We survived Hurricane Isabel with only light damage, thankfully. My car narrowly escaped getting crushed by a large oak which fell across the driveway. An even bigger oak fell in the front yard, but went the other way. Power and water are still on, too. Whew.
posted by Tim at 7:50 PM

HalfLotus writes a decent article on Attacking in the Medieval Age.

Medieval Age is a good time to attack because of supply wagons, and because your economy will be developed enough to give you a large advantage after taking an economic city from the enemy. Also because Medieval Age is cool. Supply wagons prevent attrition and, more importantly, double your siege unit’s rate of fire in enemy territory.

It's a little thin on how the opponent might respond and screw up the nice little plan, but it's definitely worth the read.
posted by Tim at 7:33 PM

If you're looking for recorded games to watch of other people playing, there are several sites that offer these. Watching good players play can be very informative. I highly recommend checking out some of these. MFO probably has the highest quality, so I'd start there and choose the games with either the most downloads or the highest ratings.

• MFO: Recorded Games Library


• RTSUK - Building Your RTS Community! -> Rise of Nations Recorded Games


• Rise of Nations Oracle - recorded games


• Infidels Clan recorded games


• C's Site o' Fun - Rise of Nations game section

If I missed any, let me know in the comments.
posted by Tim at 6:57 AM

Description of each map type
MFO has an old article on map types. Despite it's age, it's a handy reference for checking out the various map types. It's a little thin on real strategy for each map, but it's a decent start.
posted by Tim at 8:59 AM

How quickly can you beat the Toughest AI?
Over at Apolyton, Drachen started thread where he encouraged people to post their quickest winning strategies over the toughest AI. We joined in the fun, of course, and thought a 4:00 rush victory would be sufficient. Drachen beat that with a 3:46 win. I gave up, but then he later followed with a 52 second game over the toughest AI! Follow the link and read the thread to see what happened if you can't guess how he did it.
posted by Tim at 8:28 AM

Countering civs
Backwash asked an interesting question

I know there are sites with strats on how to PLAY the different nations, but can you tell me if there's a site or sites with strats on how to play AGAINST each nation?

No, I haven't seen much written about how to deal with a particular civilization. But now that I think about it, it's not too surprising. I don't vary my play that much from one opponent to the next based on their civ. Mayans are an exception - can't rush against them very well. On the other hand, it might be worth thinking about. Any ideas?
posted by Tim at 7:35 AM

Infinite Queue Redux
Dante Havion asks What is Infinite Queue? We already know I am a big fan of the IQ, but the thread leads into when to use it and when not to use it.

I use it on:

• villagers - keeps 'em coming, but saves food for upgrades in the early days


• scholars - just hit uvq uvq uvq every 2 min or so and soon all your universities will be filled


• troops rallied to a general - reinforcements just keep coming - you just have to balance resources with the market


• caravans - ensures I always stay at caravan limit

Using more than that can get you in trouble. Using it less means you could be losing some efficiency.
posted by Tim at 7:34 AM

Blogger sucks!
Blogger is acting buggy. New posts are not being displayed. GRRR
posted by Tim at 7:34 AM

The 150 Rush
TWC_Tannenbaum writes about the 150 rush.

Find your ancient rushes are becoming worthless these days? You want to rush but don't know a good way to do it? I will do my best to give you one of the best guidelines with delayed rushing..... Assuming you are playing a typical random land match the basis of the 150 is to get your commerce cap as close to 150 as possible.

