Rise of Nations -- Time for your ideas!

[Praetorian]

I like mah idea really good idea, cossacks was a realistic game, and most people didn't like that, the part that its slow to advance age and buildings take forever to make, also the thing bout mass troops thats a cool idea too, or what mah said bout it, researchin formations.

DOES the creaters ever read these forums and actually consider our ideas.

[One_Dead_Villy]

Just occured to me well more like just came back to be again, but I certainly hope they change the landscape around anyone playing Russia to be a winter landscape if they are going to have russian winter as their power. would look silly if they have lush forest just like anyone else

[One_Dead_Villy]

Just already read that troops can and needs to be reconstituded at barracks etc. I would think also they should also need to be upgraded that way too, so they cant be out in enemy terriory and all of a sudden gain new equipment etc.

[One_Dead_Villy]

They should add for Japan the Kamikazi pilots as a unique unit, which would go well with the increased plane production. and make these kamikazi planes that can fight like normal planes but has a special suicide attack which is hard to defend against, and does damage to its target even as the plane itself is taken down.

[Praetorian]

Kamkazis was a last resort weapon in world war two, their unique unit would have to be planes, not suicide planes. That could be an option planes could have that button on the mini map or somewhere that says to fly the plane into something.

[One_Dead_Villy]

well the idea isnt that it was the ultimate strategy to have kamikaze planes. but to model their cultural tendencies especially during WW2. so unlike other civs and in traditionally been in RTS, the units dont just dissappear when they get destroyed. so if they had a cheaper version of a plane (to model the lack of training of these kamikazi pilots) and the fast production, they could have a sort of through away unit that they could use in desparate moments to turn the tide. Which of course in real life didnt happen but it was their hope it would, but could conceivebly turn the tide in an RTS game (as there have been self-destruct units). Maybe what this would develop into for them is in the information age, they would develop these into robotic drones.

[One_Dead_Villy]

well dont make them too powerful/damaging or too cheap. and air superiority aircrafts would be able to destroy them with high ratio. The kamikazi planes would only be able to ram into fairly slow moving units, and would need a few of them to take it down. Basically they would be weak air units that doubles as weak missles if they get destroyed. In getting upgraded to robotic drones they would do more damage. But would also have to face more advanced air superiority fighters.

[Carver]

Originally posted by playshogi
Judging from the screenshots, is all the combat going to take place in open fields? Is there going to be a tech called "use building for cover"?

Well, for a while, the combat did take place in open fields, so maybe there should be a military tech that provides for more advanced tactics.

[Carver]

Originally posted by Crazy Dog
Yeah me too. I mean Nubians are a silly choise for a civ. I mean what are they famous for? Nothing!

They're not famous in the West becuase Westerners (save Egyptologists) know very little of that part of the world, but that doesn't mean they weren't accomplished.

Karmah, the first Nubian nation, was producing advanced ceramics by 8000 bc, before Egypt. By 1700 bc the capital had 10,000 residents with specialized occupations and a dedicated standing army. The graves in Karmah grew in size and complexity suggesting an increasingly prosperous nation. Karmah intervened in the Hyksos invasion of Egypt seizing "lower Nubia" from Egypt and holding it from 1700-1500. By 1500 Egypt had the upper hand and ruled Nubia until about 1000.

By 850 Nubia was firmly independent once again and the second Nubian nation, Kush, arose. In 750 Kush invaded, defeated and united Egypt. They ruled the area from present-day Khartoum to the Mediterranean for 100 years.

Later Kush retreated southward to Meroe. There, the language Meroitic and its own writting system, replaced Egyptian. Meroe introduced ironworking to Africa and produced it in large quantities.

Vive Nubia

[Carver]

Originally posted by Brian Reynolds
* Yes there are post-game graphs of your nation vs. other nations in lots of different areas.

That's good, but I hope there are in-game graphs as well. I hate how Civ3 gives you your rankings but not the rankings of the other civs, and there are no graphs (of the key demographic data). I just want to know how I stand against other nations during the game.

[reefer addict]

what i would like to see is a way to build a small civ that could still dominate the world, such as britain did.
in civ3, size seems to be all that matters. i can build super cities but my neighbor that has 50 tiny cities ends up with more tech, money and units.
i want a game that allows variety so every game isnt a race to grab the most land, but a choice to devolop your cities into a society, or go for the land grab and battle it out.civ3 can be fun but every game ends up the same, if you dont grab the land, you lose.
in civ3 britain would be gone along time ago

good luck with RoN , i cant wait to give it a go

[Zealot]

Yep, and Portugal would have been swallowed by Spain (and trust me, they tried, oh they tried!)

But this is a RTS game, so you have to admit that whomever has the best army will win.

[Carver]

Originally posted by reefer addict
if you dont grab the land, you lose.
in civ3 britain would be gone along time ago

too bad real life isn't more like Civ3...

j/k

[Blue Moose]

I made a new thread and posted this, but I was stupid...didn't realize there was already a thread for suggestinons, so I am posting this here.

