Rise of Nations Roblox: A Strategic Guide for Winning
Roblox Rise of Nations
Rise of Nations Roblox is one of many games available on Roblox, and one of the few fleshed out and polished real-time strategy war games you will find there. In Rise of Nations Roblox, you play as any nation with the main goal of taking over other nations, and eventually take over the world. Its gameplay is heavily inspired by Hearts of Iron (HOI4).
This article will go through some strategies for Rise of Nations Roblox, and assumes you at least already know the basics of the game from playing the tutorial and are playing with random strangers on a public lobby. And as a disclaimer, although all Roblox games can be played on mobile, I would highly recommend playing Rise of Nations with a mouse and keyboard for the best possible game play experience.
Ensuring a Good Early Game
Before the game starts, you will have to choose a nation. It is theoretically possible to achieve world domination with any nation, given enough time, patience, and luck, but starting with certain countries can give you a nice head start for an easier time.
If you are terrible at geography like me, a tip to remember would be that your territory and city will always be represented by the colors of light green and red. If you ever get lost while rotating the world, look out for these colors to quickly identify where your territories are.
Countries to Avoid
The first thing to take note of are the biggest countries in the game. They are Russia, China, India, United States. You should avoid any nation adjacent to these countries, unless they are played by someone allying with you (your friend), or you want to face the challenge of fending off a massive army with a small country from the get go.
Being next to these countries, you may get invaded before you get the chance to do anything meaningful and have any chance of surviving. Some of these smaller adjacent countries to avoid include Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Estonia, and several others.
How to Choose a Good Country in Rise of Nations
Having said that, these are the most important characteristics of countries to consider when selecting a country:
1. Size
While bigger is usually better, there is only so much a normal human player can micro-manage efficiently. Regardless, starting with too little territory will make you an easy target for any nation for a swift invasion, so having a mid-sized nation to start with should be the bare minimum.
2. Neighbors
As stated before, having dangerous neighbors can be completely detriment to your gameplan; conversely, having neighbors smaller than you means that you will have no real threat in the early game, giving you time to develop your cities and an army and the option to play aggressively. When considering the threat level of your neighbors, look at their starting manpower and size and compare to yours.
3. Economy
Every country will have income and expenses, which subtract to earn you profits. Ideally, you want to start with a good profit. Income is earned through taxes from your cities, while most of your expenses will come from your army upkeep. A good starting economy lets you develop an army and develop your cities with less worry about gaining more money. Apart from money, a good economy should also include special resources such as oil, aluminum, and titanium, either from your own territory or from your weaker neighbor’s.
4. Beginning Manpower
In Rise of Nations Roblox, every country is assigned a predetermined starting army and manpower in reserve. This means that some countries will always start with a strong army, ready to conquer any lesser nation. A bigger starting army also makes you less likely to be targeted for invasion early on.
5. Terrain and Biomes
If your country has a dangerous terrain or biome, invading armies may suffer from speed penalties and attrition, making you a less desirable invading target early on.
It also helps to know that many countries have at least 1 Formable, basically a side goal that gives benefits when accomplished, essentially a union of several countries that may have existed in real world history. These countries are more likely to be targets of players to invade, and may overlap with other countries’ formables.
Best Countries for Beginners to Start Rise of Nations With
The following countries are powerful and are unlikely to be invaded. You can expect uninterrupted early game, and this is great for a beginner especially when you’re still trying to get a good hand on things.
Brazil
Brazil is one of the most beginner friendly nations in Rise of Nations Roblox, but also very strong and popular, so you can expect every game you play to have a human controlled Brazil. She starts great income to expenses ratio, and a massive army of 640k. Additionally, Brazil is geographically located very defensively, with her 90% jungle biome. Jungle biome provides great defensive bonuses and speed reduction. With Brazil’s 381 cities from the get-go, you are secured an uninterrupted early game.
Despite these advantages, Brazil does not have many desirable neighbors to invade in the early game with her huge starting army, and Brazil has more stability penalties for declaring war due to starting with democracy. Many of your neighbors have hilly terrain, making invasion quite slow, so early aggression is not recommended. You may struggle with human controlled Peru and Argentina but taking over the South American continent will be your first priority, your second being dealing with United States and perhaps a human controlled Mexico.
