RANT: A look-back at Rise Of Nations

Back in the early '00s, when gaming suddenly exploded and PC gaming still mattered, RTS and especially Age of Empires fanboys, like myself, were looking forward for the second coming of Jesus in the disguised form of a sequel to the Age of Kings. For some reason neither Microsoft nor Ensemble Studios seemed to share our feelings and kept cockslapping us with a number of other releases in the genre, such as "Age of Mythology", which gathered positive reviews, but I never quite got into, probably because I prefer my strategy games to be about little people riding tanks or trebuchets, instead of little people getting royally fucked by Zeus for the shits 'n giggles.

But then Microsoft released another RTS, developed by Big Huge Studios (overcompensating for something, guys?), which seemed original, deep and promising. Rise of Nations was that RTS and it was very well received. It featured a hybrid of RTS and TBS, the two polar opposite categories of strategy games, it was as deep as it looked and overall, a very satisfying package.

To this day it's considered one of the top titles in the genre. And it is; don't let what I'm about to say convince you otherwise. TBS and RTS crowds are hardly the same, but in the end they're both strategy game fans and both like some aspects of the other style, something that RoN understands and does a good job at mixing them.

The units look clean and defined, the civilization system is easy to pick up and requires less attention than having to learn politics on the fly to keep those cunts citizens in your city from rioting. The battle system is simple enough, in the sense that it's less about hitpoints and armor and more about water PokeMon beats fire Pokemon and that's that.

I used to play back in '03-'04 and then I dropped the game; for the life of me I couldn't remember why. I didn't really intend to pick it up again, but recently I had to, after the pleads of a friend, who heavily implied that if I made him play Age of Empires 2 one more time, he'd strap a plastic dick on and provide plenty of motivation for me to reconsider. So I found my disk, I popped an aneurism, because the bloody thing wouldn't work (yay, Windows) and after a Win reinstall, which was long overdue, it finally played.

I like to pretend I'm an undefeated King that people love and concubines have declared a god, so whenever I play AoE2, with friends or alone, I tend to go for the hardest difficulty level, with several AI opponents. I manage, most of the time, which is why I was surprised to find out that trying RoN in "Moderate", my country was soon invaded by entire batallions demolishing my buildings, slaughtering my citizens and leaving me with serious sexual insecurities. "It's OK", I thought, "Rise of Nations is more challenging. That's good".

Not really, though. The game is frustrating, instead of truly difficult, for the same reason that all those older RTS games are frustrating; the AI cheats. It just so happens that, with the exception of the C&C games (and especially the Red Alert spin-offs), I find myself completely indifferent toward current RTS games, because they jump straight into the combat and completely ignore the economy part; a part that I wholeheatedly enjoy. I'm starting to believe that the reason for this isn't so much a creative decision as it is a practical one; I can't imagine another reason why every single RTS game that handles economy has the AI cheating so blutantly, if not because the AI programmers can't do it differently. It's not the kind of cheating you find in the "dick" games (i.e. sports and fighting). The computer doesn't know what you'll do to stop you. It just grows at a super-human rate! It gathers resources faster than you, it makes units faster than you, it can do about 50 different things at the same time, while you still struggle with scrolling from one city to another. And hotkeys don't do much good either!

Now, like I said this is an issue every RTS used to have; including Age of Empires. The difference is that Age of Empires was a true RTS, whereas RoN is not. So, in AoE, you'd make your army and you'd know exactly how to approach a battle. It was very, very well-balanced. The simplified battle system of RoN becomes an obstacle at carrying out a proper fight that doesn't involve at least five nuclear missiles totalling your enemy's capital city and then have your infantry just walk in and collect the trophies... and probably turning into an army of grey Hulks in the process...

... which I guess would be kind of cool, if it did happen. It'd be a lot cheaper than handing out weapons to the useless twats...

But that's not even the worst thing. Because that aspect is dumbed down to such a degree, the developer tried to balance out the game (and especially, I assume, the multiplayer segment) by evening out the units hitpoints, regardless of the age the player's in. BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. It's ridiculous to have a caravel sink a submarine! It makes the game unplayable. You have the AI, which naturally comes with twice your resources and ten times your army, they're left in the Medieval Age, while you've progressed to the Industrial Age and they still fucking decimate your army! They send horses against your TANKS and they destroy them. They fire arrows, you fire bullets and you still lose! And because you've progressed, your army is more expensive and takes a lot more to resupply!

I understand why you had to use this type of balance, but I was left with the impression that progressing to subsequent Ages was part of the fucking point. Otherwise, you might as well cancel out the entire civilization segment of it and turn it into a proper, full-blown, battle RTS game, where I can make sense out of each unit's strengths and weaknesses. A Modern Age unit deals a little more damage than a Medieval Age unit, but since they're never going to compete in a duel, it's a moot point! I think I reached my threshold when I was living my peaceful existence, having spent a considerable amount of resources to progress to the Modern Age, made a proud -in numbers- army and then got jumped by my AI opponent, who had just entered the Industrial Age, only to witness three batallions of my anti-tank rocket-wielding macho-men get blown to bits by WWI-era cannons and musketeers! And there's your problem; the balance is surprisingly shallow for a game otherwise deep. I know the unit that evolves into the anti-tank rockets isn't supposed to be effective against the unit that evolves into Musketeers (and later Riflemen), but they're wielding FUCKING ROCKETS. How can they not be more effective?

Shallow balance, arbitrary mechanics, cheating AI, game gets the fuck off! And it's a pity too, because otherwise, it is a bloody enjoyable game. Evolving in Real Time is fun! Seeing your barbarians tranform into sophisticated GI Joe's is strangely satisfying. Too bad they're too fucking useless!