By the way, has anyone found a good way to heal large units?
Ivar,
That’s one of the problems I have with the game. Healing is a really conspicuous exercise in micromanagement.
Of course, the alternative is to either play the French or build Versailles, in which case your supply wagons heal your units. Or, better yet, play the French and build Versailles, in which case your supply wagons heal your units really fast.
Also, in games with a naval component, citrus is great because your ships heal at sea. I don’t think there’s a similar rare resource for land units.
Argh… something must be wrong with my system, the menus flash and get all messedup, in game isn’t much better. Updated my directx9 and nvidia drivers… argh!
I noticed that as well.
I think one idea to solve this would be to allow towers and castles a ‘healing radius’ IF there’s a general in them. Sort of like a fall back rally point.
Is this a good idea?
That sounds like a good idea…(maybe only castles, though…towers are pretty cheap).
Just an interface thing I’d like to help with healing as it now exists is some kind of hotkey-combo to select all of the units in a group that are yellow or worse (i.e. red), so you could quickly grab all your wounded and order them in a castle. The most time consuming aspect of it is trying to select the wounded guys out of a big army.
I’m the guy who likes C&C Generals because everything is stripped down and real simple. So, for a game that has a zillion upgrades and options, I find that I can get my head around it ok compared to Empire Earth. Those huge help popups count for a lot, but the whole conception is really well done. You have to build scholars, ok, but once they’re built, they’re built. Forests and mines never run out, villagers find work to do, scouts auto scout, etc.
The musket battles are way cool. Off to play more,
DeanCo–
(edit) If you haven’t done it yet, read through all the tips at the beginning of the game. Once you get past the ‘you can bandbox units’ part, there is some juicy stuff in there that’s not in the readme or the hotkey list. For example, Alt-right click with an army with artillery in it selected tells the artillery to attack the target and the army to protect the artillery. TAB cycles through every building with an upgrade available. Really useful stuff. (/edit)
Haven’t won on moderate yet either (about 5 or 6 tries yesterday). Switched to “easy” today and had fun while getting better and getting used to RTS-mindset again. Last game I was just toying with the poor fellow at 67% for awhile, with all tech trees done, while I tormented him with stealth bombers anytime he built something threatening… sorta like pulling the legs off of bugs I suppose. Perhaps it’s time to move to moderate again… the computer uses spies alot on that level though, and not at all on easy. Time for a liberal use of watchtowers I think.
Maybe I am missing something but, goddamn this game is fast paced on the normal speed setting. Units get cranked out in a couple of seconds, and armies can cross the map in just a few more. I am not a huge RTS fan, but I have played a lot of them and really enjoyed a few, namely WBC2. Generally speaking I havent found my ‘mouse skills’ to inhibit my performance before but here, I seem to be behind the curve in that I am always playing catch up with the game events.
I find that I cant keep my troops at any level of cohesion w/o lots of pausing or slowing the game speed down. They are idiots, that doesnt help either. My heavy infantry will go after enemy missle troops while my calvary charges their pikemen. Is there a setting to tell these dumbasses to choose targets based on their strengths?
What speed are you guys playing on?
The thing is, even with my troops going everywhere and exposing their weaknesses instead of exploiting their strengths, the game is pretty easy on moderate. Its just chaotic as hell and that annoys the shit out of me.
So far it seems like there is a lot of depth to the game but the pacing and need for tons of micromanagement take away a lot of my enjoyment.
I will say that animations and graphics are completely top notch. Amazing really. That is another irksome thing about slowing the game down, your guys look like they are on downers.
I’m with you. In big late-game battles, there’s no way I can keep up with the details. My solution (in single-player, of course), has been to pause the game, issue orders to units, and then start it up again.
I figure next time around I may drop the speed a notch in the late game.
But of course, in multiplayer, it’ll be the kids with l33t m0u53 sk1llz that win the big battles… :sigh:
Try Conquer the World, at Moderate difficulty. It ramps up nicely, letting you choose the challenges. I did this and now I’ve learned enough to beat the AI on Moderate most of the time.
It’s extremely fast-paced, I have quite a few problems keeping up. I have a feeling this is a big-time hot-key learning game (hell it even counts up the number of times you use the hot-keys in the end-game results).
Tried Conquer the World as the Aztecs I think, in Round 2 went into Eastern US (techincally Mississippi I suppose) and got trounced, though I did win Round 1 okay. This could be a lot fun… maybe a little slower :)
BHG did want to make a game that could be finished in 1 to 1 1/2 hours though… I guess they’d make it so they’d wipe you out that fast :)
You and me both brother. WBC2 seemed just right, at least for me. AoM was speedier, but I adjusted. Rise of Nations has me clickety, click, clicking all over the place. Resources are overflowing, I am queuing up shit left and right, and thankfully little alarms are going off to let me know when the soldiers, upgrades, or cookies are done. I have not tried cranking it down a notch and maybe it simply takes a little more getting used to.
Remember Brian’s tip from another thread: Every so often hit the TAB key to quickly cycle through possible upgrades. Economic upgrades are extremely important. Anyway, I know what you guys mean about the speed. Keep playing, the game is so well laid out a lot of it becomes second-nature.
Oh no doubt, I love the feel of this game for the most part. I’m sure it’ll come second-nature, but for a game to be played successfully requiring something to become second-nature is not a good selling point.
A lot faster, and that’s saying something. From spear-chuckers to heavy artillery in twenty minutes, cities bumping up against each other all over the place, neither time nor need to make sure every city has a temple or a market. The ages clip by pretty quick and the research paths are peculiar enough to have me research electronics while kinghts still rule the battlefield.
I’m a leisurely player in most games, but I don’t think you can afford that in here. I have found the Bantu nearly invincible against the AI in the demo, largely because they can advance their borders so quickly and mass large early armies. Couple their cheap javelin dudes with Terra Cotta warriors, and you have a recipe for a near unbeatable rush.
I haven’t beaten the AI on moderate yet, and on easy there is no need to even bother with learning formations - just mass and swarm. Any tips from the pros out there?
Oh no doubt, I love the feel of this game for the most part. I’m sure it’ll come second-nature, but for a game to be played successfully requiring something to become second-nature is not a good selling point.
— Alan[/quote]
Another reason this 33 year old codger will never play it in MP. As always, if I can find a few dedicated slowpokes with which to play, multiplayer can be fun. Just diving into a random pool of click freaks on the server who are high on 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew will only serve to hasten the day when RoN will lie dormant and then rot on my hard drive.
Why are you folks complaining about the speed? I recall seeing four speed settings. The first is really slow, and the second is quite convenient most of the time. Don’t get so attached to the “Normal” label… nobody forces you to play at that speed. (Uh, or is the game speed fixed at that level in multiplayer? That would suck…)
