Your favorite RTS ever?

Games
1
  1. Post your favorite RTS right now.
  2. Post your favorite RTS upon release and first play.

Mine:

  1. Starcraft II (for the campaigns)
  2. Dune II (or Warcraft II)
2
  1. Dunno, I don’t really play RTS’s these days.
  2. Age of Empires II
3

King Arthur…

4

I only do on rare occasion. But when I need a break from TBS or city building games I often venture back to some RTS’s.

5
  1. Warhammer 40K Gladius - Relics of War.
  2. Warcraft III
6
  1. Conquest: Frontier Wars
  2. Conquest: Frontier Wars
    2a. An insanely close second is Kohan.
7

Is it weird I liked Warcraft 2 way more than 3? I enjoyed the wide open spaces and the simpler controls vs. all the special attack stuff you had to prioritize.

Isn’t that a TBS?

8

I think when War3 came out I was pretty tired of the same RTS strategies every time a new RTS came out, and Warcraft III had concepts like creeps, heroes, finding equipment and gear, and it looked cool and had 4 interesting factions, and it was peak Blizzard, I loved it. Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 might have a tie with that second answer, now I think of it, but War3 is very unique to me, or it was to me then.

9

Yeah, but it FEELS like an RTS in all the best ways.

10

Really? Whoa, I might have to look into that. It’s quite good then?

11

Oh man, I just assumed you’d played it - yeah, it’s amazing, check it out pronto, or at least hit up the thread and skim through it.

EDIT: I made a video about it about a year ago, not sure how it holds up but you’re welcome to check out my thoughts at the time.

12
  1. Offworld Trading Company
  2. Age of Mythology or C&C
13
  1. Not sure, maybe Supreme Commander 2?
  2. Total Annihilation

I think 40K Gladius is a great game, but I don’t get how it feels like an RTS (or at least not like the kinds I tend to play).

14

Total Annihilation, War Wind, and/or Kohan if it counts. I’m not big on RTSes.

15
  1. Rise of Nations
  2. Command & Conquer: Red Alert
17

Company of Heroes 2
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

18
  1. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. Yes, three! Not a typo! But! Only with the Uprising expansion. I love, love the challenge mode in this and will defend it till the day I die. Certainly the best that series ever got, for me, and the most enjoyable solo experience around.
  2. Starcraft and Total Annihilation were both pretty special. Difficult to decide. Put a gun to my head and I may have to pick Starcraft, if only for the fact that I was of an age where I was enthralled by the ‘writing’, mostly because I had no idea how shamelessly it plundered every decent line. Did you know that between Starcraft 1 & 2 you can reproduce the entire script for Aliens, verbatim? It’s true!

These people are old, dude. Entertain their fondness for TBS games that are paced marginally faster than the glaciers melting.

Edit => NO WAIT I FORGOT HOMEWORLD. IS IT AN RTS OR IS IT JUST GENERALLY A MASTERPIECE THAT DEFIES EASY CATEGORISATION ARRRGGGHH

HOMEWORLD FOR MY 1 AND 2 CHOICES

19
  1. No longer a genre I play
  2. Men of War
20
  1. I have a bunch in my backlog but the last time I played a new one was… Planetary Annihilation?
  2. Starcraft

We used to play multiplayer Starcraft at CGW after work, and while taking breaks during work-till-midnight 500-page issues, etc. We also played multiplayer Age of Empires, and that would be a close second.

21

  1. Age of Empires 2 DE - basically offers infinite gameplay, a very good and competitive AI that on the harder levels is superior to mediocre players and so so much single player (if that’s your huckleberry) that you can more or less play it forever unless you binge it 12 hours a day for months.

  2. I’d like to say something like Homeworld (actually Homeworld wasn’t a particularly balanced RTS), or Warcraft 2. I’m not sure if Total War games count as what we’d call “RTS” to be honest. So it’s got to be Starcraft.

The original Starcraft offered something that even the newer versions just didn’t have - the ability of smaller armies to regularly beat larger ones, given the right tactical situation. The time i nuked 7 carriers with my last ghost, the time i beat some jerks 2on1 when my ally dropped at the start, tossing some perfect magic storm at just the right moment, ect. There was always a way for a player who was behind to win against ordinary opponents. Starcraft had a sense that there were a lot of different tools that each player could employ. Most RTS games sense then - Age of Empires, Starcraft 2, most Red Alert / C&C games - are games about investing into your economy first and translating that into troops, and most games are won by resources (“macro” as the kids like to say).