Rise Of Nations : A guide
February 7th, 2006 | by Digvijay Lamba |Rise of Nations has been one of the better RTS games I have played and amongst those just released (read AOE III) it’s clearly the winner. I will write a review and a comparison later but for now… for all those who want to give it a go here is to you.First of all, do the honours by visiting the official pages:
Take a quick look at Microsoft’s page. It’s rubbish but hey, you have to see the official page once.
Rise of Nations at MS. The other official page however, Rise of Nations at BHG is a BIG improvement. Learn a bit about what it’s like here and then move on to greener pastures.
Now that you know what RON means, it’s time to get started. After a smooth but rather long installation, try out your first game. The tutorials is neat and if you are an old RTS hand you can take a crack at a single player game right away. If you are adventurous, you can also try the campaigns, though let me tell you, they are more of a Rome:Total War or a Civ game mixed with a RTS genre. It makes for MUCH longer campaigns and the opinions can be mixed but personally, I LOVED the world campaign. Your third world country kicking the world’s ass is a good boost I guess 
Now that you have had a decent beginners luck and good fun, it’s time to find other people and do more. Start with the two best one stop shops for RON.
Infidels Clan
Rise of Nations Heaven
Links, strategies, basic information and whatever else you may need is here. Also look for fellow players, form clans, and do the fan bit at RON Heaven. Like any other game Heaven remains my favourite Gaming Fan Site. Ofcourse, the official site at Big Huge Games and their forums and links are worth a look too. May be you even want to try some of the recorded games, though how the top level click masters play is never how I play… so it’s more “Oh! you could do THAT???” experience for me than anything else.
Now that you are beginning to get interested, it’s time to get better and beat the shit out of the hardest levels. Try a game against 6 or 7 Hardest computers and get your ass kicked. It’s time to find some strategy stats, start picking a favourite civilization and see how the strategies are developing. Fortunately, the two one stop shops I spoke of also have the best and more than sufficient stuff in strategy.
First of all, go to the Infidel clans strategy page, Rise of Nations Strategy, and it will take you several several games before you have managed to take their stats and tips and create your own unbeatable clan. You might then want to visit the forums at Heavens, Rise of Nations Heaven Forums, where there’s plenty of tips and tricks and discussions and flame wars to last you years of fandom. Oh, did I mention they also have the best starting guide? You might just wanna go there first 
Now that you are true fan and have begun to seriously kick ass…. add my RSS feed and links page for RON to your feed reader. Who knows I might give you some interesting links you are going to love.
The links page is here: My Links Page for RON and Add it as an RSS Feed
More about my games, a review and some experiences later!!
ciao
Digvijay
Technorati Tags: RoN, Games, Strategy, Links, RTS
