We all know the feeling, you may be seated in your office cubicle staring at a blank word document or you could be sitting in your car on the side of the road receiving a citation from one of your local cities’ finest for doing fifty three in a thirty when you are suddenly over come with the insatiable urge to conquer the world!!!  Before you rush for your favorite season of Pinky and the Brain or one of the great classics like Space Balls or Goldmember, (no matter how many times we watch them our favorite megalomaniacs never manage to complete their maniacal conquests) remember that the world of real time strategy (RTS) games is always there for you. 

Today we have two of the finest RTSs on the market for you to compare from the luxury of wherever you are currently located.  The new rising star, Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War and the old trusty war horse Age of Empires III, from the seasoned veterans at Ensemble studios.  Rise & Fall is an entirely new game from the designers at Midway and they have put a new twist into the world of the RTS.  Its called hero mode, and for all those who feel that if put in the shoes of one of the tiny warriors running around on their screen that they could do a substantially better job, it’s a godsend.  Hero mode puts you (the megalomaniac hell-bent on conquering the world) behind the wheel of your very own hero.  From this third person view you can lead your troops from the front lines in your mighty assault upon your lowly adversary.  Age of Empires III is like any great monarch from a prolific line of rulers, who has not yet succumbed to the effects of inbreeding.  Its AI is smart and reliable, its visuals are breath taking and well polished, and it has so many hotkeys that you will never take the time to learn them all.

Both games have well made, enjoyable campaigns as well as a skirmish mode that enables you to play a single player game against the AI.  They both also support multiplayer games over local area networks as well as Internet matches so you can play against all the other lonely megalomaniacs out there.  Rise & Fall however has a small dilemma in this area.  It has a variety of maps to choose from, but they are not randomly generated. So, when you play an islands map, it will be the same exact map every time with every tree, cliff, goldmine, etc in exactly the same spot.  As you can most assuredly imagine this cripples the replay value of the game.  Age of Empires III has a well-developed multiplayer system called ES online to support Internet games, as well as help you find other megalomaniacs who are close to your experience level.

Although Rise & Fall has some impressive visuals it is not as polished and refined as AoE III.  With that said in Rise & Fall when you fire one of the siege onagers mounted on the front of one of your mighty triremes into a formation of enemy infantry you do see the little men go flying and the ground will be bloodstained but that does not match watching a cannon ball in AoE III fired from your mighty fortress smash through your enemy’s men and then bounce and roll until it finally comes to rest amidst the carnage of the battlefield.

AI is another area where the veterans at Ensemble Studios have come out on top.  It is not so much that the AI in AoE III is far beyond any other RTS out there it is that the AI in Rise & Fall is just plain bad.  There is nothing more annoying then waiting in hero mode to charge across the boarding ramps onto an enemy ship and then have your ship unable to figure out how to pull up next to the enemy ship.  It is also not uncommon for foot soldiers to get stuck while walking next to terrain like mountains or trees.  Not to mention the chariots appear to have a fondness for doing exactly what you do not want them to do.

With all that having been said they are both good games.  Rise & Fall boasts the all-new and unique hero mode, which is, without a doubt, the highlight of the game.  Age of Empires III is an all around good game with many great features to explore, like home city and the opportunity for your explorer to gain experience.  After playing both games our conclusion is that they are both highly enjoyable and worthy buys, but if it’s got to come down to one or the other, AoE III is the way to go.

By Brita Jean Andercheck

In the world of Sims 2, there are essentially two main types of players. The players who “motherlode” their way to excessive bucks and extravagant houses, and those who suffer through the initial $20,000 dollars to build and furnish their first shack.

The first option definitely provides instant gratification. You have an awesome house, you proven your artistic skills, but your Sim has done nothing. The real challenge and skill comes in taking your family with nothing and building a dynasty, whose ancestral home is bigger than that of the cheat coding neighbors.

Please don’t get me wrong. I love “motherloding” to a truly unique creation. And everyone needs a Corleoni family in the neighborhood, and of course they can’t live in the Broke’s trailer home. And how much fun is it to make the Queen Mum if she doesn’t get to live in Buckingham Palace ? Personally, I have quite a few outrageous motherloded homes in my neighborhood. But every once in a while, I just feel the need to challenge myself and see if I can’t change the way the other half live.

In the original Sims 2 this was truly a challenge. Your Sims started adult life jobless and skill less. But the University expansion pack changed all that, and the benefits of a University education are enormous.  In my personal experience, the best way to put your Sims in the most successful position is to start with young adults in college. Declare the right major to go with the intended career, do well in college, make friends, and build the necessary skills for the preferred jobs when your Sim graduates. This is very doable, and puts your Sim in a very different position from the Sim who had just arrived from the create a family screen.

Your college graduate Sim enters the family bin in your neighborhood of choice with 20,000 dollars, plus their share of the college household funds (scholarships, grants, etc), friends and skills. (You can always move one of your other college Sims into the house as a potential spouse and double that 20,000 for an extra initial bonus.) Not only do college graduates have the option of four new career tracks, which are substantially more lucrative than the original careers, they also get a career placement bonus.

When job searching on the computer, Sims are subject to a -2 rule, with a job cap at level 6. Meaning, whichever level job they qualify for (skills and friends) they receive the job two levels below that. Sim graduates are not affected by the level 6 cap. Sims who graduate with a 3.7 or above, if they have elected to pursue one of the careers tracks aligned with their major, will receive a + 1 in job level. Those Sims who earned a 3.9 get a +2 for jobs associated with their major. Graduating Sims with a 4.0 earn a +3 job level bonus. So, if you manage the college academics correctly, your Sim enters the workforce at a level 8 or 9 job.

The most obvious benefit to the high level job is the simoleons your Sim is bringing in, but the other benefit is one the Sims 2 has been trying to teach us about since its beginning. It’s not about this generation, it’s about the next.

With your Sims at the highest job level they can focus on their children instead of their next promotion. Sims can teach their children to study and help them build skills faster by offering lessons on career reward objects. By the time your Sims’ children are teenagers and looking to head to college they will already have the majority of skills they need for college and the workforce after that. Soon, the second generation will emerge from college and into the family bin, ready to repeat the cycle, building wealth and influence along the way. They’ve always said the first generation to go to college had it the hardest, but soon your second generation Sims will have a higher net worth than Mortimer Goth.