9 replies to this topic

[Blood-Pigggy]

I bought this game and its expansions (Thrones & Patriots) a few days ago and it's very nice. There's a ton of strategy in the battles and there's a lot to do beyond combat (the cities aspect is really cool, managing your economy is great).

I especially like it because it makes resource management fun. There's been a lot of RTS games that try to add a ton of resources and attempt to make accruing them a fun aspect of the game (IE Cossacks) but those end up boring. RoN does it very well, you even need to set up trade routes to get one of the resources (wealth) and there's a great element of diplomacy between you and the AI.

It's kind of like Civilization if it was an RTS, of course those elements are watered down, but that's natural since it might be too confusing otherwise.

Anyway, the games always seem to be different. One game I was playing as the Aztecs and allied with a tribe of barbarians in North America (I was playing the Conquer The World mode, where you fight for territories on a world map against other nations and negotiate with them and etc.) and I started the battle to see two groups of barbarians fighting each other.

This was when I realized how good the AI was, because one group of barbarians (blue) was obviously weaker than the other group of barbarians (purple) and once one of his scouts was attacked by a tower of mine (he saw a huge portion of my army, which was pretty big in comparison to his tiny force) he immediately sent a peace treaty, which I agreed to.

What's cool is on higher difficulties the AI actually uses city borders to their advantage (your cities each have a border that dictates where you can build, bonuses, attrition damage to enemies and etc.) blue was battling purple near the edge of one my cities and the instant purple got his foot soldiers near blue, blue retreated into my territory where he got bonuses from being in allied territory and fought it out there. Purple got the idea of what was going on a few minutes later and retreated to the edge of his territory where he attempted to occasionally attack me and blue with a few bowmen every now and then.

The AI was on hard and this was really cool for me. The AI is pretty damn smart, and it makes the game very entertaining.

[Potatoe]

RoN is one of my favorite games ever.

[Blood-Pigggy]

I agree dude, definitely on my top 5, I've only had it for a few days but I already think it's one of the greatest RTS games I've ever played.
I think that this game has an incredible scale, I could almost compare it to Total Annihilation.
I just finished a game where nearly the entire sky was filled with bombers and jets and huge amounts of tanks and infantry were fighting it out on land as ships and submarines were sinking each other.

It feels immense.

[Eagle of Fire]

Edit: nevermind, I mixed the title of the game with another. I just checked on my box to refresh my memory and I remember liking playing this game very much.  

[gregor]

from what you are discribing seems more like advanced Settlers to me...

Settlers had this annoying thing where enemy would shoot over border but your troops would just stand there.

also there is no diplomacy there, although there is trading, but AI is not using it...

[Blood-Pigggy]

No, your troops will follow enemy across borders.

There's actually a ton of different stances.
From the normal aggressive, defensive (any AOK player knows these) stand ground, and etc.
But the best stances in my opinion, are the other more interesting ones, you have raze and raid.

Those are totally the best stances for raids on economic outposts of your enemies. Raze tells your units to primarily target buildings, primarily military and resource buildings and raid tells them to attack citizens, traders, scholars and so on.

Pair up some light cavalry with a few javelineers and you can have in a matter of seconds a small army that can harass the enemy's income.
The AI uses diplomacy in this, and it also trades with you, it practically has to, since trading is the only real way to get one of the resources in the game. They'll also ask to do joint attacks and etc. on an enemy.

[Docktor_Worm]

this game kicks nuts. The original "conquer teh world" thing sucks, but the ones in the expansion are way better

[Juni Ori]

Only click-fest I've ever played more than a moment from this millenium.

[Iendicis]

Ironically I just gave it a shot very recently, and the game really is a lot of fun. My comp can't run it very well (shame shame) but the gameplay is so good and complex, I was in a really good mood when I was done with my first game.

[Blood-Pigggy]

Docktor_Worm, on Sep 24 2007, 08:02 PM, said:

this game kicks nuts. The original "conquer teh world" thing sucks, but the ones in the expansion are way better

Yeah, I just beat the original's Conquer the World with the Japanese a bit back and it was pretty lame and boring. Fortunately, right off the bat Alexander the Great's Conquer the World segment was infinitely better.