NOLAG Lans

My name is Trevor Lehmann and I am the moderator/writer of this site. If you like my reviews and would like me to write reviews, guides, walkthroughs, etc. for your site please contact me at Lordoranos@gmail.com. I am sure we can work something out

Trevor V.S Matt:

Rise of Nations

Game Summary: Today we are going to be playing Rise of Nations, a strategy game where players start with a fledgling nation in the ancient era and develop it into a thriving empire through 8 eras ending in the present day Information Age. At least that’s what that the game box says. In reality the goal is more or less to dominate your enemy’s nation through military might (which is more or less the goal of almost all PC strategy games). That isn’t to say that this game is simplistic, as you have to choose from varied nations, develop trade routes, manage many resources, build wonders and manage scientific advancements. At the end of the day though, the game is won by controlling the majority of the map and to do that you will need lots and lots of soldiers.

The Map: The map we are playing is Great Lakes, a landmass pot marked by…drumroll please, lakes (bet you didn’t see that one coming). Obviously navies and fishing are going to be an option in this game, though the substantial amount of land means that land armies are definitely going to take priority.

Trevor (0:00)
Being a proud Canadian, I am playing as Iroquois. Being an American made game, this is as close as it comes to playing a Canadian nation. I get better scouts than Matt, so I should be able to keep on top of him intelligence wise, and with my superior infantry I hope to end this game well before Matt can get to the industrial era and build his damn fighter planes like he did in our last game.

Matt (0:00)

Knowing your opponent is almost as important as knowing their faction in strategy games. Trevor, knowing that I am a late game boomer, will probably end up going for an early rush. Since I don’t have the firmest of a grasp on the game, I hope to throw units at him to slow him down until I can out tech him. Due to Rise of Nation’s numerous epochs, it allows a tech heavy player to gain a significant advantage over their opponent. My goal is to get to the Industrial/Modern era as quickly as possible so that I can show the true German might (my faction) of aerial superiority. Where will his knights hide when my biplanes fill the air with lead?

Trevor (2:21)
Well, I haven’t even reached the 5 minute mark and already my society is in a state of borderline famine. The thing with Rise of Nations is that while there are plenty of different resources, many of them don’t come into play until later eras. This means that at the start of the game, everything costs only food and wood, which isn’t helped by the fact that at the start of the game you have around 2 dozen things that you can and need to purchase. Do I want to build more villagers, damn not enough food, do I want to research more, damn not enough food or wood, do I want found more cities, damn…decisions, decisions.

Trevor (7:50)
I’ve established a second city beside a nice big mountain, which will provide me with valuable metal to fund my warmachine. On the subject of warmachines, I constructed a Senate and given the choice of a Republic or a Despotic government, had to go with Despotism. This will not only give me a military edge by making my powerful Mohawk spearmen even stronger, but also gives me a Despot Patriot, a sort of super general that has quite possibly the best title ever. On a side note, I’ve invested in merchants to exploit a nearby rare resource in the form of sheep, which for reasons beyond me, make my villagers cheaper. Oh well, an edge over Matt is an edge over Matt.

Matt (8:20)

Working on my economy, I am trying to expand as quickly as possible. Fighting against an opponent who has committed the strategy guide to memory I know I won’t win tactically, but if I can out produce him, I can pull a “Russia” and throw units at him until I can figure out a legitimate strategy.

Trevor (15:10)
One of my scouts just stumbled into a clump of infantry Matt’s massing at his northern most city. It seems that my friend has blitzkrieg on the mind. Well we will see how he feels when I send my medieval horse archers and Despot storming through his other cities.

Matt (15:15)

Knowing that Trevor would probably pull of some crazy raping and pillaging rush tactic, I decided to do what he least expects, attack him first. Right now my army of about 20 units is marching on one of his cities and while their bows and metal sticks (I don’t know if you can call these flimsy things swords at this point). So while I sit hear listening to a friend of mine talk about feasibility of domesticating a cougar I wonder what crazy plan Trevor has up his sleeve.

Trevor (18:24)
My raid didn’t go over to well as my cavalry did not manage to kill a single villager, preferring instead, to stand around in the middle of Matt’s city while they garrisoned structures and began returning fire. Then to add insult to injury, Matt’s army shows up at one of my undefended inner cities. He couldn’t have attacked my nice castle which I built in a choke point between two lakes, he had to go and be a bastard. Anyway, I hastily trained some archers and spies and managed to kill and bribe his soldiers to fight for me before they were able to do any real damage. My new plan is to advance to the Gunpoweder era as fast as possible and obtain musketmen, than we will see whose laughing.

Matt (18:26)

Well, my supposedly well thought out attack plan failed rather miserably. In an attempt to defy the context of the game itself, I tried to sneak soldiers around to the rear of his empire, hoping to conquer an undefended city. In a normal strategy game this would be a reasonable tactic, but Rise of Nations uses an interesting territorial system designed specifically to piss me off. While my army tries to pillage his countryside, I am constantly taking what the game defines as “attrition damage”, forcing me to fight along our territorial borders unless I can build some supply wagons to block the effect.

