My very First RTS, Rise of Nations. Addictive!

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davidj

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Joined
May 18, 2002
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I consider myself a hard core pc gamer. I have played virtually every decent 1st or 3rd person shooter ever made. Shooters and only shooters (except Madden) have interested me until today I tried Rise of Nations:Thrones and Patriots.

This darn game is totally ruling me. It is almost 1:00am & I have to go to work in the morning. The damn thing is addictive. The combinations of game types is endless.
It only makes me wonder what RTS goodness I have missed out on having a closed mind.

I only tried this PC Gamer Mag demo because the new/current shooters suck. Plus I need a temporary break from UT2K4 as well.

BB will get my money tomorrow for RoN & Thrones & Patiots.



Anyone else know what I mean or have any other RTS games to suggest?


Thnx in advance.
 
Oh man, there are so many other good RTS games to play. If you want to play arguably the greatest RTS game ever, I would recommend Starcraft, even though the graphics are dated, its still a fabulous game. Age of Empires 2 is another favorite of mine. I am finally purchasing Warcraft 3 tomorrow, so I'll let you know what I think of that. (I played a beta of Warcraft 3 before it was released, and the game was damn near impossible, however I finally gave in considering every Blizzard game ever created has been damn addictive, especially Starcraft and Diablo 2).
 
Thnx Clear-

I figure that I will pick up 2 RTS games while I am there & that will do for a while. I have never hear of Starcraft but Warcraft & AoE I have. But I will pick something while at BB. IMHO the current selection of shooters since Farcry is lacking.

I am waiting on HL2, Doom3, STALKER & FEAR. But this RTS type of game is another experience all together. Man It just grabs your mind and interest, plus it's one heck of a blast.

I still love my shooters. But I've just found another addiction :) :(


:eek: I must go to bed?????
 
Some other great RTS's are Total Annihilation, Homeworld, Homeworld 2, Sacrifice, Ground Control, and Ground Control 2.

Pretty much any RTS that blizzard has made is great too, but the best one by far would have to be Starcraft and its expansion pack Starcraft: Brood War.
 
RTS games are my speciality :)

I recommend you try:

The Myth series, by bungie. You can get the "total codex" which includes both myth I and II, aswell as many user made mods and conversions. Myth is THE half life of rts games.

People still play multiplayer regularly, www.playmyth.net
It doesn't have the "build this, pump out units" it's all focused on the battles and strategy. Very very bloody strategy :) it was one of the first games to incoprate a physics model. You just have to give it a try, it's my favorite RTS series.

Next I would suggest Stronghold. It's a very addictive Castle RTS game. You have the usual rts stuff, harvesting resources, etc but you have to build your castle/defenses and things. Aswell as doing seiges and such. It's a very fun game.

After this, the Total War series.

The first one is Shogun: Total war. It's a japanese rts game, very realistic compared to other RTS games. This is another series that focuses on the combat and strategy of it.

After shogun there's Medieval: Total war and the viking expansion.

Upcoming is Rome: Total war, which looks very kick ass (just d/l some video clips of it :) )


Then you have the of course well known RTS games:

The starcraft and Warcraft series
Command and Conquer Red alert and others.
"Age of" series (age of kings, age of empires, age of mythology etc)
Empire Earth
 
For me the key is where you said "first ever"...that will tend to make it the best in my mind since I find RTS so repetitive. I LOVED Red Alert, really like Age of Empires, was fond of Age of Empires 2, and have tried about 8 demos since that I never bothered to buy.

They are just all the same thing they bored me. For strategy games, I prefer turn based, like CivII/III or GalCiv.
 
I vote for StarCraft. You can get StarCraft and the expansion BroodWars for 20 bucks now in 1 package. StarCraft is what brought me to PC gaming. My first computer was a Mac, and I used to be all about games like SimCity 3000, but when I saw StarCraft I fell in love. I still play it to this day on their free Battle.net multiplayer.

I played Rise of Nations for like a week and got Board :rolleyes: I really recommend StarCraft... over 4 years of playing it... and still not boring.
 
Thnx for all the great info guys. I will have fun just making a couple of selections today. I have close access to BB & Gamestop so this will be good.

I was bored waiting on decent shooters to finally be released.

