The BLuT ClaN (means Blood in German) is hosting a 1on1 tournament.

{BLuT} CLaN likes to welcome you to our first RoN tournament hosting. Tourney name is as you can read 'saturday gangbang'. The first saturday gangbang will be held at 15th Nov 2003 18:00 GMT+1. Place is Gamespy unrated room 4. All players are invited to participate. The prize for all efforts will be honour and pride in the RoN community as well as on our web site.

You can go directly to the sign-up page.
posted by Tim at 7:20 AM

HalfLotus posted at Ron Universe another reprint of an old strategy he developed back in the Apolyton days. This one is titled Egyptian One City Raiding.

What follows is a fun strategy that uses the Egyptian 'super-city' to good effect. As we know they can build 7 farms per city and start with a free granary in the capitol. You'll stay with one city early on and build some Egyptian unique Horse Archers for raiding. This is carried out much earlier than standard HA raiding and can obliterate the economy of an unprepared opponent. During the raids, you'll expand your economy and territory aggressively

Once again, this is how you write up a strategy. There are two example games, located here and here.
posted by Tim at 6:45 AM

Played a long game against this guy named cher that went all the way through the Info Age to End Game techs. We both went Random: I was Inca and he was Spanish. It was Secret Random map, which turned out to be Atlantic Sea Power. Not sure who cher is, but he's one of the few guys I've ever played who kept pace with me economically. Early game action was limited to the sea. I made a few ships, but didn't want to overcommit on the water. I kept what ships I saw pinned down. He made a very large navy which he kept hidden in his docks, until later when he broke out. Meanwhile, we both focused on booming economies with minimal land defenses. I made a few towers and the Terra Cotta. I'm not sure what he had made, but when I raided one of his towns with my TCA infantry, he was able to fight them off pretty easily. He raided me with some with ranged cav but they didn't do much damage either. This is one of those games where you're both aging so quickly, it always feels too risky to invest in heavy military, because you'll then end up behind in techs. So you just keep booming because there's not much else you feel you can do. Also, he had the advantage on me having built Colossus. I was capped out and couldn't make very many troops.

My plan was to research World Government and then nuke and bum rush his capital, winning instantly, but he stopped that by bombing my silos (what idiot put them by the water?!) and researching (or starting to research) missile shield. So my next plan was to get Space Program and figure out a better plan...

... when all of sudden...

... I won on wonders. D'OH! "Oh well," That was not my intention; I was primarily trying to NOT LOSE on wonders. I hadn't even noticed the timer. Now, you all know I'm a big proponent of using ALL victory conditions, but in this case, I was left feeling very unsatisfied. Kind of like playing in Game 7 of the World Series, it's all tied up, with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, bases are loaded. Just as you come up to bat, the other team forfeits. WHAT THE - ?!

"Oh well."

"GG"

UPDATE: I welcome specific comments on what is an appropriate course of action for a game like that. Attacking across the water is risky business, you cannot rely on being able to reinforce properly unless you have complete command of the seas. And "complete" command of the seas is pretty hard to maintain once air power becomes a factor.
posted by Tim at 11:19 PM

To make this site a bit easier to use, I've reordered my links section (left edge of page) in order of utility from highest to lowest. The bar to get listed is pretty low - a just needs have to have a bit of RON Strategy on it to qualify. But since I use it as my "favorites" list for checking the latest strategy news, I want to keep it order of the places I go to first. If anyone feels offended or hurt by this, well, I'm sorry. Contribute better strategy!
posted by Tim at 8:49 PM

Another blog child and it's another boy! knight101_5's Rise of Nations Blog. Good luck with the site, knight101_5 ... errr ... "knight + numbers." (Dude, I think it's time to get a new handle.)

Now everyone go visit!
posted by Tim at 8:29 PM

HL is becoming a veritable font of wisdom these days. Today he's got a new article at the Rise of Nations Universe on How to defend against cavalry raiding.

Raids can come in many forms and at many times throughout the course of a game. This article will primarily focus on the most popular raiding (and arguably the most deadly), the early cavalry raid.

UPDATE: If you want to know what all the fuss is about, I suggest you check out the Francophone Alliance Rise of Nations site for an excellent article about Horse archer rushing. The Horse Archer rush. Or as the Frenchies say it: Le rush aux Archers de Cavalerie! If you don't read French, they have a Babelfish link to automatic translation.
posted by Tim at 8:26 PM

HalfLotus has argued fervently in the comments section on behalf of his new "Roman Aggression" strategy which we talked about earlier.
posted by Tim at 3:16 PM

Courtesy of The Gematriculator
posted by Tim at 7:46 PM

The MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS. Look, I'm just about as big a Matrix geek as you can get without getting paid for it (I saw Reloaded 7 times in the theater), but I think Revolutions was kinda disappointing. WTF was that all about? Huh?
posted by Tim at 3:43 PM

Today, I am seeing The MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS!
posted by Tim at 2:54 AM

Over at the Infidels Rise of Nations Recorded Games site, someone posted a 3v4 game I played with the TWC boys. It was supposed to be a 3v5, but one of the opposing players dropped at the start, so we played on. Not much to look at, but I just stumbled on this and so thought I'd mention it.

