Those who follow this thread should enjoy this video of Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood Studios talking about Tiberian Sun and a lot about pathfinding solutions.
RTS are dead!
and then look at the number 1 this week…
Isn’t that a city builder type game?
You can ask here!
I posted it in this thread as it seemed relevant to the general RTS and industry discussion.
Yeah, city builders/sims aren’t the same as RTS games, despite the fact that they, too, tend to involve strategy and play out in real time. I still have the excellent Aven Colony to finish as far as city (colony) builders go…
Anyway, regarding the actual topic of this thread: I’ve been craving a good RTS lately and so I’ve jumped back into C&C3 and dabbled again some with the 8-Bit games. I’ve also been eyeing Forged Battalion, which people here seem to dislike (if not actively hate), so my wallet would thank you if you can dissuade me from purchasing that and point me towards something better.
It isn’t so much hate as disappointment that Petroglyph pretty much abandoned it early on, to focus on that Conan game apparently. It could have used a lot more love. They disappeared right about the time I bought in.
The best RTS games today are all old games.
Dawn of War 2 is great as long as you don’t mind the tiny scale of things. The only weak point is that the final expansion/standalone “Retribution” has the weakest and silliest single player campaign. It looks so good it’s basically a “timeless” game, imo - ie, you could play this 20 years from now and it’s still going to look great. HOWEVER, no base building. It’s very Warhammer / grim dark growling / Chaos this and Ork! that, for better or worse.
Age of Empires 2 has been out on Steam and is arguably the best RTS game widely played today, warts and all. It’s received a bit of polish graphically and so looks just fine. While skirmish and multiplayer hold up well the campaigns are very 90s, for better or worse. (IE, they’re excited for you to take one unit around a maze map clicking here and there).
I like Act of Aggression by Eugen - it’s beat for beat a modern C&C. Nobody else liked it but me though, I guess what people were looking for is something more abstract like StarCraft.
Check out Homeworld: Landships… er… Deserts of Kharak, I think. It’s great for for what it is, and has an engaging presentation for single player. The only problem I have with it is that it’s not actually that tactically complicated or interesting. As long as you like fairly basic paper-rock-sissors stuff, and think the idea of an aircraft carrier rolling across the desert could only be the best thing ever, it’s fine.
Your list fails, no Rise of Nations.
That’s because I don’t like Rise of Nations! /tongue
Basically RoN is just too old and too boring. It’s the RTS for people that don’t like RTS games, who want actual Civilization 2 in their RTS, who want to pause and play rather than play real time.
But, also, (imo) I think the low production values make it just uninteresting for me. They were low end then and they kind of suck today. I also find the sound effects and music just dishwater dull and not really the groove i’m looking for in a game. It definitely has some ideas and when those ideas meet gameplay, it has its moments. But that 20-30 minutes of being wealth capped or production capped, back and forth… especially when the music is so… and the effects are so… eh.
I’ve been wanting a sequel (spiritual or direct) to RoN for so long… I want more strategy in my RTS, less APM and babysitting.
That’s fair. If I wasn’t just being cheeky, I’d have asked why not RoN if you like AoE II, but that answer fits anyway.
I have a fair chunk of old ones yet unplayed, you’re probably right that I wanted Civ2 in an RTS since I’ve ended up mostly playing Paradox games instead. It’s still a different experience, so I should go back and try those in-between games, at least.
I’d take a remake of Empire Earth 1 with modern graphics and a few changes. Empire Earth 1.5, maybe.
I’d be okay with that too. :)
Rise of Legends actually went a long way to fixing my problems with Rise of Nations. Again sadly it seems like i’m the only one who liked that more - I guess the target demographic of 1 isn’t what they were hoping for.
Rise of Legends still has no modern way of playing it either, even though RoN was re-released a couple years ago.
You mean RTS ‘Build & Battle’, like Starcraft and C&C, a subgenre inside the bigger genre of RTS, where city builders are too.
/semantic fight
You is wrong, be sure.
Yeah this is incorrect.
Says the very same guy that lists Age of Empires 2!
Does not compute.
Also I love RTSs and Rise of Nations obsoletes the entire Age of Empires franchise. All of it. There is really no reason to play AoE2 when I can be playing RoN.
What? Age 2 is like 100x more interesting strategically and tactically than RoN. RoN is a tricycle compared to the greatness of Age 2! #forumwarsneverdie
And this isn’t some opinion! There are 15,000 people playing Age 2 right now as I type this, as many as the Witcher 3 or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (on Steam anyway) - and most of those people playing are in multiplayer. And the reason they’re playing multiplayer Age 2 and not RoN - noting that both are easily available - is because Age 2 is better.
I think this had more to do with coming between Wargame: Red Dragon and Steel Division: Normandy 44 which were a lot more unique than AoA was. One of the big appeals of the iriszoom games is that you can zoom out all you want, also, and they got rid of that in AoA, to be more traditional.
It’s undeniable that there’s people who are absolutely down for what AoE2 offers, even though i kinda think it’s more busywork. When I was more up for that kind of RTS game, I actually found 3 to be better in many ways.