Real-Time Strategy all purpose discussion thread

Just discovered this one.

Looks like just skirmishes at the moment, but it looks nifty.

What happened? Did everyone start playing MOBAs?

Yes. I like watching Offworld Trading Company multiplayer, for instance, but I’ve never dipped my toes in the multiplayer waters (even the tournament here!). But that game has a solid AI to skirmish with, some fun single-player puzzle missions, and a campaign that is interesting and variable enough to be entertaining.

And even that seems like it might be a bit too multiplayer focused.

Speaking of Iron Harvest looking like Company of Heroes, can we talk about what total clusterfucks CoH2 and DoW3 were?

For the most part, yes. It’s really hard to get a large enough concurrent player count to support online play in a RTS these days, especially if you’re a smaller studio. I love MP RTS, but you need to have a really solid AI/skirmish mode to fall back on. If you largely ignore it and focus just on MP, your game is sunk unless you achieve a critical mass of players right out the gate.

Since this thread popped back up I went back and checked Empires Apart. The game has a peak of 218 players with an average of 36.6 over the past 30 days.

The Lawbreakers of RTS! Except almost every RTS is the Lawbreakers of RTS, these days.

It’s funny you should bring that up. Both Lawbreakers and Empires Apart are games I would purchase at full price if they had decent offline modes against AI. If the Empires Apart team pivots to introduce and support more robust solo AI-focused content I will definitely pick it up. I love RTS games but I never play multiplayer these days.

Same here. I was planning on picking this up until it was clear the devs were only really focused on MP. Sadly, I won’t be joining one of the dozens of players online!

CoH2 gets well deserved criticism for its bewildering commander DLC packs and loot boxes, but if you are looking for a good single player campaign I had a lot of fun with the Ardennes Assault DLC.

It is meant to be a replayable campaign that mostly provides context for a series of skirmish matches against the AI. Each territory is tied to a skirmish map usually with some sort of gimmick layered on.

A couple of the territories are more scripted stealth sequences which I don’t enjoy as much as the traditional matches but overall I think it is one of the better dynamic RTS campaigns I have played.

Might be worth grabbing on sale

I’ll second this. The Ardennes Assault campaign makes COH2 worth playing; it’s great.

AoE2 HD currently on sale for $4 for anyone that doesn’t have it, or $12 for that plus all the expansions.

And, if you own any of the games, you get a discount on the bundle. God, I wish more games did this!

Zero-K is out you guys, and free!

Tried Frostpunk had fun in one binge session…then beat it after 4-7 hours and have no desire to replay it again.

You’re locked into a heavily scripted scenario and there is one clear path to do it in that you would never deviate from once you know the game and what’s coming.

I dunno. $30 for an economic RTS you’ll be done with forever in roughly 5 hours?

Have you tried the other 2 scenarios? I think they also said more will be coming later this year.

I have not. All talk though says they’re only 2 hours each though.

Is this true, that the game is essentially on rails, with little meaningful freedom on how to actually beat a scenario? If this is true, then the game is really a puzzle game, and I hate puzzle games.

Well it’s the same setup with the same events hitting you at the same time, every time. You’ll quickly learn the best way to deal with them and just do that every time.

One thing that’s bugging me. I keep getting hit with those heating homes requests that says “make X homes liveable in X days” but it keeps saying I have zero fulfilled. I check every single tent and bunkhouse and their temperatures are all liveable. I’ve never found a way to fulfill these so I’ve just been ignoring them.

You have to research and actually build houses to meet this requirement. ;)