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All right... I got my hands on the Gold (final) release of the game and played it for quite a few hours. For all the self-righteous people who will be undoubtebly shocked and indigned at this act of "piracy" - *arrrrrrr* - I've already paid for the game (pre-order), so sue me 
.
Anyway, RoN is a game I've been awaiting for a long time and I jumped right in for a good eight hours marathon. Well... it's not exactly what I expected, despite reading most previews floating around the 'net. However, after playing it a while, I found that some dynamics of the game were very innovative. Short review : I very much like it
. Read on for the details ...
First, the game really *is* a RTS. I mean, I was expecting it to be real-time, but the pace is much faster than I expected. On the default speed (fast), I'd say it's even faster than the Age of Empires games. At the same time, the number of resources to keep track of increased significantly compared to the standard for RTS games. For those who don't know, they are Food, Wood, Metal, Wealth, Knowledge and Oil.
The interesting part about resources is that some are generated in an unorthodox fashion. For example, you can't mine Gold to gather wealth. Instead, the primary income is from taxes. Once you build a temple and research the appropriate religion technologies, your territory starts generating a revenue. You must also build caravans that open trade routes between your cities. There are also special resources that you can claim, if they are inside your territory. To claim them, you must send a merchant to establish a trading post.
These different resources and added complexity are very welcome, but the consequence is that you have more to think about. You must train scholars, research taxes, gather raw materials, claim special resources, build cities and trade routes, build granaries, foundries, sawmills, all of these on a per-city basis. And that's only for resources! At time same time, you must think about training armies, defending 4 or 5 cities, assigning generals, and any campaining you do in ennemy territory has to be resolved quickly, else your troops will die from attrition (when in ennemy territory, your unit's hit points steadily decrease).
This means RoN is easily the most complex RTS game ever made, and I'm not saying this lightly. Combined with the game pace, it's pretty hard to manage properly. It's the first time I ever choose another speed than "fastest" in a RTS single player game. Fortunately, there are 4 speed settings : Slower, Slow, Fast and Faster. So it should accomodate everyone. I found that playing on slow suited me fine, although I may switch back to fast once I'm at ease using every hotkey and know the technology tree by heart.
Now, on to the game dynamics. RoN borrows a lot of concepts from earlier RTS games and few from TBS games like Civ. As I mentionned earlier, it's mostly a RTS game, but it's a *good* RTS game. It doesn't fail to deliver a fun gaming experience and it even addresses some flaws found in almost all other RTS. Let's take the city capture system as an example. Once you bring a city's hit points to 0, you must send infantry to capture it. The nice part is that, once captured, the city does not really belong to the attacker until it's "assimilated". Assimilation takes around 2 minutes, so it's more than enough for re-inforcements to arrive and re-take the city. Also, all non-military buildings near the city are claimed along with the city. This encourages the players to preserve the civilian buildings, as they will be able to re-use them later. This solves nicely one of my main gripe with RTS multi-player games: the "unlucky first" player to die. This is especially visible in 3vs3 games or more, as three players co-ordinate an attack on a single other player, they can usually raze his town before re-inforcements can arrive. Warcraft III tried Town Portal scrolls, but RoN's system is definitely superior.
Speaking of War3, generals borrow a lot from War3's heroes system. In RoN, generals have an "aura" that gives the surrounding army bonuses to armor and such, in addition of special abilities. Generals' abilities and "aura strenght" also increases as you upgrade them. Sounds familiar? Yup. It works well too. Some abilities, such as "entrench" are pretty awesome. An entrenched army is *MUCH* harder to kill, so for city defense, it's a must. Generals can also make units "invisible" for a period of time, where they can't be attacked. Very useful if light cavalry managed to reach your siege weapons. You can make them disappear while the rest of your army takes care of the raiders.
RoN also has an innovative air-combat system. Fighter planes can be made to patrol an area, and they always stay there, aside from short re-fuelling trips. This makes intercepting ennemy bombers a lot easier. And bombers are *strong*. If there's no resistance, they can level a whole city in a few seconds. This makes for some strategic battles, such as using a small force of raiders to destroy the anti-aircraft defenses of a town, then backing off and letting air support do its job. Once air-combat is discovered, it completely changes the game's dynamics.
Finally, it's the first time I ever see formations actually work in a RTS game. Formations in RoN are absolutely critical, and they work as you would expect them to. When your troops are formed into a line, the line is actually impassable by ennemy troops. Units don't break formation as easily as in other games such as Age of Mythology or Empires. This means that if you want to take out siege weapons behind an ennemy line, you *will* have to outflank it with light cavalry. Which is a lot easier said than done. Speaking of outflanking, it also makes a huge difference. Attacking a unit from behind gives a huge attack bonus. I witnessed this myself when an army entered my territory following a path between two of my cities which had small armies in them. I went for a "pincer" attack, and even though my forces were inferior (about 75%), I managed to win. Actually I crushed them, as most of my troops were still alive, and I just garrisoned them into forts to heal back to full strenght. This adds a lot of strategy to the battle system and makes it more than a "rock-scissor-paper" approach (once again, as in the Age of games).
In conclusion, I think RoN will probably become a new RTS classic. It doesn't borrow that much from TBS games, but the few it borrows is very well integrated. For example, I really liked how your commercial tech level affected waste. If you haven't invested in upgrading commerce, all of your resource gathering suffers, as some part of it go to waste. Definitely made me think of the Civ games. The game is very fun and the AI is bright. In fact, at the "tough" difficulty level I play (AI plays to its best, no handicap), it's very hard. I'm a RTS vet, and in the single player campain I didn't manage to win on the first try yet, and I've won 6 battles. All around an interesting game, though maybe a little too real-time for some apolyton readers.
