07/17/05 >> Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War

Genre: Real-time Strategy

Developer: Stainless Steel Studios

Publisher: Midway

No official site yet

When you have a market full of real-time strategies, how do you know which is good and the right one for you? Read our interview with Designer Rick Goodman to learn more about his upcoming RTS, Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. A big thanks goes to Rick for taking his time to answer our questions.

Please introduce yourself and the game Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War.

I'm Rick Goodman, president of Stainless Steel Studios. I was the co-founder of Ensemble Studios and the lead designer of Age of Empires. I founded Stainless Steel Studios in 1997, and to date we've released two games--the best-selling Empire Earth and the critically-acclaimed Empires: Dawn of the Modern World.

Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War represents the true next generation of RTS games, and it's being built on four primary tenets: large-scale combat; epic sieges; realistic, genre-defining naval combat; and Hero Command, a revolutionary feature that places you directly in the heart of the battle.

Large-scale Combat: Our combat system offers you unprecedented control over thousands of units simultaneously. Use the unit-formation system to quickly and easily group your units, and the intelligent and reactive AI ensures that your formations line up in proper strategic depth. Unleash ancient super weapons, like the Fire Raiser, and decimate enemy troops.

Epic Sieges: Thousands of your units scale an enemy city's walls, while your catapults bombard the city's defenses from both land and sea. On the other side, the Archimedes Claw, a defensive super weapon, pulverizes your siege equipment. No other RTS game has ever offered sieges of this scale and scope.

Naval Combat: For the first time ever in an RTS game, naval combat is an integral and vital part of the combat experience. Unleash the Ramming super weapon and use your ships as battering rams to rip an enemy vessel in two. Outfit your ships with swordsmen and board enemy vessels, or build mighty Onagers and exterminate the enemy from afar.

Hero Command: For the first time ever in an RTS, you will experience the ancient world's greatest battles from the ground level as you head down onto the battlefield and take personal control of a legendary general like Alexander the Great, Achilles, or Ramses the Great, and lead your troops into the heart of combat. There will be a total of 8 heroes for you to control, two for each civilization, and each offers unique benefits and styles of combat.

What features that were done right in your previous titles are being implemented in Rise & Fall?

All of the features that our millions of fans have come to expect from a Stainless Steel Studios game, such as an unparalleled multiplayer experience, an epic and engaging single-player campaign, and massive, earth-shattering battles, will be included. Rise & Fall will have something for everyone.

Though there are many games within the RTS genre, they don’t all play the same way.  What are you trying to accomplish with Rise & Fall?

One of our primary goals is to offer a stunning cinematic experience that rivals any of the battle sequences of movies like Gladiator or Troy. That means that we're creating a vibrant and immersive world that really feels alive. We're able to do that because of the next-generation graphics engine that we're using, which really elevates the graphical standard of the strategy genre so that it's on par with shooters. It's really a revolutionary step forward.

Stainless Steel Studios’ first title was Empire Earth.  They then released Empires: Dawn of War.  You’re now working on Rise & Fall.  With each title something new was brought to the real-time strategy genre.  How much more innovation is left in the genre?  Are we just beginning to realize its potential?

There's a lot of room left for innovation. In fact, if you look at Hero Command in Rise & Fall, it's obvious that we've only just scratched the surface of what is possible in strategy games.

When you enter Hero Command, you're immediately in the thick of the battle, leading your men in a siege against an enemy city, fighting on the deck of a Bireme, or directing artillery fire. For a very short period of time, you actually become the mightiest warrior on the planet. And during that time, you're a juggernaut who's slaughtering hundreds of enemy soldiers with your blade or cutting them down with your bow and arrow.

What's important to remember about Hero Command is that it truly has a colossal impact on the outcome of a battle, because your actions can turn a certain defeat into an uplifting victory. But it's also very precious because you can only enter Hero Command for short bursts of time.

You can truly turn the tide of a battle, and that’s what gets me so excited about Hero Command. I've never experienced anything like it in any other game.

Is Rise & Fall more about tactics or micromanagement, or a combination of both?

