Real-Time Strategy all purpose discussion thread

You know what it looks like to me? Age of Windwaker.

Empires Apart is discounted to $25.49 for a week then goes up to the MSRP of $29.99 on April 5.

One of the top AoE2 players is streaming Empires Apart right now:

Edit: He is giving away keys on the stream. 5 so far (sounds like another 5 later)

Wow it’s almost hard to follow him due to how fast he is moving!

Heh, don’t let someone lame your sheep near your town center. They are flagged as enemies and get shot at by the tc. He just lost about 8 sheep.

Yes, he is pretty fast. He is generally considered the top AoE2 player for the past few years.

I couldn’t resist. About $23 with the beta tester discount.

How was the AI in beta?

I almost exclusively play RTS solo against AI so I just wanted to make sure the AI makes for a fun experience. It doesn’t need to be flawless since I am a rather poor RTS player, but I love the genre. :-)

From what I did play it wasn’t the greatest, but I didn’t play it at the highest 2 levels.I think it needs to do a better job of trying to conserve force. It lets units die too easily to fire from town centers. So it would send some units to raid you early, and just let them get lit up. It sounds like they have some improvements in the pipeline for the AI that are supposed to be out today or soon. The destinybit folks seem dedicated to the game so hopefully they will continue to improve it, and work on balance.

It looks like they finally disabled the vr plugins in unreal engine so it no longer tries to fire up your headset when you start the game. My one contribution to the game I guess :)

French cavalry seem overpowered right now. They only cost 60 food. So people are pumping them out and rushing their opponent. With the charge ability they just wreck people.

I was all set to buy Empires Apart yesterday then I noticed that Steam reviews are mixed with lots of complaints about pathfinding, AI quality, and general performance.

I also skimmed through the Steam discussions a little and noticed that the developer stated multiple times that the main focus is competitive multiplayer and they probably won’t be developing the single-player options much (such as not adding a campaign). So with that information I think I’m going to hold off. I have plenty of RTS games that offer more robust solo support. I may consider it down the road depending on how it shakes out.

Direct quote from Dev in Steam forum:

Some reviews instead are from players that expected more singleplayer content and/or related singleplayer features like buildings rotation (event thought we always stated it’s oriented to competitive multiplayer): we’re sorry it doesn’t meet their needs, but it’s not the main focus of the game.

Gah, I’m out.

When will RTS developers learn? Seriously. Multiplayer-focused RTS is dead, and it’s been dead for a long time. Even Blizzard could only go so far with Starcraft 2, and these guys ain’t Blizzard.

I think multiplayer is an important feature to have for a RTS, just not putting all your eggs in that basket. Because if the game doesn’t reach a critical mass of players, that multiplayer feature will be near worthless. If you sink the time and resources into good AI and interesting skirmish modes, people (like me) can feel safe in spending my money on the product because I know I’ll get some value out of it.

Agreed. It’s such a bold move by a small dev for a game that hasn’t been marketed much.

It’s had 218 players at peak the last 24 hours. I hope it does well and gains a following but I really wish there were more robust solo vs. AI options. That combined with the art style and Age of Empires inspiration would have been an automatic purchase for me.

Right? People still play classic RTS games like Kohan and such because of solo play options, not multiplayer. Good single player is what gives a game legs over the long term.

But the people on their forums tell them it’s the only game in town.

Drives me nuts, personally.

An insane move! :) I mean, I would be incredibly happy for them if they knocked it out of the park and the got a real multiplayer community, but… it’s far more likely this is the Lawbreakers of RTS. A handful of dedicated fans, staring a lobby and wishing they could get a game going.

Yeah, it definitely has issues. I tried a 4v4 with AIs and that was bringing the system to its knees without anyone near the pop cap. From what I’ve read the hard and hardest ai levels are not much better than the medium level which is a pushover. I think the best way to describe it is “about what you would expect from Slitherine”. I doubt it will ever gain much of a mp community. Even there it is lacking things like replays. Currently it is not recommended for comp stomp with friends as well, apparently some desynch issues they are working on if you play mp with AI (plus the problem of the ai difficulty). As far as singleplayer, maybe once they release their mod tools people will be able to throw together some scenarios or campaigns since they have that survival mode. I hope that survival mode would have been built mostly with those tools and is not all code in the game.

I imagine that is where it already is. The leaderboard had under 100 people yesterday (takes 5 games to get ranked).

Too bad. The game will be dead before anyone can say “microtransactions”!

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.