Real time strategy? More like rubbish-time... rubbish [Archive]

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-04, 03:45 AM

This article has been published into Pc Gamer (UK version) in their July 2008 Edition. The writer's name is Tom Francis. The magasine's website's forum is here (forum.pcgamer.co.uk).

I wanted to post it here because I found it... insightful. And true. Comment :smallcool:

Since I was 12 I've been palying real-time strategy games, and I've only just realised that the entire genre is worthless. It took a while to dawn on me because until recently I'd never glimpsed the type of game they're supposed to be.

It was in Dawn of War : Soulstorm - by all account a merely decent expansion pack. there's a bit I mention in my review where an invincible angel is giving you grief, and she gets her power from four shrines spread around the map. But she turns up every time you attack a shrine, and her aura makes that shrine invincible too.

I actually had to stop and think about this. I've been lulled into such a stupor by the banality of this genre that the first time one actually required a single neuron to fire in the cobwebbed cavity of my skull, I temporarily crashed and had to reboot my brain into 'think' mode. Duh, I guess I could send a dummy fire team to one shrine, then when she shows up to guard it, my main force could attack another?

It worked, and I felt like a fenius. It's a simple, heavily scripted, artificial example of a tactic, but it's a tactic. Building a load of anti-vehicle units because the ennemy have vehicles is not. That's just playing Simon Says with lascannons.

For the first time in years, I had to think about what my enemy would think, instead of mechanically going through the motions for the sake of an artificial sense of accomplishment for having bothered to build up an army big enough that I can simply right-click on the ennemy base to win.

Remember when Churchill won World war II with a tank rush? When Wellington bested Napoleon at Warteloo by spamming tech-3 artillery for half and hour? Or when Genghis Kahn conqueredm ore than a fifth of the habitable surface of the Earth by maxing out mounted archer research?

Neither do I. These things aren't tactics, they don't win wars. They're grinding. In singleplayer, they work because the AI is coded not to try them itself. In multiplayer, the player with the most streamlined build-order and the fastest clicking finger wins. The genre is broken.

And this is more important than just semantics. The dross we've come to accept as strategy isn't actually demanding anything of our brains. It's leading them on a breadcrum trail of dopamine - just like massively multiplayer games - where the steady stream of progress and achievement is enough to keep us clicking for ghours after the last ouce of joy has seeped from our souls.

There's a great scene in the low-fi sitcom Peep Show, where the nerdier character Mark is playing Blitzkrieg at his PC, and wonders aloud, "Am I even having fun any more? Oh, it doesn't matter, I've got to win it for the Fuhrer".

Right now there's little scope for feints, distraction tactics and psychological warfare in RTS. But the bigger problem is that there's no need for them. These games need to pit us against a force we can't destroy with mind;ess spam/ an ennemy we can't defeat simply by attacking with all our units at once. A base that isn't vulnerable to direct attack.

Because right now, all we're being teste on is our ability to click on a scissors factory when confronted with a paper army.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-04, 03:57 AM

All right, now that the article itself is laid out, I can add my own comments.

That guy hit a nerve for me. Want to know one of my favorite of all-time strategy game? Ground Control. Not the 2nd. Ground Control 1. You had few units, and the ennemy outnumbered you about 4 to 1 on every map. Not to forget their turrets were totally killing you in a frontal assault.

You had to be careful about the whole game, because you knew that if you lost unit during a mission, there wouldn't be other to pop later. You lost you air units because too stupid to check out for anti-air turrets beforehand? Too bad for you, sucker. And trust me, those anti-air turrets had quite a punch.

When I first installed Ground Control II.. I hated it. My god, this game was boring. Simply create new units, and then send them to fight and die.

I once joined a guild in Starcraft. I had a dedicated section of their website where I posted the correct tactic to win against missions in Brood War. I only did 5-6 Terran mission, sadly. But the point is, NEVER, NEVER I have said "Create 12 Battlecruiser. Go to point B, then go wipe point C."

The last Terran Mission, I had found a specific weakness in all the Cerebrate's defence. The first one (the one with invincible Sunken Colonies) had a plateau near the Cerebrate itself. If you could manage to land 3-4 tanks, with about 10 Wraiths, you could hold that spot. When the computer stopped sending troops at you (careful about the overlords! they always have troops in their bellies, and you'll loose your tanks), use your wraith to strike a few time at the Cerebrate. When Zerg ground support arrived, retreat your wraiths near the tank.

