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Rise Of Nations Feature
Stephen Leyton
03/02/2003
We sit down with Brian Reynolds to discuss Microsoft’s eagerly awaited 'Rise of Nations', a real-time strategy (RTS) game.
Microsoftâs eagerly awaited 'Rise of Nations', a real-time strategy (RTS) game, that combines fast-action of real-time gaming with the broad scope of epic turn-based strategy games like Civilization, is already receiving much critical acclaim. Gaming luminary Brian Reynolds, who Derek dela Fuente chatted to, well known for his work on 'Civilization II' and 'âAlpha Centauri', is heading the gameâs development with his Maryland-based development company, Big Huge Games.
A number of the team members, including executive producer Tim Train, chief engineer Jason Coleman, and senior designer Doug Kaufman, have been working with Brian for many years - including on the previously mentioned titles. Other members of the team have worked on various products around the industry. The expertise and experience on offer is very impressive.
Combining elements of both turn based and real time strategy games is an interesting concept. I asked Brain to explain more: "We wanted to get the best of both genres. Real-time games are second to none for fast pace and excitement, but the 'classic RTS' has become kind of a formula, and we decided a lot of players would like some significant new twists. Because we came from a background of designing turn-based games like Civilization 2 and Alpha Centauri, we thought there were a lot of interesting things being done in that genre that hadn't been tried in real-time games. We think the new elements we've brought from the turn-based side will be just the sort of thing classic RTS players will be looking for to reinvigorate the genre.â
The basic idea in Rise of Nations is that you begin as the ruler of an ancient nation. You guide your nation over the whole course of history - through the Classical Age, into Medieval times, the Renaissance, and on into the Industrial Age and Modern times. You make many important decisions for your nation - how it will conduct diplomacy, develop its economy, and defend itself from enemies.
"My partners and I felt expansive topics are the best topics for games because they provide plenty of interesting material. We think human history is an especially interesting topic for players because we all, of course, share the common heritage of history. We've tried to approach history in a way that is both realistic, fun to play and pleasing to look at. Even though it covers all of history, gamers will be able to zip through the ages rather quickly and have a fun experience in under an hour. Yet they'll still be able to get a good feel of the distinction between the ages."
Rise of Nations features several kinds of resources. Common resources, ranging from wood and metal in the early ages, to oil in the industrial ages, are unlimited in the sense that they do not deplete and run out. For example, in the case of oil, you can only find it at certain places on the map, and you can only pump oil at a certain speed from each oil well. So if you want to gather oil faster you would need to expand and
take over more oil well locations. We've tried to have each different resource require a different activity and decision on the part of the player in order to gather it. For example, gold is mostly gained by forming trade caravans among your cities (or with your allies cities).
There are also 32 different 'rare resourcesâ in the game. Rare resources must be discovered on the map, and are then collected by a Merchant Unit. Collecting a rare resource not only allows you to sell the rare goods for common resources, they also provide you a unique benefit or 'power' that other Nations (lacking this unique resource) will not have.
Brian duly obliged by explaining the many facets of the unit types on offer. "There are quite a number of different units available in Rise of Nations. We begin by thinking of units in related groups we call 'lines'. For instance, at the Barracks there is a Light Infantry line, a Heavy Infantry line, and (in the early ages), an Archer line."
"Each nation has several unique units which are special to that nation. These units replace the units of one or more of the standard lines."
"So all in all we have around 160 individual unit types in the game, but when playing a particular nation in a particular age the number of units available to a player at any one time is kept to a reasonable number."
"In terms of how many soldiers your nation can have in play at a time, the maximum would be around 200-300 units depending on your choice of particular units to build."
Experience and the time line in the game could muddle things but when you move from age to age, you have an opportunity to upgrade your previous age's units. For instance, you can re-arm your crossbowmen with muskets, and later with rifles and assault rifles. Your units will change appearance appropriately as you move forward through history.
One interesting idea is that apparently units can morph into other unit types. The question many may ask is whether this ability is limited to certain units and number of 'morphs'? What units can you morph into?
