Game Moments #5 - Rise of Nations
Hardcore Enough For the Challenge?
I don't really consider myself a hardcore gamer anymore. I'm somewhere in that never-neverland between hardcore and casual. We came up with a few interesting names a couple of weeks ago, but none of them fit. But I don't think it's the lack of hardcore sensibilities. It's a lack of time, and an abundance of responsibilities. Boring, I know, but that's the way of life. I still make time for games. And the cool thing is, my daughters are getting old enough that I can play games with them. So that responsibility thing isn't without some really awesome benefits.

I usually don't play new games at the hardest difficulty. I never really have, but sometimes now I even play a game on a "sissy" game setting a notch below standard. My objective isn't to make a game "last" by playing it on a harder setting (and thus having to replay sections over and over again). Instead, I really want the game to NOT join my ever-increasing pile of Games That I Hope To Finish Someday. Some of those games have gathered twelve years of dust.

But I still like taking on the occasional brutal challenge - as a lot of the previous Game Moments have been about.

Oh, no! It's an RTS Story!
This time, the game is Rise of Nations (with the Thrones and Patriots expansion). I hadn't played it in a while, so Thursday evening after work I started a game. United States vs. the Aztecs. I was the United States - it's a little weaker in the early game (except for the fast-build of the first wonder, and the free government upgrades). The random map was - I think - British Isles or something like that. Basically two very large land-masses separated by a channel. I had a single opponent this time, with the difficulty set on "Challenging" I think (the highest AI level before it just cheats and gives the AI more resources). A good, clean, fair fight. I win about 90% of the time at this level, but it really depends on which nations are being played. The Aztecs can be brutal with a solid early-game offense, but the separation between the two land masses may save me. The game was set on Conquest objectives - you had to completely wipe out the opposition.

I'm doing pretty well in the early game - I get my navy hopping early on, and I do my usual strategy of sneaking my fourth city onto the opposing player's land mass before he's fully built out. If I can, I then quickly build out my army there so I can avoid having them cross the ocean (where they are vulnerable) to attack later. I also try and build a Terra Cotta Army wonder in this invading city.

I'm not doing so great, and I'm a bit behind the Aztecs in technology. I'm making up for it in wonders, though - I've got the Hanging Gardens, the Colossus, the Coloseum, and the Terra Cotta Army wonder going. Most of our efforts are going into naval combat, but I've just about got the Aztecs on the ropes, destroying their main port. The land battle is going slowly, but I've managed to build one more city and take over one more. I probably possess 65% of the land mass on the map, and I've definitely got naval supremacy.

Been There, Done That.... now what?
And then I'm called away. Dinner, maybe. I can't really remember. Anyway, I thought I paused the game. Later, that little annoying JUSCHED.EXE - the annoying Java Update utility that refuses to be shut down and removed even though I don't use Java that often - decides that I REALLY need to download the latest update, and it's SO FREAKING IMPORTANT it minimizes my game so I can DOWNLOAD THE UPDATES to a virtual machine I seldom use RIGHT FREAKING NOW. (Yeah, I'm not Java's biggest fan, though it's not a bad programming language).

I recently bought a laptop, so I don't use my machine downstairs as much anymore. That night my wife wanted to watch a video, and after that i had some game development stuff to do on the laptop So I didn't get back to my game. The following night, we went to see Narnia. Saturday was super-busy, and I got Age of Empires III and installed it on the laptop. So the poor old (emphasis on old) desktop computer didn't get visited again until Monday night.

And then I saw that Rise of Nations was there, minimized. Fully expecting to see a "You have been defeated" message (or a crash, which happens a little too frequently with that game), I opened it up again, trying to remember how long I must have left it going.

By the Way, While You Were Out...
Much to my surprise, I was still in the game. My naval bases were destroyed (though one ship remained, ignored), and my two offshore mining stations were long gone. Some of my farms and other buildings on my starting island had been torn apart by air attacks, but many were still going and in use by citizens. All of my cities on the Aztec island had been captured EXCEPT for my first one. Everything (including the Terra Cotta Army) had been destroyed, the Aztec navy was shelling it with something like 20 battleships off the coast, and it was being pounded in the air by about a half-dozen fighters. But the AI was stuck in some kind of loop - without my interrupting it with any kind of interactions, it was continuing to pound the city to mash but hadn't bothered to invade it. Concentrating all its force on the one city, it left everything else alone. For FOUR DAYS.

You just can't win the war without infantry.

The battle itself wasn't particularly interesting to me - I'd forgotten about it entirely over the weekend. But now I faced an interesting situation that challenged the hardcore gamer in me. My enemy no doubt had nearly infinite resources at this point. Me, I had probably half as much, but it was still virtually infinite, so we were on parity there - except for oil. I had only about 1700 units of oil. Since every offensive unit at higher tech EXCEPT for infantry required oil, that was a severe disadvantage. I was down to only three functioning cities - plus the nonfunctional one getting pounded, which ironically made it my most important city. I was several ages behind - the Aztecs now had nukes, stealth bombers, missile shields, and AI to allow it to create units INSTANTLY. I still had sailing ships and horse-mounted cavalry. The Aztecs had built nearly every wonder remaining, giving them an advantage there as well.