I don't usually do a 150. I either rush from the start in ancient, or I just boom. After reading this article, I might have to try this strategy out sometime. Unfortunately, once I get my econ shwerve on, I tend to keep rolling.
posted by Tim at 2:10 PM

WOW!
I just started this strategy blog and already I've gotten several links from a few other RON sites (without even soliciting). Thanks! I welcome any new visitors, and I hope that I can add to some of the strategy discussions.
posted by Tim at 1:54 PM

How feasible is rushing in RoN?
Speaking of the Infidels... War has a nice article on rushing, which he was kind enough to point out to us.
posted by Tim at 1:30 PM

Good site
Infidels Clan Site
Most of the articles here are of pretty high quality. It's worth checking out.
posted by Tim at 1:26 PM

Beating 7 random teamed toughest AIs
Some people think the toughest AI is too tough. But I think the AI is terrible. The AI cannot handle any type of early rushing attack. Here's an egregious example where I whip up on seven of them. I could post simple rush victories over 1, 2 or even 4 of them. But beating 7 was actually kind of fun. And pretty hard. Granted, if you let the toughest AI build up for 10 minutes, it can be a bear. But I want an AI that will play rough the whole game, without employing any "no-cheese" rules.
posted by Tim at 3:35 PM

Ramping costs in RON
It's the Cheese!
Carch writes about how much he likes RON, ramping costs being a nice "feature."

Combined with a cost-ramping feature which models economy of scale

Cost ramping doesn't model economy of scale. It models diseconomy of scale. As you approach scale, the next unit produced should be cheaper, not more expensive. This is my fundamental gripe with the game. Cost ramping forces everyone to have the same army. Thus, assuming equal tactical handling, victory goes to the one who can produce the biggest army. I'd like to see greater reward placed on army composition choices, and if we're going to model anything, model reality. The first one is VERY HARD to make, then they get cheaper going on from there, down to some minimum cost. Also, I'd add in declining costs based on the elapsed time since the first unit was made.

Imagine if your first heavy infantry unit cost 200 food and 200 timber. The next was 150/150. The third 100/100 and the next was 75/75. And because you made them earlier, later in the game they are much cheaper, as well. This creates all sorts of interesting strategic questions. Instead RON eliminates those and forces everyone to have the same stuff. Talk about BORING!
posted by Tim at 3:27 PM

How to defend against the rush
I still find that the typical on-line players on gamespy are unable to deal with a quick HI rush. I don't rush all the time, but when I have, I've won. About 50% of the time I rush, I win out right by taking both of their towns, or by them resigning. The other 50% of the time I usually manage to capture the capital and, even though they recapture it, use the sack bonus and the disruption of their economy to gain an early advantage - which has always proved fatal. So far.

Given that, I thought I'd discuss techniques for 1)recognizing the early rush, 2)stopping it, and 3)winning the rest of the game.

Recognizing the rush. If the enemy is both late getting to classical AND late making a second city (based on either scouting or territory score), you can assume he's doing an ancient rush. If you're playing conquest victory only (territory score are not shown), scout the enemy early enough (~2:00) so that you can get a sense for whether he's expanded or not. I wouldn't count on finding his barracks. A good rusher won't have the barracks near his town. He'll want it closer to his borders and it could be easy to miss.

Stopping the rush. If you get a sense that he's rushing you (see above), but no hard evidence (i.e., no sign of troops yet), I'd go ahead and research MIL1 and then build a barracks or a stable. I generally don't bother with a tower that early - they are slow to build and level 1 attrition won't save your capital. If you elect NOT to build a barracks, I'd keep a timber reserve of 120 on hand so you can plop one down in a hurry, but this is risky. A good rusher will bring slingers and even maybe an archer to deal with villagers making defenses. It can be tough to get a building up quickly if he catches you in the act, and a few seconds delay can be the difference between winning and losing.

Once you've gotten a barracks up, you should be pretty safe from an out right loss. You'll have a bigger economy and you'll be able to make counters for his troops, so you can eliminate the attacking force and recover any cities he's managed to capture.

Another trick is to use your villagers to make sure the captured cities stay reduced so you can quickly recapture them if you have more troops or if he wanders off to the next city.

Winning the rest of the game. If he doesn't get your capital, then you should still have a better economy, even despite the disruption to your production. Winning should be fairly straightforward. One option might be to queue up some HI of your own and send them with your other troops to his (soon to be made) second city, or even his capital.

