Real-Time Strategy all purpose discussion thread

Ah I see. You can control individual units in the sense the they may not be part of an army yet but I’m hard pressed to think of an advantage in doing so. It’s really not that kind of game. You’re not going to be manually firing off a unit’s abilities or dodging a projectile, the game just doesn’t operate on that scale, in my experience.

If that’s your primary concern I wouldn’t write the game off as I think you may have the wrong impression. I intensely dislike micro and the lack of it is one of the game’s better points, IMO.

There are a few edge cases where micro can get you a small local advantage in Ashes, but there’s nothing even remotely on the level of Mutalisk/Marine kiting in StarCraft. I’ve played a lot and am very competitive, and I only micro units in a few unusual situations like shift-right-clicking to prioritize building targets when attacking a base.

It probably sounds like marketing bullshit, but I really do jam dudes together into armies and control-click to attack-move something like 97% of the time.

Hell, expanding is pretty much “get group of dudes, shift-right-click nodes to capture in order you would like, profit” - they will move over together in formation, attack any enemies present, hang out at the node until it’s captured, then move to the next one.

I haven’t played Ashes, but in SupCom, while “get group of dudes, shift-right-click…profit” is prevalent - individual unit micro (of certain units) was devastating despite the ethos of the game.

Things that remain in my memory that had enormous impact on efficacy include T1 artillery attack ground micro, bomber target splitting micro (target splitting micro in general was really strong since units did not coordinate fire), T2 ground unit micro (the first ones off the factory were also important to micro to get maximum effect out of them before the battlefield totally shifted to them).

Which is exactly how I play RTS’s, and why I don’t go in for the competitive stuff.

Yeah, I could never play SC etc competitively. If only I were working on a game that had the best RTS AI I’ve ever seen and was really good for compstomping… ;)

(Not to take anything away from the ranked ladder, which I also enjoy.)

(Ye gods, I swear I’m not bullshitting. Yes I work on the game, but I absolutely do believe everything I’m typing here. Ashes isn’t flawless, but it has its high points, promise!)

I agree, I think concerns about micro in Ashes are completely unfounded. This is one of the most non-micro “traditional” style RTS I can think of, and I thank thee all for it.

I’ve got my quibbles with the game, but micro absolutely is not one of them.

There are so many good points in here that I’m not sure where to start.

In Ashes the player has the special abilities. The meta units are just individual units that are then turned into a single unit. So think of it like the ship designer in GalCiv but in real time where you are deciding what capabilities the unit has.

Where it gets tough from an engineering point of view is that often times, the AI really does know better than the human on what a unit should be doing because it’s so far ahead but players are thinking that a compoennt of the unit should be doing X when in fact that component is saving up its energy to heal or recharge or whatever a more important unit that it has calculated will need help in 1.2 seconds.

Chess has a lot of history and analysis that makes it interesting, and it’s easy to find someone who knows how to play. But as a ruleset it’s far from perfect. White is clearly overpowered compared to black, draws are too common, and the outcome is too predictable unless players are closely matched in skill. It can also suffer from downtime, which of course RTS games are designed to avoid.

If chess were invented today, it probably wouldn’t become very popular.

Sounds like you listed Sirlin’s Chess 2 talking points. ^_^

Anyone planning to pick up 8-bit Armies next week?

I sure am tempted to, yeah.

If they bundle the soundtrack with it, then definitely yes. If they don’t bundle it, maybe.

I worship the ground Frank K walks on.

This thread has me spending a lot more time with rts games than is normally the case. I picked up Grey Goo this weekend and played through the 1st 3 campaign missions. I also spent some time with the Ensemble Studios catalog. I’m amazed at how well both Age of Mythology and Age of Empires III hold up graphically. Running AoM on a modern system is simply a matter of modifying a .cfg file for your resolution. There are 2 different patches around that will let you play Age of Empires: Rise of Rome with modern resolutions (moddb has one, and voobly the other). Voobly also has a patch for AoE 2. It was enteraining playing a round of AoE:RoR, but it really hit home how much of an improvement AoE 2 was. I know the internetz have been asking for an HD version of the original AoE, but unless they added some features I’m not sure how much I’d play it. I should add that in my 1st attempt to play AoE:RoR again I had to restart because I forgot that you needed to build a market in order to build farms. My poor people were in trouble.

I’d probably agree with the people saying Rise of Nations was the peak. My personal favorite will probably always be AoE 2 though.

Next up is to add Ashes to the collection. Next up is to try Ashes.

Have people played any online games with the HD versions of AoE 2, AoM, and RoN? I usually play single player so it doesn’t effect me, but I’m curious how bad the desync issues really are.

I wasn’t even aware of this game , till you mentioned it. Thanks!

I’m glad this thread is around. I definitely plan on picking up some of the older classics (Kohan, RoN, etc) when they go on sale.

Alright, Petroglyph. You win.

8-bit armies is one of the most interesting releases I’ve seen in the genre in awhile for its strategic marketing. Specifically, it’s only $14 which is a steal.

I admire the effort Petroglyph is putting towards continuing the genre, but man, they really need to come up with better names for their games.

On a related note, 8-Bit Armies looks like an almost exact clone of old school C&C. Big fat “meh”.

The current release is super light on content, all things considered. It’s a bog-standard C&C clone with one faction and the entire 25 mission campaign seems to be set on a rotation of the 10 skirmish/multiplayer maps included with the game (i.e. you see the same map a lot under different circumstances). That said, the units are actually a bit more interesting than your typical C&C fare (base infantry have anti-infantry miniguns and anti-building grenades, for example, which makes them very effective at tearing down bases so long as nothing crushes/shreds them, which is way better than typical C&C rifle infantry) and they plan to add more factions to the game if it’s successful.

If they start doing that, things will get interesting very quickly, since the first faction they seem to want to add is fantasy-based. For now, it’s a functional C&C clone with a few neat quirks, a novel art style (for an RTS) and an amazing soundtrack. Hard to recommend for $15, though.