Posted on: August 17, 2011
mothwentbad
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Flawed AI, but 5 stars anyway
I got this game about ten years ago and still have the CD, but bought it again on sale for ease of library management. It was fun then, but I appreciate it even more now that I have a better understanding of RTS principles. This game has aged well. There is no zoom feature, but the sprites are well-drawn and fluidly animated. The pace is a little slow, but my experience with RTS is that you're always giving orders in 8 different places and queueing up units, so that's actually a good thing. And the scenery is generally appealing, with nice details and non-functional structures like houses thrown in for effect. You'll actually appreciate having time to soak up scenery during and between shots, as opposed to StarCraft which moves so fast so as to distract you from how much the terrain looks like a homogeneous landscape of rocky vomit. There are 4 original factions, and a 5th expansion, along with obligatory additional expansion units for the other four. They all play differently, with the possible exception of there being two "vanilla human" factions that play similarly: * Veruna and Aramon, both having siege weaponry and boats, and the former differing mostly in that it has more naval options, and the latter having more air power. * Taros is a faction of black magic and the undead; watch out for friendly fire with these, as Liches can wipe out your army just as fast as the enemy's if used inappropriately. * The Zhon are the most outside-the-box group, a band of beastmasters who hardly build any structures beyond a camp fire (for HP regen), allowing you to evacuate your unit builders or move them closer to the front lines as the situation calls for it. * The expansion faction is a sort of steampunky techno society. They have the corniest and most annoying voices by far, reeking of the producers having let their 8-year-old kids having a hand in production, it seems like. In any case, they're fun to play and included in the GOG package. Some nice features are available, pretty nice ones, too, given that this game is from 1999. Selecting one or more units and then holding Shift allows you to queue up actions: * Move to Point A, and then start a patrol from A to B, B to C, and C back to A again, for example; arial scouts will just fly in a circuit, while a harpoon ship will attack any enemies in range. It's not perfect for organizing for complete battle effeciency, but it saves you trouble and more than works well enough for the AI most of the time, with further micromanagement available. * Build three guard towers in three specified locations in the specified order * Clear out this brush, this tree that's in the way, and that other tree * Attack this unit, this unit, and this unit * Buildings can also be queued to produce 5 of this unit (shift-click), then 1 of that (click), and then spam another unit indefinitely (ctrl-click). It doesn't display the order of production, unfortunately, but it remembers, and this puts it ahead of its time. The campaign mode, unfortunately, suffers from weak AI. After a few warm-up maps, usually you start at a distinct disadvantage, and you need to establish a good position and fend off some attacks. Once you're fortified, the initial wave of aggression dies off and enemy troops will dribble haplessly toward you off of the production lines, never resembling much of a coordinated strike. Occasionally you may suffer heavy losses when you try to invade them if they have strong units and you don't use the appropriate countermeasures. For example, guard towers require large swarms, or can be taken down from afar with well-protected siege weapons; sometimes 20 archers and 20 footsoldiers will get murdered where the addition of three catapults would make all the difference. Interestingly, long-range weapons often can fire much farther than they can see, making the use of flying scouts necessary - you're patrolling with them, right? There is only one resource, mana. But mana management is somewhat interesting, allowing you to rush production, and you're never really "out of mana". Just... slowed down a bit. You have a generation rate, an expenditure rate, and a raw stock. The generation rate and maximum surplus possible depend on how many mana sources you control. You can speed up buildings by having two or three builders work on them rather than just one, but you spend three times as fast, accordingly. Suppose you have 0 mana left, are generating at a rate of +20, and are spending at a rate of -60. That means all construction is at 1/3 speed of what it would be if you had mana available. It's up to you how to relieve the burden. This allows for more fluid play and is at the same time simpler on the face of it than a multi-resource game like StarCraft. The original campaign, or at least the 20 or so missions I've gone through so far, are a nice, slow stroll through RTS with some nice variety, and good for casual gamers. I'm told that the expansion campaign is harder, but only for having the odds stacked against you that much more at the start. The multiplayer is probably great, if it works. I haven't tried it yet, but it's the only way you would expect to get a real challenge typical of a more symmetric RTS match-up. This isn't a "get murdered over and over again" sort of RTS AI... *cough* http://www.kadlecik.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/957439412_cDdUj-L.jpg *cough*
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