It is not uncommon that the South American continent goes uncontested by most players for most of the game, since European and Asian Countries are more popular, so Brazil is usually a good nation to play with diplomacy and ally with other players. As United States is one of the strongest nations and Brazil is quite nearby, your game can depend on how United States plays – whether she decides to ally with you or not.
South Africa
South Africa is another beginner friendly nation like Brazil. She also starts with good economy and a decent size army of 120k. I know Brazil has much more army, but the army only really needs to be bigger than the neighbor’s and South Africa’s neighbors are all much weaker at 20-30k. Additionally, South Africa is at the southern tip of the continent – so players will either have to invade you navally, by which time you should be prepared to deal with, or after either Germany or Russia have dominated Europe and is expanding to Africa, which should also be pretty late into the game.
Similar to Brazil, the African continent is usually uncontested by most players in the early game, but usually becomes of interest later in the game. After South Africa’s first conquests, your main problem will be Egypt and Nigeria, 2 other popular African countries, but they are further up north and should not bother you for most of the early game. While dominating the African continent should be your number one priority, your neighbours do have some dangerous biomes that cause attrition, so be careful with early invasions.
Japan
Japan is a good country to pick for a beginner to learn about Asian conflicts and naval combat in this game. Despite having great income, army of 450k, and a geographically defensive location, Japan’s weakness is the lack of special resources, forcing you to trade or invade.
Japan is made of islands surrounded by sea, making invasion by threats require a navy. Even though China is nearby, you should have a relatively peaceful early game. However, you will be competing with China for invasions. Although China is unlikely to attack you directly, China may invade your primary invasion targets before you can, since it is harder for you to invade across the sea. You should be focusing on invading either the Koreas or Southeast Asia for special resources before focusing on China. Due to her proximity with China, Japan is a good country to learn to deal with large superpower countries like China and Russia, with a much higher chance of surviving into mid-late game.
Best Countries for Experts to Play Rise of Nations With
If you are already verse with the ins and outs of the game, and are looking for a challenge, these countries are great for you. The following countries are powerful but start in highly contested continents.
You can expect early game conflicts when playing these countries. Compared to the previously mentioned countries, they will be in a hotspot nearby countries that are more likely to be picked by players, such as France, Italy, Russia, and several others – therefore a hotspot for early game conflict. You would be forced to learn to invade and defend against other players a lot more than if you picked one of the aforementioned beginner countries, otherwise you will be picked off by a more experienced player.
Germany
Germany is one of the most contested countries in public servers, and for good reason. She has a strong economy a good starting army of 180k. Germany is also surrounded by weaker neighbors with no dangerous terrain or biome so there is no threat of invasion early on while having the option of early aggression.
Germany is one of the most powerful countries, being in the best position for taking over western Europe. Her only potential threat is the huge country that is Russia to the East so watch out for a human controlled Russia who may be focusing on taking out Germany; just remember that Germany can match Russia’s army production.
Turkey
Turkey is another strong country with a decent economy and starting army of 200k and 79 cities, but is neighbors to Russia, Egypt, and Iran, 3 rather powerful countries. Still, Turkey has other much weaker neighbors to invade early on. Like Japan, Turkey also has a shortage on special resources, and has to deal with a large neighboring superpower.
Unlike Japan, however, Turkey only has its hilly terrain to deter invaders – not nearly as effective as the sea, so Turkey will likely face more conflicts early on, possibly from Russia as well. As such, it can be rather difficult for a new player to handle.
Singapore
Singapore is a city state nation with a small income and population and basically no army or special resources to begin with. If you ever played as Venice in other similarly themed games such as Civilization V, then you will know the unique challenge to the playstyle of city state nations that can be really intriguing due to their 1 city start. Even though there is far less management early on than usual, I still would not recommend a city state nation for a beginner due to a lack of special resources.
The main problem with Singapore, as with all city state nations in this game, is that if any players choose a country that is near you, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, or the Philippines, you should probably leave the server and try another one because there is no way you will survive an early invasion. Fortunately, those countries are not commonly picked, which is probably why Singapore is the city state nation with the highest pick rate (compared to Hong Kong who likely gets obliterated by China), since it is more likely that you can conquer Southeast Asia with less contest.
