Data-driven decision making is the only way to go
The amazing 2003/2004 RTS by Big Huge Games (2014 Extended Edition available on Steam — though that version is riddled with gameplay bugs!)
Now that nearly 100 people have subscribed to Fall of Nations, it seems like I should go into more detail about what exactly I want to accomplish with it. I’m also starting to run into the character limit of a Workshop mod’s description – and even if I wasn’t it’s still becoming pretty unwieldy.
Let’s start with the broadest strokes and work our way down from there.
In the course of my RoN modding adventures, I decided to make a broad-scope “tech demo” style mod, showcasing some of the moddable aspects of RoN that I felt were being underutilisied – and hopefully learning a few things in the process.
After trying to mod a few things that I feel have been vastly undermodded, I ran into.. some problems. After much frustrating troubleshooting and testing, I realised this was due a limitation of RoN’s mod manager.
I then got to work on how to get around it.
Continue reading “My Workaround for the Limitations of the RoN Mod Manager”
If you’ve ever tried to browse the Steam Workshop for Rise of Nations, you may have been frustrated at how none of the entries appear to have thumbnails. I looked into this and it appears that this is because the native mod uploader does not support thumbnails.
Nonetheless, by using a workaround, last night I became probably the first person to ever have a thumbnail for my RoN mod on the Steam Workshop. Here’s how I did it.
Continue reading “How to Add a Thumbnail to a RoN Mod on the Steam Workshop”
Hop on the wagon as we run through Granaries, Lumber Mills, Universities and more.
Continue reading “Building a Strong Economy Part 4: Enhancement / Amplifier Buildings”
After publishing my article on War Elephants, TripleAAA commented asking about Militia and Minuteman (Minutemen?) against War Elephants. I hadn’t tested that but it seemed like useful information to have, so I put it on the to-do list.
While running these new tests I also ended up with some questions of my own regarding the ranged attack of Mahouts. Was the damage of the melee and ranged attacks identical? Was the damage modifier different for the ranged and melee attacks (i.e. would one attack deal different damage to the other depending on what unit was being hit)?
I set out to answer both sets of questions, and ended up stumbling into a few surprising answers in the course of doing so.
Continue reading “Elephants Followup: Militia, Minuteman, and the Fake Melee Attack of Mahouts”
Regular members of the Rise of Nations Discord server will likely be at least vaguely aware of how much I dislike fighting against War Elephants, and much of this came from my experience while playing the Alexander campaign on Toughest1 (which also provided some useful insights).
However it wasn’t until recently that I actually crunched the numbers on exactly how effective these behemoths really are. It turns out they are somehow even better than I thought they were.
Continue reading “War Elephant: Most Powerful Unit in the Game?”
Rare resources are a secondary resource available alongside the likes of basic (primary) resources such as Food. They provide a way to supplement other economic production, either by building on existing strengths, or helping to shore up weaknesses. Sometimes they can also create new strengths, allowing you to utilise strategies that might not otherwise have been viable options.
Continue reading “Building a Strong Economy Part 3: Fish and Rare Resources”
There are a few things about resources, resource gathering, and resource costs in Rise of Nations which don’t necessarily fit cleanly into their own separate category, but which are still important to know.
Continue reading “Building a Strong Economy Part 2: General Game Concepts”
Economy and military are two pillars of most games within the RTS genre: you gather resources in order to produce an army of some kind, then use that army to win the game. Whether it’s made up of Zerglings, Grizzly Battle Tanks, Footmen, or Fire Lances – the overall concept is basically the same. Units cost resources, so more resources gathered = bigger army.
Rise of Nations in particular seems to especially focus on the importance of a strong economy, so this series will go over how to get one.
Continue reading “Building a Strong Economy Part 1: Basic Resources”
After looking around online, nobody quite seems to know exactly how Caravans work.1 People agree that Caravans generate Wealth, but even how they do it doesn’t seem to be universally understood, much less how the amount generated is calculated.
Well, since nobody else seems to have tested to figure it out how all of it works, I did. Here’s how Caravans work, in detail.