If he did manage to sack your capital (and you recaptured), then he might have more immediate resources than you do, but he'll still be behind in production. Focus on getting back on track and replacing any villager losses you incurred. He'll use that +500 bonus to ramp up very quickly, so you won't have much of an advantage, if any. The key here is to get back into your rhythm and recover as quickly as possible.
posted by Tim at 3:02 PM

What do you do during the first minute in game?
For insta-rushing, I do vqlw - queue up vills and then research mil1 - then 2 woodcutters make farms; 1st new vill walks to make barracks near border; and the rest go on wood-cutting detail. Scout gets corner and then just slightly leads troops before they hit. Scout searches for tower or baracks and slingers hit builders while hops kill capital and expansion.

For normal play, I vq - queue up vills - and make farms with the 2 cutters, while new guys go to wood. When I have 120 wood, I research sci1, then civ1. I like to get the farms going first, because food is going to be the most constraining resource early on. If I find a ruin prior to sci1 completion, I hold off for the couple seconds until its done. I also keep my food low by queueing extra vills as needed. Scout goes to corners and then enemy.
posted by Tim at 2:34 PM

Thoughts on the strategic stagnation in RON
I posted earlier wondering why we don't see more prolific strategy posting on this game. On the surface, this game appears to have marvelous depth, with a variety of civilizations, a multitude of ages, numerous technologies, great RPS interplay of units, and many different victory conditions. On the surface.

But after the playing the game quite a bit, it's become apparent, to me at least, that much of that depth is superficial. There seems to be pretty much one basic strategy for this game. Economy wins. Three main factors for this are:

Defense is very strong
Ages are short
Armies are always the same

Early defense is very strong. Attrition makes attacks before the advent of supply carts a risky venture. Once your opponent gets attrition, a failed attack means the loss of your entire army with no gain other than minor economic disruption. So any attack you make must be enough to completely take out a town. But because of attrition garrisoning troops your opponent only needs a handful of defenders to resist pretty much any early attack. Raiding (except for the Mongols) seems a limited option. A wildly successful raid at best kills an equivalent portion of villagers to compensate for the loss of troops. Even after supply carts are available, it is still easier to defend with smaller numbers of troops who attack and draw out the siege defenders and then garrison back to safety when the enemy responds. So making a small early force of defensive units becomes the dominant strategy.

Ages are short. Because there are so many ages, the time spent in a particular age is usually very short. Players are faced with the choice of upgrading troops NOW for the attack, or to just wait until the next age. At that point, unlike (AOE and AOK) they can upgrade their troops to the new ones without going through all the previous upgrades. Meaning it becomes better to dash through to the ages as efficiently as possible to an age where attacking become more effective. Attacking becomes a lot easier in the gunpowder and industrial ages. So why not wait?

Armies are always the same. Two factors collide to make army composition relatively mindless. First of all, the cost escalation for each additional unit of the same type encourages players to make armies with lots of different units. Secondly, the overwhelming counter abilities of units against certain other units make having a one- or two-unit army rather stupid. This ensures that the best army is one that contains a smattering of all unit types, which oddly enough looks JUST like the army the OTHER guy has. Who wins, largely depends on army size, which goes back to the best economy. (IMO, having cost escalation is a poor way to encourage army composition. In reality, building additional units should be CHEAPER, not more expensive, as a civilization realizes benefits of scale and learning curve. Then you’d see players forced to make strategic choices, specializing in particular units, and encourage better cooperation in team games.)

So despite the huge variety and massive scale, the strategic depth seems to be LESS than that of other RTS games, like Kohan, for example, where with only 4 factions, you have completely different army types and philosophies of playstyle. This may be one reason why there is so little being written about strategy. Just not much there to think about, I guess.
posted by Tim at 1:52 PM

Use the infinite queue!
Being well-versed in AOE and AOK, I have had to unlearn some bad habits to improve my RON game. One specific bad habit was to queue up a bunch of units using shift + or by mashing the hotkey a few times until the resources ran out.

