Fans of Fate of the Dragon, the Eidos-published RTS, may do a bit of a double take when they see Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs. This new RTS by Chinese game studio Object Software is a follow-up to Fate of the Dragon, and graphically, the two games are stunningly similar. However, Dragon Throne promises to offer more refined gameplay than its predecessor, along with more features and more options for building your kingdom over the course of three single-player campaigns. The game offers some unique features, like a "profession transference" system that lets you use workers as soldiers (and vice versa), and the overall look and feel of the game is very slick. The main obstacle that might stand in Dragon Throne's path, however, is the fact that it will probably offer very little that hasn't been done before in many other RTS games.

Ancient China sets the stage for Strategy First's Dragon Throne.

Dragon Throne is set in ancient China, circa AD 208. Based on the characters and events of the classic 14th-century epic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the game challenges players to unite the three divided kingdoms of China while playing as one of the three key figures of the time: Liu Bei, Sun Quan, and Cao Cao. The single-player game, in fact, provides three separate campaigns, one for each character. The prerelease version we played included only the Liu Bei campaign, but it was extensive enough to give us a good feel for the styling and overall design of Dragon Throne.

As in most RTS titles, your tasks in Dragon Throne boil down to gathering raw materials (such as wood and corn), refining them into useful items (such as wine and food), building bigger and better facilities within your kingdom, and, of course, stomping your opponents through brutal military conquest. Dragon Throne offers quite a bit more depth than that, of course, but anyone who has logged even a few hours in any other Age of Empires-style RTS will quickly pick up the basics of this game.

Laborers can be trained to become effecient soldiers.

The most intriguing element of the entire resource gathering system is that you can send some of your laborers off to the barracks to train as sergeants. This means that they can be sent off to fight wars as trained and effective killing machines and then come home and return to the fields as unskilled laborers once their battles are fought and won. Assuming, of course, that they make it back alive. Even more so, it assumes that you will enjoy periods of relative peace during the game, wherein soldiers can be granted leave to harvest crops (something you don't see much in an RTS game) and not be called upon to defend the realm against attackers. Regardless of the petty details, the profession transference feature is very cool, especially since the trained sergeants are better able to defend themselves if attacked while working as laborers.

The kingdom construction aspect of Dragon Throne is nicely executed. As in most RTS titles, you must build specific buildings to accomplish certain feats or produce certain units. The swordsman's barracks, for example, is required to produce (you guessed it) swordsmen. A single farm, on the other hand, can be called upon to produce both corn and pigs. Basically, you construct the building and then populate it with laborers, who you then designate particular tasks within the context of the building. So you can have two corn farmers in the farm building and two guys tending the pigs.

To keep your laborers productive, you can research new technologies that increase their carrying capacity, their happiness, and their life span. You also have complete control over your empire's tax rate, which governs not only the size of your coffers but also the general happiness of the people under your control. In addition, you will have access to some trade and diplomacy options, which can come in handy when you begin to encounter the other cities and warlords in the surrounding kingdoms.