I learned fast during the game to make sure to build defensive/offensive people. At 1st I was just building to aquire wealth and then would get attacked by my neighbor(the bastages). :) As a matter of fact now I am one attacking maniac without provication :D
I also enjoy sending in a small force from the front, hide my HUGE main force and flank them by suprise :cool:


Any good battle tactics that I should know about?
 
I'm going to second Stiler's suggestion of Stronghold. The game is incredibly fun, especially at lanparties. Build bakeries and more bakeries!!!
 
Its all about Red Alert 1 and 2... Red Alert 1 is and will always be considered the best RTS in my book.
 
NowhereMan said:
Command and Conquer Generals is pretty cool if you have a fast machine.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Command & Conquer was definitely the best RTS series out there.

BTW david, if you liked RoN, you will probably also like Empires RTS.

Another good RTS (older one) is Battle Realms.
 
The only one I ever really got into was Age of Empires 2....

Rise of Nations was great, but it didnt have the addictiveness to me that AOE2 did.

I like simple things, and the thing about RTS games that pisses me off the most is that in newer games, it takes forever to be able to recognize what buildings you have. In AOE2, things like that were instantly recognizeable to me....I could easily tell what was a stable, blacksmith, mill, etc. With alot of other games, they make the environments so futuristic that it is hard to immediately tell what building you are looking at, especially when theyre built so close together.
 
If anyone's seen the video for Battle of Middle Earth, let me tell you, that game looks great. I'll definately be getting that!

RoN is awesome though. I used to be insanely addicted to it.
 
Age of Mythology
Empire Earth
WarCraft3++++++++++++++++++++++++
Rise of Nations+++
Starcraft++++
Age of Empires++++

Great fucking RTS games...
 
Let us not forget (argueably) the greatest RTS of all time; Warzone 2100.

It was released by Eidos a while back and later abandoned by them when their developement studio went under. You'd probably have a hard time finding it, but it's worth looking for.
 
My all-time most played RTS is Age of Mythology. RoN is great too, but what I really liked about AoM was three sides (4, with bonus pack) that played out *completely* differently, instead of having near-identical civs with unique bonuses. Plus in AoM, each of the three races has 3 sub-flavors. There's a lot of hidden subtlety in AoM, much more so than it is given credit for.

That having been said, I recently gave it up. At my level (moderate to intermediate), the new civ from the bonus pack is just too overpowered, and I hate playing them myself as they are boring, and Titans just suck. That means I have to go back to vanilla and lose some nice benefits from the bonus pack like auto-queue, the ability to build town centers in classic age, etc. So, the bonus pack ruined it for me.

Still, was a fun year+ of playing :)
 
Hey guys, check out these shots for Battle for Middle Earth. I have never seen such magnatude for a battle.

Do any of the other games such as CIV or AoE, etc. look like this??

This genre kicks major butt.

lor1.jpg


lor2.jpg
 
davidj said:
Hey guys, check out these shots for Battle for Middle Earth. I have never seen such magnatude for a battle.

Do any of the other games such as CIV or AoE, etc. look like this??

This genre kicks major butt.

lor1.jpg


lor2.jpg
Click to expand...

Rome: Total war looks pretty good.
 
Congrats the first rts you played is also the best single player rts ever created (have never played it on line).
 
I would hardly call rise of nations the "best" rts single player experience.
It was a great game, but not the best imo.

In terms of an RTS with story and a better experience imo was the myth games. Single handley some of the best stories in a game even beyond rts standards.
 
davidj said:
Hey guys, check out these shots for Battle for Middle Earth. I have never seen such magnatude for a battle.

Do any of the other games such as CIV or AoE, etc. look like this??

This genre kicks major butt.

lor1.jpg


lor2.jpg
Click to expand...

Take a look at Empires Dawn of the Modern world, it kicks ass, the only thing i have a problem with, it can be pretty slow at times. Just like these screens, you can have massive, MASSIVE, battles, talking like 300 world war 2 planes flying around over a huge massive base (like a city size) with tanks and troops just swarming the ground, sometimes u can have a battle of about 1000 units, but its a pain in the arse to be controlling half of them, lol.

Anyone who has said Warcraft, I'll agree with them! Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne are great Stradegy games, and with free B.Net access, its just awesome! Empires also has free online playing, just its not very popular.