In AOK this works because you pay for units only when they begin to train, but in RON you pay for them as they queue up, making it difficult to sustain production without significant micro-management.

However, I found that the infinite queue button solves this dilemma quite nicely. (This is only for those that are NOT using it. If you use it obviosuly you know this already.) So instead of hitting HCCCCCC imediately at the start of the game (or now VVVVVVV), you can just hit VQ (or whatever you have remapped to).

This becomes an essential tool for playing on the faster speeds and is also useful for larger macro management.

For example: I build an early barracks and queue up one "iteration" of my army: slinger, hoplite, slinger and then hit Q. This will slowly give me an army with a 2:1 ratio of slingers and hoplites, and will contine to grow as long as I have resources and population available. I set my rally point on a likely enemy avenue of approach and things tend to take care of themselves.

In later ages, I can manage both my army and econ by watching the top left info boxes, setting rally points on my hot-keyed generals, and buying/selling resources with clicks on the market boxes in the top left - with little degradation of logistics, even at hyper-speed. (Maneuvering is a little different!)

If you're not using the infinite queue, I'd highly encourage it. It takes a moment of practice for the AOK player, but it's a definite improvement.
posted by Tim at 1:51 PM

Let's talk Forts!
davepy over at the RON Heavens Forum asks about placement of castles and towers. It's an interesting discussion.

In 1on1, I usually place a castle directly behind my 3rd city. Since cities cannot be destroyed by enemy fire, the presence of the city helps protect the castle, while the (garrisoned) castle makes capturing a reduced city next to impossible. Castles might be nice to help push borders, but I find that they become juicy targets for enemy siege weapons.

I don't find towers to be all that effective, other than as an early warning system and to annoy the enemy. Singleton towers can be easily dropped by siege.
posted by Tim at 1:35 PM

Growing your economy efficiently
I've been puzzling over this for awhile, but have not yet decided on a definite answer: What's the most efficient method for expanding your economy? Assume for a moment that there is no real danger of any type of rush (e.g., peace for 10 minutes, or FFA, or something). In this situation, I am currently doing:

1. SCI1
2. CIV1
3. COM1

At this point I have tried all of the different options (in descending order of practice):

-CLASSICAL - adds an extra +200 to economy (+100 for 2 new resources), but you need to spend wood, food, and wealth to get start gathering metal and knowledge. Usually followed by SCI2, COM2, and CIV2

-COM2 - adds an extra +150 to economy (+50 for 3 resources), but really requires a 3rd city to maximize, usually followed by CIV2, to get econ up to +150, or by CLASSICAL.

-SCI2 - increases ruin bonuses and makes subsequent researching cheaper by an extra 10% (plus you are likely to be getting the 10% bonus for researching a later classical) - while not my first choice, I seem to have the best success when using this method

-CIV2 - enables 3rd city, but you can't really make good use of it until you research COM2

-MIL1 - not really used. I don't research mil1 unless I am rushing, and then I don't usually wait this long.

In watching films, I've seen a wide variety in choices.

My best success so far has come with two economic strategies (insert MIL1 somewhere as required based on scouting):

1. Variation on this: SCI2 -> COM2 -> CIV2 -> CLASSICAL -> COM3. This puts you at +180-200 food, based on rares, and it enables military expansion as well as continued booming.

2. CLASSICAL -> SCI2 -> COM2 -> CIV2. The early classical enables me to continue pumping continuous villagers and gathering other resources (metal and knowledge) without regard for cap. Subsequent techs are also cheaper in the other resources - timber & knowledge for COM2 seems better than spending tons of food. Food that can be beter spent making villagers and getting CIV2.

Of course, what I usually do is just rush a MIL1 and hit both of their towns. I either win outright or keep their econ down at +20 for 3-4 minutes. Despite the defensive resoruces available, most players I have seen cannot handle a well-executed ancient rush at all.

posted by Tim at 1:05 PM