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addictive ...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I really liked 'Alpha Centauri' so was thrilled to pick up this as soon as it came out. The game has various modes of play and can be played online or in a solo mode. The game also comes with half a dozen scenarios in addition to the 'Conquer the World' campaign.
New wars have also started popping up on the net and you can download American Civil Wars from online sites!! As other people have said the game goes a bit too fast but this can be corrected by increasing the level of the game.

Awesome detail

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. It's fun by both the implimentation of battle tactics with economy. I love how exquisitely detailed and diverse every nation is. The best thing about this game: the graphics hold up really well, but don't require a supercomputer to run! Awesome! The best thing Microsoft has released since QDOS!!!

RTS and Turn Based landmark title

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

AHHHH !!!
This is how RTS should be made. If you are one of those persons who likes to have the same game updated with new graphics, then this game is not for you.
Rise of Nations is simply the best choice for anyone who thinks that RTS were going stale. It has numerous options, to make it one of the most user friendly computer games. The design choices where you do not need to babysit every one of your workers is incredible.
That leaves space for more interesting aspects of the game, mainly to develop commerce between the cities or to go the military way. Borders and therefore expansion of your cities commerce play a major role here.
I could go on praising such a wonderful title (Conquer the World mode,anyone ?), but check out other opinions to ensure that this is the right type of game for you. Chances are that if you go for this one, it is never going to leave your hard disk...

An improvement on the RTS engine

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: March 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I really didn't know what I was going into buying "Rise of Nations." I was already a fan of "Empire Earth" and had heard RoN was so-so. Then I met an individual who told me it was definately worth my while, so the minute I had spending money I went to my local Best Buy and got me a copy. Not only was I impressed, but RoN soon replaced EE as my game crack!

Like EE, you play a game against computer opponents on a variety of maps and victory conditions (conquest, wonders, etc). You also get to update your culture through the different time periods - although unlike EE, RoN does not have a high-tech future with fighting robots. You get things like "advanced battleship" and ICBM missiles in the last tech tree, but that's about it. Also, like EE, you can choose what culture level you start and end at. The added bonus is that the different updates and micro-managing of your civilization techs reminds me of the Age-of-Empires or even Age-of-Mythology games. The different ways you can customize the head-on games alone leaves for much added replay values.

There are two things that I like about this game that ranks it above other RTS of its kind: the political system and the national borders. Most RTS games have the political system of a Middle East conflict - me at war with you. RoN, unless you set it so the alliances/wars are fixed, allows a much more reliable and flexible political mod in the vein of the Civilization games, and you can declare war, form alliances, and make peace as best you see fit. Also, the construction of cities and forts will influence your national border...basically, the area of land your nation controls. What does this mean? Well if you research such things as "Patriotism" your enemies will get attrition when they invade, their units getting damage the longer they stay. Don't worry, you can help supply vehicles to keep your troops supplied and therefore attrition free. This not only prevents those annoying endless rushes RTS AI's seem so keen on, but it adds to the realism of the game. Watch as your enemy carries out an invasion that ends on par with Napoleon's retreat from Moscow!

There is a "campaign" game in here, called the "Conquer the World" scenario. Imagine Risk with combat being portrayed as RoN missions, units and buildings all. The only thing I didn't like was the positioning of the different civilizations. Some seem trapped inside other cultures, and you might find yourself forced to go to war sooner than you want. If you fear no one you probably won't care, but if you want to secure your borders before attacking then you will probably find this aggravating.

If you like RTS games give RoN a try. If you play strategy games like "Hearts of Iron" or any thing along those lines, then introduce yourself to RTS games like this. It's not revolutionary, but it's fun.

Good for rushers but a couple of major flaws

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: February 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Opinions on these games vary, but that is what reviewing is all about. I think one reason for this is the type of game an individual prefers. In an RTS, there is typically a couple of different basic strategies:

1) The Rush
Players are aggressive in the early game and attack enemies as soon as possible.

2) Defensive (or Turtling)
Players concentrate on building a large economy, strong cities, and huge armies before engaging in battle.

I personally am more of a fan of the latter strategy, but Rise of Nations seems to have been designed more for the rush player in mind. The fact that you can't build walls is one example of that. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed RoN, but felt that the game could have been more satisfying for the defensive-minded players without sacrificing the game's flow.

One particular good feature are the dynamic boundaries. For those who have not yet played RoN, this means that everyone has territories with distinctive borders which can be expanded as you develop near them. You also have advantages when fighting inside your own borders. You can eventually push your borders against the enemy's borders and even collapse theirs against them.

Now, the two things I consider the worst features of the game:

1) Automatic morphing of land units into sea transports.

