Rise of Legends Demo

I've been playing the demo quite a bit, and so sometime in the near future I'll post guides to the Alin and the Vinci. I can't wait to try out the Cuotl, May 9th seems so far away.

It looks like they've really done their homework for this game. At least as far as hotkeys are concerned. There are hotkeys available to select all air or all ground units, as well as one that selects all units on the screen. You also have the option of enabling expanded control group functions, where each control group has an icon. You can then select a group of units and right-click on a control group icon, those selected units will then join that control group. I'm still looking through them all, but so far, I'm impressed.

Some folks seem to think this is Rise of Nations but with fantastical units. While it does resemble RoN in some ways, there are fundamental changes.

There isn't any "aging" to do. There is a research track that provides new units or new abilities. It's set up in a 4 x 4 grid, and frankly, even if someone is a few advances ahead of you, it's not as big a difference as it is in Rise of Nations, where age five versus age three can be all bad...

You don't build cities, you capture them. Each city will have a number on it's flag, which will tell you the strength of troops needed to capture it. If you don't have enough, you can either bring more, or begin smashing the city until the number goes down low enough. With Rise of Nations, you can never be sure exactly how many troops you need, especially if the enemy has their own troops at the battle.

The rock-paper-scissors model for troop versus troop battles is not as pronounced as seen in some RTS games, though I will have to study this more.

They have moved forward with the "hero" unit first seen in Rise of Nations as the Patriot unit, and in WarCraft 3 as hero units. Each race has a "Master" unit, which you can only build one of, and these units are forces of reckoning by themselves. Each one that I've tried is able to take out a city by itself, even with a defending army of some strength. Each race also has three Hero units, which gain in power as they gain experience. The Hero units have special powers and abilities, and while they aren't as powerful as the Master unit, they are quite powerful, and at the head of an army, well, eeeeewwwwhhh.

More soon!