CodeOptimist

Here are two fun massive multiplayer text-only RPGs, they are about the only RPGs I actually like Kings of Chaos In this one, you get people to click your "unique link" to give you soldiers. Neat idea! Lords of Legend This one seems more stable than Kings of Chaos. No link-clicking either. They are both pretty similar (attack people to get gold, buy troops, buy weapons/armor, etc). It's be simply awesome if WFG had something like this

Render and Wijit: There is definetly a balance with the uniqueness of civs IMO. AoE was one extreme (very similar civs), and AoM is close to the opposite extreme (very different civs). On this issue though, my mind keeps going back to the Empires:DMW demo. I think that game hits the perfect balance! In that game (at least the demo), every civ felt very different. They created a completely different building/unit set for each civ.. lots of work, but it definetly paid off. However, not only are the graphics different, but the unit special abilities and civ bonuses are different. If you look hard enough, there are unit "classes" (light infantry, tanks, fighter aircraft, etc), but each civ's unit is named differently (not something AoK did) and has different powers/abilities of it's own. I think all the 0 A.D. staff should download and play the demo You have a point. While I didn't particularly loath upgrading, it's one more thing that makes the civs seem similar. When all the civs share the same unit base and the same upgrade path AND the same buildings and technologies and... well, you get my point Yes, in AoK there were different tech trees.. but only to allow/forbid different units/techs from civs. I definetly prefer "civ-personalized" techs, upgrades, units, buildings, graphics, etc, over AoK's style. (whew, I'm going to have to write an article dedicated to this subject sometime ) I kind of feel bad though, since we're all pointing out the faults in AoK.. It really was one of the best games ever!

I happened to open up my control panel to the Currency stats, and I saw my name as the tenth richest forum member! I didn't think I had been posting that much..

Thanks for all the compliments. I had fun writing this review Yep Quacker: I bet it sounds awesome on a trumpet Math: I'd do one for Stronghold, but I don't have the game

