I have been banging on the old preview build they sent out back in December. And I’m pretty psyched, as you may be able to tell.
EDIT: Okay, link fixed. I are dumb.
nope.
Hmmm. Less economy and building, and more clickiness during combat? Not exactly kablamo. On the other hand, the different sides sound cool. I just hope I can slow it down enough to manage the micro.
That sounds implausibly good.
Kevin, unless Big Huge Games has some weird change of heart before the game goes final, not only should you be able to slow it down enough (including during multiplayer games!), but you should also be able to pause and give orders.
In Rise of Nations, you could set game speed to be freely changed during multiplayer games, or you could lock it at a single speed. You could also award each player a certain number of “cannon times”, which would briefly crank the game speed way down to presumably let you target scouts or spies or general powers.
However, among the things Big Huge revealed at their latest press event was a streamlined multiplayer matching system. I suspect this sort of configurability will go by the wayside for the quick matches. But I’d be surprised if guys like us couldn’t set up super-slow-mo games to ours hearts’ content.
-Tom
Sounds pretty good,
has BHG released any info about the single player campaign? I remember hearing they might do something similar to conquer the world from Ron.
You are beautiful (in a Vladimir Putin sort of way). This preview is beautiful.
What’s the skinny on the Cuotl? Do we have any more information about the way they work yet? Is Mayan star gods geek code for Protoss, or what?
Arg. Damn you.
Everything sounds awesome. Something I wanted to ask is will the technology tree be optimized for different strategies? Is it similiar to AoM so that each nation has a few options for strategic dominance regardless of just being that particular race and it’s strengths and weaknesses?
Why not just ditch the “Rise of Nations” branding and call it “Rise of Legends”? I dunno, they could put a “from the creators of” on the box or something.
- Alan
I’m not sure how to answer other than to say there are all sorts of strategic options available. The way the tech “tree” works (it really isn’t a traditional tree) for each nation allows you to emphasize wealth, mining, expansion, your unique spell, armies, or whatever.
Each nation has four teach “tracks” that suggest various strategies. For instance, the Alim have an Evocation track that gives them free units every time they build a summoning circle, which is their “barracks”. Upgrade this enough, and your barracks comes with a nice little bonus army.
But for the Vinci, that track is Scavenging, which gives you resources for killing enemy units and therefore encourages attacking. So a Vinci player who’s going to rush might put points in Scavenging to supplement his economy.
However, if you’re putting points into these tracks, you’re neglecting your mining track – which pushes your borders out and boosts your ore production – and your prosperity track – which heals units in your territory faster (yay, defense!) and improves wealth income.
There’s a sense of having all sorts of options, but never enough to buy them all. It’s a very generous game in this regard.
But the tech tracks are only part of how you emphasize what you’re doing. How you build your cities up also is a factor, but one that I suspect will sort of homogenize as you play, similar to the Rise of Nations tech tracks. Which dominance (god powers) you pursue is another way to effect a strategy. Then there’s the hero you choose to focus on. You can easily enough bring one out early, but it’ll be expensive to upgrade his skills and make him the uber unit you want him to be. If you’re the Alim, you have to choose whether to focus on sand, fire, or glass unit improvements. The Vinci research labs are a really cool concept as well that I talk about for a bit in the preview.
They’re all ways to determine how you play your race, and many of them are distinct to a particular race.
I suspect it might sound really overwhelming reading about it, but in the same way the Rise of Nations feels sleek and simple after playing a few times, there’s something similarly elegant about Rise of Legends. But unlike Rise of Nations, which tends to progress linearly (science, then iron, then push your borders, then catch up that military track, then science, etc.), I get the feeling in Rise of Legends that I can go off in all sorts of different directions.
-Tom
All right, I got my knee pads. Who do I need to service to get a copy of this playable preview?
So far, this RTS looks like it will be to the RTS genra as WoW is to the MMOG genra. That may be overstating it a bit, but seriously, it looks totally sweet. The kind of sweet that in 10 years after the game is out, people will still be comparing other games to it, like TA is the measure for other RTS games now.
I hate to ask something totally pedestrian, but what are the system requirements like for this one?
Dude DeepT, it’s Jean-Ra!
The more I read about Rise of Legends, the less clear I am on how the whole thing actually works and the more enthused I am about buying this on day one.
I think something is wrong with me.
Troy
Lord forbid I’m going to be this guy, but is there a firmer date for this thing than “Q2?” I assume that since the hype machine is kicking in, it is likely to be less than six months.
I’m going to buy this game and if I don’t like it I’m going to give up on RTS games altogether. Last one I played and enjoyed was Starcraft.
Did you try C&C generals, if not you missed a good one. AoM was good too, but I just sucked at it to much to play it multi-player.
Vladimir Putin is beautiful?