Rise of Nations Preview

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Militarily, RoN is actually quite similar to AoK and many other rts games but again, there are some significant differences which help enhance combat in RoN.  In the early ages, you've got hand to hand units, ranged units and mounted units, each of which counter each other in the typical kind of way.  A variety of siege weapons are used for destroying buildings and cities.  In the later ages, you gain access to riflemen, cannons and tanks.  Tanks are the first unit to require the 6th resource, oil.  After tanks, eventually you get planes and ultimately, missiles and nuclear weapons.  To be honest, in terms of units and army make-up, RoN is pretty close to games like AoK and Empire Earth.  All units have counter-units so armies with a combination of unit types will always be stronger than armies made up of a single unit.  I'm not going to go into any details about exact unit names, stats or costs since much of that could change between now and the release date of the game but rest assured, all the logical units show up in RoN.

The largest difference in combat between RoN and most other rts games is the concept of flanking fire.  Some other rts games have attempted this concept but usually in the context of large fixed force type of battles where there are long lines of troops.  I don't recall any other standard rts game that has successfully incorporated flanking fire but RoN looked to have a very natural and logical method to achieve this feature.  In RoN, when you build a foot unit, the single unit is shown on screen as a set of three units.  The set of three shares hit points and is accounted for as a single unit.   The advantage of representing the unit as three is that the unit has a real flanking side and it helps the unit look much more in proportion to tanks and some of the other larger units.  Groups of foot soldiers will automatically arrange themselves into formal battle lines where the flanks are very obvious.  In RoN, flanking attacks and attacks from the rear provide a significant advantage so battles end up being much more strategic and realistic than the typical rts game where units in battle tend to devolve into a large mass of entangled troops.

Two special military units, the general and the supply wagon, are not required for victory but can certainly change the outcome of any battle.  Supply wagons automatically heal nearby units and generals have some unique commands that can be used in battle.   Generals have rally that can make units shoot faster, forced march which makes them run, and ambush which makes units in the nearby area invisible for a short period of time.   Both supply wagons and generals are relatively weak units on their own but putting a couple of them in a protected position behind your lines during an attack or defense can mean the difference between victory and defeat.  It is also another feature that causes battles in RoN to look and feel more realistic than other rts games.

Although the units may not be unique in RoN, because of the differences in the economic structure of RoN, the battles tend to play out differently than AoK.  For example, battles tend to take place in one of two different locations, either at the national borders between two Nations or at a city.  Since this is where battles typically take place in the real world, it was pretty kewl to see how because of the game structure, the battles in RoN naturally gravitated to those locations.

RoN also offers a fantastic alternative to the typical "kill every unit and building" objectives of the typical rts game.  Of course, the typical "kill everything" victory condition is included but in all the games we saw at E3, military victory was achieved by capturing the enemy's capital city.  Each player's original city is designated as their capital city which must be defended at all costs or else that player will lose the game.  So to defeat an enemy via Capital conquering, you must attack and reduce the enemy's capital to 0 hit points, then have more of your military units in the area than your enemy for 3-5 minutes.  All players will see the countdown to defeat displayed in the interface.  Keep in mind that since the economic structure of RoN does not require a player to move around the map to find new resources, a player has no reason to ever leave his capital for greener pastures, so in theory, the capital should be the center of each player's nation and have the strongest defenses.   Therefore, I think this is a much more reasonable and logical form of conquest than hunting the map for every last enemy unit.  Of course, this option can be turned off if you prefer the regular conquest victory but I personally love the capital victory idea.