Artwork and Gameplay

As I mentioned before, when the game starts we are greeted with a really cool load screen that tells us the powers for the Nation we have chosen as well as seeing the various unique units that are available to you. As the game starts, the thing that immediately catches your eye is the beauty and detail of the buildings. As I will continue to say, this game is simply a treat to watch and the art team is to be commended for their outstanding work. Of course the high level of detail on the buildings has led many people to ask “Is this game 3D or 2D". Well the answer is really a mix of the two. What they have done is place 2D buildings with added 3D elements into a world with 3D units and terrain. When the design team got to the point of deciding between 2D and 3D buildings, they quickly realized that having 3D buildings would allow them to add one thing and one thing only. A rotating camera view. Rotating cameras seem to fall into that category of things that people use a few times to look at all the pretty things for a few minutes, but as soon as the action starts they go right back to the standard fixed position. They also thought that the detail level on them just wasn't there yet in terms of overall look. 3D buildings simply couldn't be made to look pretty without drastically increasing the system requirements. So for these reasons they went with 2D buildings that contained some 3D animations.


One of the things that can't really be shown via screenshots is the various animations that the buildings have. Windmills on granaries turn, lumber mills show logs being cut into planks, Oil derricks move up and down as they pump oil from the ground. They even have shutters on the cities that move in the wind and I would not be surprised to see people sticking their heads out and waving from those same windows. You can click on the image to the right to see the lumbermill in action. Many thanks to Dave Inscore for this.


Tim also took a moment to tell us about something very special that they would be doing to the art sets in the game. As many of you may know, the game has 4 main art sets. African, American, Asian, and European. In the early ages (Ancient, Classical, and Medieval) of the game all the Nations will be divided into these 4 art sets based on their region. So as an example, the Russians and Greeks will look about the same. As the game progresses into the middle ages (Gunpowder, Enlightenment, and Industrial) the art sets get subdivided and go from being 4 to 8. This means that the Russians and Greeks will be divided between Northern European and Southern European and look vastly different during this time. When you reach the end ages (Modern and Information) the art sets merge back into the 4 regional art sets to reflect the standardizations of the more modern times.

After you've taken in all the impressive artwork, it is time to get down to the business of running your nation. The game play is much as you would expect from an RTS game. You need to build citizens and gather resources in order to create an army that you use to attack or defend. But once again Big Huge Games has added some interesting nuances here that make the game a bit more interesting. Many of these items have been covered in the various other previews and articles, so I won't mention them here. If you've missed them though, you can find links to them on our Previews Page. I will however talk about a few new items that have been added or changed since the Marketing Beta was released.

The first item to talk about here is the addition of “Taxation" into the game. Taxation is a technology that can be researched much like any other. What it does is allow you to gain more wealth depending upon the amount of territory you control in the game. So for example, if you controlled 20% of the territory on the map, each caravan would produce 20% more wealth on its trade route. As your share of territory increases, the bonus you get from each caravan increases to reflect your Nation's taxing of the people in those lands.

The next item we talked about was something that few reviews of the game have mentioned. Ramping costs. Ramping costs are used to simulate the expense of having and maintaining a larger and larger army. The way they work is that as you build more of a unit, it gets successively more costly to build. So if a unit has a ramping cost of 2 food, and initially costs 20 food, the first would be 20, the second 22, the third 24, etc; This concept was in the Marketing Beta, but what they have done in the latest build is make it so that rather than having the ramping costs effect only a single unit, the ramping costs is now applied for all units produced from a building. In the case of a barracks, it would go something like this. If I build a Hoplite, that is counted as an increase in cost to all units created at the Barracks. Now my Slingers and Archers have their ramping cost added in and it will start to become very costly to build a large infantry army. The ramping cost increases are the same for each unit produced, so it doesn't matter which ones you make. Building 3 Hoplites will make the 4th one just as expensive as if you had built a single Slinger, Hoplite, and Archer. This sort of forces you to create units from your stable to balance the costs of your force out.

After going through a few of the other economic items in the game, Tim decided it was time for a demonstration of some good old fashioned combat. After a few quick keystrokes into the cheat menu, he had created two opposing forces made up of Musketeers and Cannons and placed them on opposite sides of a river. Rivers in Rise of Nations play a fairly important role, they cause units to move slower as well take extra damage from attacks. This makes them very strategically important when considering a location to make a defensive stand. As Tim marched the attacking force towards the defenders through the river, we watched as they were slaughtered mercilessly. Not only did the defenders catch the enemy army in the river, they were also on higher ground which added even more damage to their attacks.


Even though I didn't learn about it until much later in the day, this seemed like the appropriate place to bring up a really cool new feature. Directional Flares. As they seem to be doing with many of the tried and true paradigms of RTS games, Big Huge Games has taken the standard flare capability and expanded upon it to make it better. Rather than simply indicating the spot where you would like an ally to go and then having to talk them through it, you can now drag the mouse to create arrows that can communicate things like directions in a matter of moments.
The system can also be used like the telestrators that are used during many sporting broadcasts where the announcer circles or marks off various places on the screen where he wants to draw your attention.


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