"Morphing was actually a feature we were trying earlier and ended up deciding to take out of the game because players found it too confusing. The idea was you could take a unit like an Infantryman, and give him special training to become a very different unit like a Flamethrower or a Paratrooper or something. This sounded cool but seemed to confuse players in practice, so we've decided to handle specialty functions like flame throwing and air mobile units in a different way."
The balancing of a game is always the hard part. How do you, for instance, get around the player who builds and builds units for attacking against one who is more tactically aware? Well, a player who concentrates solely on building units will not have enough resources left to spend on technology; a player with a more balanced approach will have better technology which can be used to defeat primitive 'barbarian hordes'. Early in the game the balance is weighted slightly toward a defending nation (just as castles made very strong defences in ancient and medieval times); later in the game the military momentum shifts more toward aggressive players, although peaceful and prosperous nations can also win the game through, for instance, a Wonder victory.
Unlike the classic RTS model in which you normally build one main base or town and then fight your enemy, in Rise of Nations you build many different cities, each of which may have different functions in your Nation. Importantly, the placement of your cities defines the territory and national boundaries of your nation (and you can only build structures in your own nation). The political strength of your nation determines how far the national borders extend from your cities and how well you can compete with other nations for territory. Taking over territory is also important because from territory comes your resources. For instance, if you need more metal you will need to expand and take over more mountains so that you can build mines near them. Your cities can also trade with each other to increase the strength of your economy and generate gold.
Brian went on to explain the micro management. "We have a lot of useful automation and AI-adjustment features we think players will enjoy. One of the most useful features is the 'Smart Citizen' feature - if you leave some of your citizens idle for a time, they will automatically look around for useful tasks to perform (e.g. gathering a resource, completing construction of a building you ordered built). You can turn this feature on and off (and tell the citizens what kinds of tasks they are allowed to perform). Likewise you have some control over the behaviour your military units will exhibit when they encounter enemies.
The environments and that of the people have been meticulously researched and you will find that there were actually several early nations existing in the Americas before the 15th century, and Rise of Nations features the Inca, Aztec, and Maya nations, as well as other nations from around the world - European, Asian, and African nations as well. Nations from different regions will have different artwork for their buildings and units (e.g. the African units have dark skin).
As you would assume terrain has important effects on combat (e.g. controlling the high ground), and can also affect resource gathering. Work is still being implemented on this, as well as how weather will be represented in the game.
Rise of Nations will feature several different ways to play it. There will be pre-set solo missions and campaigns of the sort you'd expect in an RTS game, but also a 'Conquer the World' campaign in which you control the course of your nation on a strategic map, moving from province to province, and then zoom to the normal game to resolve situations in particular provinces.
The victory conditions: In Rise of Nations you have your choice between several different kinds of victory conditions - military conquest, territorial victories, capture of the enemy capital, and wonder victories are some of the most popular. We also have special game variants like Assassin, free for alls, and Diplomatic games.
Completing what was a very detailed and impressive overview of Rise, Brian gave his opinions on what made the game impressive and one to buy. "We think our many game play innovations, including national borders, cities, rare resources, territory-based gathering, a technology tree offering specializations in different areas, and combat tactics, will be very attractive to players looking for something a little different from the 'classic RTS' formula. We're competing against some big and famous brands who are working on classic RTS games, so we felt we wanted to be very strong on game play with a whole range of original twists. We think the game will be appealing to players who like historical games and players who like real time strategy. We also think that fans of our earlier turn-based games will be interested to see what we're up to, because this game will play very differently from most real time games."
For those of you who are not convinced I ended by playing devil's advocate and mischievously posing the final question - 'haven't we seen all this before'?
(A smile)"I think when you have a chance to play Rise of Nations you'll see that it's quite a long way from the classic RTS that you've seen before. The key for developers who want to develop interesting new games is to create original and interesting game play and then polish it to create a really seamless and exciting experience. In Rise of Nations we've combined the best elements of two different genres (real-time and turn-based strategy), set it in the context of a very broad and interesting topic (all of human history), and developed a series of game play innovations that make playing Rise of Nations a very different and interesting experience.
