Real Time Strategy games

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SnaKe-Fu

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Dec 26, 2000
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I'm the oddity in RTS fans in that I don't really like SC2. From what I know though, there isn't much in the way of base building in Starcraft 2, is there?

I really enjoyed the campaign of SC2, but I just couldn't get into the multiplayer. I didn't want to spend the time learning to click so fast. =P
 

Cadaver

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Feb 9, 2011
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Age of Empires 2 still rocks.
It's one of the third games installed on my computer since their release: UT, Diablo 2, Age of Empires 2.
 

Balton

The Beast of Worship
Mar 6, 2001
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I preferred Empire Earth over Age of Empire, never got to check out the sequel.
 

SleepyHe4d

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Has anyone tried Stronghold or Stronghold 2? I've seen that around on youtube or advertised on Steam before and I thought the castles looked awesome. Thing is I feel like it won't live up to expectations or just won't be very good and possibly too specialized.

Turtling isn't as effective as it could be, but you build bases just like in Warcraft, Age or CnC.
You don't get your units flown in like in Ground Control 2, if that's what you mean.

@Jacks: From your choices I predict you'll like CnC3 (but might have liked Generals even better) but will be a little disappointed with AoE2. Let us know what you think either way.

Eh, I don't think you can compare WC3/SC to AOE/CnC like that. With blizz rts they have static defenses, but that's about it when it comes to building placement. With both AOE and CnC you get to make walls and more varied defensive structures which is fun and a bit of what Jacks was talking about.

As for him not liking AOE2, I don't see why you would say that since it really does have similar aspects and I think he will also enjoy the extra dimension of trade routes and hunting/gathering and the different resource types and stuff.

As for CnC3, I would say that would be the game he would be disappointed in. When I tried it I was really hoping for nostalgic CnC gameplay, but it was really extremely fast paced and kind of annoying the way it forced you into playing with certain units. Also every abandoned building is able to be occupied and that was extremely exploitable and annoying imo.

If he want's to go the route with trying a newer CnC game, if anything he should try Red Alert 2 and its expansion Yuri's Revenge. That was easily my favorite CnC game to date, it had all the fun of the old ones, but with a huuuuge variety of units and things you could do. What was super awesome about that game was being able to take over a different factions buildings and making hybrid specialized units. For example if one faction had chrono commandos and another had suicide bombers, you could make suicide chrono guys or something like that if you took over an enemy base. Really Really fun.

CnC3... bleh imo. :(

I'm the oddity in RTS fans in that I don't really like SC2. From what I know though, there isn't much in the way of base building in Starcraft 2, is there?

Err, how can you say that without having tried it! That is what I was trying to explain to Jacks, don't let the crazy MP competitive aspect turn you off of the possible fun of Coop or AI Skrims. I think one of the main charms of SC2 is the extremely asymmetrical races and variety of playing styles. :D

I admit, I got tired of the online MP fast though and didn't really play any Coop or AI skrims. And like I said, the campaign was meh. :(
 
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Sir_Brizz

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Feb 3, 2000
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He's probably basing that on Starcraft, for good reason. I'll buy Starcraft 2 when all three games are out in a battlechest for $20.
 
Mar 19, 2002
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stupid fog of war! Oh well.
Other than that, and the fact that your research doesn't stick with you from match to match (in SP), I like Supreme Commander 2.

Herzog Zwei, Age of Empires 3 (just so I can get ridiculed for my lack of nerdiness)

On hold I have Company of Heroes, want to buy DoWII Retribution, Red Alert 3. There's a couple other less big budget ones on my Steam wishlist too.
 
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BlackFish

ginger synther hipster
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Those still playing SupCom: Forged Alliance and are interested in playing with new "patches" and players in general might want to look into FA Forever.

But yes, Supcom FA is where it's at for me.
 

DarkED

The Great Oppression
Mar 19, 2006
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If any of you are interested in firing up AoE2 and it's expansion, here's a few things you absolutely need:

*Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Patch 1.0c - This is the last official patch.
*Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Patch 1.0e - This is a fan-made patch that prevents cheating and hacking. You can install it directly over 1.0c. Note that the game may still tell you it's 1.0c after installing this patch.
*Age of Empires II Widescreen Patch - This patches the game to run in your current desktop resolution, no matter what resolution that is. I think this only works if you have The Conquerors installed (but why wouldn't you?)
*Age of Empires II 1,000 Population Mod - This mod adds a new tech tree you can research at your Town Center, the upgrades all add up to 1,000 total population capacity. Massive armies and day-long games are possible with this mod.

If anybody wants to play some AoE2 online, let me know; me and my roommate would love to join in.

