Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

So this is a fun strategy game I used to play and I tried playing it recently but I needed to reinstall it, I seem to have lost my packet that came with the game so I don't have the 25-character product key.
Is there anything to do about this?

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Nevermind found it



Does anyone even play this game or has anyone played it before?

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Spoiler: now pointless discussion on cd key (click to show/hide)

The company that developed Rise of Nations, Big Huge games, declared Bankruptcy in 2012. There is no possibility of receiving a replacement key.

Other options include buying the "Extended Edition" which is a HD re-release developed by SkyBox Labs and released on Steam.
One could also use a crack but the legality of cracking/pirating previously owned software varies from country to country, often falling into gray areas.

I bought the Extended Edition a couple of months ago in a sale since I've heard a lot of praise for it. I personally found it to have aged much better than both Empire Earth I/II and Age of Mythology- especially graphically.

Unfortunately the game just never gelled with me. The "province" system seemed to clash with my traditional RTS heavy expansionist playstyle and the game seems to want you to micro a lot of systems at once, including unit management, economy and the tech progression system. A lot of that would be inflamed by my inexperience at the game but it does come across as very intimidating and time consuming to get over the learning curve.

I do appreciate just how much effort have been put into the game regarding all the different technologies and cultural flavour. I liked how the game tried to simulate a realistic age system since I always found it a bit of a laugh that you can research stuff like "The Dark Age" or "The Middle Ages" in other RTS. The unique resources and trade system was also really interesting.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Ya
I used to love doing whole timeline campaigns and watch as everything grew.

Now (in the past hour that I got it running) I just like watching the mussleloader infantry fight eachother, the animations are fun to watch, almost like a giant cloud of smoke as each side tears the other apart

[Darkmere]

I have a copy of Thrones and Patriots around somewhere. I remember it being pretty fun back before I got digusted with RTS games in general. The super-tech post-modern age was irritating to play, though. The rest were fun.

[Flying Dice]

RoN always struck me as the sorta-weird cousin of all the other RTS and 4X games, with a bit from each and a rather slapdash whole.

The Terracotta Army wonder was hilarious though.

[GreatJustice]

I liked RoN mostly because it was the only major RTS I had with a somewhat vibrant online community when I played (compared to Age of Empires and Empire Earth 1, anyway). Then GS killed the servers and the HD version doesn't seem like an improvement.

RoN always had a lot less variety than other RTS games in terms of scenarios. AOE and EE both had diplomacy style build and destroy, pseudo-RPGs, cinematic type games, etc whereas RoN was always basically just "build cities and conquer stuff", occasionally "conquer cities because you can't build more", and if you had enough friends online, "use diplomacy with your friends and paint a map your favourite colour".

I also got a chuckle out of how age advantages didn't matter as much compared to, say, Empire Earth. In RoN, you could conceivably fight someone in the Information Age with Industrial Age troops and come out okay because of how weak everything felt (with the exception of nukes), whereas in EE, if you went against a Nano Age army with a Modern Age army you'd probably be taking at least 3-1 losses, a fact exploited by a few campaign missions. About 10 Nano Age regular infantry and a tank could easily kill hundreds upon hundreds of Stone Age cavemen without taking significant damage, whereas in RoN a bunch of phalanxes could actually inflict significant losses on T51 tanks.

[scrdest]

@GJ, did you play the expansion? The Cold War campaign has, IMO, excellent Espionage scenarios that always were half the appeal of the campaign for me.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

@GJ, did you play the expansion? The Cold War campaign has, IMO, excellent Espionage scenarios that always were half the appeal of the campaign for me.

+1
Those were fun too

[Wysthric]

 I really loved the old RoN back in the day. It is to Civilization as Sword of the Stars is to 4x games, I think. The cost scaling mechanics on units and buildings was a good idea. The supply wagons, not so much. I used to play with my dad when we bought the game, but when he realized he could not use the same tower rush strats he used in Age of Empires II and Empire Earth he stopped playing.

[Frumple]

... and then there was rise of legends, which is one of the few RTS games out there with a decently-ish done steampunk faction <3

[GreatJustice]

@GJ, did you play the expansion? The Cold War campaign has, IMO, excellent Espionage scenarios that always were half the appeal of the campaign for me.

I liked some of the Cold War scenarios (espionage was unique, the "install an allied puppet regime" scenarios were fun, etc) as well as the scenarios of a few other campaigns, but I still found that RoN had a lot less versatility in terms of scenario design than EE and AOE2. That isn't to say they weren't fun, though

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Ya rise of legends was great
Now I have to find my copy of it and play it again

[Mattk50]

rise of nations was definitely a great, up there with empire earth 1/2, AOE1-3, age of mythology, etc.

[GiglameshDespair]

Yeah. Once stealth bombers appeared, fun was over.