbered? You can turn the tide of battle by rushing your cavalry into the enemy flanks from a nearby hillside.

* As you'd expect given the strategic background of the developers, victory will come to the player who can effectively use combined forces against the enemy (infantry, artillery, cavalry, and eventually air power). Still, Big Huge Games wants simplicity as well as depth, so they're trying to limit the unit types accordingly. "Careful pacing and streamlining" is how Reynolds described their approach to the game's combat system.

* Speaking of imperialism, the only way to get gold is through trade. As you expand, you'll want to create little trading caravans that will establish trade routes between your major cities, just as you did in the Civilization games. It's a good way to strengthen your economy, and hence, broaden your borders. There are also special resources available, usually in only one area of the map. For example, you might discover a diamond mine. If you set up a merchant nearby, the advantage of the diamond mine will go to your civilization and yours alone -- in this case, increasing your civilization's maximum trade output. Areas like these will also no doubt be hotly contested.

* Along with your standard games and your random map games, you'll also be able to limit the scope of the conflict. "No fighting until gunpowder" is a popular one with the beta testers right now.

Normally, I'm not a RTS player. But this game is looking interesting. It will come with many options to suit your play style. Also, the fact that RoN will be in beta testing for another year really speaks volumes on the potential quality of this game. . .

I hope that RoN will come with a separate upgrade screen to allow a player some interesting decisions on what to upgrade/modify. . .

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Leonidas
* Attacking another nation isn't a trivial matter of flooding it with your units. For one thing, once you cross into another nation, your military units will suffer from attrition (Slowly losing health and combat effectiveness.) Resourceful players can counteract this by sending out supply wagons to reinforce the troops.

I'm not sure that I like that feature. Combat effectiveness is a reasonable thing to the farther an army goes into another countries territory but I fail to see any reason for the health loss. This penalty should also taper off as the civilization advances through the ages.

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Combat effectiveness is a reasonable thing to the farther an army goes into another countries territory but I fail to see any reason for the health loss. This penalty should also taper off as the civilization advances through the ages.

Well, if you look into history you notice that health is very important.
If one looks at Napoleons raid to Russia - he started with several hundred thousand men, but finally only about 30000 made it back IIRC.

Rest of the men didn't all die on the battlefield. Besides bad supply to troops deserting was another big problem of that time. So losing health is OK to me.
And yes attrition should be more harsh in early game than in modern times.

[WarpStorm]

The Russian Winter brutalized Napoleon's Army. The chart I have here (http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/1812/1812.htm, if you want to see it too), shows 422000 troops going into Russia and 10000 coming back. The chart is cross correlated with temperature and geography (this is a true classic of information presentation) and you can clearly see that each time the temperature dropped, there were massive losses. The river crossing at the Berezina River was disasterous.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Jeje2
Well, if you look into history you notice that health is very important.

I'm more concerned with the balancing aspects of the idea than I am the historical aspects of it.

[MarkG]

reposting WarpStorm's cool url

http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/1812/1812.htm

[Jeje2]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I'm more concerned with the balancing aspects of the idea than I am the historical aspects of it.

OK,
you have a good point - gamebalance before historical facts.

Have you played Europa Universalis (EU)?
In that game the aspect of attritgion is done quite well IMHO and it works for gameplay too.

WarpStorm: Yes, a very good link about the classical fact - I was too optimistic in my writing.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by DinoDoc


I'm not sure that I like that feature. Combat effectiveness is a reasonable thing to the farther an army goes into another countries territory but I fail to see any reason for the health loss. This penalty should also taper off as the civilization advances through the ages.

DinoDoc: If I read correctly, you can send supply wagons along with your invading troops which will help reduce this loss in health. . .

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Leonidas
DinoDoc: If I read correctly, you can send supply wagons along with your invading troops which will help reduce this loss in health. . .

That's part of the problem I have with it from a game balance standpoint.

The main concerns I have are below:

1) How effectively can the balance the feature to keep the Russian defenses, for example, from being completely impenetratable, especially in light of the fact that the "Russian Winters" have played such a large role in turning back invading armies from thier territory? Such a scenario sounds disturbingly like the big money maps from StarCraft.

2) How do they plan on balancing the cost/benefit raito of the "supply wagons" to allow for deep strikes into the territory of an underdefended enemy but still keep the concept of attrition in play?

3) How is attrition to be calculated?

[Grumbold]

Conversely, if you only invade "Russia" in summer, and bite off just enough territory that you can manage before winter strikes, why would you suffer any higher rate of attrition? The two examples given have been of two armies too driven to seek a decisive battle to stop when they reached the limit of their supply lines.

Is the game going to model seasons? Its foolish indulging in too much spceculation this early (look where it got us with Civ 3) but this idea of varying attrition rates sounds hard to balance. Take enough supplies and its no advantage at all, but in a RTS where it takes less than an hour to get through the ages, have you got the time to organise a logistically sound campaign before your troops are out of date? If you are getting hit with excessive attrition for attacking the town nearest the border where your supply lines ought to be relatively short then the whole thing is a nonsense, particularly if it was your town ten minutes ago and had no noticable blizzards when you owned it (although it may of course make for good gameplay...)

[Boris Godunov]

While some cool ideas, the Russia-attrition thing is a little too rigged for me. What if you're on a random map and russia is in a temperate climate? How can you justify the attrition then? It should be based on terrain, not civ.

[Kataphraktoi]

And yes, you really can play it on your lunch hour. Playtesters so far are able to go from the Stone Age to the Information Age in roughly 56 minutes, so you'll really get to feel the march of time.

just like you can get to imperial age in 20 minutes in AoK,it dosnt mean that every game will be like that. that is what the best testers can do,not what you would do in a normal game.i hope its like that at least...

While some cool ideas, the Russia-attrition thing is a little too rigged for me. What if you're on a random map and russia is in a temperate climate? How can you justify the attrition then? It should be based on terrain, not civ

the russians have INCREASED attrition,not the only civ with attrition. your right,on temperate its not realistic.you can also conquer the world in civ3 with aztec. its about fun not realism...

[LaRusso]

1) the game is being rushed
2) we will be robbed for beta
3) we will borrow a cd and play to confim our scepticism
4) we will wait for gold edition to ship for 20 bucks

nothing i read here sounded very original. nothing at all.

[tniem]

Originally posted by LaRusso
1) the game is being rushed
2) we will be robbed for beta
3) we will borrow a cd and play to confim our scepticism
4) we will wait for gold edition to ship for 20 bucks

Hmm, I don't necessarily agree with this (and if anyone remembers me posting back on the Civ3 forums, they know I screamed up and down to delay release of Civ3 but they did not listen). Any way, the game has eight months till ship and they are showing a polished game at e3. Now that doesn't mean the game is near release, just that they are months ahead of where Civ 3 was the summer before release and BHG still has eight months at least until release. They might not have a beta, but they certainly will have a polished game. I think if they continue working on it, it could be a very good game - one worthy of the BR and Civ legacies.

[LaRusso]

cmon, i was just joking. i mean, i gotta be a bit sarcastic once in a lifetime yin is enthusiastic