Rise of Nations Demo. The demo of the original version, which actually plays quite well.
Empire Earth 2, to compare to Rise of Nations. I already have this via GOG.
There is a lot of overlap between Rise of Nations and Empire Earth 2. Overall, I think I like Rise of Nations more, though. Empire Earth wins on the civilopedia front, but Rise of Nations seems more polished. In EE2, if a worker finishes a building, they just stand there, even if there's an unbuilt one right next to them. In RON, like in AOE2, they'll build the one next door too. And I think some of the concepts in EE2 don't really add much. The crown system, even after reading the civilopedia entry, is difficult to understand in terms of who gets it and why, and it seems like certain bonuses are almost always the best ones. And while a cool idea, I haven't found weather to be that nice in EE2. Mostly I just get annoyed that bad weather makes it hard to see what's going on.
EE2 does have more ages, but the difference between them often doesn't feel that big.
In Rise of Nations, I haven't found any seemingly-superflous systems. I also like that the tech is a combination of library + regular buildings, versus the nearly-all-university of EE2. It never really felt right that if you aged up early in EE2, you completely lost out on the tech you skipped.
Nukes also feel and look quite powerful in Rise of Nations. I leveled nearly an entire town of mine when testing one in sandbox mode.
RON also aged relatively well. I'd put it as aging better than Age of Empires II, but probably a bit below Age of Mythology. I was happy that the demo ran with no technical issues whatsoever.
Although it isn't enough better than EE2 that paying $20 for the new one would be a better value than the $10 I paid for EE2. $11 for the CDs of the original probably would be a better value, though.
Empire Earth is in my opinion the best Empire Earth series:
While all use the same units, only some unique units and buildings was added in its expansion it has so much customisation.
You can create your owm civilizations with a point system, you put points on improving your units which can be things like speed or damage but also things like cost reduction or build speed.
In the expansion you can also spend points on powerful abilities such as allowing you to build town centers directly or having one more citizen in each mine.
You can focus your points on few things however each thing you get in that cathagory make all other picks more expansive which mean focus give you less, or you can spread your picks and get more but you don't get anything very powerful like if you focused.
In the game you can then spend some resources to uppgrade your units in different things however you can only uppgrade each unit type with 10 points with everything but armor costing 2 points and each thing can also only be uppgraded twice and you can't undo the uppgrades of that unit type even then you uppgrade to newer tech the uppgrades stick.
So you can have very different units compared to your opponets, maybe your sword cavalry is faster but his is stronger, your archers maybe can shoot further and hit harder but his is faster and toughter so they have easier time to keep up with the cavalry.
The game have a pretty complex counter system for the later ages but for the early ones it is just a trinagle type system, navy also use that system for basicly all ages.
The age changes are pretty significant in that game and still it has as many as 14 of them (15 with expansion), you can really feel the advantage of for example having airplanes before your opponent, but they can still be countered by partisan from industrial era.
The units range from pretty simple ones that useally are made to counter another type like spermen vs shock (sword) to things like crossbowmen that useally 1-kill infantry units, even shock (counter for archers) but reload slowly, is extreamly expansive and useless vs cav, 1-hp per hit on cav.
Useally the game really benfint the side that use the correct units for example a few artillery that hit the same area may destroy everything that is in their area of effect but they are very weak and expansive so they are weak vs other artillery and cavalry but usefull vs slow infantry.
The game also have things like priest that can convert opponents to your side however they are usless if opponents units are covered by universities.
A more powerful unit then the priest is the prophet who can call on camalties which are the most powerful in the early ages because their power don't increase with ages, they are something to fear, even one can destroy more or less an army however like priest they can't do much if opponent keep their units behind temples and things like crossbow can 1-hit both them and priest from long distance.
It also have things like moral which makes units that defend their civilan buildings stronger.
Empire Earth 2 lacks the customisation of civilizations and units of Empire Earth 1 while it add more customisation to the game setup.
It have the nice map modes that alot more games should use in my opinion.
It have some very intressting, maybe even unique ideas such as random changing weather that effects things like speed of the units.
It tech system is intressting with how you only need to get half of them to age up but you will never be able to get rest of them if you so you maybe want to wait and get more techs.
However the units aren't as intressting as the first game, maybe you can say they are more balaced however you don't find any of the destructive things of EE 1 with maybe the exception of nukes (you can acctually stack radiation in EE2 if you for example dropped alot of bombs around the same time in the same location which can make the ground extreamly dangerous to enter, instanlty killing units or heavy damage from just one tick.
Its territory system have both ups and downs, the good thing is that it makes ground much more valuable then just for resources, the bad is it can snowball really badly because much of the buildings are limited per territory and you can only get so many people from one territory you need more to be able to build more units.
It also have intressting crowns to fight over, and allow the winner to chose between different bonuses, however to be able to get a crown you need to have all of thats crown technology so if you age up you may lose the crown next time.
Rise of Nations as a game I got later, maybe even after Empire Earth 2
It like EE2 lacks customisation among the civilizations compared to EE1 which is to bad but civilizations feels more unique in EE2 but EE2 put alot of focus on regional groups which is not to be forgotten.
Rise of Nations like EE2 dont have the destructivness of units that EE1 have and no prophets or priest like the EE, its units are maybe the most balanced of the games.
It have increased cost system making units and buildings cost go up if you build more of them, so you pay less if you go for vararity instead of monotone armies.
Most of its units like in EE2 follow a normal counter system, it like EE2 mostly lacks special units but have some, but not things like Crossbowmen of EE1.
I haven't talked much about resource gathering in these games however they are not the same in any of them.
Empire Earth 1 have 5 resources food which mostly comes from farming later on but it is possible to have a hunter socity in that game.
Wood is a limted resource compared to the other ones however it is maybe the easiest one to get alot of citizens to gather on.
Stone, Iron and Gold is basicly unlimited however you can only use a few citizens on each mine making it important to get alot of mines.
You can also increase your citizens effectivness by permamently put citizens in settlements and its improvemnts, while expansive its make your limited resource gathering more effective and it basicly is a way to sell food for other resoruces.
Empire Earth 2 do away mostly with the put people in buildings, but now you can purchase things at the market.
It also have unique resources that is only for some eras before they go obselete and get instantly sold on the market allowing for more intressting experince.
Gold can also be gotten from trading both land and sea trade is possible.
Technology is gotten by tech points not by spending resources.
Rise of Nations have many different resoruces to many which are unlocked by later ages.
The game is based around cities which allow for control of territory but also for things like farming and building some buildings like efficency ones which make resource gathering much much more efficent in a close area of the city.
The other thing is the resource per 30-seconds limit which is increased by economy tech, if you try to gather more of any resource knowledege is exeption from this limit you lose all overflow.
Much of Rise of Nation Economy system is about Quality not Quantity which EE system is about.
Well I would probably call maybe the 90s early 00s for the golden era of RTS because that is in my opinion the era many of the best RTS was made.
In my opinion the best RTS was EE1 or Age of Mytholoy not maybe because they are the best game, but they have had the best feelings of the RTS I have played