A really unique game that some of you might want to talk a look at is Spell Force. It reminds me alot of Sacrifice. Sacrifice was one of the most different stradegy games i've ever seen, but it got so addicting because it wasn't like anything else, its the same for Spell Force. Its alot like warcraft, except with the Heroes, its much much more like an RPG. I think its actually labeled as RPG\RTS. Its just an awesome game,
 
Ah! yes!

how the hell did I forget Sacrifice.


I defiently recommend that RTS game. It was indeed ahead of its time.

Also gotta recommend Battle Realms.
 
I saw spell force the other day at the mall and almost bought it. Currently only play warcraft 3 for rts games but might have to borrow my wife's copy of age of empires 2 after I finish beating the Etherlords 2 campaigns.

I'm more into rpgs then rts games, but my brother was a huge starcraft / warcraft 3 fan so I played those to play online with him.
 
Stiler said:
I recommend you try:

The Myth series, by bungie. You can get the "total codex" which includes both myth I and II, aswell as many user made mods and conversions. Myth is THE half life of rts games.

People still play multiplayer regularly, www.playmyth.net
It doesn't have the "build this, pump out units" it's all focused on the battles and strategy. Very very bloody strategy :) it was one of the first games to incoprate a physics model. You just have to give it a try, it's my favorite RTS series.
Click to expand...


Oh man, I can't believe I forgot to mention Myth 2. Arguably one of the greatest strategy games ever. Different than most too since you don't build but just battle. I loved that game, I was a WW2 mod junkie for a good year or so, 4 years ago. I had many excellent nights with that game, staying up till 4 am.
 
Gardack said:
I saw spell force the other day at the mall and almost bought it. Currently only play warcraft 3 for rts games but might have to borrow my wife's copy of age of empires 2 after I finish beating the Etherlords 2 campaigns.

I'm more into rpgs then rts games, but my brother was a huge starcraft / warcraft 3 fan so I played those to play online with him.
Click to expand...


If your more into RPG's then you would probably be very interested in Spell force. There is one mayor problem I have with it though, is you can use the scroll wheel to zoom into 3rd person perspective to take control of your main hero, just like sacrifice, except then you can't order him to attack, but you can order him to use spells and stuff. Its really a pain how my hero needs to be attacked first for her to respond when I'm in that camera angle, she's an archer, and always has the enemy right close then, its kind of stupid.
 
Hi again guys.

I need help capturing a city, any city. Every time I try I get creamed :( . Eliminating an invading unit is easy. Even when I try to get a city near my border my army gets killed.

Is overwhelming them with a huge force the key? Should I focus more resoures on creating a HUGE Army/Navy. Do I focus more on research or create more generals, etc, etc. Or maybe should I create multiple units using certain shapes or specific soldier types :confused:

This was easy at 1st but just when I thought that I was the major land owner I get attacked :(

But this is even more fun than before :D


So my question is what are the best battle tactics for capturing an enemy city?


I have decided to go with the full retail version of RoN with the xpack Thrones and Patriots first since I love the T&P demo so much. I will add another to my HD in 3 or 4 weeks and just continue to build a RTS collection like I have a shooter collection.


Thnx in advance.
 
Overwhelming them with a huge force is always helpful, but the key is to mix different unit types whenever you build an army, as each unit has a certain role to fulfill. For example, catapults/artillery is great for taking out buildings, but not so good against cavalry. However, cavalry is easily defeated by heavy infantry. You want to mix as much as possible so that you can deal with whatever they throw at you. Also don't forget to bring supply wagons with you. They keep your units from losing health while in enemy territory.

Another important thing is to constantly reinforce your main attack force with fresh units. This is where a healthy economy and a lot of barracks/stables come in handy. You can send your units automatically to an area as soon as they come out of the barracks/stable by selecting the barrack/stable and rightclicking on the place you want them to go.

Also try to make sure that your units stay as one cohesive army. I find that in rise of nations units have a tendency to wander off and get killed :( if you don't keep them organized.
 
This thread has made me install Rise Of Nations and Age Of Empires II and the Conquerors expansion.
I never really got around to playing them. I was always a fps guy too but after reading this, Davidj, your enthusiasm has convinced me to give rts another chance. Thanks.
 
You are welcome Bloefield-

I realize that just like shooters, some are made well and some are not. The same applys to the RTS genre. I think that I got lucky tried RoN:T&P 1st.

I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.
 
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