Brief overview... I come from the Fantasy/RPG/War genre in PC gaming. I used to love the Koei series of games way back when.. My most recent plunge however was spending almost the last 3 years (Oct 01 - Jul 04) playing the MMORG Dark Age of Camelot. I have to say the best game I have ever played up until I relized that the lag induced problems, login times, down time, constantly added content (all falls into the same hole) became utterly NOT enjoyable. I have decided to never touch a MMORG again until technology allows for a lag free environment (most likely never), but it is what it is. I want to turn instead to single player or at the most a handful of on line human opponent TURN BASED strategy game. I have tried several and what really bothers me is that the majority of games out there favor that Microsoft style "Real Time" garbage that just everything but the kitchen sink going on at the same time. You can't enjoy the fruits of your labor at all since you are constantly giving orders to lazy citizens and trying to keep your military units from running off. Rise of Nations is the latest one of these types of games I tried and I was completely surprised at how fast the game is pushing me thru ages of technology. I mean I takes 10 turns to go from Ancient age to generating units with rifles. By the time I can get all my Javelin guards back to the city after they had run off, I can already make Musket carrying riflemen. Too busy micro manageing every single pixel on the screen to actually enjoy the game. As I said the latest versions of this genre actually speed up the whole process even further making it truely a dumned down game for me. My point. I would like to see game developers start working on true TURN BASED games again. I would like to see enhancements in AI and World Wide strategy be the direction of War games going forward. I don't want to be restricted to the Eurpean theatre or the pacific theatre. I don't want this "keep the player busy constantly so that they don't realize how stupid, thoughtless, and repetive this game truly is" mentality in a "TURN BASED" game. Real Time is NOT TURN BASED no matter what turn based aspects you add on later. I am sure lots of gamers would appreciated World Wide Conquest, Turn Based, and taking their time to enjoy the game. The option of "End Turn" is always there when you are ready to move on. Getting there is more than half the fun of world domination. Fantasy RPGs and Wargames could take a hard que from the Koei company of Japan and look more into turn based strategy and expand upon it. Get rid of mission and scenerio crap. Make the games open ended where the player can affect the end game. Learn to reward the player for spending hours of game play utilizing a different tactic. Real Time "Rush" garbage games and lag-o-ramic MMORGs are what the gaming industry is working on. This is bad news for the anyone who thinks like me. Not every gamer out there is 14 years old ya know.

"Dominate 6,000 years of history from the Ancient Age to the Information Age. Which forces will you deploy to lead your nation to global prominence? Trade, espionage, diplomacy…war? Whichever path you choose, you’ll experience the pulse pounding thrill and speed of real-time gaming combined with the epic scope and depth of turn-based strategy games – brought together for the first time ever in Rise of Nations. "
-http://www.microsoft.com/games/riseofnations/

This is why I bought the game as apposed to all the others bing completely RTS.

Even so the extent of the "Turn Based" in this game is negligent. You can't really do anything in the turn based environment. All your city building/fighting/defensive tactics are during Real Time unless you pause the game.

Anyway I uninstalled the game and it ain't going back in. I found one setting for technology and adjusted it to the slowest mark. What that did exactly I didn't wait long enough to find out. It didn't seem to do anything.

Thanks for the info but nothing is ever gonna make an RTS fun in my eyes.

I just hope some game developer takes a chance and does it right.

Some may laugh at me now if they haven't already but.....

"Imperialism" back in 1998 had the right idea. Make a game like Imperialism, slow it down a little more, make it REAL countries of the World with more playable countries within that world, update the graphics, fix the bugs, and you my friends have a money maker.

That game was the bomb for it's time, but wow if any developer would make a game like this with 2005 technology and with higher end CPUs in mind IMHO you have a "Can't Miss".

-Mak

Market it of course..since we all know marketing the game represents what....75% of your future revenue? :P

"Thanks for the info but nothing is ever gonna make an RTS fun in my eyes" -AP

There is nothing wrong with RTS. Blizzard RTS games are among my favorite games of all time. They take just as much strategy as TBS, if not more as it is easier to catch people off gaurd. And I think RTS are more fun than turn-based strategy games. They focus more on combat and the games don't last an obscenely long time. One of my favorite turn based games was Civilization:2 but the games get really repetitive in that. And you spend the majority of your time managing your cities / building roads / irrigation etc. And very little time actually in combat. Which is the total opposite of a game like Warcraft3 where you spend little time on your base and a lot more time is spent fighting the enemy. I think a lot of players are discouraged when they first start an RTS because they get attacked early or something and dont feel like they did anything that game. But it really just takes practice to get good at them. I guess it just depends on the type of person you are, I suppose you don't like shooters either?