Efficiency and Hot Key Guide

This if my first ever guide. I am making this guide for people who are relatively new to Rise of Nations (RoN) and want to be able to be able to play more efficiently with less stress. Thankfully the game has a lot of ways to help reduce the tedium of managing resources and unit queues. Also make sure to have "advanced options" turned on in your gameplay.

I wrote this while at work so I might have missed a few things. If you have anything to add or any suggestions please let me know. I hope this helps people who are new to this great game.

Building Grouping

One of the basic things that make the game so good is that you can treat buildings like units somewhat.

Ex. You can press Shift + K to select all the Barracks you own. Now you can make a "control group" by Ctrl + # (any number 1-9 & F1-F8). Now when you press that key, all of your Barracks are selected. Now lets say you have a very steady amount of resources and need to field an army. Press the hot key for a unit (often it is G, H, or A), and press Q. Q turns on the infinite queue and will produce units one by one. This is good for two reasons. You don't need to spend a large bulk sum up front, so it allows you to also build other things while the army isn't on the field. And it allows you to focus on other matters at hand. You can apply the same technique to Stables/Factories/Docks/Airfields. A quick note, when adding a new unit to the queue have you restart the queue again (i.e. have just riflemen and you add machine gun, you should initial queue again).

A great thing is that you can also set way points for all of these units, and even better you can make the way point your Despot/Senator/Monarch/etc. So where ever the leader is with their army, the front line will be reinforced directly, without the need to queue the army individually and without having to select them again to send them to the front.

Formation and Selecting

Now when you have a large army often the formations will be very long and might not be as useful for a battle in a relatively narrow passageway. Well when you have your army selected you want to make sure it is facing the right way. You can do this by holding right click on an area and dragging the mouse in the direction you want them to face. But at the same time if you left click you can change the shape/formation of your army to better deal with the situation at hand, scrolling the mouse wheel will also effect the shape. Also when it comes to moving units, make a habit out of holding Ctrl when you do so. It will be an attack move and will have them engage the enemy as soon as they are in range. That extra step they are taking within firing range and not responding can be the difference between pushing and retreating. Holding Alt while dragging a selection box will only select the "non-support" units inside of the selection. This excludes things like siege, supply wagons, generals, spies and scouts. This is an efficient way to redirect your army in a firefight without disturbing your placement of these units. Alternately, holding Ctrl + Alt together while dragging a selection box will select only the siege inside the selection. If you want to select citizens when surrounded by units that take priority holding Ctrl + Shift will only select the citizens.

Idle Tech / Idle Unit Prevention

Also you want to get into the habit of using Tab whenever you can. By pressing it it will quickly cycle you through all the available techs that you can purchase, saving you time hunting down the building you need to upgrade something. Also you should have it so the Library techs should hang from the bar that tells you the Age you are fighting in, along with the many extras that are on the bar on the top left.

You also want to have your units avoid being idle for as much as possible. Pressing the "." (period) key will select any worker not building / gathering, and pressing the "," (comma) key will select idle military units. The game is very kinetic and having even a small force probing and harassing even a worker or two on the borders of your enemy will put pressure on them and force them to deviate from their strategy. Even if they repel you, it allows you to better gauge how much force you need to have to avoid being run over. Pressing Shift + , (comma) will allow you select all military units and Shift + . (period) will do the same with citizens.

Stances

The stances that you are able to have your army take are important too. If you are in an open field, you want to be aggressive and try to kill generals and a few of the harder counters. If you are a besieging a city let the cannons do the work. Having ten muskets shoot it as well doesn't help as much as having a defensive posture and defending the cannons. If you do this they lose much of their army and you take their city. If you have a particularly large army, It often helps to split it and have one be a defensive (pinning force) and another be aggressive (striking force). You can often flank and disperse your enemies effectively if your pinning force is ranged and tough (archers and guns), and your striking force is quick (tanks and horses).

If you are going to be raiding or defending you can set the stances of your units prior to them being built by clicking on the stances in the barrack menu.

Air Power

Air power in RoN is often overlooked as a resource to win games. The fact that a base of bombers can often clear many buildings and raze a city in one pass is hard to overstate. Of course it is a double edged sword, you lose the base, you often will lose the bombers if you don't have others for them to fly to.

The trick to using fighters and bombers goes back to the first thing in this guide. To really get the most out of your air and move them around at your whim you need to control group your airbases. In general you want to have distinct packs because if you spread them out they will have different ranges and might be less effective. I often might have my air bases in pairs. Bombers of course are effective against buildings and fighters are good against units.