2nd Cerebrate: It doesn't have any ground defence near him. If you manage to land a team of 10 cloaked ghosts on the ledge that run on his northen border (with one colony spore at every 7-8 cm on your screen), you could get those ghosts near ennough the cerebrate to nuke him. Leave a few ghosts behind as decoy, and try to divert his air power. It's the only thing that could kill those ghosts.

When the 2nd Cerebrate was dead, the 3rd was totally open from the eastern side. Just rush him there, there is top 4-5 Spore Colony in your way (and whatever troops he can muster).

I've done it often. it was FUN to think you way around the map, to find weaknesses, and exploit it.

Grey Paladin

2008-07-04, 04:36 AM

Most games in most genres are mindless clickfests, some are just easy enough that even your average joe can spot the problem, what else is new?

Also; every unit always has another unit that is the optimal choice when conforting it, this is true in every single game ever with more than a single unit, this choice combined with the logistics and location of the attack are what is commonly known as strategy, once you have chosen the battle field, it falls down to tactics.

EDIT: The writer is correct, the things he mentioned the greatest military leaders of the world perform are indeed not tactics, but Strategy.

And I don't recall Stalin doing anything *beside* Tank Rushing to defeat Jerry.

TigerHunter

2008-07-04, 04:48 AM

I've always agreed. TBS is better, but RTS is flashier, so all the big companies make RTS.

Cubey

2008-07-04, 04:53 AM

Let me post my comments on single and multiplayer modes separately.
Single: yes, most missions follow the pattern of build the base-create lots of units-swarm the enemy. That's easy, repetetive and boring, but only if you only have the basic pattern in your game and nothing else - what separates hackjobs from good RTSes is that the latter have additional elements that, while not necessarily changing the structure of the mission, make every mission different and because of that, enjoyable. Blizzard's games are a good example of that thinking, with, for example, additional twists and quests on basically every single map of Warcraft III. Now, the reason why the pattern still is the same, and most missions require next to no strategic thinking is simple - otherwise you'd have a game too difficult for casual gamers to play, so they wouldn't buy it. Real hardcore strategy fans shouldn't play RTSs and complain about the lack of strategy - it's like buying a microwave oven and complaining it doesn't freeze your food like a freezer should. However, there are still things in RTSes directed at them, be it games like the mentioned Ground Control or...

Multiplayer: I disagree with the idiotic thought that it's only spamming units in the most streamlined fashion, with the fastest clicker winning. (At least, that may happen in bad RTSes, but we're talking about good ones here) Sure, that's what it looks like - but olympic grade gymnastics look easy and simple when the athletes perform them too! There's more to multiplayer gaming than just a clickfest - being able to react quickly is the requirement of being a good multiplayer gamer, but not the ONLY requirement. Each mulitplayer tactic has a viable counter-tactic (we're talking about good games with good balance here, let me rephrase that once again - and here's a little hello to Starcraft Brood War, which was broken as hell when released and it took many patches to make it balanced! :smallyuk:), be it rushing, making certain unit combos, and so on. It's for the enemy player to recognise the tactic swiftly and deploy a counter-tactic, and then for the first player to, if the counter was successful, retrieve the equilibrium of your forces without getting destroyed. It's almost like a fighting game, where the most important thing is to "feel" the opponent and the way they fight - but you still won't go anywhere if your reflex and timing are bad!
For the multiplayer part of the article, I think the writer is an example of sour grapes - he (or she, but knowing the gaming demography it's a guy) sucks at multiplayer RTSes, so in order to save pride he calls it simple and requiring only monkey-grade fast clicking. I saw the same friggin' thing happen to people who suck, and therefore continue to diss, Player vs Player in almost every possible game. Fighting games, World of Warcraft, you name it - you don't need skills to fight them, you just need monkey reflexes (or gear/level, where appropriate)! Bollocks, I say.

Reinboom

2008-07-04, 05:27 AM

This makes me think back, and realize I agree with this article completely.
I disagree with this article.

I say this, because, my view point and at which audience and at which game I'm looking at is changing between each line.