Following up on the Age of Empires review I posted a few days ago, here's my second review. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings was a phenomenally successful game. One of the best-selling RTS games in history, if my memory is correct. Ensemble Studios did a fabulous job, bringing the Age series into the Medieval period and creating a truly remarkable game! Breakdown Animation [Good] I don't think you can get any better than this with sprites. I read somewhere on the Ensemble Studios' website that they created every single animation by hand, without any motion capture. There really aren't any bad points about the animation, except the normal pitfalls of sprite-based units and terrain (units hovering over cliffs after they die, etc). Civilizations [Good] In the last review, I criticized the Age of Empires civilizations as not being unique enough. Age of Kings got rid of this problem, almost. The civilizations in Age of Kings weren't as unique as Age of Mythology or Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, but I wouldn't change them much. The games that have very unique civs, tend to have less civs, and I liked the wide variety of civs in Age of Kings. Gameplay [Good] The gameplay in Age of Kings was simply awesome. Especially with the tweaks in The Conquerors that took some focus off tiring micromanagement. Again, there is a balance between micro- and macro-management. Too much micro and the game isn't much fun. Too much macro, you start to take the 'S' out of 'RTS'! Graphics [Good] As said above, Age of Kings is right on the limit of what you can do with a sprite-based graphics engine. You can't really get any better without moving to a 3-D engine. Ensemble Studios did a terrific job! Interface [Good] The interface was very pleasant, and very intuitive. A very good feature introduced here was the Advanced Commands button. Beginners could view a simplified in-game GUI, while experts could utilize commands for formations, unit stances, and so on. Multiplayer [Neutral] I'm giving multiplayer a Neutral rating here because of some of the frustrations involving OOS (Out of Sync) errors, NAT (Network Address Translation) and router non-support, and a few other issues. Unfortunately, you could only play multiplayer if you had a direct IP-to-IP link to the other player(s). That meant, that people behind a router experienced weird problems and only one person behind the router could play at a time. Other than those issues, multiplayer was very fun. Lag was not too bad as long as all the computers were nice and fast. Ensemble did a good job of fine-tuning the unit and civ balancing, as was apparent in the huge variety of strategies that popped up on the 'net. Music [Good] I really enjoyed the music in Age of Kings. It was definetly a little less MIDI-sounding than the original Age of Empires music. Sometimes, I'd pop the CD in a CD player so I could just listen to it! The opening theme is one of my favorite tunes of all time. I find myself playing it on the piano and humming it quite often! Pathfinding [Good] The pathfinding was much improved from the horrible pathfinding in Age of Empires. Still buggy in a few places, but overall, very well done. Single-Player [Good] Yes, this is a new category! I forgot to add this for Age of Empires, oh well. The Single-Player category is for the campaigns and scenarios that shipped with the game, along with the computer AI. The campaigns in Age of Kings were awesome, and very challenging. I have only beat a few of the scenarios (still try to beat some once in a while). A very good addition is the William Wallace Learning Campaign. The "training campaign" in the original Age of Empires was pretty dull, but Age of Kings is quite the opposite! The skirmish AI for the computer is pretty good, and pretty hard to beat at the highest level. Unfortunately, the computer actually cheats on "Hardest", which was kind of a quick-fix by Ensemble. Sound Effects [Good] The sounds and voice-overs in Age of Kings were much better quality than the low-quality Age of Empires sounds. I suppose a good analogy is Stereo vs. Mono. The Age of Kings sounds were very lifelike-sounding. Timeframe [Good] Medieval history is exciting to almost anyone, and definetly to me. Playing this game is a great way to learn real history, and have fun doing it! Other/Misc Most, if not all, of the bad points of Age of Empires are gone in Age of Kings. It's been rightly said that there are not many good sequels. This was one of the few good ones! Age of Kings made it much easier to pick a civilization than Age of Empires, in two ways: more civ bonuses, and the tech tree viewer (which let you easily see the ups and downs of a particular civ). What it Means for 0 A.D. A good interface, crisp graphics/animation and fun, balanced gameplay are very important points for any RTS game. Keeping the civilizations unique is also a key. Age of Kings made a step in the right direction with the addition of Unique Units and Unique Technologies. In a future review (Empires: Dawn of the Modern World) I'll point out that you can go even further with civ distinction and make a game even more fun. Personally, I think the music is another important factor in a game. Some people ignore the music or turn it off completely, but I love to listen to it. I also think that a distinct melodic tune for the main/opening "theme", something that people can associate with the game, is important. With routers and other NAT hardware becoming very mainstream, it's almost critical for any new game to support NAT traversal. When Microsoft released DirectX 8, which included support for NAT traversal in DirectPlay, it was a great benefit to router users. I'll talk more about this in my next review. Next Up: Empire Earth

Congrats Black Hawk, I hope to graduate soon as well

Hi everyone, thanks for the warm welcome. I'm honored to be a part of WildFire Games and to help out this great community!

The music, but blowing stuff up is great too I also like the dialogue and plot a tad..

Let me know if I missed any!

I like the new changes. It makes it easier to tell what the rank is.

I think a "dynamic" GUI is very possible. You could split the GUI into definable "sections" internally, i.e.: MiniMap TaskButtons BuildButtons ScoreBoard ResourceBar ... and so on. Then, you could hide/show each of these individual "panes", and possibly reorganize them.

Thanks for all the comments! Well, that is usually the case with games that have lots of civs to choose from. The civs begin to get less and less distinct. However, I don't think that they become less distinct because there are more civs. There just hasn't been a game (yet) that has many distinct civs. (I think Empires:DMW will be the first) I don't really care how many civs there are in a game, although I would prefer more over less. As long as they don't begin to all seem the same. A good example of what I mean (and I'll point this out in review #2) is: AoE vs. AoK. In Age of Empires, I never really knew what civ to pick. Granted, I didn't play it a whole lot, so I didn't know good civ strategies, etc. But, the civs seemed so much alike that I'd either randomly pick one, or just choose Egypt. (I liked their building art ) In Age of Empires 2, I had no trouble picking a civ. There were two reasons for that. One being that the civs were more unique (with better bonuses, better tech trees, etc), and second being that you could easily compare civs (with the tech tree viewer). That's what I've been hoping for all along

Wish there was a way to save it :-( There are some posts there I wanted to save but I can't remember which ones.

