Is it worth playing?
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What makes a great leader? Unfortunately, it seems that historians could never agree upon this all-important question. Some emphasized the warrior’s qualities – courage, brute strength, determination, and zippy decision-making. Some gave their vote to intellect, diplomacy, cunning, education, while others favored ethical values and moral integrity above all. And there are also scores of seemingly minor traits to consider: jousting skills, dancing proficiency, multitasking and ability to resist poison, to name just a few. Whatever may be your stance on this matter, Rise of Kingdoms will give you the free reign to become a leader you’ve always dreamed to be and write the history of your kingdom in golden calligraphy – or blood. Brute, despot, dictator, benefactor, megalomaniac or enlightened monarch showered in riches, war spoils and eternal glory. All this will be within your grasp…provided that you’re willing to pay a certain price. But, let’s save the unpleasant topic of prices and payments for later, lest we scare off the faint of heart.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Development
The game was developed by a renowned Chinese developer Lilith Games…
Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade was developed by a renowned Chinese developer Lilith Games, and was originally released in 2018. as Rise of Civilizations If you aren’t quite familiar with their work, here’s a couple of notable titles that might jog your memory – AFK Arena, Art of Conquest, Soul Hunters, Abi, and others. In any case, just to avoid any possible confusion, due to some legal reasons, in May 2019. Lilith Games had officially changed the name Rise of Civilizations into Rise of Kingdoms. This turned out great for gamers worldwide because they conveniently used that rebranding opportunity to further enhance their real-time/city building/MMO offspring with several new features, including a couple of new civilizations and commanders, as well as a completely new and, might we add, utterly awesome musical score by famous Christopher Tin. And, if, by any chance, you’ve started whistling Baba Yety just now, you’re completely right – that’s the guy.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
GAMEplay
Anyone who played strategies such as Civ or some of its clones will find himself on the familiar ground…
As you probably know by now, we at the Blue Moon Game are suckers for a great storyline. Yet, as a game with open, non-linear structure, RoK doesn’t have a particular campaign or story that would underline the entire game and seamlessly unify all its features. And in this case, that’s not a bad thing – after all, you’ll be free to write your own story – nay saga, nay…legend! – through your mighty gubernatorial deeds and not be restrained by limitations imposed by a screenplay. What it offers instead is great and extremely functional gameplay with a plethora of diverse features that make it rather unique on mobile platforms. However, let’s make one thing clear from the very start: although it’s occasionally advertised that way, the game doesn’t offer anything particularly revolutionary. The entire concept with different civilizations, technologies, historic periods, leaders, heroes, and commanders, as well as a medley of different gaming genres such as RTS and City-building is actually a skillful pastiche of various time-honored ideas we’ve seen countless times throughout the gaming history.
Of course, there’s also something to be said about those games who successfully recycle elements from other titles – which is sometimes more difficult and complicated than a mere novelty for novelty’s sake – and combine them into an elegant functional whole. That’s certainly true about RoK, an RTS/City Builder combo which puts you on the throne of a great nation’s leader who’s leading his civilization from rags to riches, inspiring them to become something more than a ragtag band of primitive barbarians and ushering them into the new age of prosperity.
The skill with which developers from Lilith Games had put into practice all those various components is evident from the very start. Anyone who ever played strategies such as Civilization or some of its clones will find himself on the familiar ground. You start by choosing the civilization you’ll lead. Initially, there were eight available civilizations, but, as we’ve mentioned developers had expanded the choice by adding three more. At the moment, all the usual suspects are there: Rome, Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Korea, China, Japan, with a few more exotic choices such as Arabia, Ottomans, and Byzantium. Will there be more of them? Not quite sure, but because the gaming community is virtually screaming for more on Reddit and other virtual venues, it’s reasonable to suppose that there indeed will be. In any case, each civilization has its unique starting advantage in the form of different commanders, special units and bonuses, which means that there isn’t the best civilization per se, but only those most fitted for certain situations or diverse playing styles. This makes this choice particularly important since various civilizations might prove especially useful in different phases of the game. If you feel that you’ve made a wrong choice, there is even an option to change civilization later in the game. However, since it’ll cost you the king’s ransom, we’d strongly advise you to carefully consider your choices.