<RANT>

It did spark a discussion I had with Tann: why do players SO OPPOSE playing with skill settings? Instead of playing with 3v5, why not just do +10 skill settings? Hmmmm? I was in another game with 3 BLUTs, 2 TWCs, and me. I suggested BLUTs vs., but they wouldn't have any of it. "We got a newbie on our side," was the response. !??! So random teams is better?! Why not just use the skill settings and play set teams. That way you can start to develop some clan/team strategies. Something that seems sorely lacking. And even if you don't do set teams, shouldn't you still use the skill setting to balance out poor players?! Isn't that what it's for?! I think so, but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

</RANT>
posted by Tim at 8:08 AM

I spent some rare Rise of Nations time playing around with HalfLotus' new strategy. I also watched his recorded games. Or should I say game? Unless I somehow messed up in the downloading, both recordings were of the same game. Anyway, it's clear from the recording that his victory came from extremely poor micromanagement on the part of his enemy, and not due to better strategy. In fact, watching the game, I felt like he was losing up until the part where his opponent threw away the game. So credit to HalfLotus for winning with good micro, and even more credit for winning with a "bad" strategy.

Why did I say "bad?" And why did I put it in quotes?

Well, first off, I like to separate out the quality of the strategy from the quality of the execution. They are two distinct yet inter-related aspects of the game. In Real-time Strategy games, all strategies require execution. Rise of Nations is no different. You could have a bad plan and still execute it really well and get a victory, but does that redeem the original plan? On the other hand, if you continue to win with a strategy, can it really be that bad?

In watching the replay, I felt the CLASSICAL before SCI2 was a waste of knowledge. The anticpated notion that a delayed SCI2 was saving some critical food was dispelled by watching the game. The early MIL2 and subsequent HA raiding (ONE HA!) was easily fended off by the opponent, who only needs MIL1 and Light Cav to hold him off. Mining was delayed to enable both MIL2 and CIV2 (to get that third city up). I think the early CIV2 is still a good deal, but I wouldn't ignore the need for COM2. I think you should grab COM2 and CIV2 and drop that third city. Get mining going and then research MIL2 when you're ready to drop the fort. The way the game actually progressed, HL was behind on Knowledge AND Wealth for much of the game. For shame.

Anyway, we're holding off final judgment until we see more recorded games. We expect HL will refine his strategy in the future.

UPDATE: Wow, either the Rise of Nations Heaven Forum is down, or I hit a sore spot with HL. (Answer: probably both! :-) He's posted a number of great rebuttal comments in my comments section that give further specifics on his approach and philosophy for this "Aggression Strategy." Now, regardless of who's right, this is a worthy conversation to have; hopefully it will help improve this strategy and make it actually viable even better!
posted by Tim at 5:49 AM

HalfLotus has posted his latest Roman strategy over at the Rise of Nations Heaven Forum

This is a very aggressive strategy that uses quick raiding, fort border pushing, an early general, and sieging of economic targets while steadily increasing your knowledge rate to stay even or ahead in the tech race. Its main strength is keeping the opponent off balance and it takes advantage of bonus Roman wealth and cheaper forts/towers. It works best on land maps in 1v1.

It sounds like a fun strategy -- we do enjoy our border pushing -- but I'm always leery of building forts and towers on the border. They make great siege targets. And since the Roman player is investing in forts and towers, the other player should be able to afford a couple of catapults in response. Toss in the troops to defend them and what's the poor Roman player to do? Nevertheless, this may be something I'll try between Chinese games.

By the way, this is a good example of how you should right up new strategies and techniques. Start with the nation bonuses and then design the build to complement them. Here he inverts the normal order of CLASSICAL and SCI2 because he feels he's got enough wealth built up.
posted by Tim at 11:57 AM

blue_thunder asked a "weird question" at the Rise of Nations Heaven Forum

My friend asked me a qestion which I couldn't answer: Why is important to build cities? He is n00b and he builds only 2 cities. I build as many I can and I see that everybody do this. But really, I don't know the answer on question 'why is having city so important?'

The typical responses were "more of everything." But me, being a contrarian, I disagree.
More of everything is not really true, and in any event, there is more to it than that.

Resource collection:

• Food, Timber and Metal. On most maps, you can keep yourself capped on pretty much everything with only three cities, as long as you efficiently use production boosters (granaries, smelters, etc.) and research the techs when available. 15 farms produces +450 food. With 3 cities that's +480. If you had any fishing or rares you'd be capped out. Same thing for timber and metal. Rarely do you see good players building extra cities for those resources.