Other Countries
Once you have gotten used to playing the game, you should have gained enough EXP to unlock play as the powerhouses of the world, namely United States, China, and India. All 3 of these nations are very powerful and it is worthwhile to play them and enjoy a much easier time of world domination.
Earning Money Fast in Rise of Nations
Early game is usually when you have money problems, and hopefully you are not playing a country that suffers from both economy and being a juicy target for invasion. Only countries that start with Democracy ideology and have a large population tend to not struggle with economy: these include Brazil, Japan, United States, and India. If you are not them, these tips may help with your early game economy management:
1. Aim to Build 2 Electronics Factories ASAP
They cost 25 million money each, but should pay for themselves after selling the electronics they produce to the AI. The AI may not be competent enough to play against for a challenge, but at least you can make money off of them before invading them. Every AI country buys electronics for different prices; you can search online for tables compiled by fans of the game and find the best deals available in your game.
2. Invade and Plunder
After somewhat stabilizing the economy with electronics, simply invading and annexing cities will improve your economy, as every city will provide you with taxes. Target AI-controlled countries for much less resistance. If you have to end a war before an AI country has been eliminated, you can demand war reparations for extra income.
3. Increase Taxes
This can be done through policy and ideology management and technology research. Increasing taxes is a surefire means of receiving more money.
4. Maintain Stability
Maintain stability at all costs, as low stability is guaranteed to demolish your economy. This means going easy on wars when you’re democratic, avoiding going into debt, and more.
5. Delete Unnecessary Armies
When you are really desperate, have no need for an army for some reason, and/or really just want more income, deleting your army will reduce your expenses and raise profits.
Handling Diplomacy in Rise of Nations
Alliance with players can be established through a diplomacy tab, and by requesting through the in-game chat. AI countries cannot be allied with; only players can – this usually just means a formal agreement in the game to work together, but backstabbing is also possible.
Allying with a fellow player usually involves fighting wars together and sending each other aid. This is where it really depends on the players in the server, and what countries were chosen. If you really want an alliance, it is more reliable to play this game with a friend. In a normal game, assuming players are all strangers and playing strategically to win, there are a few factors you should and they may consider before allying:
- Are you on the same continent?
- Are you powerful enough to be worth allying with?
- Do you communicate frequently in-game for coordinated attacks?
- Are you acting suspiciously with your troops?
An alternative to alliances is factions, which can only be formed by a superpower country such as China or United States. Generally, there is not that much difference between an alliance and a faction, except in wars, as allies do not automatically join their allies’ wars while faction members participate in wars as a group.
Regardless, if you are a new player, it is possible to get rejected quite often as players may not be as willing to help, but you may find some nicer players every now and then in casual games who do not mind guiding you.
Best Strategies to Deploy in Rise of Nations
Having the best country picks, a formidable alliance and measures in place to earn enough money, now let’s take a look at some strategies that ensure a deciding victory in Rise of Nations.
1. Scorching Cities
Scorching cities is an action you can do to any city you own or occupy. A scorching city will have no income of money and manpower and causes attrition to all armies nearby, regardless of alliance. Most importantly, a scorching city give stability penalty. As mentioned earlier, stability is important to maintain as low stability can demolish your economy, forcing you to delete your army. There are several strategies involving scorching cities that directly target your enemy’s stability, forcing them to deal with instability and severely weaken them.
Executing the Strategy
1 strategy is to capture the enemy cities as fast as possible and let them recapture them. But shortly before they recapture their city, scorch all their cities to give them a penalty.
Another strategy against a stronger invader is to scorch all of your city near the border while retreating. This can give you a fighting chance due to damage the attrition caused.
One more strategy is to “gift” your enemy a scorching city when making a peace treaty. This is best done when the enemy is the one initiating the treaty, so the offer cannot be refused.