Now, before all these lofty notions of grandeur, eternal glory and your personal empire on which the sun never sets, go into your head, know that your beginnings will be quite modest and that every great leader is – first and foremost – a servant of the nation. In practice that actually means that you’ll spend your time slaving between many tasks that demand your royal attention, so you’ll soon realize that the single most important quality a leader might have is his ability to multitask efficiently. The kernel of your future kingdom will be a single, fairly undeveloped city with walls which, in all honesty, wouldn’t stop a band of angry kittens, let alone infamous Hannibal and his raging elephants. But, fear not, it’ll not stay forever that way. As in many other games of this type, the key prerequisite for the development of your booming little city will be the level of your City Hall. Give it some attention and love, and your fair city will soon boast other structures necessary for further development and training your noble armies. At that point things will start getting increasingly interesting, as you’ll start exploring your surroundings, dispersing the fog of war with your scouts, searching for the resources, fighting barbarian hordes and encountering other players.
Other players? Why, yes! One of the most satisfying features of the game is its MMO component, which creates a lively and dynamic arena for your exploits. You’ll be able to take more, let’s say, military-based course, with spectacular RTS combats and plethora of tactics, with your troops being led by some of 27 heroes that are currently available. However, pacifism, diplomacy, steady development, an economy that’s not based on pillaging and plundering are also completely viable options. Just as in some tasty multilayered cake, the possibility to join in the alliance of like-minded individuals, affords a new scrumptious dimension to the whole gaming experience, which not only can make your life much easier, in the long run, thanks to the things such as shared resources and protection of your allies but will allow you to directly interact with real people. Finally, alliance membership will also unlock several interesting options exclusive to each alliance, and additionally enrich the entire gameplay.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Graphics and Tech Compatibility
Created in an utterly cartoonish style which might remind you of something that famous Albert Uderzo might have done…
Unsurprisingly, the visual presentation of the game is on a quite high level. The graphics are appealing, colorful and are done in an utterly cartoonish style which might remind you of something that famous Albert Uderzo might have done if he was a Pixar animator. And while visual designers and animators at Lilith games had obviously done a pretty decent job, as they always do, this time they might’ve just gone little overboard with an excessive cuteness.
Of course, they’ve intentionally done it so that they could confirm the visual presentation to the taste of the majority. Admittedly, most gamers like this type of carefree, slightly caricatured design and puppy-eyed characters, but in doing so they also achieved two slightly subversive things which become apparent once you’ve seen through all the dazzling visual spectacle. Firstly, the final result is indeed adorably cute and easy on the eye, with a pleasant pastel color scheme, but it’s also quite generic. You’ll have a feeling that, in terms of the visuals, you’ve already seen all this somewhere. The other thing is that this exuberant cuteness doesn’t quite reflect all the depth and complexity of the gameplay, and, perhaps, would be more suited to some less ambitious and casual game, than this one which is essentially a serious RTS/City Builder MMO title.
However, take this remark with a grain of salt, especially if you’re inclined to this type of presentation because visuals are indeed quite likable. That especially becomes apparent thanks to the so-called “infinite zoom feature” which (although, of course, there’s nothing particularly infinite about it) enables you to zoom and unzoom with extreme flexibility, whether for tactical purposes or for pure aesthetic enjoyment.
Where can you enjoy the Rise of Kingdoms? As far as Android users are concerned, as long as you have a device with a 4.1 version of Android OS, you should be just fine. Owners of iPhones, iPads, and iPods touch devices (equipped with iOS 8.0 or later) will also be pleased to hear that they can finally experience firsthand what it’s like to be a leader of a rising nation. Finally, there’s also a way you can play this game on PC, but you can read all about it in our guides section of this text.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Free-to-play Friendly
“Stages that end with a boss fight” model…
We’ve finally come to this part of our text, the dreaded topic of payments. This is where even the mighty fall like dominoes, and, in this instance, RoK had certainly stepped on a pretty slippery bar of soap. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Is it free-to-play friendly or not? There’s no beating around the bush – it’s as friendly as an unruly barbarian horde that’s preparing to sack the temple defended only by a group of helpless vestal virgins. As you might already know if you’ve checked out what gamers across the internet have to say about this topic, it is currently a very unbalanced game that very much favors pay-to-win players. Unfortunately, our experience is pretty much the same: if you’re a free-to-play user, you’ll have extreme difficulties in the latter stages of the game to keep up with paying players. They’ll raise their structures quicker, recruit better heroes and be bigger, stronger and faster in every respect.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Verdict
This is a successful hybrid of real-time strategies and the city builder genre…
Both real-time strategies and city builder games had always represented pretty engaging concepts that gave interesting results on those occasions when they were combined in a single game. Rise of Kingdoms is one such ambitious hybrid which attempts – and, for the most part, succeeded admirably – to pair those two. To make everything more challenging, it also introduces an MMO aspect to the entire combo, which adds a completely new dimension to your state-building and expansionist efforts, especially when you consider the fact that there are currently plenty of alliances to which you could pledge – or refuse – your cause. Finally, all this goodness comes artistically wrapped in a tasteful, colorful and eye-catchy visual casing that will look pretty sweet on the screens of your mobile devices. The only major (and when we say “major” we mean it – it’s literally the size of the famous Colossus of Rhodes) issue concerns the balance of power between free-to-play and pay-to-win players, but with some tweaking, even that could be overcome relatively easily.