Ex. So lets say I have a three airbases very close together. I have used my cursor to select them and I bind it to F1 (I like to have my units be numbers and my buildings be F1 or F2 and so on). They are filled with a nice mix of fighters and bombers (a few more bombers than fighters because of the splash damage anyways). Now I see a large city, it even has a few anti air defenses. Often people forget that scouts/commandos jam them so they don't fire and can also rig them with explosives. So I have a commando jam them as you take it out first and for most. So I will press F1 and my three airbases will be selected. Now press R and click within the city or building. All of your air units from those three air bases will fly simultaneously to the area and destroy everything in the area for you, bombers will auto-attack buildings and fighters will auto-attack units. If you merely right click what you want to attack with the airbase you will only get one plane per click, this allows you to do all available planes with one. Want them to move to a nearby city? Press F1, press R, click on that city. If you need them to recall press Y and they will all fly back.

It is very important to have a good airforce or anti-air battery defense because of how good they are at razing cities. Win the skies and every army engagement will be a matter of how soon the fighters and bombers can get there to hand you that win.

Scouting and Waypoints

Scouting is very important early on, while it might be easier to have them wander about, try taking control of them to be more aggressive about getting the ruins that give bonuses to your economy. A nice way to do this is to hold Shift down and setup a waypath that you developed. Similarly you can do this with other units as well to make waypoints. If you want to insert a new waypoint at the beginning of the path Shift + Alt on the area (ruin) and they will make sure to do that first.

Being Sieged and Healing

Have at least one Tower / Fort per town / city. Try and put them in choke points or very close to a farm/mine/woodcutter so if and when you get attacked, select the city and press "z". They will run to the nearest garrison and make that garrison more effective. Also a common problem I see is that people don't heal their troops well prior to battles. An effective way to select only the injured units and avoid selecting them one by one is doing Shift + Home, which selects all wounded units out of the current selection. Ctrl + Home selects all wounded units across the map. By upgrading the tech in granaries and putting the injured units inside of any building, they will heal faster than their base rate. If you own the Red Fort wonder the rate of healing is increased by 500% (or 6x) the current rate you are at (only when garrisoned in the Red Fort specifically).

The base rate for healing is 0.75 hp per second with no upgrades. Herbal Lore bumps it to 1.0 hp per second. Medicine bumps it to 1.64 hp per second. Pharmaceuticals bumps it to 3.0 hp per second. So to heal a unit with ~300 hp that is close to death will take about 100 seconds, but the Red Fort wonder it will only take 12 seconds, making your army incredibly effective and saving you resources.

By saving a unit from a battle that's an extra 100 food / 100 wood or 100 gold / 100 metal you are saving, and if you do it even for 10 units it will add up over the course of a game. Being able to retreat well is a skill that helps with wars of attrition.

Attrition and Defensive City Placement

Speaking of attrition, if you don't have it your enemies will just harass your country side. Make sure to invest in it (in towers) so that it forces them into larger armies rather than raiding parties. I personally avoid forts/cities on the borders with other nations if I can avoid it. All it takes is a well set up artillery and some guards to level either of my cities. You want to always fight with an advantage, and even if your disrupt their attack, its unwise to push so quick into their (attrition) territory unless you planned for such. You want to always fight on your terms with your advantages. Putting forts and cities halfway between borders and other cities is advisable, unless you need to be fighting over a good resource / choke point. Be sure to also have temples on frontier cities as it increases hit points and cities radius, also a very cheap way to increase city size is with a watch tower, which also gives advanced notice of attacks. Every second counts!

Resources and Playing the Market

Speaking of resources, don't neglect them. The earlier you get them, the more dividends they will pay. Sugar for instance gives free food and reduces food costs FOR EVERYTHING by 10%. If you hold that from the start of the game to the end, you will be able to field a larger army faster. Milk them for everything they are worth, and if you see peacocks, slug it out for them. 10% adds up over the course of a game, especially if you are Bantu.

You can have the market prices at the top left corner at all times with advanced options and clicking on the menu to open up. A good rule of thumb (in my opinion) is to avoid having too much stocked up as treasure (unless you are the Dutch). Your resources aren't worth a thing unless you use them, and a thing I notice is that sometimes you might have a glut of food but a dirth of metal, sell sell sell and buy buy buy. You might not get a ton of money but getting techs earlier make your nation that much more efficient and stronger.

Team Play

A strategy that I found to be very successful in games 2v2, 3v3, & 4v4 is having a boomer. A boomer is a nation that is able to very quickly amass a lot of resources and bank it to get into the next age or two first. You want to try and make sure you boom into an age where you have a unique unit if possible to further extend your advantage. This works on a number of levels and I will explain with an example.

