gscotti: For you maybe. For me, Empire Earth was excruciating because the units are not just incompetent but utterly helpless. Now I understand that some people will find aspects of EE (which I have played extensively) more fun compared to RoN, but when it comes to unit management, EE blows, and that must hurt the fun factor a bit even for the most hardcore EE fan.
Even though not as good as RoN, even Age of Empires has a much better unit management than EE.
tinyE: I think AoE tops them all. Both 1 and 2 are probably still my favorite RTS games.
You have to understand though, I'm old and slow. The less strategy the better the game is for me. :P
I am VERY slow, but RoN allows me to control the game while stopped, or play it at a very slow speed. It is an RTS that gives you the tools to be played as a true 4X game where an overarching strategy is important, whereas you can leave the minutia of fight dynamics to the AI. Sure, some attention may help, but if you did your strategy right (
strategy, NOT tactics) then you will have so much resources and production capacity, that it doesn't matter much how the AI resolves the battles. I don't know how to make this any clearer. I am a slow, sit-in-recliner-and-drink-coffee type of player. I detest anything action.
I don't understand why would someone old and slow not like strategy - slow and methodical strategic thinking is what I would expect from someone old and slow to excel at.
gscotti: I installed and played Age of Empres for a few hours. My verdict: a bit more hand-holding than with RoN, and far less fun. Here's why: for one thing, you can't drag your units into formation. This is something you can do with RoN by selecting your units and then, instead of just right-clicking where you want them to be, you can right-drag to select where the formation will point towards (and RoN will also nicely draw the formation it will create, so you will have an idea where the units will be when they arrive to destination). Then, the monks: when you point them to retrieve an artifact, when they arrive to the artifact they just stand there like idiots! I actually have to point them back to the monastery! How stupid is that? In RoN, when the merchant is sent to a special resource, it will take care of the whole logistics of it. Also, merchants will set up routes between markets automatically - you don't have to do anything, they'll just automatically start moving using the shortest paths.
But al that is small potatoes compared to the biggest drawback in AoE: rebuilding farms!? In Age of Empires farms have to be constantly rebuilt. How much fun is that? About as much fun as three consecutive kicks in the bollocks, I reckon. I don't see how RoN can be harder than AoE - AoE has all the things that make it easy for an AI to play, and hard for a human. RoN levels the field quite a bit.
Ceratinly rebuilding (or replanting) farms was a pain in the backside, as were the other things you mention. We didn't really care back in those days, though, did we ? Micromanagement carried out at frantic speed was something we all accepted back then : the ability to do so was part and parcel of being a good player. I still think AoE 2 is one of the classic RTS games, though obviously dated now. What killed the RTS in the end (which was really quite a sad event) was that the more complex an RTS became, the more wasted that complexity became, because when the base-building phase was over and the combat kicked off in earnest, there was simply no time to plan strategies, or even to think "tactically". RoN was a very ambitious and complex RTS - almost like a real-time Civilization - but all of its complexity never really came into play once the fighting became large-scale, between several nations. It got high review scores at the time and I really enjoyed it for a while and have fond memories of it, but despite its thoughtful mechanics it was really a game which, in spite of its intentions, rewarded quick reactions rather than strategic or even tactical thought.
Yes, kind of, but the need to constantly rebuild farms is a completely artificial requirement put in there by the game designers. There was no reason why farms couldn't have been like any other building. It's just some idiotic product manager that thought people enjoy going back to the farms every minute. But apparently AoE III got rid of that, according to accounts in this thread.
I don't understand you guys: I have the slowest reactions in the universe. Really. I'm slow as molasses, and could never enjoy any platformer or shooter. And yet I did/do OK with RoN. Just dial down the speed to slowest - which is what I always, absolutely always do - and be ready to stop the game frequently. During stoppage, RoN allows you to give directions to units. Then you restart.
tinyE: The difference being that Empire Earth is actually fun. :P
IronArcturus: So where did RoN go wrong? Did it not have the futuristic aspect like Empire Earth?
Nowhere. RoN kicks ass. It even has the future tech era, if that's your thing.
