No stack of doom here, but you have the line of doom instead.
If you like Civilization, but find that it is a very time-sucking game, then Rise of Nations is for you. And if you like AOE2, but hate AOE3 and long for the good old days, this game is for you. If you like both, then this game can give you the best of both worlds.
With a navy of this size, you can tell Castro to return those nukes.
Certain familiar elements from Civilization is present in the game. The concept of cities, which are key to expanding delineating your national borders, and also for building resource-multipling buildings, temples, marketplaces, universities, etc, much like what Civ is. And then there are the AOE elements – the fact that you’ll need to attempt to outresearch, outbuild and outnumber your opponents in technological research, defence capability and army size. By combining the best of AOE and Civ, Rise of Nations is a game where you’ll do everything in real-time, and your game will span the whole of human history from the days of stone-throwing, club-totting warriors to nuclear bombs and jet fighters of today. Each game will probably last an hour on normal settings, and in that same hour, your actions will determine whether you get owned or you will triumph. And that’s skirmish only.
In Thrones and Patriots, there’s the Conquer the World mode, where on sinks your feet in great conquests throughout human history from Alexander the Great’s conquest western Asia, to America going wild with revolutionary decolonialisation and then there’s the Cold War, which happens to be the best era among the five Conquer the World campaigns.
The game isn’t as addictive as Civ is – you’ll get a bit sick of it after a while, but take a break for a few days and you’ll come back, especially if you play multiplayer which is definitely the way to go if you want to enjoy RoN. RoN runs great on Windows 7, but the problem is that it has a minimum resolution of 1024×768, which means that it will look a bit stretched, unfortunately.
Like
RoN features the best of Civ and AOE
Doesn’t have the unwieldy 8-hour long games of Civ, and neither does it have the restricted time era of AoE
Unique game concept not replicated in any other game (not even its sequel)
Dislike
Can get a bit repetitive after a while, especially on certain Conquer the World campaigns
Lack of players online
1024×768 minimum resolution makes for a lesser visual experience
Verdict
This game has great replay value, great historical backgrounds and realism. It combines major elements such as economy management, warfare, politics and strategy all into one while feeling like a fast-paced action-packed game.
Pictures: Nvidia
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Man, i’ve try RoN gold edition on my netbook, aspire one 532h, but it’s doesn’t work. May be because i don’t have 1024 X 768 res, so how to fix it?
Does it have a Intel GMA driver? You can hack it to allow unsupported resolutions. See: http://netbookist.com/blog/2011/06/26/hidden-resolutions-in-intel-gma-driver/