I always liked Age of Empires 2 :)

I wasn't that good at it though.

The key to being a good offensive player in the Age of Empires series (and by extension, Empire Earth) is to properly learn how the 'rock, paper, scissors' scheme works in regards to unit effectiveness. For example, in Empire Earth, Shock units (melee swords, clubs, maces) beat Ranged units (archers,) which beat Thrown units (spears,) who in turn beat Shock units.

The key to being a good defensive player is to learn which buildings and upgrades lead to building better defenses.
 
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SleepyHe4d

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Jan 20, 2008
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If anybody wants to play some AoE2 online, let me know; me and my roommate would love to join in.

I'm down for some games and I have patch C and Widescreen patch installed. Do I need those other 2 things to play with y'all? I like keeping it vanilla. :p

I guess I wouldn't mind installing the other stuff too though.

I suck though. :(

I was playing VS hard AI, came into their base with a huge army, killed all of their units, but then got decimated by towers and castle/town center. Then he brought a few units to my based and raped me. :( I think my mistake was not using trebuchets and only using battle rams. Without trebuchets its basically impossible to finish off a town or even dent it. Also I find it annoying how their villagers go build another town center in some random place while I'm trying to finish off their main base. -.-

Have any suggestions? Just build trebuchets and sit back and defend them instead of sending my army into the middle of their buildings and getting shot to death by towers and buildings? With that I have a feeling they will just be able to sit back and keep rebuilding or repairing if I do that. Gonna go try it right now anyways.
 
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DarkED

The Great Oppression
Mar 19, 2006
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Right behind you.
www.nodanites.com
I'm down for some games and I have patch C and Widescreen patch installed. Do I need those other 2 things to play with y'all? I like keeping it vanilla. :p

I guess I wouldn't mind installing the other stuff too though.

As far as I know, you would need the 1.0e patch and the 1,000 pop mod to play with us, as they both modify core game files that would be checked against ours. But we can play without the 1,000 pop mod if you like; I keep two copies of the .dat file around, one with it applied and one without, just in case. It's worth mentioning though, the game is so much more fun with the mod when playing on a gigantic map with only three or four players.

I suck though. :(

So do me and Josh :D Don't worry about it, I'm guessing we'd all three be pretty evenly matched. We play for fun - not to be good at the game.

I was playing VS hard AI, came into their base with a huge army, killed all of their units, but then got decimated by towers and castle/town center. Then he brought a few units to my based and raped me. :( I think my mistake was not using trebuchets and only using battle rams. Without trebuchets its basically impossible to finish off a town or even dent it. Also I find it annoying how their villagers go build another town center in some random place while I'm trying to finish off their main base. -.-

Yeah, that tends to happen. The key is balancing the amount of units in your invasion force and the amount of units back at home base playing defense. Also, both defensive and offensive fortifications are integral; I usually don't attempt to go on the offensive until my base(s) are surrounded by fortified walls, watch towers and bombard towers. Put a castle or two on the path into your base and surround them with towers; castles can do a LOT of damage to an attacking army before they finally collapse.

Have any suggestions? Just build trebuchets and sit back and defend them instead of sending my army into the middle of their buildings and getting shot to death by towers and buildings? With that I have a feeling they will just be able to sit back and keep rebuilding or repairing if I do that. Gonna go try it right now anyways.

When still in the early game, build a Scout Cavalry at your Stable (or use the one that is generally given to you at the start of each round) and use shift+click to order waypoint destinations to them. Shift+click all over the map, then ctrl+click and the Scout Cav will follow all the waypoints one-by-one, exploring the entire map in the process. Once you know the layout of the map and where extra resources can be found, plan your expansion strategy and start building additional outposts as soon as resources and solid defenses allow.

Now, once you've got a few outposts properly defended and collecting resources, it's time to go on the offensive! Mixed unit tactics are the key here. Siege equipment is kind of a double-edged sword; when you're using ranged splash-damage siege equipment like Trebuchets and Rock Throwers, it essentially requires all of your melee units (including Rams and Infantry/Cavalry alike) to stand on the sidelines (or fight other battles) while the siege is in progress. The reason being, your ranged splash-damage siege weapons will likely do more damage to your own forces than to the enemy's fortifications and structures. I think the Ballista is immune to this caveat as it fires a single pinpoint missile, but I'm not sure. Additionally, siege equipment is much less effective against Infantry, Cavalry, Archers, other Siege equipment, etc. than standard units are.