Ways to Counter this Strategy
Scorching is unfortunately not easy to counter. The first strategy mentioned is the one you can try to be aware of to mitigate it at best. Due to the attrition caused by scorching affecting all armies, you will notice that the enemy will suddenly start retreating when they are ready to scorch, typically when you are trying to recapture. You can try to act quickly with any nearby stray armies to recapture before they start burning.
Getting scorching cities will hurt your stability severely so try to mitigate it as far as possible with policies and lower spending. It is quite likely that the scorching player is preparing for the next attack against you, so you have to be prepared for that as well.
Scorching cities is considered a low blow move so consider using it sparingly. Mass scorching is seen as cheating in some situations and can lead to a ban from the game.
2. Blitzkrieg (or Tank Rushing)
This strategy involves stacking a large army of tanks, taking advantage of their high speed and attack power. As the main unit involved in this strategy, all technology involving improving tanks should be researched. Tanks are quite expensive, requiring Motor Parts, Steel, Oil, and a high initial cost to produce, so selecting or taking over countries with these special resources is recommended before employing this strategy.
The element of surprise is important in this strategy, so the enemy has less chance to respond. Unless the enemy was already prepared to deal with your attack, you can expect to take over at least 10 cities before the enemy starts putting up significant resistance. Sometimes this can be enough to force the enemy to request peace from you, giving you a boost to your economy, and in the best case the player rage quits making the war far easier against an AI.
Executing the Strategy
The main idea behind this strategy is a quick surprise attack with overwhelming number of tanks. As players always have full view of the globe and there is an in-game chat, players can suspect when you are doing some suspicious action and be prepared, or even inform unsuspecting players of your plan. Do not stack tanks the moment you decide to execute this plan; instead wait, starting to build as many as you can about 30 seconds before you officially declare war.
A good complement to the tanks would be air and naval support, as well as a few artilleries. If you can afford it, ideally you should also amass some bombers and submarines for an easier time.
3 things to be aware of when executing the Blitzkrieg
1. Blitzkrieg is a very all-out and focused strategy. Once you decide to employ this strategy, focus all your military and resources into invading your target. Even if you get attacked from another direction, focus on completing the Blitzkrieg to apply continuous pressure as players are unlikely to accept peace if you are losing in the war – i.e. not applying enough pressure. Hopefully, you can take over a significant portion of your target before you request for peace with them and deal with other invasions.
2. Choose your target wisely. A player who has strong diplomatic ties with other players near you is a very poor target, due to this being an all-out strategy leaving you vulnerable to a quick counter-offensive from other directions from their allies. If every player near you is allying with each other, you should probably forego this strategy and ally with them as well.
3. Keep a watchful eye on your economy as debt is a very potential problem if you overextend in the war. Going into debt is a very fast and sad way to lose the game completely.
Ways to Counter this Strategy
1. If you always defend your capital, you should have an easier time defending a Blitzkrieg. A typical Blitzkrieg army consists of 10-20k army of tanks in multiple divisions, so having a defence that can overpower this army is ideal.
2. Research the anti-tank technology if you suspect a Blitzkrieg coming your way. This technology can make your infantry overpower tanks with ease.
3. Have a good diplomacy game! There is no shame in having strong allies to help you. Blitzkrieg is actually rather looked down upon as players view it as “scummy”, so players are usually happy to help team up against the Blitzkrieg player.
3. Camping (Abusing Enrenchment)
This strategy primarily exploits the game visuals showing enemy players an inaccurate view of your own army, split into multiple divisions but all in the same position, thus only showing 1 division and tricking enemies into believing that you have a weak defence.
This visual trick is actually extremely easy to pull off as you can multi-select your army and order them to move to the exact same position. Once this is done, stop moving those armies and they will automatically start entrenching, accumulating defensive bonuses over time. An invading enemy may attacking this “weak” army you have and be caught by surprise when their supposedly stronger army gets wiped out within the next second by 50 divisions of 10k all at once.
This “bait-and-switch” can really surprise powerful unsuspecting players and wipe out a large portion of their main army, turning the tables in your favor.
Executing the Strategy
Basically any nation can pull off this strategy in the mid-late game after amassing a significant enough army of at least 500k. This strategy is primarily a defensive one and is most effective when you are at war with a country who believes they are stronger than you. Turn off “auto-merge” so your divisions will stay separated when at the same position.