Rise of kingdoms guides and TIPS
How to improve your gaming experience and gameplay…
Here is the part when we get a bit more in-depth. We compiled a list of useful guides, tips, and tricks that will help you throughout your gaming journey and hopefully make it more fun and easy! Enjoy!
Use links below to jump to the guide sections.
FAST LINKS:
- How to Get Alliance Credits?
- How to Get Alliance Gold?
- How to Get Passport Pages?
- How to Get Speedups?
- How to Use Sculptures?
- How to Attack a Pass?
- How to Zero?
- How to get Teleports?
- How to Get the Arrow of Resistance?
- How to Play on PC?
In the meantime, guv’nor, whatever you do, don’t fret – we got your back! We know what manner of severe challenges lie ahead of you. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide which contains the answers for some of the most sought after questions, so think of it as a light version of Rise of Kingdoms Wiki. Whenever the burden of leadership becomes too heavy even for your capable and broad shoulders, and you want to find out something particularly important that’s been hindering your progress in the game, check out our guide sections below. You just might find what you’re looking for. It will help you to overcome all the odds and become the mighty leader you’ve always meant to be.
How to Get Alliance Credits?
Someone once said: come join the army and see the world. The same goes for joining the alliance – not only it’ll immensely enhance your overall Rise of Kingdoms experience, but it’ll also increase your chances of staying alive and prosperous. Alliance credits are one of those essential resources that will help you ensure just that. They can be used for funding a number of extremely useful things, from constructing and repairing different structures such as magnificent alliance fortresses to conducting various researches. There are several ways how they can be obtained. First of all, each time an alliance member participates in some activity – be it some sort of research or constructing some structure – the alliance credits will automatically be generated. The same goes when a member contributes to technology research. The third way is to simply build structures such as forts or flags. Participating in the building of Alliance Flags can potentially be an especially efficient and easy method to earn alliance credits. The only problem is that most gamers are repeatedly making the same mistake – they assume that more is always better, so they send a larger number of troops to shorten the time of building. However, the number of credits generated that way is based not on the number of troops engaged in building, but on the time of the building – the longer the better. So, the trick is to send only one troop, which will extend the building time, thus enabling you a steady income of alliance credits for the duration of the process.
How to Get Alliance Gold?
Just as with all other types of resources, you’ll secure gold for your alliance by building Alliance Flags, and thus making a Goldmine (or any of the other three resource deposits) an integral part of your alliance’s territory. Then it’s only a matter of farming them, and the alliance will automatically receive its percentage of a particular resource.
How to Get Passport Pages?
Some people think that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Whether you count yourself as one of them or not, there are a couple of ways you can pack your suitcase, change your location and transfer from one kingdom to another, hopefully for the better. For the players above level 9, the solution is to acquire the coveted Passport Page. Currently, there are two ways to do it. Firstly, if you’re a member of an alliance, you can purchase it in the alliance shop for the hefty price of 600,000 Individual Alliance credits. The other method is to simply purchase some of the available Value Bundles which contain a Passport Page, and you’ll be ready to go! Of course, take notice that oftentimes there will be certain requirements you’ll be required to meet before you’ll be allowed to migrate to another kingdom.
How to Get Speedups?
Speedups are one of those items which can be real game-changers if they’re used at an opportune moment. As you probably know, there are several categories of speedups, which you can acquire in a couple of ways, depending on how much effort (read: grind) and time you’re ready to invest. If you don’t shy from a bit of hard work, you can participate in several events that are available in the game, and most of them regularly offer speedups as a reward. Likewise, if you don’t mind bashing a few barbarian skulls, that also might prove as a pretty decent source of training speedups. On the other hand, if you want to avoid all the hassle – and aren’t beneath spending some extra gems – then Shop, regular or VIP, is your go-to place.