As such, when building your invasion force, be very careful to ctrl-group your forces properly so that you can easily keep your footsoldiers and other melee units fighting the enemy's army where they ought to be and out of your siege battalion's own line of fire. If the enemy's towers keep killing off all of your units, try building an invasion force with lots of weaker more-expendable units. Your enemy's towers can only target one unit at a time (bombard towers being an exception, more on them in a bit) so a force comprised of overwhelming numbers of weak units can overcome them. When facing bombard towers, break out all of your best melee foot units. The faster the unit can close distance to the tower and begin attacking it, the better, so battering rams are a bad idea since they tend to move slower than molasses. Ranged siege units are useful if that's all you've got, but as previously stated, they'll take down your melee units in the process.

Another good idea is to ALWAYS have two bases if the map is large enough to allow it; this way you can more effectively run ambushes, flank maneuvers, and provide reinforcements faster. This also has the added side-effect of doubling resource gathering, and thus, unit and fortification production. This is especially true when using the 1,000 population mod, because your original base will run out of gold and stone resources to harvest long before the game even hits the midpoint. If the map is too small to setup another full base, just find some isolated spot out in the middle of nowhere and build a town center with some reserve villages, just in case things go south.
 
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shadow_dragon

is ironing his panties!
I don't personally like most RTS games myself, resource management is dull no to me and that's always the main focus. You either have to manage your own well or wipe out the opponents.

I remember I enjoyed Batlle for Middle Earth though. The resource management was simple, base building was also very simple as you had set points to make choices over what you wanted to build and all you had to do was make good decisions. I was never sure whether the heroes were a good thing or bad thing though.

I also remember liking battle for middle earth 2, that did open up a lot more, you could build a lot of walls and defensive structures and build anything anywhere in the traditional sense. I doubt there's much in the way of multiplayer anymore but i remember having some very fun 6 player games.
 

Hadmar

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Jan 29, 2001
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A game I hardly ever notice getting mentioned anywhere is Warlords Battlecry 3. The missions, at least as far as I remember, are pretty much standard stuff. But there are quite a few races and they combined RTS and RPG. You can pick different classes, level up, collect items and cast spells. IIRC ordinary units can level up too and after the map is finished you can put some of them in a pool you can choose units from for the start of the next map.
 

DarQraven

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Jan 20, 2008
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Everyone should be able to tell by my signature that I'm an SC2 nut, so I'd obviously recommend that to everyone. (Also, really? Did I catch someone on BuF-"True-heroes-of-competitive-gaming"-boards in the 99/2k4 era complaining about MP being too competitive? Now I've seen everything...)

Other than that, you might enjoy Company of Heroes. I'm not a huge fan of the SupCom series due to how much control is actually taken away from you (autoproduction, non penalized queueing, micro-less combat, etc...) and how I often felt like I was playing a 3d spreadsheet, but I can appreciate how SC2's "you misclicked, you lose" style of MP gameplay is not for everyone. Even now, more than a year after I started playing, I *hate* losing matches where, strategically, I should have won but misplaced some of my units or made them target the wrong unit.

In terms of gameplay, CoH seems to be right in between SC2 and SupCom in that there is more action, and you have more control over how those battles play out, but it isn't some kind of Korean-only spamfest where you'll be practicing builds hand speed before you can survive the first 10 minutes of a game.

Units are controlled on squad level (except for the bigger stuff), there are asymmetrical factions with some pretty varied styles between them, interesting short- and long-term decisions to make, and the resource system is pretty fun to play with, based more around area control than raw harvester-building.
 
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Jacks:Revenge

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Jun 18, 2006
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somewhere; sometime?
as you might recall I started with Command & Conquer 3, Sup Com 1, and Age of Empires 2. after a couple weeks playing each of them I think I'm enjoying C&C3 a little more than Sup Com, but both are good. my only disappointment with Sup Com is like what DarQ said about how it takes control away from the player. it's a little too streamlined, such that even during heavy combat it feels sort of sterile; "playing a 3D spreadsheet" is definitely a clever way of describing it.

so at this rate I think I'm going to change from my original plan.
I thought I'd go from Sup Com 1 to Sup Com 2. but I'm gonna' stop with 1, and instead I went and bought Age of Empires 3.

AoE2 was pretty spot-on in terms of the kind of RTS gameplay I enjoy the most.
good call on that one Sleepy.
after reading about the fact that AoE3 is basically a clone of AoE2 (with an updated engine and features) it was a pretty easy jump to make. I'm just a sucker for base-building and resource management, don't know why exactly. massive armies that are just thrown at each other are nice and all, and I still have Total War games for that, but I really like the long term planning and pace of AoE.

in terms of trying another C&C title, I'm considering Red Alert 2 or 3 next.
still no interest in Star Craft or Warcraft though.
 
