Questions

[Conditional Zenith]

I do not own the game or have a computer which the game will run on, but there are some questions I would like answered. I am familiar with civ3 and AOK.

1) are there units like Chinooks or APC's?

2) can your ally just cancel the alliance while you are going through their territory, thus giving you heaps of attrition?

3) are alliances an all or nothing thing or can you just agree to certain things, like ROP?

4) can you set your fighters to automatically attack any bombers entering your territory or is it manual? and can you set fighters to escort bombers?

5) I read that you can only have 8 cities. can you capture more than 8?

6) what effect is there if you flank a unit rather than attack it straight on?

7) is the scout line of unit a sitting duck, are they hard to see, can they go into territory of someone you are at peace with, and do they suffer attrition?

8) how does unit upgrading work?

9) when you set up the game so that there is now war unitl age X, does that mean everyone is in age X, the declarer and/or declaree of war, or something else?

I realise that there are a lot of questions, but any answers would be appreciated.

 

[Rohag]

1) Chinooks - no; APC - no APCs that carry infantry, but there is a light armor line of modern units that counters foot/light infantry.

2) It costs your ally to downgrade to "peace" status and I believe the game gives you a short while to withdraw your troops before they start suffering attrition.

3) Currently there are only three diplomatic states: Enemy, Peace (no right of passage), Ally (ROP)

4) You can designate a rally/patrol point for fighters and they will automatically attack any unit nearby. Escort: Both fighters and bombers can be based at the same airbase and you can send them all to the same target area, but that's not quite the same as escort; you'll get a better effect by sending the bombers to attack a certain target and the fighters to rally nearby with an aggressive stance or set to defend one of the bombers.

5) Yes. I've had as many as 22-25 at the end of a game.

6) Flank attack - 100% more damage inflicted; Rear - 50% more (BHG made this determination on the basis of advice from a military source)

7) Scouts do not suffer attrition at all - they can go anywhere anytime without worrying about attrition, cannot be seen while stationary unless detected by a detector (another scout, scout tower), and can upgrade to the commando and special forces with sniper and other special abilities.

8) Once you age up, you can pay to upgrade individual unit lines at the building where they are built. You do not have to upgrade every era, and can wait several eras before upgrading. In that case, your upgrade costs more but takes that unit line to the current age directly without evolving through the intervening ages.

9) I don't know.

 

[Conditional Zenith]

Thanks for the answers Rohag.

I have a couple more questions:

10) What are ruins and what do they do?

11) Are the rare resources immediately visible, or does something have to be done before you can see them?

 

[Rohag]

10) Ruins are RoN's equivalent of "Goodie Huts." They look like miniature Stonehenges and are scattered about the map from the beginning of the game. When a unit touches the ruin the unit's owner immediately receives a gift of whatever resource (except knowledge) he/she most lacks at that moment of the game. Scouts, whether on auto-scout or way-pointed by the player, will automatically depart from their path to grab a ruin whenever one comes into its view. Researching Science (I believe) upgrades both the line of sight of scouts and increases the value of ruins to the discovering player.

There is also a "Relics" rare resource in the game that looks like the Easter Island heads. Placing a merchant on it increases the player's knowledge gather rate and reduces research and upgrade times.

11) Most rare resources are immediately visible from the beginning of the game. A few, like uranium, only become visible later in the game from the age in which their bonuses begin to be useful.

Oil, a basic resource, only appears in patches on rocky ground from the Industrial Age onward.

Personal Opinion: RoN is truly a great historical RTS game that has cleverly integrated some elements from the TBS world. I would not, however, describe it as a "real-time Civilization"; it has a feel and flow of its own. RoN has more adjustable settings - like research speed, cost, etc. - than any other game I've seen, and a fair number of Civ fans have found satisfying ways to play (check out Apolyton's RoN Forums).

 

[fret]

5) - As far as I can tell, the theoretical limit for total number of cities you can control, without actually winning the game is...

((N*8)+8)-1

..where N=number of opposing Nations (each can 'build' 8), then plus 8 for the total that you can build, and remove 1 because there has to be at least one city in control of someone else, otherwise youve won the game.

So if you are playing against 7 other nations (I think thats the limit, unless its possible to mod it with the ini??) the maximum you could have under your control would be 63.

One problem with this though - Consider if you are at a stage where your city limit is, for example 5, but you have only 'built' 4 cities. If you then take over an enemy city, before building one yourself, then you lose that available 'slot' in the number of cities you can build.


9) - I'm not sure you can set the stage at which wars begin? You may be able to but it doesnt seem to be an option?? You can set the tech-level that the game starts in, so if you start in the industrial age, everyone begins with tech research at the same level. I'm not sure if this effects both the normal tech research, and the research done by certain buildings - in RoN, you can research things like Taxation at Temples?!?! for some reason, not sure what thats all about . Other stuff like research that enables you to build units or buildings faster can be done at the woodcutters yard, granaries or smelters etc.