Caltrops - Gamerasutra - someone explain Rise of Nations to me

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by FABIO 06/24/2003, 5:43pm PDT

Played the demo. Seems just like a more refined version of Empire Earth, nothing more. Does the turn based between battles risk setup really make that much more of a difference?

The resource gathering is a bit more streamlined, plus income limits that I guess are supposed to keep you from mindlessly hoarding all the crap you can and just start KILLING, but I'm guessing all it will really do is make people quickly reserach the stuff that raises the limit.

Combat- Can these games please get past the AoE formula of infantry beat cavalry, cavalry beat archers, archers beat infantry? Or least name the units something everyone can easily recognize? Like infantry MkIII for the 3rd age or archers Mk.VI for the 6th age? The fuck am I supposed to remember what Currisars/Impids/Umpas/whateverthefuck little-known historical name they decided to go with? Impids beat Currisars! WELL OF COURSE THEY DO! The last age or so you get infantry, anti-tank guys, and tanks. There, simple. Why can't the other ages be so easy to recognize? Oh right, someone wanted to show off their mideval history skillz. I mean fuck, Black Watch? The only black watch I've ever heard of is my father's favorite bagpipe band.

I read that there's no point to focus fire since they penalize you for it. There really doesnt seem to be much strategy to battles other than trying to get your cavalry around to his rear line missile troops. Is there any way to set it so that your units dont go charging into the unit type that they're weak against? I try to keep my knights back until my archers can punch a hole in the enemy pikemen so I can charge the archers. Nope, my knights sense them a mile away immediately turn around and charge straight into the pikemen. Javeline people good against archers? Great, so why do they shoot at the line of infantry fighting with my guys instead of the archers directly behind them? Guess I'll have to manually tell them to target each archers BUT OOPS FOCUS FIRING IS BAD! So combat really just boils down to picking (guessing?) the right army composition before every battle then just lift your hands up in a "i give up!" gesture when they mix it up. Maybe if you can get your retarded cavalry to circle around and attack the archers instead of making a beeline ot the pikemen.

I wanted to like Empire Earth, but I couldn't. This game is more refined than Empire Earth, but it's still just Empire Earth.

What am I missing? What makes everyone love this game?