• Wealth. Wealth is primarily generated from trade routes, taxation, and rare resources. In 1on1 play, you can only trade within your own empire, so having lots of cities is important. But you can get 6 trade routes with only 4 cities, and you'd never fill out all the routes if you had 5 cities. And, of course, in team games, you only need one city for a lot of trade routes with your allies. Rares only require you to have a market or a dock, of course, so there is no need to have more than one city for those. Fishing is an excellent way to gather wealth. Taxation is based on territory and the best way to expand territory is with more cities. But if you are capped on wealth from caravans and fishing, then extra territory would go to waste. Taxation is a good reason for expansion though.


• Knowledge. Extra cities also enable you to make more universities and to produce knowledge. If you are booming that's great, but usually there will be fighting early on and so having more than three full universities can be a little overkill, particularly if you use the university upgrades. When I make more cities, I first put in a temple, and then I put in a university. Even if I never fill it with scholars, +10 knowledge is worth the initial investment cost of the building. So knowledge is a good reason for expansion.


• Oil. This is the biggest reason I end up making more cities. If you have a small territory, then you can be competitive up until Industrial Age. At that point Oil becomes important and requirs you to have a big territory to have access to the oil wells. Also, you can put a refinery in EACH town to give you +33% oil production. If you only had 3 towns, that would only be 2x. But if you had 6 towns, you could be at 3x, plus you'd have easy access to a lot more oil wells.


• Rare resources. Having access to good rare resources is an excellent reason for making more cities and controlling space.

Denial of resources. Not to be forgotten is the flipside of the coin to the above - denying resources from your enemy. You can squeeze your opponent out of valuable resources like oil, rares, and fishing lakes (e.g., African Watering Hole). This is a great reason for extra cities. This is the reason the "border push" is so powerful.

Depth.Another major reason to make lots of cities is to create defensive depth to your empire. (Depth used to be one of the Characteristics of the Defense). Empty border cities are great for keeping the enemy far from your capital and your economy. Having deep borders with heavy attrition discourages raiding. It also foces the battles closer to the heart of the enemy and away from you. Keeping the enemy from your economy and capital is a good reason to make extra cities.

Wonders. If you like to build wonders, then you are going to want to have a few extra cities, since you can only place one wonder in each city (Egyptians get two). I usually only try to get 3 wonders or so, so this isn't a big deal for me.

So in summary, build more cities for:

• Taxation


• Knowledge


• Oil


• Rare resources


• Resource denial


• Depth

posted by Tim at 10:04 AM

I know you're thinking of the Monty Python Lyrics, but I am referring to the Chinese civ in Rise of Nations. The Chinese have several virtues that really fit my playstyle.

• Instant villagers that go where you want when you want them, just remember to click the waypoint before hitting 'V.' This fits my game because I like to set up waypoints and use the infinite queue a lot. Now, I can still do the setup, but get a major boost to the econ by having the villagers appear instantly, as long as I have the food. Which leads me to another point: the Pyramids are great for Chinese because they provide more food for instant villagers, but they also provide the +1 city for the border pushing large cities.
• Large cities so they are harder to rush. This is always useful since rushing is risky, but still very dangerous. Also, even during later age attacks, the Chinese cities will take longer to reduce, enabling you to get appropriate defenses in response.
• Large cities so their initial radius enables them to grab resource spots more easily. I like to position my towns so they can grab as many good resource locations as possible. Chinese cities make this even easier. A minor plus, but it fits my style nicely.
• Good early border pushing with those bigger cities. I like to border push (even though I think it's over-rated). The bigger cities are nice for pushing back enemy borders. Helps secure some of that early game key terrain.
• Instant caravans and merchants so you can quickly get your economy up and running and there's no waiting for them to train before setting new waypoints. This is the biggest bonus for me. I also get distracted waiting for that merchant to finish so I can set a new waypoint for the next one. Now I can spend 15-20 seconds in the game to hit 'N', and then RIGHT CLICK on rare, 'B', RIGHT CLICK on rare, 'B', RIGHT CLICK on rare, 'B', on each rare resource I want to send merchants. My rare resources stat goes way up when I play Chinese in team games. This makes the Porcelain Tower an excellent Wonder to get.
• A UU that is actually useful: the Fire Lance line. The Fire Lance line is one of the best UUs in the game, and it comes during Ages where most of the fighting occurs, so it is actually useful. If you have the Pyramids and Colossus you'll also have a bonus to Food and Timber collection which is essential to making large numbers of these very powerful UUs.
• Cheaper science research. The nicest thing about this bonus is you can research SCI2 off of only ONE wealth ruin and prior to building a market. This means you don't have to wait on a market to go CLASSICAL if you are so inclined.

I noticed that I always had better than usual success with them in random civ games, and the above reasons are probably why. So I think I'm gonna start playing them exclusively for awhile to refine my play with them. I like them a lot more than Koreans I think.
posted by Tim at 9:13 AM

This was a non-gaming weekend, but it was not devoid of Rise of Nations. We took Wifey & Kids to visit Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. We got filled up on the glorious history of the United States and the Rise of our Nation. This follows closely on the heels of our recent visit to Monticello.
posted by Tim at 8:32 AM