We've streamlined resource collection (there are two historical resources that you must actively gather, gold and wood), and our formation system makes it very easy to manage your troops. That frees you up to concentrate on the important aspects of the game, such as recruiting soldiers, hiring key advisors, and developing your overall strategy. Rise & Fall is ultimately about world conquest, and everything in the game is geared around making it intuitive for you to realize that goal.

Will defeating the enemy by means of firepower be the only road to victory?

Ancient conquests were settled with blunt force and total defeat of one's enemies, so that's the path that we're taking with Rise & Fall. That doesn't mean, though, that achieving victory will be a simple matter of recruiting a massive army and then charging them into battle. Being victorious will require strategy, cunning and the full utilization of combined arms, especially using both your land and sea forces.

If you look back on history, many of the world's most epic and dramatic naval battles took place during ancient times, with Greek, Roman, and Egyptian navies clashing in battles that involved hundreds of ships and thousands of soldiers. And we wanted to capture the essence of those epic naval struggles.

In Rise & Fall, we place you in the heat of battle in the largest, most full-scaled naval combat you've ever seen. There are four primary aspects to our naval combat: ramming; boarding enemy ships; using your ships as floating barracks; and laying siege to enemy cities.

Ship ramming is one of the thrilling things that players have asked me about for years. Putting it into Rise & Fall was an absolute must, because it's something brand new to the experience. The way it works is if you hire a drummer, he will turn your ship into a naval super weapon.

If you can maneuver into position, your drummer will work the crew into a frenzy and your ship will move at top speed and strike the enemy ship on its side, obliterating it and sending its crew flying. It's truly an awesome sight to see all those enemy units tossed into the air like rag dolls.

Boarding enemy ships is also really exciting. Let's say an enemy has equipped his ship with archers, and you only have swordsmen. You'll be able to pull up alongside the enemy's ship, grapple it over to your ship, and then board it. This is a lot of fun, especially when you go into Hero Command and personally cut the enemy's crew to ribbons.

Because your ships can be used to recruit and train new soldiers, you'll be able to quickly replace units lost on the field of battle, and also adjust your strategy on the fly, as you change the outfitting of your ship to counter-balance the enemy's moves. Along those same lines, you'll be able to build giant Onagers on your ships, which you can use to lay siege to an enemy city, or to bombard an enemy's fleet. The naval combat in Rise & Fall will be unmatched.

How many civilizations will be in the game?  And are there civilization-specific units?

The two single-player campaigns lets you play as Greece and Egypt, but in multiplayer, you'll be able to take the helm of any of the four playable races. In addition to Greece and Egypt, there is also Persia and Rome.

Ensuring that all of the playable civilizations are both properly balanced and historically accurate is very important to us. So what we've done is look at history and then apply the real-life attributes of each civilization to the game. What's fascinating is how easily history and gameplay balance mesh together.

For example, the Greek army was vastly outnumbered by its enemies, especially Persia. The advantage the Greeks had, though, was that they were incessant when it came to training. This was started by King Philip and carried on by his son, Alexander the Great, and as a result, the Greek army was the best trained fighting force in the world at that time. And it worked, because they defeated the Persians.

So what we've done in Rise & Fall is make the Greek army a little more powerful than the other sides, and we've also introduced the Spartan. This is a unit you construct in your barracks, and he goes out and automatically trains any idle troops in the area. So even when your troops aren't actively engaged in combat, they're still gaining experience.

The Persians, on the other hand, had a massive army, the largest in the world. But because the Persians relied heavily on mercenaries and under-trained troops, their individual soldiers weren't as adept at fighting. We represent the real-life history of the Persians in Rise & Fall by making them a little bit weaker. So if you play as the Persians, you'll be able to build a huge army, but it won't be as strong as the other sides.

The fighting style of the Egyptians is very well known--they were skilled archers and relied heavily on ranged attacks. They would lay down a blistering barrage of arrow fire and then send in their melee troops to mop up any surviving enemy forces.