Ex. You are China in the Medieval Age. You have a strong economy and two allies on either side of you with good defenses and armies. Not worrying about anything aside from minor techs (non-Library techs) you pour most of your resources into Library techs and rush to Enlightenment. You make sure you have the right amount of military techs so you can upgrade your units. So you can now do one of two things. Use this momentary tech edge to build a wonder ahead of your competition or start producing units for war. What you do is up to the situation. If you are going to build a large army (mostly of Fire Lancers in this case) produce it quickly, but steady. When you feel you have a very formidable force, THEN you upgrade them into unique Manchu Musketeers. The Fire Lancers are much cheaper to build since they are older and the cost for upgrading them all the way to Musketeers doesn't scale. So you can have a very cheap, advanced, and large army with which to assert yourself. Make sure to take advantage of this temporary edge in firepower, as soon as you upgrade them they should be in combat, make sure that your teammates are also ready to assist you.

On the flip side if you notice a nation is leapfrogging ages you can be pretty sure they are booming. If they are going through an Age very quickly what I often do is the rotation technique. One player booms to meet the age, another player builds defenses, and the last player builds an army. Once the boomer starts to next-Age units, the player building the army ought to advance and immediately upgrade the army. Finally while the other two have semi-next-Age armies. You can join them or similarly do the army-upgrade-slingshot to get a large modern army for cheap.

Also a very good habit is establishing lookout posts. They allow you to see invisible forces using the general power, and give advanced notice. That last thing you want is to send a handful of workers to a corner to build a city just to find their army is preventing you from expanding, and disappearing as you get close. Which if you are doing is a great tactic of invisible-general-harassing/ambushing to frustrate their ability to grow.

Nations [America - China]

I am not going to be very in-depth about every nation, but I can outline what sort of parameters you can either play within to take advantage of their strengths or what to expect from them as enemies.

America - Very good at expanding quickly and keeping up with other nations, because large standing army gives resources over time. Having an instantly built wonder is incredibly useful and versatile. Having trouble building units or buildings that require wood? Get Temple of Tikal. Attrition damage causing headaches? Statue of Liberty. They are a very flexible nation, good at offense (standing army), defense (unique units auto entrench), and going through the library (free scholar in university).

Aztecs - Be aggressive. There is no reason you don't have a unit in their territory at all times. Free units, high initial pop cap, and extra resources for killing units and buildings. Think of it this way. Lets say that you make 3 barracks and get some free units (unique ones early). You send said units with a despot. Kill a worker or two and raze a farm and run away. You would get enough to make at least 3-4 more units. Do it again chipping away at them. Its snow balls very quickly if you make sure to not lose units and prevent them from ever really getting momentum themselves.

Bantu - These guys should worry you if you see them on the other team. Able to expand quickly with cheap extra cities, make more units with 100% pop cap, and they all run 25% faster. Hit and Run so they can never get their feet off the ground while you drop cheap cities everywhere. You also don't need the military tech to upgrade, just the age, and with the extra 100% pop, you can pretty much ignore it for other techs.

British - So you want to turtle? Well with the +2 range on forts and tower and their scary strong archers you will be sitting pretty. Plus the extra 25% commerce cap allows you to squeeze the most of smaller lands and the extra gold from taxation helps the coffers too.

China - A very underrated civilization. The 20% discount on library tech is nothing to scoff at. Getting those techs make all other techs cheaper, so going 3-4 in very early allows them to slingshot so to speak. And once they hit the Medieval Age with their long line of unique, cheap, units they can cover a field very very quickly.

Nations [Dutch - Inca]

Dutch - BOOM! Here come the Dutch. With their ability to soar past their commerce cap restrictions they can do a lot of things. Jack-of-all-Trades but master of none nation, though good at sea with their unique units. They are slow to get going, but once they get a large treasury of resources they are able to go in any direction they want.

Egypt - If you find that wonders are the key to victory look no further. They can have a nice collection of wonders in only a few cities. It is pretty discouraging to be using muskets and watching Egypt build the Statue of Liberty, especially at a discount. The extra farms plus the gold are a nice touch. But if you are going to use Egypt have a flexible strategy about what wonders you Need - Want, and also keep in mind that wonder cost stacks as you build more, so make sure all of your swords aren't becoming chisels.

French - Are easily one of the best nations in the game. With other nations I always feel like I never have enough wood for buildings, units, and wonders. France laughs at those problems like a man listening to kids whine about final exams. Add in the fact they get free generals for forts AND free supply wagons WHICH HEAL YOUR TROOPS WITHOUT GARRISON. You pretty much have an army that doesn't need to retreat and has plenty of wood for muskets and cavalry. If you are France get Temple of Tikal to send your wood production to the Moon, and to prevent anyone else from getting close to your wood chopping dominance.

