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RTS Games

6 years ago

Anyone a fan of RTS games? Building a base of operations, managing your units on the battlefield, wiping out your enemies and so on. Some examples being the Command & Conquer series, Starcraft, Age of Empires, MechCommander etc.

List your favourites here.

RTS Games

6 years ago

I loved Dawn of War when I was younger. Haven't played the new one, though.

RTS Games

6 years ago

All of the Mount and Blades and most of the Total Wars are good. I liked Brutal Legend, too, but that was more for its satisfying Beat 'em Up aspects than its RTS gameplay. Because, seriously, it's a completely fucking braindead RTS. My favorite would have to be Overlord, though.

RTS Games

6 years ago
Not sure I'd consider Overlord an RTS, unless you stretch the concept a bit.

RTS Games

6 years ago

"Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games where the game does not progress incrementally in turns.[1]

In an RTS, the participants position and maneuver units and structures under their control to secure areas of the map and/or destroy their opponents' assets. In a typical RTS, it is possible to create additional units and structures during the course of a game. This is generally limited by a requirement to expend accumulated resources. These resources are in turn garnered by controlling special points on the map and/or possessing certain types of units and structures devoted to this purpose. More specifically, the typical game of the RTS genre features resource gathering, base building, in-game technological development and indirect control of units." -Wikipedia, the internet argument settler

How is that stretching the definition  by any stretch of the imagination? That's Overlord almost to a T. The only thing it's missing is base-building, but Total War and M&B don't even have that, at least not in the Realtime segments, and it could definitely be argued that the spawn improvements and shit you try to capture in multiplayer is base-building as well as resource-gathering.

RTS Games

6 years ago

Says Overlord is an action role playing game, but whatever it is, I did enjoy that game a lot.

Sort of liked the game play of the sequel a little better. Even the Wii version of the game was fun even if it wasn't as good as the other two.

RTS Games

6 years ago
Somehow I ended up not finishing the game, it felt a bit too rote for my taste.

RTS Games

6 years ago

Yeah, if there's one flaw in its design, it's that everything and everyone is too specialised, to the point where each enemy and each enemy combination becomes a matter of mastering the various clever gimmicks rather than being able to outmanuever or simply out-fight your opponent. Outside of the arena, you don't get many areas in the game where you have to come up with your own strategy rather than memorizing and exploiting patterns, and things get absorbed in gimmicks.

Dark Souls is a little bit like that, but they break it up by making the combat gimmick so absolutely customizable that you never have to completely sell yourself to the initial version of the combat gimmick. Pikmin has similar gimmicks, but it breaks that up with fun puzzles and resource-gathering. Overlord isn't very customizable, and its engine was not built for puzzles, so it breaks up the gimmicks with amusing things and the ability to abuse your minions for fucking up, which is sort of a love-it-or-it'll-overstay-its-welcome kind of mechanic.

RTS Games

6 years ago

I can understand where they're coming from, but an ARPG would be much, much more focused on the Overlord himself, and maybe some party member minions, kicking ass themselves. I guess there are some Overlord-Centric builds that you can use to sort of take care of shit yourself, but you really can't get by without your army, and everything you do with your minions is RTS.

RTS Games

6 years ago
I used to be pretty into Age of Empires but I have mixed feelings about it and stuff like StarCraft since they basically killed TBS games for such a long time and replaced them with shallow clickfests.

RTS Games

6 years ago
The original Starcraft + Brood war is free to download and play now, just by the way.

RTS Games

6 years ago
Used to be the only genre I played when I was younger, then as the years went by somehow I lost interest in the genre. Played Real War/Rogue States, Command and Conquer Generals/Zero Hour (love it to this day), Age of Empires (I, II, III + DLC), Age of Mythology, Empire Earth+DLC, Rise of Nations, Rise of Legends (really liked it). Among the modern ones, I've tried Banished (can't really get into it), Starcraft 2 WoL (loved it, need to get round to the other two some day), Company of Heroes (1 and 2, hate 2), DEFCON, Divinity Dragon Commander (the RTS part was terrible, the Visual novel part was fantastic), Endless Space (Nice), Galactic Civilizations II, Grey Goo (really did not like, shallow as hell), Kingdom:New Lands, Medieval II Total War (Classic), Offworld Trading Company (liked it a lot), Planetary Annihilation+Titans (Really weird camera and terrible graphics but strapping a thruster on a moon and slamming it into another planet has its own joy), Rome II Total War (disappointing), Shogun 2 Total War (Phenomenal), Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (Lost so many hours to this one), Star Wars Empire at War + DLC (Liked this one, despite the shallow gameplay), Stellaris (needs more content), Supreme Commander 2 (Nice, but I hear the first was better), Total War Warhammer (satisfied my lifelong itch to defend Moria/Helms Deep areas from Orcs), Ultimate General Gettysburg (never really got into it), Unity of Command (Just got that recently), Wargame Airland Battle (I keep trying to get in, but there's steep learning curve, Command: Modern Air Naval Operation (Learning curve on steroids, I'll play it... someday), World in Conflict+Soviet Assault (Technically Real Time Tactical, but the game itself is a gem), WH40K 1, 2, Retribution (not as fun as I'd hoped, CoH did things better). Yeah, in hindsight I've played a lot, but amusingly, not as much as I play other genres.

RTS Games

6 years ago

There's a lot of games in that list for me to comment on, but I will say that the difference between Age of Empires 1 and 2 is one of the most drastic improvements I've ever seen in a video game series. In one game there's bugs galore, you can barely build a single warship before all of your enemies destroy your dock, and good luck trying to kill an archer with nothing but axemen. Age of Empires 2: freaking castles, battering rams, major upgrades to the graphics in every conceivable way...it blew my mind. 

On the other hand, cheat codes for AoE 1 are still amusing. Type "bigdaddy" into the chat box and bam, the game gives you a car equipped with rocket launchers which zooms across the map, looking incredibly out of place in the medieval setting. One of the enemy priests converted this rocket-launcher car over to their side, and suddenly the game reached a whole new level of badass. 

RTS Games

6 years ago
Just realized I'd forgotten Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 from that list, the first was innovative, the second was boring. For most improved games in a series, I'd point of Witcher 1 to 2, and again from 2 to 3. But yes, AoE 2 was an excellent game for the time, and yes the fun cheats from AoE1 and AoMythology were a barrel full of laughs (and revenge where applicable)

RTS Games

6 years ago

Wait a minute, since when is Galactic Civilizations 2 a RTS? Last I remember, it was a turn based 4X game.

RTS Games

6 years ago
I loved both GalCiv games but yes, they were definitely turn based. That was a major part of the appeal.

RTS Games

6 years ago
I'm amused someone finally caught that. Haven't played GalCiv 2 in a while and forgot it was 4X turn based not an RTS. Sins of a Solar Empire was the semi 4X hybrid I confused it with. I make the same mistake with Endless Space which was also 4X turn based.

RTS Games

6 years ago

Back in the day I tried stuff like Warcraft 2, AOE, and Kohan but just never got into the genre.

The closest I did might be with stuff like Populous, Powermonger, and Dungeon Keeper, but those fall under the "God game" genre rather than RTS.

RTS Games

6 years ago

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. If you want that Star Wars/Stark Trek rts game.