In Rise & Fall, if you play as the Egyptians, you'll have access to all these great archer units, like the Chariot Archer. It's a chariot with four archers in the back, who fire even when the chariot is moving. So you can order a formation of Chariot Archers to circle the enemy and bombard them. I love using the Chariot Archers in multiplayer because they really frustrate the other players.

The best-known civilization is Rome, who, like the Greeks, were hardcore when it came to training and discipline. They also relied heavily on formations, so we give them a formation bonus in the game. As they defeat enemy soldiers and gain experience, that experience is applied equally across all of the units in the formation.

However, because of their reliance on formations, that does make them susceptible to ranged attack. So if you're playing as the Egyptians, the aforementioned Chariot Archers can do a lot of damage against the Romans.

Let’s talk about the units of Rise & Fall.  Roughly how many units will there be in the game?

There will be 80 unique units, in the game, with which to conquer the ancient world.

Tell us a bit about the conquering of land and how it affects gameplay.

Maps contain neutral Outposts. These represent territories which you can conquer. Each is guarded by the AI, but if you can go in and conquer an Outpost within the Territory, you get a production bonus.

Normally, when you train a soldier at your barracks, you get one soldier. For each Territory that you control, you'll get one free bonus unit. So if you control six Territories, you actually get six soldiers for the cost of one. This reflects a historical reality--as Alexander the Great conquered new territories, people from that territory were recruited in his war effort.

During our multiplayer testing, I've seen some brutal, knock-down-drag-out fights for control of the territories, as each side battles to get those precious bonuses. I think introducing territories is not only going to encourage players to explore the map, it's going to make for some truly epic battles.

Rise & fall will give players the ability to command units from the map or from the ground, even allowing the player to take control of a Hero.  With all this going on, it sounds a bit complex.  How do you design this in a way where the inexperienced RTS player will have fun?

We've spent a lot of time ensuring that the two modes are both easy to use and fun to play. A single keystroke puts you in the shoes of your Hero, and while you're in that mode, your forces continue to carry out any earlier orders you gave them. The same keystroke also immediately returns you to the normal RTS mode.

And once you're in Hero Command, you control your Hero with the W, A, S, D keys and use the left mouse button to attack, so it's immediately familiar to anyone who has played a shooter. As I mentioned earlier, you're on in Hero Command for short periods of time, just a minute or two, so you won't be pulled away from the RTS elements for long periods of time.

Real-time physics are all the rage right now with games.  How are the physics of Rise & Fall being used in a way that is more than eye candy?

We have a fully implemented physics system, so when men are hit with catapult fire, they pirouette into the air, their arms and legs flailing. Physics also play a key role in our naval combat. When you ram an enemy ship, physics determine which sailors and soldiers are immediately killed and which ones are merely thrown into the water. This is an important distinction because soldiers in the water can attempt to swim for shore and rejoin the fight.

Give us an example of the game’s AI.  Just how smart and clever will it be?

The A.I. in Rise & Fall can be quite devious. It will probe your defenses in search of a weak spot, and it'll also take notice of the type of army that you're building and then take the necessary steps to counter it. The game will also offer different levels of difficulty so that it matches the skill level of the player.

Will terrain and elevation play a crucial role in the player’s tactics?

Just as in real-life, units at a higher elevation enjoy an attack advantage, especially during sieges. And siege combat in Rise & Fall is going to be something really special. You will command huge catapults, siege towers and ladders. To defend your city, you'll be able to build the defensive super weapon, Archimedes Claw, which will pick up and smash enemy siege equipment. Imagine thousands of units storming an enemy city as flaming arrows and catapult stones tear through the air and smash into the enemy's defenses. It's an exhilarating sight.

And because all of the buildings and structures in Rise & Fall are completely accurate in their scale, we can do some really awesome things during the sieges. You'll be able to knock men off of walls and other structures and utterly destroy the city you're attacking.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Hero Command is an amazing new feature that lets you become a super weapon of the ancient world, something you've never been able to do before. And the naval combat is fresh and innovative as well, since it lets you do things like ramming and boarding. Those are the things that players have asked us for since the first game I worked on in 1997, and they’re what will set Rise & Fall apart from other games on the market.

Interview by Alex Hammond