Try to have at least some backup support, such as aircraft and artillery, and some stray armies, to throw off suspicion and poke their armies down.
3 things to be aware of when executing the Camping strategy
1. Like Blitzkrieg, camping relies a lot on the element of surprise, but it is harder to pull off successfully as it is reactive. Camping is not as all-in as Blitzkrieg is so read the situation and go on the offensive if the invader does not fall for the bait.
2. Do not overestimate the damage reduction Entrenchment provides. Entrenched troops are not completely immortal – fully researched divisions of 969k army can still kill a good portion of your troops! Against such large armies, performing the first strike with your large army is better than taking the hit through entrenchment.
3. Employing a Blitzkrieg after a successful bait is a powerful way to finish a war quickly. Do not try to bait multiple times; go for the head once the bait was successful and make your enemy panic and play poorly.
Ways to Counter this Strategy
1. Knowing this strategy exists at all should help you a lot in being more careful about the player you are invading. You can check the military rankings to gauge your enemy’s true power, although it is possible that they left a stray division to defend while on a Blitzkrieg.
2. Try to send a weak army to test the waters with any suspicious weak defenders, so your main army does not get demolished.
3. If the enemy is camping but appears determined to bait you into attacking their troops, simply avoiding their troops will completely nullify this strategy. Try to split up your army and go for a more divide-and-conquer strategy. Camping players tend congregate their defenders near their capital or whatever strong city they have, so just go for their other cities. But beware if their defenders
4. Submarine Baiting
Navy is an important aspect of this game, and submarines are the strongest navy units, having invisibility and strong attacking power. Its unique cloaking ability allows for spying and guard duty for your other ships. This strategy is employable against players who enjoy building battleships as submarines are extremely effective against them.
The concept is to bait an attack from enemy battleships on your frigates or destroyers, and then performing a surprise attack on the battleships with the submarines. Battleships are close-range attackers, so if you position your submarines near enough, the battleships will not be able to escape the counterattack. As frigates and destroyers are far more inexpensive than battleships, you will have the naval and economic advantage from this exchange.
Executing the Strategy
4 submarines are recommended for a significant attack on the battleships. You will also need at least 1 frigate or destroyer as bait. Ideally, this naval exchange should happen in some kind of strait or canal to make escape even more difficult for the battleships.
While this can bait inexperienced players into charging with all of their battleships, employing this strategy is also a good way for newer players to learn the basics of naval combat and naval defence. Players may not go all-in on battleships, so this is not always a relevant strategy.
Ways to Counter this Strategy
If you see a stray frigate or destroyer patrolling a random canal, always assume that they are guarded by submarines. If you need to get past the canal, bring some submarines as backup to be careful, and do not overcommit your attack with the battleships.
5. The Outlast Strategy (Pacifist)
This is a very extreme, tedious, and time-consuming strategy if you are in it for the long con and want to win without any risk. It ain’t flashy, but you will be playing against human players, and humans cannot play this game forever. The goal is simply to stay on the server for as long as possible, until all other human players eventually inevitably leave. They will be replaced with an AI who you will have a much easier time invading.
Executing the Strategy
If you intend to employ this strategy, starting with any defensive nation is a good choice to ensure survival, such Brazil or South Africa. You should be playing as normal and taking out AI nations, but focus on forming alliances with players, economy, and defense. Employing camping is a good idea to wipe out any hostile players. Once you have the best possible defence, it becomes a waiting game for the other players to leave one by one. Be prepared to be monitoring the game for at least 4 hours, or even more. There are some hardcore players out there.
This is not a strategy any normal player should be using, but it can be some kind of endurance challenge for you to try out. If you want to go for World Conquest, it is faster to just invade players normally and take them out with your superior tactics and skill.
Ways to Counter this Strategy
It is pretty much impossible to tell when someone is intending to just stall the game out indefinitely, so really the only counter is to just conquer everyone as quickly as you can – not that this is a particularly reliable or common strategy players will be thinking of. Players may use this strategy for a lower effort World Conquest achievement, but there are more common, more powerful strategies that threaten your game with a loss than this.