The fact that you don't need to bulid any shipping ports and transport ships to get land units over the oceans is a major boo-boo. When you instruct a land unit to move to a location divided by water, the unit will automatically turn into a boat, float across the sea, and revert to its original unit. This pretty much kills the sea-based warfare in my opinion. True, the units, when crossing, can't defend themselves and they're weak to attacks, but in a large game with many players, it is often way too easy to have them slip across the ocean undetected.

2) Nuclear Weapons

This feature just sucks. When you've worked so long building up a great army and people start launching nukes, you can bet the game is over. As if it weren't bad enough that they are so destructive, the game designers must have felt they needed to incorporate their own political agenda into the game with the "Armageddon" rule. Too much nuking will suddenly end the entire game an nobody wins. This makes it a complete waste of time.

One final complaint is that it is far too easy for some players to advance far beyond others in age so you end up with soldiers with muskets battling helicopters and battleships. The strange part about this is that many times the weaker force will triumph. There needs to be a method to better balance the transition of ages. I would suggest that perhaps with the first player crossing into a new age that everyone else goes too, but the players who are doing better are rewarded some type of bonus on a sliding scale, as a reward. Perhaps extra resources or units.

Other than those last few gripes, I would have scored Rise of Nations a five.

Absolutely an amazing game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: May 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

How can I describe Rise of Nations, perhaps Age of Empires on steriods or Civilization brought to real time strategy, better yet a combination of both.

The game has aspects of Civilization where you expand to build cities, build city improvements (to include wonders), capitalize on resources and research tech. Instead of tedious turn by turn sloth approach such as Civilization, its is real time strategy, like ages of empires.

Like age of empires, your building troops but instead of one troop per click you get 3 units making one unit, such as 3 swordsmen is one unit. Larger units such as horses and cannons are still one. Build queues are the same, keeping clicking to produce more. However in this game your workers are smarter and will voluntarily go to buildings where there is still capacity available to work. Your workers keep working without the worry of resource running dry. Resources in the game do not deplete.
The music in the game is outstanding matching the pace of what you are doing. My favorite is the victory music while one peruses all the graphes at the end of a match.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes a quick pace, semi-micromanging, with all the detail of a strategy but yet presented at an abstract level which makes play enjoyable and fun. Once you mastered the maps the come with the game, check the scenario editor and make your own maps and missions.

Keep up the great work Microsoft!!

Excellent combination of everything!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: May 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game suprised me quite a bit. I was thinking it was going to be just another Age of Empires clone, but in 3D. Boy was I wrong. There is so much stuff invovled in this quality strategy game that I was just awestruck. The Conquer the World mode is just absolutely awesome, which involves you taking over the rest of the world in a Risk-like fashion. Overall, this game is a high quality piece of material, and I would reccomend it to everyone, including those who only have a very slight interest in strategy games.

Believe me: the best Strategy game for PC ever!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: August 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have been a fan of Strategy Games for a long time. Great titles have been released over the years. Since the Command & Conquer series, full of action and great graphics, to Sid Meyer's Civilization saga, based on turns and with poor graphics, but plenty of deepness and amazingly addictive. Rise of Nations gets the best of ALL its antecessors and not only one single bad thing of the same, and furthermore introduces some really well thought new features (for instance, in Rise of Nations you do not have to micromanage your civilian units anymore and you can concentrate in the really fun stuff: war. Amazing). The result is a solid program incredibly fun and addictive and full of possibilities. Boy, these guys in Microsoft did it again!!. Congratulations to the developing team, there is no doubt they all love startegy games too. Thanks to them too for reminding that there are some people out there who want good games and are not teenagers anymore. Those people have been playing for a long time now and know exactly what is really a good program and what is just a commercial childish little stupid program por PC or console. Buy this game if you have ever enjoyed a Strategy Game, and buy it too if you have not.

Innovating the RTS genre

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: May 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

WOW. After playing a match last saturday, I got to admit it this game is the best in the RTS genre right now.
It won't make a revolution, but it takes many great aspects of this genre to create a new standard.
It has a great AI(I mean this AI is very hard to defeat in moderate) as well as graphics. I can't rate the music since there isn't but the sound of each unit is great. Each unit also has an excellent animation.
All of the civilization (there are 18)seem to be very balanced: each one has unique units as well benefits.
So if you are tired of the same RTS repeating itself try this one and you will see how it refreshes the genre.

YOU MUST HAVE THIS GAME!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: May 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I really like rts's. So one day i bought Empire Earth. It was pretty good but it has a lot to be desired. So I bought Empires dawn of the Modern World. It was also very good. But when I bought Rise of Nations, it blew both of them, plus age of Mythology, plus every rts that has ever come out, out of the water. If you are reading these reviews and you cant decide whether it is worth buying or not... IT IS.

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