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hal

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as you might recall I started with Command & Conquer 3, Sup Com 1, and Age of Empires 2. after a couple weeks playing each of them I think I'm enjoying C&C3 a little more than Sup Com, but both are good. my only disappointment with Sup Com is like what DarQ said about how it takes control away from the player. it's a little too streamlined, such that even during heavy combat it feels sort of sterile; "playing a 3D spreadsheet" is definitely a clever way of describing it.

so at this rate I think I'm going to change from my original plan.
I thought I'd go from Sup Com 1 to Sup Com 2. but I'm gonna' stop with 1, and instead I went and bought Age of Empires 3.

AoE2 was pretty spot-on in terms of the kind of RTS gameplay I enjoy the most.
good call on that one Sleepy.
after reading about the fact that AoE3 is basically a clone of AoE2 (with an updated engine and features) it was a pretty easy jump to make. I'm just a sucker for base-building and resource management, don't know why exactly. massive armies that are just thrown at each other are nice and all, and I still have Total War games for that, but I really like the long term planning and pace of AoE.

in terms of trying another C&C title, I'm considering Red Alert 2 or 3 next.
still no interest in Star Craft or Warcraft though.
Sorry you aren't as excited about SupCom. There's two sides to every coin though and what you're calling "taking control away from the player", I call "removing a lot of micromanagement". To each his own!

If you're enjoying AoE so much, don't forget to check out Age of Mythology: Age of Titans. It's part of the AoE family and is by Ensemble Studios as well. I thought the campaign to be quite entertaining and the mythological units are a real breath of fresh air.
 

Sir_Brizz

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Feb 3, 2000
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as you might recall I started with Command & Conquer 3, Sup Com 1, and Age of Empires 2. after a couple weeks playing each of them I think I'm enjoying C&C3 a little more than Sup Com, but both are good. my only disappointment with Sup Com is like what DarQ said about how it takes control away from the player. it's a little too streamlined, such that even during heavy combat it feels sort of sterile; "playing a 3D spreadsheet" is definitely a clever way of describing it.
I'm not a huge fan of the SupCom series due to how much control is actually taken away from you (autoproduction, non penalized queueing, micro-less combat, etc...) and how I often felt like I was playing a 3d spreadsheet,
Honestly? This is part of the reason I love SupCom (and Total Annihilation). They are about tactical strategy, not ordering rows of units to move backwards or else they might die too fast causing you to lose the battle. I don't see it as removing control from the player at all, since you can still plan your overall strategy. Micro-management is boring, it is the equivalent of "programming" in XML.
but I can appreciate how SC2's "you misclicked, you lose" style of MP gameplay is not for everyone. Even now, more than a year after I started playing, I *hate* losing matches where, strategically, I should have won but misplaced some of my units or made them target the wrong unit.
I just don't see how that is fun. In SupCom and SupCom 2, if you lose, it's almost always because you made massive tactical flaw against your opponent (didn't plan for the type of units they were building properly, didn't attack at the right times, didn't expand properly). In Starcraft, you can lose from something as simple as, literally like I mentioned before, not moving your front line of units back early enough so they don't die in one battle. Yes, one tiny amount of micromanagement in one battle can literally turn the tide in Starcraft. That just doesn't happen in SupCom (or C&C or AoE or TA....).
 

Jacks:Revenge

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Jun 18, 2006
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somewhere; sometime?
Honestly? This is part of the reason I love SupCom (and Total Annihilation). They are about tactical strategy, not ordering rows of units to move backwards or else they might die too fast causing you to lose the battle. I don't see it as removing control from the player at all, since you can still plan your overall strategy. Micro-management is boring, it is the equivalent of "programming" in XML.

I just don't see how that is fun. In SupCom and SupCom 2, if you lose, it's almost always because you made massive tactical flaw against your opponent (didn't plan for the type of units they were building properly, didn't attack at the right times, didn't expand properly). In Starcraft, you can lose from something as simple as, literally like I mentioned before, not moving your front line of units back early enough so they don't die in one battle. Yes, one tiny amount of micromanagement in one battle can literally turn the tide in Starcraft. That just doesn't happen in SupCom (or C&C or AoE or TA....).

thats-just-like-your-opinion-man.gif


To each his own!

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DarQraven

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Jan 20, 2008
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What makes the micromanagement aspect of SC exciting, to me, is that it creates a sort of blend between an action game and an RTS.

You'll still need to play strategically and tactically sound to win, there's just one extra aspect in that the execution of that strategy can differ in quality.
You're not just casually ordering units around from your armchair, you're in the heat of battle yourself.

On the flip side of "losing a won battle due to micro", there is "calculated risk taking and relying on superior micro or positioning to pull you through".