What is Rise of Nations?
Rise of Nations is a historical real-time strategy game. The game combines the epic scope and depth of turn-based strategy games with the pulse-pounding speed and action of real-time strategy games.

Rise of Nations lets you create new cities, improve your city infrastructure and expand national borders. You can win through military might, using everything from slingshots to cannons to stealth bombers; corner the market on key commodities; and wheel and deal with a wide variety of nations. You can quickly play from the Ancient Age (2000 B.C) to the Information Age.

When will Rise of Nations be released?
May 20th, 2003

Will there be a public Beta?
Yes! Make sure to check this Web site on a regular basis for updates.

When will I be able to download a demo?
We are planning to release a demo of the game in Spring 2003

Back to FAQ Top

How will Rise of Nations differ from other RTS games out there?
Rise of Nations is the first game which combines the strategic and in-depth features found in turn-based strategy games with the speed of real-time strategy games.

Is this game overwhelmingly complex? Hard to master?
Not at all. The game features 6 walk-through tutorials, staged in difficulty for the beginning RTS player up to the Advanced RTS gamer.

What is the "Conquer the World Campaign"?
An exciting single player campaign. You play on a real-map of the world. Some people have described it as being akin to playing "Risk" in real-time. We will release more information about this campaign in the upcoming weeks.

How many Nations are there?
There are 18 nations in the game: Aztec, Bantu, British, Chinese, Eqyptians, French, German, Greek, Inca, Japanese, Koreans, Maya, Mongols, Nubians, Romans, Russians, Spanish and Turks.

Do the different Nations each get special military units?
Yes. Each nation will be able to build at least four special units. Some unit examples are: the Japanese have Samurai, Bantu have Umpakati, the Germans have Tiger Tanks.

How many military units are there in the game?
Over 200!

What are the resources in Rise of Nations?
The basic resources are Wood, Metal, Food, Oil, Wealth, and Knowledge. There are also 32 unique rare resources. These rare resources confer special powers on the nation that controls them.

Back to FAQ Top

I've heard that peasants will be "smart." How does that work?
If a peasant is left alone without orders, he or she will look around for something productive to do. This includes things like working at an available "gather building" such as a farm or oil well. The peasant will also help repair damaged buildings or assist in their construction. Note that peasants will NOT begin totally new construction on their own. Peasants only notice things within a limited range so they tend to remain near where you left them. It's also worth mentioning that you can turn this behavior off if you prefer to have your peasants simply remain idle.

What kind of unit limit is there in Rise of Nations?
Like many RTS games, Rise of Nations uses a "Population Cap" system that limits how many units a player can have at one time. This number starts out small and increases as the player advances down a branch of the technology tree. All units count against this "Pop Cap" and, in the later ages, some units even count with a value of greater than 1. It is very important to remember that in Rise of Nations many units are actually made up of multiple figures (usually 3). This means that while an Archer unit may only take up 1 space toward your Pop Cap you're actually seeing three Archer figures on the screen. You'll quickly discover that the armies in Rise of Nations become much larger than you might expect. You'll be able to keep a productive economy AND field an army worth fighting with.

Back to FAQ Top

Is the game 2D or 3D?
Rise of Nations uses an original, hybrid 3D game engine that allows the use of expressively animated 3D elements with the rich detail of 2D. More specifically, animated game elements are fully 3D. This allows the units to interact with each other and with special effects in ways that are difficult or impossible to do with 2D units. Buildings, on the other hand, are 2D. 2D allows a level of detail that would be too expensive in 3D. The Rise of Nations hybrid system allows the 3D and 2D elements to inhabit the same world and interact with each other giving us the best of both worlds.

How does "Zooming Scale" work?
You can zoom the game camera from close-in tactical view to an elevated strategic view. For technical and gameplay reasons the view does not rotate. You can perform this zoom easily with the keyboard or with the mousewheel.

How do the borders work?
Your national borders define a territorial region that "pushes out" from your villages/cities depending on their size and your Civic accomplishments. Borders also push out from your forts based on similar considerations. The only limit to your borders comes from another nation "pushing back." Also, territory is exclusive - if it's YOUR territory, your opponent CAN NOT build in it.

Your national territory defines:
A). Where you can build military buildings (stables, siege factories, barracks, etc.) and new cities (universities, granaries, lumber mills, etc.)
B). Where you control strategic resources
C). In some cases your troops take attrition damage while inside another nation.

Borders allow you a new venue to compete with other nations besides simple military attacks - you can increase your political strength and thus increase your territory, taking away control of vital strategic resources from your rivals. Likewise there's subtle strategy involved in where you place your villages and forts to "claim" territory you'll want later.

Back to FAQ Top

Will the game include a scenario or map editor?
The game will ship with the same scenario editor that our designers will be using to create our campaigns. It will include a trigger system, a custom scripting language, and the usual features you expect from an editor.

Will there be multiplayer and how many players are supported?
Rise of Nations will include many victory conditions and options for multiplayer gaming. Up to eight players can play head to head, or in teams on a LAN or the Internet.

Can I select which of the ages my game spans?
You will have the option of choosing in which age you would like to start your game  and in which age it will end. For example, you can start your game in the Gunpowder Age and end in the Industrial Age.

Are formations part of the game? What do they do?
Formations play an important role in the game; they keep your military units together. A group of various military unit types that normally move at different speeds will move at the pace of the slowest unit if they are ordered to move in a group. Your cavalry units will not leave behind your vulnerable siege units, and will automatically move to the front of the formation to provide protection for ranged units.

Back to FAQ Top

How does it work with the units in the game? If I build an Archer in the Ancient Age will he battle against tanks in the Modern Age?
No! You can upgrade all your units to stronger military units when you advance through time. You don't lose the units you build early in the game.except in battle.

Is it possible to use Nukes in the game?
Yes, in the last two ages of the game you will be able to develop Nuclear weapons.

Does Rise of Nations use the special effects supported by advanced cards?
We use pixel shaders and hardware-accelerated transform and lighting.

• Pixel Shaders
  Nuclear explosions use a luminance effect to make the whole screen wash to grey. Every "renderstate" has to have a corresponding pixel shader to make this work (one small area, but LOTS of shaders). Boat reflections need pixel shaders to clip at the water line (texkill).
• Vertex Shaders
  Boat reflections use vshaders to put a sine wave on the verts under water, making the reflection look wavy. Some of the nuke effects pieces (mushroom cloud and impact flash) use vertex shaders as well.
• Logo
  The high end GPUs get a dot3 bump map lighting model on the RoN logo in the main menu.