Rise of Civilizations Is an Epic Strategy MMO for Mobile

Most mobile games are stripped back versions of their PC and console counterparts, with fewer elements, smaller maps, and cruder visuals.

Rise of Civilizations is different. While it is clearly optimised for mobile, and playable in five minute bursts if necessary, it’s big and ambitious enough that we wouldn’t be surprised to find it on Steam.

You start out with a choice of eight different civilizations. They include a diverse range of cultures such as Germany, Japan, Spain, and Korea. Once you’ve made your choice, you’re free to decide the fate of your people.

Sort of. The world of Rise of Civilizations is full of enemies, but you can choose to engage them, beat them back, conquer their territories, and generally ruin everybody’s lives, or take the path of peace and concentrate on your own little patch.

The massive, zoomable world map is cut up into regions that you gradually gain access to as you play the game, by opening up passes. You can also send scouts into the fog of war to reveal stuff like temples, villages, caves, and – most important of all – intel on your enemies.

Rise of Civilizations is incredibly dynamic in its gameplay. You can station your troops anywhere, force yourself into battles that are already going on, run away from battles that are causing you pain, and dispatch multiple commanders at once.

Commanders are a whole thing in themselves. You gain more and more of these as you play, and each one is based on a real historical figure, such as Joan of Arc or Sun Tzu. These hero characters can be leveled up, RPG-style, via their own individual skill trees.

Of course, it’s not all swords and bows. Back at home you have a city to run, by unlocking and upgrading a huge number of building types, laying roads, planting trees, quarrying stone, growing crops, healing troops, training archers, repairing fortifications, and so much more.

So much, in fact, that we’ve almost (almost!) run out of space without even getting to the alliance side of the game. It adds a huge number of missions and other activities to get your teeth into, and sees you join up with other players.

As you might expect this mode sees you involved in various scuffles over territory, and making sure you gain the best land – such as the mountain passes between regions – is essential if you’re going to nab the best rewards.

You can download Rise of Civilizations on Google Play and the App Store when it’s launched on September the 21st.