How to Use Sculptures?
What aspiring governor wouldn’t want a magnificent piece of the very best Carrara marble carved in the likeness of some great hero in his backyard? However, in Rise of Kingdoms sculptures aren’t just fancy artworks, but are used for a very specific purpose – to upgrade the skills of your commanders. Now, in case you aren’t aware of that, there are two main types of sculptures – so-called Universal and Specific commander sculptures. As the name suggests, Universal sculptures (which, by the way, look like famous Easter Island heads) can be used to upgrade the skills of any hero. They have four tiers, Advanced, Elite, Epic, and Legendary, so depending on the tier, they can be used to level up skills of the commander of the corresponding level. They also can be swapped for statues of particular commanders. You can use Specific commander sculptures to summon specific heroes, as well as to level up their skills.
How to Attack a Pass?
In the case you aren’t yet familiar with Passes, they are basically monumental defensive structures, gates with a portcullis between mountain ranges which separate different zones or provinces in the game. To move your troops between zones, you’ll have to pass through these gates – which often means that you’ll have to fight your way through it. Now, how do you attack it? Simply, rally your troops in the vicinity of the Pass (or, if it’s an initiative within your alliance, reinforce the rally until it’s full), and then attack the gate. Once you’ve exterminated all the enemies (which might take a while, depending on the number of troops and the level of the Pass), you’ll capture the Pass. Of course, before all that, it’s certainly a good tactic to send a Scout first to infiltrate the enemy Pass. That way you’ll receive valuable intelligence such as info on the number of the troops stationed there and the identity of the primary commander and his skills, which will give you a hint on what you might expect and accept the outcome of the attack.
How to Zero?
Arguably, this is one of the eternal questions that bugs many a strategy MMO player – how to zero someone, preferably some annoying arch-enemy that’s been plaguing your kingdom for a long time? The other question would be how to avoid getting zeroed yourself, but that’s a topic for an altogether different situation. Naturally, there isn’t a simple answer to this question, especially in a complex game with many variables such as Rise of Kingdoms. Of course, it goes without saying that you aim to bring down someone powerful – a fledgling player isn’t much of a challenge, right? Here are a few general tips that just might help you get a clearer perception of this problem. First of all, know your enemy, his strengths and weaknesses, using your scouts to find all you can about a particular governor. Next, don’t go after him without some serious backup, especially if he’ll bring the troops from his own alliance to his aid. Particularly, if he’s a part of some powerful alliance then it’s mandatory to rally the troops from your alliance – the more the better. We can’t stress enough how much it’s of paramount importance to carefully and efficiently coordinate the attack. Never spread out the attack, but, rather, join forces in a synchronized charge so that he doesn’t know what had hit him. Concentrate on the defensive structures such as walls, watchtowers and garrisons and his city will receive burn damage. Destroy his wall – as long as it stands, the city will resist. Eventually, if all goes well, you’ll destroy the walls of his precious city and he’ll be teleported to a random location on the map. Congratulations, you’ve just zeroed your opponent!
How to get Teleports?
As you probably know, the RoK offers several types of teleports. From the so-called Beginners Teleport, through Random, Territorial and Targeted teleports, each has its specific purpose. Except for Beginners Teleport which you’ll automatically receive at the beginning at the game (compliments of Lilith Games) and which expires after 10 days, other types of teleports can be obtained in some events, but you can primarily purchase them in Shop, VIP Shop, and from the Mysterious Merchant.
How to Get the Arrow of Resistance?
You want your Watchtower to rise high and proudly so that you can keep your city extra safe? In that case, in addition to regular resources, you’ll have to obtain a certain number of items called the Arrow of Resistance, depending on the level of the tower you want to upgrade. Luckily, you can obtain ample quantities just by fighting barbarians and going through the event called Lohar’s Trial. Of course, just like most other items in Rise of Kingdom, you can procure the Arrow of Resistance in Shop.
How to Play on PC?
As with many other seemingly exclusively mobile games, there is a tried and true way to try out Rise of Kingdoms and play it glitch-free on your PC. Just install BlueStack emulator on your PC, download the game and you’ll be ready to roll.