On the Plus Side, They Won't Be Expecting Us...
My first order of business was to drive up my tech tree. I hoped the opposing force wouldn't interrupt it's bug-caused shelling of my long-dead coastal town to take more deadly action. What I REALLY hoped was that the AI had invested everything into naval and air forces, running into its population limits so it couldn't generate a sizeable force of infantry to feel "comfortable" making an attack on the city. I counted on it.

While my tech was growing, I started creating new cities on my island. More cities meant more places the AI had to conquer when its counter-attack came before wiping me out of the game. With AI and near-infinite food supplies, as long as one city was left standing I could instantly generate lots of citizens to rebuild defenses.

The next trick was oil. There was no land-based oil fields, so I had to go to sea. That meant risking contact with the enemy, which could bring a WHOLE mess of trouble on my head in an instant. I had to build a dock first, which I placed behind my island. There were several oil fields (I was playing on a large map) behind my island, so I sent citizens to build oil platforms there. Fortunately, the Aztec navy was all bunched up trying to take turns shelling that ONE CITY, so nobody was patrolling to see I was getting active again.

I researched everything but missile shield. I started building my forces - a slow, hard slog, since I had to wait for oil production. I also researched nukes. As I began researching Missile Shield for myself - my last technology - I started building up my forces and moving them into position out in the ocean, hoping I didn't accidentally run into some enemy ships on the way. I did end up moving my ships and transports past an Aztec oil rig, but since I didn't attack it, I noticed no effect.

Normally, if I'm fighting an enemy that I've let get to AI technology (I try hard to avoid it), I attack the enemy infrastructure. Since it can build units instantly, the key is to deprive it of resources so it can't afford to build anything. That wasn't going to work this time. So I had two strategies I could attempt. The first was to perform a two-prong attack. The AI in Rise of Nations tends to commit all its forces to one battle at a time, so diversions work really well. In this case, however, I was going for something a little trickier. All I needed was a solid foothold on the other island.

Ready - Set - Blow Yourself Up!
Just moments before my missile shield was researched, I unleashed my assault. I opened up by nuking my own city - the one that had been getting pounded for four days straight. I aimed right on the coastline. The resulting blast took out most of the Aztec navy and several aircraft. My intention was that the Aztecs would immediately begin rebuilding the navy, sending ships back into position. I had a few seconds before the new ships arrived. I immediately created a ton of citizens, and set them to work immediately building a temple (to extend the city's influence), barracks, a couple of SAM sites, a fortress, a dock, an airfield, and factories for artillery and armor.

As soon as I got the build queue going, my navy began attacking cities on the far side of the island. The intent was two-fold - to "soften" the cities for my invading troops that were loaded in transports, and to attract the enemy navy away from my poor beleagered city. The first one worked - the second didn't. The newly recreated Aztec Navy was coming BACK to my coastal city, and began pounding me again. But they focused on the city, not my new construction projects. My SAM batteriest soon wiped out all the enemy fighters, so the AI started sending stealth bombers to pound the city.

On the other side of the island, I brought in my troops. We took the first city easily. Not wanting to lose my momentum, I kept moving to the next city, and hastily started producing citizens to build defenses and more barracks & factories. My coastal city, by this time, was finishing up its construction projects and I started cranking out combat units, and sending them en masse to the nearest Aztec city. By the time the AI got around to launching an effective resistance, I'd already taken a third of the islands.

First the Hammer, Then the Anvil
Part two of my plan was to attack enemy combat unit production centers. While the Aztecs had infinite resource and could build units instantly, building factories, airfields, docks, and barracks still took time. I didn't really bother with the docks - I conceded naval superiority to my opponent. My units would have to be built on the island. My usual strategy was to launch a main attack (or defend against a main attack), but send a group of "skirmishers" along the flank to cause as much damage to production centers as possible. This caused damage, and made a great defense, as the Aztecs would often break off their attack to deal with my "suicide strike." This was particularly effective when the Aztecs would cross the ocean to attack my home cities - I'd immediately launch an all-out assault on a city, and the troops would usually turn back, and make the slow crossing of the ocean the other way.

I was often fighting with just infantry, lacking oil to make enough tanks, missile launchers, or aircraft to make a difference. Cities near the middle of the island changed hands a DOZEN times or more. At one point the Aztecs nearly kicked me off the island completely, taking my original coastal city (I didn't win it back for forty-five minutes). All told, the battle took me nearly three hours from the point where I first discovered the game was still running. It was a brutal, frantic slog where my computer would visibly slow in certain areas because of the sheer number of units and explosions.

It was definitely my longest Rise of Nations battle EVER, even if you disregard the time spent where the game was running without a player. But seeing the score pop-up when I finally took the final Aztec city made it all worthwhile (Note the Game Time - man, what would it have looked like if I'd let it go four more hours - there's no room for an extra digit!):

Labels: Game Moments, Mainstream Games

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