BDGE,
let us know what you think of the games after you get a little playing time in. Like everyone else, I think RoN is a work of art and genius both. But I also really love AoM and find myself playing it far more. I don’t think you can go wrong with either…and you didn’t!
Cheers!
I’ve only really played AoM thus far, about a half-dozen missions into the original campaign, liking it quite a bit, though it is extremely familiar Ensemble territory. I haven’t tried out any of the other races beyond Greece however, so I am very curious to see the differences in resource gathering/unit population with the other factions.
I love the God powers and abilities, adds a nice twist to the game progression. I find myself more of a ‘Bruce’ player though(from Tom’s article), I get real big into the economy and civil matters almost neglecting my military until it’s either too late, or I have the most beefed up unit types to decimate in one swift stroke. I’m not an early provoker. The interface is awesome, particularly the idle state flags and simple group management, very intuitive stuff.
The combat is pretty dated though, same old messy packrat duels of a mid-90’s RTS. I really do like having a bit more control over the outcome of a fight ala WC3. Too much reliance on the rush, but God powers add a slight wrinkle to the mix. Plus the myth units ARE pretty awesome and I love the crazy body flying animations, still would like a bit more control beyond mere attrition.
I’d love to get a big Qt3 game going though, I really don’t see myself ever playing a public match.
Still have to install RoN, but holy crap am I excited for Rise of Legends!
That would make baby jesus cry! I played the AoM demo, and didn’t see a way to slow the game down.
My problem is that while I really enjoy RTS games, my clicky clicky skills are fairly weak. So, in order to actually enjoy the game, I like to slow it down so I can manage all the clickiness. Now it is true that this would make me easy prey in any sort of online game, but I only play single player.
It seems 50/50 whether a particular game will have the ability to slow down gameplay. Dawn of War, can be slowed down to a snails pace, so I’ve been playing a ridiculous amount of skirmish games. BFME on the other hand, is just too fast for me. Is it that difficult to make a RTS game with scalable time?
I feel your pain, Kevin.
I don’t think it’s that difficult to adjust the speed of an RTS. I think the issue is that a lot of developers are writing for a specific type of player, trying to strike a balance between running too fast and pacing the session too slowly. For instance, Warcraft 3 has a few adjustable speeds, but you can tell the game is carefully built to run at a certain pace. There’s a sort of ‘break point’ where the gathering of resources (hurry up!) meets the unit ability management (ack! slow down!).
Age of Mythology does a pretty good job with their default speed, although it really does favor advanced players in multiplayer, which is an issue I have with it.
A game like Rise of Nations and Warlords Battlecry lets you futz around with the speed, but I think a lot of RTS developers are of the mindset that they might be too grognardy or hard-core if they have a set-up screen with all those details. And they might be right. Look at Empire Earth II, which not only lets you set the speed, but also determine the pace for how quickly units do damage, move, gather resources, etc., etc., etc. It crosses the line from flexibility into developer indecision so that you don’t know what to change.
-Tom
Rise of Nations also lets you handicap the players in MP, which is a great way for advanced players to give newbies a fair shot. I think that this alone makes it a superior MP game.
Troy
I haven’t played RoN multi yet (I’ve been waiting for all the issues to be resolved), but I must admit I love playing AoM online. I’m also not a “first provoker.” That is, I used to be until I fell in love with Poseidon (we’re going steady now) and figured out that the best way to win with him was to rush with Greek cavalry. But there’s this indescribable feeling of tryting to out-feint and out-maneuver someone else, not just an AI. Obviously, it helps when you’re not getting killed by a foul-mouthed youth of eight. That’s why I hope we start some qt3 games, which would be really welcome.
AOM has handicaps too, BTW. :)
Also you can play co-op agains the AI, and/or use “shared resource” mode which is a good way of playing with very different skill levels. I think RoN may have something similar.
If you play AOM single player, definitely check out the random map game mode. A lot of people only play the campaigns in RTSes, but for the Ensemble games, at least, we spend a TON of time on the random maps and computer player AI to play a solid game on them.