One of the most "turn off" points while playing a RTS I ever had, reading a fan forum on Warcraft 3 that had gotten to the play point that they weren't exchanging strategy or tactics ideas, they were exchanging play builds. That is, you would get topics discussing "Windwalk Rush", "Counter Windwalk Rush (human base build).", "Call to Arms swarm.", etc.
These were play set ups that were so... overwhelming in play with little room to deny their grounds, and the only discussions being on how to more effectively deploy them there... that I realized I was looking at "Magic: The gathering, the point and click series.".
Now, I love MtG - and this will be one of the few times I will use such a comparison negatively, however, for such a genre.. this is rather disappointing.
What made it worse is that it even became less of a mental task and more of a speed task to do one thing more efficiently than the other. Which is even a worse aspect.

Now, that was me agreeing.

Watching championships of StarCraft, each play. Amazing in their nature. The commentary even more amazing. Seeing a siege tank start striking from the south end of a base, to be quickly accompanied by a half dozen firebats and a couple ghosts, the entrance viewpoint of a good base opener - yet, the real threat coming from the east rather than the south, having a sudden rush in on the corner part once the enemy has his forces distracted expecting the offense to be from a different direction.
The beauty in the plays and not just simply the set up of the army internally, but how each unit is used and, most importantly, how to outwit your opponent.
Then, as stated, there was the commentary.
Describing the thought process, even describing that for a few, Sun Tzu's Art of War is their play bible. How to think in the game, you must understand your opponent, even an enemy you are blind to you must see in to, and not let the reverse occur.

Games can be played on different levels quite commonly.

Winterwind

2008-07-04, 05:42 AM

Cubey pretty much already said what I was going to say, and more eloquently, too, but I am going to do so anyway. :smalltongue:

Sorry for sounding elitist, but this guy either has no idea how RTSs work, or has never played against human opponents with any ranks in Knowing What They Are Doing whatsoever.

While AIs often are predictable or abusable enough for a human to be able to formulate a scheme that works every time (which is why good RTSs provide twists in the singleplayer missions), a human will come up with a counter-tactic. Which you have to counter again. And then adjust to how the last battles went. And so forth.
You could, say, turtle and get some nigh unbreakable defenses, against which the AI might waste huge amounts of units, while you amass your army in the safety of your base.
A human, however, would not attack; he would expand all over the map (which you could not prevent since you invested so much in defense), gain an economic advantage over you, and demolish you with superior forces.

He thinks splitting his armies to attack at two points at once is genius? Well, this just about proves he doesn't get RTSs, because this is barely the basics. You could harrass the opponent with a small team of quick units to disrupt his economics and keep his army moving senselessly back and forth, while your main forces gather for the proper assault. You could attempt a drop (either a couple of highly destructive units sneaked into his base to do massive damage before he can react, or bringing your entire army behind his actual defense lines). Isolate expansions and parts of the army, to take care of them with part of your army while the main forces cut off the way for the reinforcements. Instead of running into a massive defense, retreat in time - with the option of luring pursuing enemy units into an ambush. Try to set up flanks (ever seen what happens when a Protoss army runs straight towards a Terran army with vultures and tanks? Ever seen what happens when the exact same Protoss army swarms the Terrans from all sides?). Instead of just sending your millions of units in, micro them. All the while trying to decide - should you get more units? Tech, so you can get better units? Or expand? Get the wrong proportions, and you will die either way. And let's not forget predicting what your opponent is up to - attack while he is trying to expand, so that a lot of his ressources are bound into something that doesn't help him in the battle immediately, and try to prevent that expansion. Get the exact right counter units, preferably before the units they are supposed to counter attack for the first time. Attempts at scouting are involved, but just as much, and probably more, psychology and attempting to read the enemy.

And just for the record, all of these are not things that might, hypothetically, come up, but never will because the players will just send their armies at each other stupidly. Nigh all of these come up in every single game, and if they don't then it is because the players in question evaluated the situation and decided that, in this particular moment, a specific strategy would not be the way to go.

All in all... sorry, but I see no merit or insightful content in this article.

Were-Sandwich

2008-07-04, 05:46 AM

I must say that I agree with the article, but then I'm hardly an unbiased source as I don't really like RTS games, I prefer TBS. As someone who plays tabletop wargames, the whole "Build a base, build units from base" model always rubbed me the wrong way. If games were more along the lines of "Player A has these units and this objective, Player B has these units and this objective. They are not necessarily balanced. Go" I'd like them a lot more. My favourite mission on an RTS I've played has got to be Hyperion Peaks from the Dark Crusade campaign, precisely because it was that kind of mission.

I do play Dark Crusade quite a bit, but I'm not very good; I'm in it more to see all the cool tanks/dudes running around shooting each in lots of different awesome ways than to perfect my Flayed One rush.

