Rising Generals from Innogames is an empire-builder that's doing things a little different. Sure it's got base building and soldier training, raids and defensive scrambles, but the approach to some of these elements are downright refreshing.
First is the way that, unlike some of those games with clashing clans, you'll only lose a unit if it's actually destroyed. So if you spend hours building up an awesome army and use them in a battle, you won't necessarily have to agonize over whether or not you want to actually use everything. Second and most significant is the way in which the wait timers work.
Rather than forcing you to pick an option for resource production (for example) and wait minutes, hours, or days for it to complete, you pick what you want and it completes right away, then it goes on a cooldown. In other words if you want to build a new structure or something, you can build it immediately and then wait for your construction option to recharge before you build again. Time will tell what the iOS gamers think of such a method, but I personally think it's pretty fantastic.
You'll be able to decide for yourself when Rising Generals releases later this summer.
InnoGames, fresh off announcing Rising Generals, has an iPad strategy game currently soft-launched in Canada. Forge of Empires has players building a town, so I grabbed my sword and hammer and set off for the land of maple syrup for this edition of It Came From Canada!
The main phase of the game is town-building: creating new buildings in order to earn more money, or items that can generate more resources such as building points, villagers, gold, and even happiness. There's a lot to keep track of here. This is all in service of becoming the most powerful town in the world. There's a leaderboard of players that one can peruse, with guilds that can be joined for cooperative purposes.
Okay, it sounds a bit like Clash of Clans so far. The key difference is that players don't just send off enemy hordes to battle: they enter a turn-based strategy game with them.
Battles take place on a hexagonal grid, where players can move their units about within their specified range, and can attack enemies within their attack range. There are also defense bonuses for certain terrain types. It's very basic strategy gameplay, but it's definitely deeper, even in its simplicity, than most Clash of Clans-esque games. Units start out as Bronze Age soldiers and eventually get up to modern era ones, though this will likely take a long time to get going. Those who check in often and spend their forge points regularly will get to the later eras first.
While there is a campaign against computerized enemies, it's also possible to interact with other players. These can be in friendly ways: motivation and polishing will help resource generation and production happen at a faster rate. As well, it's possible to attack other players and plunder one of their buildings. It appears that all battling is asynchronous for now against human opponents.
Players can research new units and types by spending forge points. These recharge over time (or can be bought with gold or diamonds) and by researching new tech trees, new unit types can be had. The tech trees are deep, so people who come back often will be the first to unlock later portions of the game.
While the town-building is very familiar - and the strategy very basic - for this oft-imitated genre spearheaded by Clash of Clans, the relatively-deeper (yet still approachable) combat might be worth checking out once it launches worldwide.
InnoGames has announced their new cross-platform strategy-MMO Rising Generals, designed with the help of Bruce Shelley of Civilization and Age of Empires fame. Built around player-versus-layer combat, players will command planes, tanks, and armored automobiles in worlds that will span 40,000 players each. The game will be cross-platform between iOS, Android, and browser, with support for the same account on different platforms for those who aren't loyal to one electronics company.
