RISE OF NATIONS ISO UPGRADE

Oil, for example, can only be collected once your nation has reached the Modern Age. These luxury resources differ from the five basic resources of wood, metal, food, money and knowledge, mainly because they only become visible when you have reached a certain technology level. They also produce merchants who ride out on their faithful mules to set up shop next to various luxury resources dotted around the map, such as lemon trees, gems, horses, rubber, uranium and oil. Markets are particularly useful as they allow you to build caravans that link your cities and increase your income through trade. Other ways to push your borders forward include constructing things like universities (which also increase the knowledge of your nation), temples, farms, fortresses and markets.

RISE OF NATIONS ISO UPGRADE

Why, for example, is the upgrade to increase your ships' speed found in a granary? Call us picky, but maybe that kind of technology is more suited to the docks building. This problem is compounded by the fact that sometimes an upgrade seems to be completely misplaced. It may also be worth noting that due to the immense amount of upgrades available, it's very easy to forget where to find the upgrade you want. There's even a turbo resource-gathering mode that means you can literally forget about your economy and concentrate on destroying the planet instead. Thankfully, the single-player skirmish mode provides a variety of options aimed at minimising this problem.

The knock-on effect of this is that you can often become bogged down in managing your economy in order to gather enough resources to research your tech, when all you really want to do is raise an army and, well, raze. As a general rule the nation that wins a battle tends to be the nation that's completed its research tree first. As well as civic technology, you need to research military, commerce and science. There are seven levels in total, so while you can only build seven cities per map (which is more than enough - believe us) there is of course the added option of capturing enemy cities to increase your numbers, and ultimately your overall national strength. Each level you advance up the civic tech tree allows you to build one more settlement. But most important of all, you need to make sure you have researched civic technology at your library. Is it near a good source of metal and wood? Is the land fertile enough to farm? Is it easily defendable? You also need to have enough food and wood available to actually start building. you can't just wander about setting up cities here, there and everywhere.ДЇirstly, there's location to consider. In fact, success in RoN lies in your ability to spread out as quickly as possible from your capital city in a manner similar to a turn-based game we may have already mentioned. One of the most obvious ways to increase the size of your territory is to found new cities. By watching your border edge forward or slip backward, you can gauge exactly how powerful your nation is compared with your neighbour. This real-time, shifting coloured line across the battlefield indicates the limit of your territory. One of the main reasons RoN has gamplay in abundance is down to its concept of national borders.

and always will remain, secondary in this genre. Besides, show us a strategy game that's become a classic purely because it's pleasing on the eye. Big Huge Games has taken the sensible if not fashionable view that gameplayД¬omes before looks. But overall, there's none of the beauty of C&C: Generals' lush 3D world. And you have to admire the way each culture in the game has a different graphical style, and in many cases completely unique units too.

Frills such as birds circling the battlefield as well as decent unit animation breathe a little life into the static landscapes. Consequently, RoN's graphics do the job and nothing more. Sadly, these days AoE is hardly a glittering showcase of cutting-edge visuals.

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