Rise of Nations was a game in the Age of Empires and Empire Earth mold, but
its sequel, Rise of Legends, is a definite departure from these games’ historic
empire-building gameplay. Rise of Legends creates its own fantasy world in which
three very different factions compete for dominance over a mythical world.
Microsoft gave us a preview build of the game that gave us the chance to try out
two of the factions, the Vinci and the Alim.
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| The Alim on the march. |
The Vinci are a race that have managed to bring the numerous designs of
Leonardo da Vinci to life and believe in a steam and gear works world of
technology. The Alim are a desert people that rely on magic instead of
technology and have elemental creatures at their disposal. Their units and the
appearance of their structures look like they were drawn from the pages of the
Arabian Nights. These two races not only differ in terms of philosophies, they
play fundamentally differently as well. The Vinci build powerful units that take
time and resources to create, while the Alim can quickly generate large numbers
of weaker units. As a Vinci player you’ll need to keep your opponents at bay
until you can bring your superior technology and firepower to bear. On the other
hand as an Alim player you’ll need to strike the enemy early and often and
overwhelm him or her with superior numbers.
The game is a real-time strategy game and if you played Rise of Nations or
similar games then you’ll have no problem grasping the basics here. The game
does make some changes to the basic model, though. Bases are not collections of
individual structures, but rather are centralized cities to which you add
specialized “districts”. Adding a merchant district will increase your income
while adding a military district will add more soldiers to your army. As cities
expand they can be grown to higher levels allowing for the addition of even more
districts. This method of base building has two major effects. The first is that
city size is naturally constrained and choices will need to be made as to the
focus of your city, be it military, economic, or research. This leads to the
second effect, namely you’ll be able to tailor your city to your style of play.
During the course of the game you’ll be able to create new cities, so you can
even specialize individual cities. The cities are impressive to look at
especially when they grow to a large size. They can fill the screen and are a
hive of activity and motion. When under attack, you’ll see the defenders man the
battlements and fire out at the attackers. It’s all pretty impressive to watch
and this is in a preview build of the game.
Enemy cities – as well as neutral buildings – can be captured as well as
destroyed. In fact, it is generally better to capture cities as capturing and
expanding cities will extend your national borders. Borders have a different
effect on the Vinci and the Alim; the Vinci are constrained to building
structures within their territory, while the Alim can build special
unit-generating summoning circles outside of their borders although Alim units
suffer slow attrition when moving in enemy territory. When attacking a structure
or city, a number is displayed that represents the number of units required to
instantly take it over. These units are lost in the siege, so it is usually a
better idea to attack the city to reduce its defenses, which in turn reduces the
number of units required to take the city or structure outright.
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