Battle Nations

Gameplay

The game puts players in control of land with limited resources where effective management of resources is vital to expansion and advancement. Building a productive nation allows players to form armies which are the basis for the game's core: PvP combat in turn-based strategy warfare. It is impossible to "lose" in Battle Nations: even if the player has no buildings to generate gold, the player will always have enough gold to build a supply drop, which generates 100 gold every hour as well as 25 of iron, wood, and stone. Most of the technology in game is based on that used by humans during WW2, although there are a few exceptions (e.g. velociraptors, mammoths, lasers, swords, railguns, etc.). The game seems to lack logic in various areas, allowing players to grow crops in 5 minutes while in real life crops take months to grow, as well as a man with a pistol hiding behind a scrap car door being more dangerous than an imperial soldier with a shotgun and military grade steel shield.

Nanopods

Nanopods is a rare resource in Battle Nations. With it, the user can buy units, buildings, speed up units and building formation, research new unit attacks, and finally buy resources the user lacks of. The user can win them by leveling up (10 free nanopods each level), buying them with real world money, watching adverts or achieving a good rank in events (Boss Strikes or Arena Challenges). In general, the units and buildings requiring nanopods are better than the ones requiring normal resources, but this has proven to be false at different occasions. However, promotional units all require nanopods to be acquired, which makes them really valuable to the user. A few months before battle nations have been removed, however, all players have been given 1000000 nanopods.

Development

Battle Nations is Z2Live's third game, following Trade Nations and MetalStorm. Z2Live released a video that described the inspiration behind the creation of Battle Nations. The concept for the game was inspired by Trade Nations users who provided feedback requesting additional PvP elements in the game.

Mid-Years & Events

Battle Nations grew quickly, and the playerbase became loyal and dedicated to the game. 'The Boss Strike', in which allies in guilds joined together to get the highest score possible, and thus cool unit and resource rewards. 'Invasions' also presented opportunities for guild members to work together and compete against other guilds by defeating enemy invasions on their outposts. 'Arena Challenges', although controversial and 'pay-to-win', allowed players to square up against other players in Asynchronous player-versus-player combat. With every event, a 'promotional unit' was released. These units were purchasable by Nanopods, and in some cases, had incredible advantages over non-promotional units. This led to the firm conviction by many of the players that the game was 'free-to-play, pay-to-win'. Some of the more 'overpowered' of the promotional units assisted in the eventual demise of the game.

Final Days

In February 2015 it was announced that King Digital Entertainment had purchased Z2 Live Inc, for $150M. Subsequently, Battle Nations was pulled from the Steam platform as of 16 April 2015. During this time, the game developers released less and less updates and events, and the quality any updates decreased as well. On July 17, 2015, the game developers released the last update, focused on a new world boss and 2 eventual boss-strikes, along with some additional units.

On June 28, 2016, Z2 had announced a close, and have pulled any Z2–related game off the appstore, and any online service has now officially shut down as of September 28, 2016.