I think that I have a problem: I’m addicted to the Rise of Nations expansion Thrones and Patriots (TaP). When I’m at work, I wish I were at home playing TaP, and as soon as I get home, I rush to the computer and spend a good portion of the evening strategizing. I can’t help myself; the game is just that much fun.
The last couple of years have seen a great number of real-time strategy games come and go. At first glance, Rise of Nations did not seem so much different from other games in the genre, but it quickly distinguished itself from the pack. The player still gathered the same sort of resources (food, metal, wood), but the game also featured national borders and the ability to take over other towns and claim them as your own. With the release of TaP, an already great game has just gotten better.
To begin with, TaP offers the player six new civilizations from which to choose: the Americans, Dutch, Indians, Iroquois, Lakota and the Persians. If you are unfamiliar with RoN, the civilization you choose will have a major effect on the game because, in addition to having unique units, each civilization has a unique power that will benefit the player militarily or economically or in any number of ways. The new civilizations are very fun to play around with; I’m very pleased to finally have the Persian War Elephants that I enjoyed so much in Age of Empires II. I’m also pleased to play as the Dutch and finally see my people represented. Everyone laughed at us after the release of Goldmember (I’m from Holland, isn’t that veird?), but now we’ll take over the world with our armed merchants. The unique abilities of the new civilizations really make the game even more fascinating. For example, the Iroquoian scouts can pass through trees and the Lakota do not need to build farms because their citizens and cavalry units gather food merely by existing.
The unique ability of each civilization allows the player to customize their gaming experience based on their personal preferences. In TaP, the addition of a system of government allows the player to further customize their experience. By building a Senate, the player can select a form of government that will affect the gameplay by providing different benefits, as well as a unique General unit. As the game progresses through the ages, different forms of government became available. While this certainly adds an element of strategy, it wasn’t as significant as it could have been; because it wasn’t a mandatory aspect of the gameplay, I often forgot that it was there.
The single player aspect has been expanded as well. In the first game, there was only one campaign; the player could pick from any of the available civilizations and set out to conquer the world in a giant game of real-time Risk. However, the campaign stretched all the way from ancient to modern times and I lost interest as the technology became more advanced. There was nothing wrong with the gameplay; this was merely a matter of personal preference. I’m sure there were plenty of people who couldn’t wait to get as technologically advanced as possible.
Fortunately, TaP offers something for everyone. There are four brand new campaigns, two of which follow the military careers of Alexander the Great and Napoleon. These two campaigns provide advice for the player based on the decisions that Alexander and Napoleon actually made. However, there is a bit of inconsistency; sometimes the player can choose to go off the beaten path and revise history, and sometimes the computer tells the player where to go next. The New World campaign has the player select a European nation, a Native American civilization or the Americans. Each group has its own set of requirements to win, so essentially this is three campaigns wrapped into one. As an added touch, the New World campaign board looks so much like an ancient map that the bottom of it is inscribed with the phrase “"Americae sive novi orbis nova desciptio", which was a very nice touch. There is also a Cold War campaign that features exclusively modern technology, extra counterintelligence and the potential for nuclear warfare, complete with a DEFCON meter that counts down as the campaign progresses. Of course, there is also the original Conquer the World campaign which is now playable with the six added civilizations. All the campaigns feature a game board similar to the Risk-like setup of the original campaigns. I did find a lot of variety in some of the missions in the new campaigns, but there was not that much variety as I found myself playing the “kill 25 enemy units” (among others) mission on several occasions.
I purchased a new computer last month and TaP was the first new game that I installed. While the graphics have not changed that much from the first game, I am now able to appreciate them more fully. As I progressed through the New World campaign, I loved watching the change in my surroundings from dense forest, to plains, to the thick jungles of South America. The character animations are brilliant and once again I found myself zooming in to watch my civilization as they went about their business. As the miners mine for metal, little flecks of rock fly up and after firing their weapons, the musketeers will pause to reload their weapons. These little details really show how much thought the designers put into the game.
The soundtrack provides some scintillating background music, but for some reason, there is a pause in-between tracks, which leads to a second or two of dead air before the music starts up again. This is not a major problem, merely a curious oddity. The tracks themselves are the stuff of summer blockbusters and really set the mood of the game. The game also offers a plethora of sounds to accompany the dazzling animations from the popping of muskets, to the campy sound byte when a spy is selected.
Thrones and Patriots manages to double the immense amount of replay in the original Rise of Nations with the addition of six new civilizations and four new campaigns. I think that Thrones and Patriots will keep me occupied for a long, long time. I hate to end this review abruptly, but I’ve been away from the game for too long and I need to get back to helping the Dutch conquer the world.