I've decided to write some short articles about some RTS games and what I liked/disliked in each one. The first game I'm looking at is Age of Empires (including the x-pack, Rise of Rome). I'm really a fan of ancient history so natually, I liked this game. Breakdown Animation [Good] The animation was good. 3D animation looks a lot better than 2D sprites, but Ensemble Studios did a fairly good job here with the resources (and computing power) available. Civilizations [Neutral] The civs were good, but could have been better. Games with specialized civs are much more fun than generic civs. This is a semi-good example of a "generic civ" game. Age of Mythology and Empires: Dawn of the Modern World are good examples of "specialized civ" games. Gameplay [Neutral] Overall, the game was fun, but the fun was somewhat reduced by the lack of more advanced GUI/strategic options (i.e. build queues, formations, etc). Graphics [Good] The graphics were also well-suited to the ancient feel of the game, though a little low-detail. Interface [Neutral] On one hand, the interface was somewhat nice. On the other hand, it was somewhat limited. I always thought that the GUI was a bit too dark, even for an ancient history game. I think a semi-dark GUI is good for an ancient history RTS, but I would have preferred it to be a smidgen lighter. Other than the lighting, the GUI was limited in other aspects, including not having build queues (although that was added in the x-pack). Overall, it felt somewhat "primitive". Music [Good] Yes, it was MIDI-ish and somewhat repetitive, but it added to the general "ancient feel" of the game. Multiplayer [Neutral] The multiplayer setup wasn't hard to use, but there was no save-game option for multiplayer. Pathfinding [bad] The pathfinding AI in this game was terrible, obviously created for 200MHz machines. Such is the evolution of computers. Sound Effects [Neutral] The sounds and voice-overs were OK, but a little on the low-quality side. Timeframe [Good] As I said above, I love ancient history! I really wish this game could be "updated" for the new advances in computers since it's a great game. Other/Misc While not a big issue, I like games that are more "specialized", as I stated in the Civilization section. The areas that deal with specialization are civs and Wonders. In Age of Empires, both of these areas weren't very specialized. What It Means for 0 A.D. Gameplay isn't the most important factor in a game. The GUI and feel of the interface are sometimes overlooked factors, but are very important. Games that have widely different civilizations are much more fun to play (especially in multiplayer) than games with not-so-different civs. I'll expand on this a little more in future reviews. Next Up: Age of Empires II

It's Wijit's call, but that idea sounds good, DA.

I have no problem with it...

So nice of MSN to lock out 3rd-party clients

7/10 The last one stumped me a bit, my answer was off by 72 feet

Yep, with layouts mapped to hotkeys, you could quickly switch to a "game only" GUI to snap a screenshot, then switch back to "normal" mode.

I have two more things to add here: 1. An "advanced GUI"-toggle button is a must (aka. AoK). That way, beginners don't get overwhelmed by the buttons, tabs, etc, while the experts can get everything. 2. Maybe, just maybe, there could be a way to customize your GUI, sort of what Icy_Tripod is describing. It could be under Settings (or Options) on the main menu. If you go to the "Customize GUI" setting (or whatever it's called), you can drag around parts of the GUI, toggle them off/on, etc. Just got another idea you could save custom GUI layouts and map them to a hotkey, so you can switch in-game. That way, you can mimic the features in AoM (full-screen minimap, full-screen game window, etc), by just creating them and mapping them to a hotkey, instead of them being hard-coded into the game. That's all for now...

DA: Need help with the WFG sites? I've done some web design and I could probably help. Unfortunately, I know ASP (not PHP), but I could still help with the design/maintenance, etc. PM me if you are interested

I think the user interface is EXTREMELY important in an RTS game. Especially things to do with villager-management and econ. I'll post other things here as I think of them (can't think of any right now), but your suggestions are good.

Umm, Wow! I could back up my hard drive indefinitly! I hope this becomes a reality!

I have an idea DA: how about a simple page in the Control Center to set up "milestones". You can choose any number you want, and when you get past that amount of posts, you get notified somehow (e-mail, "congrats" message on the top of the page, etc). What do you think?

Yeah, I'd prefer Wonders not to be game-enders in most cases. I'd rather them give you large bonuses, etc. There could be a checkbox for Wonder Victory if you wanted to use Wonders as a game-end condition. Also, there could be a Wonder Race game-type like Mythos suggested.