Germany - My personal favorite. Has a deep list of unique units: check. Has a strong ability to boom: check. A Juggernaut outright is Germany. Able to make all of its production far more efficient than other nations earlier, they need less workers to get the same production meaning more of those tough unique units. A good strategy for Germany is to expand quickly for the extra city bonuses and just start dropping all the buildings you can to get the most of them (50% completion bonus). At that point you can start churning out units. Its so difficult (for me anyways) to play anyone else after playing as Germany.

Greek - Science! Greece is a bit of a one trick pony, but its a good trick. Science is finicky, but the fact that Greece can start so early means that they are often cruising in the Medieval age while everyone else is banging sticks together. After a while their power fades, they are best used early in the game to be ahead of everyone else and hurt them with their great unique cavalry, make sure you capitalize on that.

Inca - GOLD! They (with the right wonders) can swim in it. And gold can buy whatever else they need. Get a merchant on some Amber and you can really start playing the field. Also having a refund on units is very nice, so play an aggressive defense. Ply your gold advantage for the long game and have a strong home army.

Nations [Indians - Maya]

Indians - Are able to make very tall cities with the help of a +4 radius, but some of their other abilities are lackluster. Don't get me wrong packing your cities with all the buildings make them all much better, and saves you money, but are a very weak booming civilization compared to Germany and Dutch. Their Elephants are some of the hardest things to kill for their Ages so make sure to use that advantage before its gone, else you aren't going to get far with them.

Iroquois - I hate attacking them. They heal, they are invisible, and they have an extra 10% HP for barrack units. They get both food and wood from their woodcamps. They are still tough outside of their territory but always attack them with care, and if you are playing as them, use that to your advantage to do hit and run ambush attacks.

Japan - If you like the units that come out of barracks and don't care for anything else. They are built cheaper and faster for every military tech, they do more damage to buildings, and they get more food from their cheap farms and fishermen. More food + cheaper units = Strong Army. If you don't have one at all times you are doing something wrong.

Korea - Is a defensive nation that is all about making sure that their buildings don't down fall down while they shoot at you with powerful archers. A very strong anti rush nation. They get free citizens with cities and don't take damage from repairing buildings under attack, forcing you to get up close and personal to a lot of arrows.

Lakota - A good player can be mean. Placing cities and forts all over the unclaimed land. making strong hamlets of standing armies (for food) and doing raids because they cant afford to lose a lot of units. They are a nation that needs finesse to do well.

Maya - Another anti-rush nation. Able to dole out more damage from their towers, cities, and forts. They can build them faster and for less wood. A very straightforward nation, but if you can be aggressive with their ability you can really cause enemies headaches (read: build forts and cities everywhere alone their borders)

Nations [Mongols - Turks]

Mongols - I don't need to tell you how you should have a horde of horses up at all times running in, killing a farm or two and running back. But I did... Anyways the fact that you take 50% attrition damage should already tell you that you should be in their face all the time. The fact that you have cheaper, faster cavalry that take less damage means they have to constantly be defending. The more you keep pushing the more they will have to turtle up and avoid expanding because they can't stretch their lines. That means more territory for you, which goes well with their other bonus for food per % of land owned. Just remember that the hard counter to ranged cavalry is light cavalry, so if you see a Mongol nation as your enemy stack up on light cavalry and pikes, and hope they don't know how to micro them well.

Nubians - A soft boom nation. Better than India but not as good as Germany or the Dutch, with a few possible exceptions. Being able to see all the rare resources in your territory at once is fantastic for you and your team. The fact that you start with a market means you can start sending merchants out and not have to build so many workers. Plus they get 50% more from the resource, and it stacks with other bonuses like the Porclein Tower but it isn't multiplicative. The extra caravan is a nice touch and with markets 50% off you should build them in all of your cities without a thought. You will have no problem with Gold. Now from everything I have said its obvious they are a good boom teammate, but if they are able to get a hold of Amber (+10/-10 of buy/sell in markets) on top of their +20/-20 you can have any resource you want at the click of a mouse. Here is an example of how good they can be on a team.
Ex. You have a lot of gold. You need wood for buildings/army. You can absorb up to 30+% off costs for those resources. You can buy the market and raise the price drastically and barely feel it. Now if you have a teammate who is swimming in food, wood, oil, or metal they can sell theirs (assuming they also have a merchant on the amber the Nubians have) and since the market swung so much, they could possible sell for an extra 100+ gold per click, rather than the smaller amount of gold. So both of you are playing the market for resources when you need them. Communication is a must obviously.
Oh yeah they have good archers and ranged cavalry so play the borders and use them to raid here and there while you take over economically.

