Review by: Rob Beschizza
Published: May 23, 2003

After years of waiting, Rise of Nations hits store shelves this week. It’s as A-list as games get, the creation of Civilization II designer Brian Reynolds, who formed Big Huge Games to create this conceptual behemoth. At its heart, it’s an RTS of the time-tested Age of Kings mold. With a 6,000 year tech tree spread over nine epochs, 18 factions to control and a Medieval: Total War-esque strategy map, it’s much more besides. That Rise of Nations allows quick, lunch hour battles to erupt anywhere amid this sweep through the years is testament to an ambitious plan, which seems to be to stuff every conceivable RTS possibility into a single title. However, the taller they stand, the harder they fall – will this Microsoft-published game stay on its feet all the way from Mesopotamia to the Manhattan Project?

Rise of Nations has its priorities in order, and doesn’t aim to be a visual stunner. Observed from the now-standard zoomable isometric viewpoint, the game is presented with textured landscapes and colorful 2D buildings. The units are detailed and well animated, plus rendered in real-time 3D. With a similarly workhorse control system, anyone with a smidgen of experience in the genre will soon acclimate themselves to the environment. Indeed, if you confined yourself to Rise of Nations‘s heart of pure RTS, all you’ll see is the latest, greatest example of resource gathering, city construction, technology researching and group-’n'-click warfare.

As the cliché goes, there’s so much more. For starters, whatever your favorite civilization, you’ll probably find it in Rise of Nations: Aztecs, British, Chinese, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Incas, Japanese, Koreans, Maya, Mongols, Nubians, Romans, Russians, Spanish and the Turks are all present, leaving few corners of the Earth unrepresented. Each comes complete with apt bonuses that take effect during the title’s real-time battles. The Egyptians, for example, possess the power of the Nile – they start games with a free granary and their farms generate wealth as well as food. The Romans have the power of Caesar – their barracks produce extra units. The British power of the Empire confers trade bonuses and cheap naval units.

Technology and timescale each play an important role. Though textbooks say the nation-state is a recent invention, Rise of Nations grants us history’s big picture, beginning where it all started, with slings and stones. Nine epochs await our nascent cultures, a sequential travel through time mirrored by improved buildings and weapons along the way. The medieval era’s wattle-and-daub structures and cobbled roads supercede the classical age’s plinths and columns. Choking smokestacks mark the transition to industry, and then gleaming towers mark the modern era and the advent of air power – itself a late addition to the game’s formula and an example of the detail with which each eon is represented. It’s only one example of the tech tree, however, which is split into four parallel rails: military, social, commercial and scientific. You’ll have to keep an eye on all four to do well.

Rise of Nations‘s single-player experience centers on a world conquest mode that brings an abstracted, risk-like strategy map to the fore. Beginning with a world of tiny, equal civilizations holding but one province, each takes turns to plot and plan the kingdom’s growth; the decisions resulting in appropriately framed RTS skirmishes between turns. Though it’s simpler than Medieval: Total War‘s system, it’s still a great idea that’s constantly neglected in the real-time strategy genre. More on this later, however, as it’s important to remind ourselves that it’s still a peripheral element – the action happens closer to the ground. Rise of Nations must ultimately be attacked as a straight RTS, played against the machine, or against other generals over a LAN or the Internet, courtesy of an integrated GameSpy client.

Even in this “core dynamic” of city building and tactical warfare, Rise of Nations gives us access to an unusually large stash of possibilities. Not only does each faction come with its own special units, but also the basic set of common units. Though there are no residential structures aside from each’s city’s central square, the cast covers farms, mines, merchants, libraries, woodcamps, temples, barracks, stables and siege factories. All of that is before you’ve even progressed past the Stone Age! Greek-era wisdom comes with universities, fortresses, granaries and lumber mills. Constructing every one reveals related technologies to invest in, histories’ many convolutions distilled into a series of efficiency upgrades too numerous to describe. Even after many hours of experience with Rise of Nations it’s possible to mistakenly click the “wrong” building and uncover an entire set of economic tools you’d never guessed were present. A full roster of world wonders complements the standard civil and military structures, each expensive and time consuming to erect but providing impressive rewards. There’s nothing quite like a Colossus to give your economy a kick in the backside.

Establishing that economy, however, is the day’s second job. First is mastery of the intricate control system and screen layout. Those familiar with similar titles, especially anything by Ensemble Studios, will feel right at home. For the rest, it will appear complicated but logical. Couched to the screen’s bottom, a minimap reveals a radar-like overview of the world. Dominating the lower right of the play area, an information box phases to match what you’ve selected on screen – pick a building, and available upgrades detail their intrinsic benefits and the resource outlay needed to construct them. Select a military unit and tactical orders, dispositions and formations pop up. Select a library, however, and the lower left corner is replaced by a grid representing your technological and cultural progress; clicking on grayed-out examples initiates research. To the right of the central information bar, more detailed breakdowns of the selected entity, such as hit points, current activities and progress meters, help accommodate players who like to micromanage. In the bottom right, diplomatic controls help manage international relations. If all this sounds too much, don’t worry, a series of narrated tutorials explains every nook and cranny of Rise of Nations, interface, even improvising during training missions to help you correct mistakes.

Reynolds’ involvement is clear in the Civilization-like elements brought to Rise of Nations, an interesting proposition given that while the game has a turn-based component, it’s the real-time model that benefits from the kind of complexities present in Microprose’s 1996 masterpiece. You’re not building bases here, but genuine cities, each of which can only command a certain geographical area. Also, each city can only sustain a single building of each type – and five farms – forcing players to throw up new city centers to expand their empires. Though this prevents unchecked growth, it also sets the scene for building caravans to bolster the treasury, as each new city opens up the possibility of a new trade route to any that already exist. Though separate, each contributes its resources to your central treasury, allowing more classic Civ-like tactics: Farm cities placed in safe backwaters, containing only farms and granaries, can be thrown up to help production. Then you can gear outlying colonies solely to military production, erecting fortresses kept supplied by those selfsame breadbaskets. Borders on the map ebb and flow with the tides of battle. In peace, they mark the boundary of possible growth. Returning again to the comparison, Rise of Nations suggests a hysterically fast real-time game of Civilization: even when it’s just a tactical battle amid the World Conquest campaign, you’ll start with a small presence, slowly build a network of cities, research dozens of techs and sacrifice perhaps hundreds of units – all in 90 minutes.