Here are some interface options I'd like to see in RoN (a number of this ideas come from my experience with EE). Hopefully they wouldn't be hard to add to RoN before it ships (or better yet, they are already in there!) I am eagerly looking forward to RoN in any case, but the following would be some "extra nice" features.

1. A button to select the first half/second half of the currently selected group. As well as the parts of the group in thirds. This way a larger army could be easily split up into smaller armies. Ideally, each unit type would be split up equally among each of these groups. So if I had an army of three unit types assigned to my '1' key. I could assign the last third to the '3' key, the middle third to the '2' key and the first third to the '1' key. With each of those three unit types equally split among those groups. Even more ideally, each 'third' would be a an even split of the army formation (imagine 2 lines through the army in formation splitting the army into thirds). I think this would be quite handy.

2. Custom formations would be nice, perhaps even an editor to make your own custom formations (not entirely an interface issue). As well as hot-keys for formations. I read in one of the previews that the mouse weel can be use to move between formations, something about changed how the echelons are positioned, I think. This is a nice feature, but it would be nice to have this customizable to some extent as well (or perhaps pressing the shift/control/alt keys would allow you to cycle through different formation schemes). It was somewhat unclear as to wether the army selected would immediately adopt the new formation without you needed to click a spot on the map. (I'd like this since you could have the sides of your army close in and surround the enemy as it was winning without needing to do extra clicking).

3. Customizable hotkeys for *everything* including unit groups and the like.

4. Hotkey for scrolling through all units of the currently selected type, depending on wether it is idle, not idle, or just all of them combination of the above.

5. Hotkey for finding military units not currently assigned to a group.

6. Ability to tell a building to keep building a particular unit or sequence of units as long as it can get the necessary resources.

7. A "scout borders" order for units, as well as an order to patrol between two or more waypoints (think Dark Reign where you setup a waypoint system and then could assign units to it).

8. Not quite an interface hope, but I 'd like my medics and anti-aircraft guns to stay with the body of my army. So if I give an order that says "everyone go here and attack anyone along the way" then they won't just go to that spot, but will stop with everyone else if land resistance is met. (I am not sure if there will be medics since supply wagons seem to play some role in unit healing, but basically this applies to the entire army...I want them to stay together as a cohesive force if any of them get engaged...including, now that I think of it, if those anti-aircraft start attacking some aircraft...I don't want my ground to ground forces moving on without them).

9. Ability to set default AI on units. In EE I found I didn't like the aggressive behavior at all. having my units hold their ground worked much better, since they'd stay together and no one would wander of and die, hence the enemy had to face everyone. It was annoying having to get constantly be changing the AI for newly produced units. Ideally you could set the unit prefs for each unit-type, not for each building as some past systems have done. Perhaps this could be an option you can tweak before games that automatically loads when you play?

10. Hopefully there will be an alert or other (at least optional) warning when an foreign civilization moves any military troops into your territory. Likewise, I hope the normal unit AI avoids going into foreign territory unless you are at war (this might be especially true with planes that circle around a spot).. It would be nice to have an optional warning/cofirmation screen if you order your troops into another's territory with whom you are not at war with.

11. Will you be able to make a treaty delcaring a part of land as a no-fly/no military unit zone?

Hmm, that's all I can think of now, but other can feel free to add their own thoughts to this.

[Blue Moose]

on walls and seige engines

One thing that I've never seen in a game, is a historic useage of walls and seige engines.

Up until the emergence of gunpowder, the bigger, thicker, and taller the wall, the better. They were harder to knock down, and made the fortress last longer.

However, when gunpowder came around, that all changed. Walls became very shallow, because cannon could easily hit and demolish a large wall. A shallow wall however, was much harder to hit, and some cannon and troops could easily shoot over the wall, hence making it very defensible. Into the modern era though, this has changed yet again. Stationary fortifications of any sort don't work all that well, at least not against artillery and aircraft. The sole exception is the deeply buried bunker, but that is not something you can defend from, only hide in and wait for reinforcements (or possible lauch nukes). Even this can be damaged though, if enough effort is given (there are missles that can penetrate deeply into the rock, and very few bunkers could survive a nuke or two). In mondern eras, wars are very mobile affairs, all else being equal, the more mobile army wins. It would be nice to see this evolution of walls and forts occur, as well as having some system to man walls with archers/riflemen.

As for seige engines, in ancient times they were very innaccurte, and hence you couldn't go about using Trebuchets against ground troops (as a good number of people do in EE), they simply wouldn't be able to hit such a target. Even against castle walls they took some time to do damage (for after each hit they'd need to be lined up and aimed again). I'd like to see the innacuracy of artillery and seige modelled in some way. Very accurate weapons didn't come along until the civil war era (I believe, and those were stationary). You didn't really get accurate field weapons until the world wars (again, as best I remember). So it would be nice to see this modelled.