.Anyway, RoN is a game I've been awaiting for a long time and I jumped right in for a good eight hours marathon. Well... it's not exactly what I expected, despite reading most previews floating around the 'net. However, after playing it a while, I found that some dynamics of the game were very innovative. Short review : I very much like it
. Read on for the details ...First, the game really *is* a RTS. I mean, I was expecting it to be real-time, but the pace is much faster than I expected. On the default speed (fast), I'd say it's even faster than the Age of Empires games. At the same time, the number of resources to keep track of increased significantly compared to the standard for RTS games. For those who don't know, they are Food, Wood, Metal, Wealth, Knowledge and Oil.
The interesting part about resources is that some are generated in an unorthodox fashion. For example, you can't mine Gold to gather wealth. Instead, the primary income is from taxes. Once you build a temple and research the appropriate religion technologies, your territory starts generating a revenue. You must also build caravans that open trade routes between your cities. There are also special resources that you can claim, if they are inside your territory. To claim them, you must send a merchant to establish a trading post.
These different resources and added complexity are very welcome, but the consequence is that you have more to think about. You must train scholars, research taxes, gather raw materials, claim special resources, build cities and trade routes, build granaries, foundries, sawmills, all of these on a per-city basis. And that's only for resources! At time same time, you must think about training armies, defending 4 or 5 cities, assigning generals, and any campaining you do in ennemy territory has to be resolved quickly, else your troops will die from attrition (when in ennemy territory, your unit's hit points steadily decrease).
This means RoN is easily the most complex RTS game ever made, and I'm not saying this lightly. Combined with the game pace, it's pretty hard to manage properly. It's the first time I ever choose another speed than "fastest" in a RTS single player game. Fortunately, there are 4 speed settings : Slower, Slow, Fast and Faster. So it should accomodate everyone. I found that playing on slow suited me fine, although I may switch back to fast once I'm at ease using every hotkey and know the technology tree by heart.
Now, on to the game dynamics. RoN borrows a lot of concepts from earlier RTS games and few from TBS games like Civ. As I mentionned earlier, it's mostly a RTS game, but it's a *good* RTS game. It doesn't fail to deliver a fun gaming experience and it even addresses some flaws found in almost all other RTS. Let's take the city capture system as an example. Once you bring a city's hit points to 0, you must send infantry to capture it. The nice part is that, once captured, the city does not really belong to the attacker until it's "assimilated". Assimilation takes around 2 minutes, so it's more than enough for re-inforcements to arrive and re-take the city. Also, all non-military buildings near the city are claimed along with the city. This encourages the players to preserve the civilian buildings, as they will be able to re-use them later. This solves nicely one of my main gripe with RTS multi-player games: the "unlucky first" player to die. This is especially visible in 3vs3 games or more, as three players co-ordinate an attack on a single other player, they can usually raze his town before re-inforcements can arrive. Warcraft III tried Town Portal scrolls, but RoN's system is definitely superior.
Speaking of War3, generals borrow a lot from War3's heroes system. In RoN, generals have an "aura" that gives the surrounding army bonuses to armor and such, in addition of special abilities. Generals' abilities and "aura strenght" also increases as you upgrade them. Sounds familiar? Yup. It works well too. Some abilities, such as "entrench" are pretty awesome. An entrenched army is *MUCH* harder to kill, so for city defense, it's a must. Generals can also make units "invisible" for a period of time, where they can't be attacked. Very useful if light cavalry managed to reach your siege weapons. You can make them disappear while the rest of your army takes care of the raiders.
RoN also has an innovative air-combat system. Fighter planes can be made to patrol an area, and they always stay there, aside from short re-fuelling trips. This makes intercepting ennemy bombers a lot easier. And bombers are *strong*. If there's no resistance, they can level a whole city in a few seconds. This makes for some strategic battles, such as using a small force of raiders to destroy the anti-aircraft defenses of a town, then backing off and letting air support do its job. Once air-combat is discovered, it completely changes the game's dynamics.
Finally, it's the first time I ever see formations actually work in a RTS game. Formations in RoN are absolutely critical, and they work as you would expect them to. When your troops are formed into a line, the line is actually impassable by ennemy troops. Units don't break formation as easily as in other games such as Age of Mythology or Empires. This means that if you want to take out siege weapons behind an ennemy line, you *will* have to outflank it with light cavalry. Which is a lot easier said than done. Speaking of outflanking, it also makes a huge difference. Attacking a unit from behind gives a huge attack bonus. I witnessed this myself when an army entered my territory following a path between two of my cities which had small armies in them. I went for a "pincer" attack, and even though my forces were inferior (about 75%), I managed to win. Actually I crushed them, as most of my troops were still alive, and I just garrisoned them into forts to heal back to full strenght. This adds a lot of strategy to the battle system and makes it more than a "rock-scissor-paper" approach (once again, as in the Age of games).
In conclusion, I think RoN will probably become a new RTS classic. It doesn't borrow that much from TBS games, but the few it borrows is very well integrated. For example, I really liked how your commercial tech level affected waste. If you haven't invested in upgrading commerce, all of your resource gathering suffers, as some part of it go to waste. Definitely made me think of the Civ games. The game is very fun and the AI is bright. In fact, at the "tough" difficulty level I play (AI plays to its best, no handicap), it's very hard. I'm a RTS vet, and in the single player campain I didn't manage to win on the first try yet, and I've won 6 battles. All around an interesting game, though maybe a little too real-time for some apolyton readers.
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