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PC | Strategy | Rise of Nations

Boxart for Rise of Nations
Rise of Nations 45 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.5
  • SOUND: 3.5
  • CONTROL: 4.5
  • FUN FACTOR 4.0
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.7
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.3

First Look: Rise of Nations

First Look by DUNJINMASTER | 09/10/2002 | 15:13:50 PM PST

Watch civilization grow in real time in Microsoft?s historical RTS, Rise of Nations.

Brian Reynolds, the man behind Sid Meier?s last two hits (Civilization II and Alpha Centauri), decided that he?d like to see a Civilization-type game done in real time. The result is Rise of Nations, in which you?ll take a small country from the Stone Age to the Information Age in the space of a real-time strategy game.

In Rise of Nations, you?ll control one of 18 civilizations (Aztecs, Bantu, British, Chinese, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Inca, Japanese, Koreans, Maya, Mongols, Nubians, Romans, Russians, Spanish, and the Turks), each with their own signature units and special abilities. A clearly defined national border will show you where your influence ends, but you?ll be able to establish new cities and towns to expand your lands. Multiplayer games will enable you to go from the Stone Age to modern times quickly.

Not a big fan of micro-managing every tiny, little detail in an RTS setting, Reynolds has taken a lot of aspects typically found in strategy games and simplified them. Peasants straight out of training will wait around a few seconds, but if you don?t give them orders, they?ll go to the first place they?re needed. This will keep you from having to micro-manage which peasants build, which perform repairs, which mine gold, etc. Resource gathering will also be streamlined; resources will be infinite from within one single source (mines for gold, mountains for stone and metal, etc.), but each source will only be able to support a certain number of workers, so if you want to gather resources more quickly, you?ll have to find more sources. These things will lead to less time worrying about small stuff and free up more attention for the demands of running a large nation.

And these nations will get large. In most RTS games, you have a main base and a couple of smaller outposts, but in Rise of Nations, you?ll establish multiple cities in the interest of growing your empire. Each city will push back your nation?s border a certain amount, enabling you to encroach on someone else?s land. This will lead to border disputes and outright war as players try to keep their country and resources.

Combat will be different from many RTS games, as well. Formations and tactics are very important in Rise of Nations. If you can flank your opponent?s forces, you?ll gain a great advantage since units are more vulnerable from the sides or from behind. The vastly varying tech levels mean you might face down bombers with your pikemen, or you might get nuked while you?re researching flintlock pistols.

Rise of Nations? motto is ?History on your lunch hour,? so you can bet the action will be both strategically correct and fast-paced. In a recent brief play session, it took less than half and hour to get from the Stone Age to the Industrial Age, so you can look forward to spanning the centuries without spending almost as long to play.


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