Persians - Like Greece they are an early game powerhouse. They have many very good units in the early stages of the game, so many sure you use them. They start with 50% bonus food, regardless of setting, so that means more workers / cities which means you get a good jump on establishing infrastructure and such. They get their civics at a 30% discount and that pairs well with their second city becoming a capital. They also have instant free caravans. This is good because it allows you to have a wide empire so to speak. Capitals that are far away from each other, caravans you don't have to really worry about protecting, cheap civic techs for more cities, and great units to defend / push with. Rush for as much land as possible with cities, get 3-4 and make sure to make full use of Classical and Medieval Ages when you should peak.

Romans - They are tricky in that you can do a lot of different things with them, althought it generally comes down to making a massive army and crushing your enemies with them. You want to have a few cities for the +15 gold per city, and with the extra border pushing of the forts and their 25% discount you should make sure every city has a fort by them, but also near the frontier of the borders. Have 4-5 units garrisoned inside the outlying forts (like maybe the Heavy Infantry that are built 10% cheaper and fasters). They are good at both offense and defence for this reason.

Russians - So lets get this straight. They get bonuses to increase their borders by +1 for every civic, they start with a free civic (and by nature a very early second city), Their Attrition is 100% (or Twice as effective) and the upgrades for them are free. Also their Cavalry units do 25% more damage to enemy supply wagons and siege units. Everything about them screams for you not to invade them (unless you have a very good defence for your supply or Statue of Liberty). Especially if they get bonuses from the Colosseum or Kremlin to increase their attrition bonus further. They are a great nation to do the pinning and striking I mentioned earlier. You should always have a corp of at least 10-15 Lancers grouped (Ctrl + #) as a secondary army. Have an army of pikes and archers meet your invaders while you ambush their supply lines with the Lancers. Either they will focus the lancers to stop them, or will keep attacking. Either way they are flanked, and have to run while you keep killing them as they run off. Throw in a few cheap spies to further thin their ranks and the prospect of invading Russia becomes that much more daunting. Finally you want to spread your cities out and make them have to push DEEP into your territory. Best part is even if they raze your stuff, YOU get the resources. #getsome

Spain - You can see the map! Now I am not going to sugar coat how weak they are as a nation in this game. A lot of their potential power comes from luck, i.e. finding a ton of ruins. They help you with that by giving you the map and extra resources from ruins (plus an extra +26 per Science level from the library so get to level 2-3 quickly for large pots. But again, its not always going to pan out well, especially in team games when you have lots of competition unless you tell your teammates not to scout. Built 3-5 scouts and go to town. The nice this is their units are incredibly lethal to mounted troops. So if you are up against a Greece, Mongols, Frence and so on, don't dispare, but remember that pretty much ALL of your bonuses and unique units go to zero as soon as you hit the Industrial Age. So make your time count and take chances with them.

Turks - They are given the "Power of Siege" and they don't undersell. The range of their guns can have enemy lines breaking before they even engage you. You should be taking out cities and assimilating them with your power (200% or 3x faster) to avoid spending money on making your own! The siege upgrades are free and you get 2 free siege units for every Siege Factory. Now the think with their unique bombard / cannon is that they are more expensive but more powerful. So many sure that in the Classical or Medieval Age you build 3-5 Siege Factories for those free units and allow them to upgrade for free and avoid the cost of the expensive earthshakers they are. Sack a city, lock it down with cheap citizens, and move on to the next city. When you finally engage the enemy on near equal footing it would behove you to move your cannons closer litle by little one at a time to always have a splash damaging, out ranging monster that will scare away most sane commanders.

[Mesenger]

Best guide I've ever seen on Steam Community, thank you so much for this, sir

[Knaupst]

Fantastic!
Can you add a section on Generals and commandos?
For people coming from other games, their power is often overseen

[Nihilistaconsentido]

Could someone tell me how to save the game? PLZ xD

[Pooter86]

This was hands down the best guide ive read and the most helpful. im a newbie at this game but i love it and this giude helped me so much just to learn the ropes

[Huitzilopochtli]

This is the best guide I have seen on Steam. Nicely written and no cheats or exploits messing with my fun.

[Hasinfefa]

noice

[Shebraaaa]

GG nice

[henrique_atb]

Fantastic guide you did, thank you. I will save it for future reference. I discovered this classic game recently, and am slowly learning the mechanics. Your guide deserves to be considered unofficial required reading.

[cjudif]

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[St. 9mm]

Yo, we have to protect the community