Trevor (27:42)

Upon hitting the Gunpowder era, I switched my government over to a Monarchy. Besides giving benefits to my cavalry, I chose it because the chant “long live the King” sounds so much better than “long live the Despot”. In commemoration I have begun constructing the Colossus of Rhodes and the Terra Cotta Army wonders, which not only look cool and provide numerous economic and military bonuses (the free soldiers the Terra Cotta army produces are particularly nice), but if built en-mass and held onto, can win me the game. With the formidable army I’ve been amassing for the last ten minutes, I should be able to take down Matt well before I even need to consider a Wonder victory.

Matt (27:55)

As I mentioned earlier, territorial borders are very important. In Rise of Nations if your opponent manages to control 70% of available territory then he starts a victory timer. This can actually be very easy to achieve if he gets a leg up on you and manages to capture and hold a few of your border cities. This seemed to be designed to prevent a game from dragging on, as is often the case in economy heavy Real-Time Strategy games. This game plays nice however, and gives you a number of ways to push your national borders. If researching is your thing, Civic technologies will allow you to push your borders; while for those of you that prefer to be more of a war monger, you can build castles (named differently depending on the current era) to also push borders forward.

Trevor (35:18)
Despite being off to a rickety start as my soldiers mindlessly marched past Matt’s defending army, I managed to take the city of Linz with my newly invented cannons. Matt finally caught on to the effectiveness of spies and managed to bribe a few of my units, but I quickly disabled most of them with my own. Meanwhile, I sent some Special Forces soldiers (Iroquois scouts become this in the Enlightenment era) to sabotage some of his infrastructure. Matt seems to be preoccupied with trying to retake Linz, so my special forces should have free reign in his empire.

Trevor (38:50)
I managed to take Linz and push forward to Matt’s capital of Berlin. To my horror however, over a nearby hill Matt rolled his tanks in. It seems the sneaky bastard has been focusing on rushing through the eras to get tanks (I knew taking those cities was a little too easy). The resulting battle went as one could imagine a regiment of musket men against a battalion of tanks would go, and despite managing to blow up a couple with my special forces units, I was forced to retreat back to my military base and take advantage of the Iroquois ability for their soldiers become hidden and heal when in friendly territory.

Matt (39:50)

Well, it’s been an interesting game so far. With a powerful frontal assault, Trevor’s pushed through my border city and into my capital. In this game, losing your capital is really, really, BAD. If your opponent captures it a timer starts and you have three minutes to take your capital back by force. Otherwise, even if you have six other fortified cities, apparently that’s not good enough and your army surrenders faster than you can say c’est quoi ce bordel!??! (roughly translated to WTF in French). Fortunately, I moved my capital a good minute before it was captured by building a new Senate building in a different city. Now knowing that I had a few good minutes of suffering left, I proceeded to upgrade my cavalry to tanks which put a stop to his forward push and allowed me to take back my cities.

Matt (42:21)

I just took back Berlin only to see it taken away a few minutes later as his muskets and what-were-spearmen-but-somehow-turned-into-anti-tank-regiments-in-the-last-couple-minutes completely own my tanks. This game seems to really punish people with counters and my noob-like tactic of hording tanks resulted in the quick fall of my army.

Trevor (44:49)
Now this is more like it. My newly equipped soldiers have been steamrolling over Matt’s cities, taking Linz, Augsberg, and his capital of Berlin. On top of that, Matt’s foolish investment only in tanks has resulted in him being unable to overcome my now well equipped infantry. I did notice Matt has some fighter planes further back in his Empire, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything with them. Another benefit of taking all this territory is that I now control most of the map’s oil wells which, just as in real life are crucial to the later eras of the game. This combined with my recent government change to Capitalism means that I will be rolling in the money and oil in no time.

Matt (47:49)

Well the game has taken a turn for the worst. Trevor’s Iroquois combination of anti-tank regiments fighting alongside 17^th century musket-men have crushed any hope I had of a last minute comeback. I had built three airports safely at the back of my base to use an aerial advantage to hold the lines. Apparently World War I biplanes were not that efficient and just as they got to the invading army, they turned back to refuel. My air force never saw combat because as Trevor’s forces had come within range I had almost already lost the game due to me being unable to control 30% of the map.

Trevor (48:04)
I’ve managed to whittle Matt down to his final 2 cities. Unfortunately, it’s well fortified and in the most recent skirmish, Matt made a point of targeting my artillery before retreating back behind his defenses. With that said, I was greeted by the friendly territory victory timer, signifying that I control over 70% of the map and that if I can hold for two more minutes I will be victorious. I dig my troops in at my recently acquired city of Strassburg and prepare for a grueling two minutes.

Trevor (51:57)
Okay so it took longer than 2 minutes. Matt managed to reset the victory timer a couple of times by expanding his borders with fortresses, but it was just delaying the inevitable as my shiny new howitzers quickly tore them down. Matt managed to be exceedingly annoying with his bi-planes, but just as in real life industrial era wars involving Germany, they inevitably lost. Long live the Iroquois Confederacy.