I think the person who compared some RTS's to Magic: The Gathering was spot on. I love Magic, but serious RTS players always strike me as sounding like Tournament level Magic players (I'm a committed Casual player, myself).

Prustan

2008-07-04, 05:47 AM

The article did bring up a few good points, but that's probably why I'd prefer the Total War series. TBS, with RTS battles. And there's so many different ways to win. Buying the enemy troops (my brothers seem to reach this possiblility quite easily), alliances, conquering, sneak attacks, assasinations, the list goes on. Although, I haven't gotten to the point that a series of good cavalry charges won't win the battle. Haven't spent enough time playing yet.

Another brilliant thing about the Total War battles is that is possible to pull off some spectacular victories if you use your troops properly. My older brother once had some archers, tough infantry and crap infantry (like peasants or militia). He had the archers advancing in front of the tough infantry, while the crap infantry went off to try and flank the enemy. The archers got in range and let off a few volleys before charging the enemy to pin them down. The tough infantry followed quickly, and the crap infantry charged from behind, causing the enemy to panic and run. He repeated the tactic and turned what was going to be a crushing defeat into a victory. Can't really do that in most RTSs, as the enemy would never run and the crap troops would just get slaughtered without doing anything.

Winterwind

2008-07-04, 05:49 AM

One of the most "turn off" points while playing a RTS I ever had, reading a fan forum on Warcraft 3 that had gotten to the play point that they weren't exchanging strategy or tactics ideas, they were exchanging play builds. That is, you would get topics discussing "Windwalk Rush", "Counter Windwalk Rush (human base build).", "Call to Arms swarm.", etc.
These were play set ups that were so... overwhelming in play with little room to deny their grounds, and the only discussions being on how to more effectively deploy them there... that I realized I was looking at "Magic: The gathering, the point and click series.".
Now, I love MtG - and this will be one of the few times I will use such a comparison negatively, however, for such a genre.. this is rather disappointing.
What made it worse is that it even became less of a mental task and more of a speed task to do one thing more efficiently than the other. Which is even a worse aspect.While it's true that many people play in this exact manner (it depends on the game, too, in some - like WarCraft - you can possibly get away with stubbornly sticking to your build order, in others - like StarCraft - if you do not keep adjusting all the time, you are going to perish), they will always be in a disadvantage to an opponent who keeps reading them and understands how to adjust his strategy to theirs. Perfecting a single strategy works only if the people you play against are attempting to do the same - play one specific strategy and stick to it no matter what happens.

Can't really do that in most RTSs, as the enemy would never run and the crap troops would just get slaughtered without doing anything.That sounds more like a feature of one specific game, not a distinguishing feature between RTSs and TBSs. I know many TBSs where the troops will never run either, and there is nothing that would prevent the implementation of morale in RTSs, either.

Reinboom

2008-07-04, 05:56 AM

While it's true that many people play in this exact manner (it depends on the game, too, in some - like WarCraft - you can possibly get away with stubbornly sticking to your build order, in others - like StarCraft - if you do not keep adjusting all the time, you are going to perish), they will always be in a disadvantage to an opponent who keeps reading them and understands how to adjust his strategy to theirs. Perfecting a single strategy works only if the people you play against are attempting to do the same - play one specific strategy and stick to it no matter what happens.

You would think so. However, the game falls in to the error of making the build plays in question a "respond or do not respond" situation.
That is, the builds do not need to react to the opponent, they are too precise and quick. Rather, the opponent needs to react to them. Do you stop the windwalk rush? Or do you hope your opponent is applying play build B this game? That's right, not "try to get information on your opponent and learn from their game - this game - to try to get in to their strategy." no, I must emphasize the word 'hope' here.
I emphasize this, because, after seeing the darkside of Warcraft 3, I must say, it's one of the most... silly levels of playing Rock Paper Scissors I have ever seen.

Now for StarCraft, oh how I love StarCraft...
Amazing they are by the same company.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-04, 06:08 AM

Oslecamo

2008-07-04, 06:14 AM

Now for StarCraft, oh how I love StarCraft...
Amazing they are by the same company.

That's because Warcraft was intended to be RTS-RPG hybrid(heros who lv up, items, shops, neutral enemies etc, etc).

And the screwed it. The neutral creeps reward those who spend endless hours training how to kill them in the fastest way to get that juicy exp and gold, just like in Wow.

What I find even more ridicule is that when your army and the enemy army meet, it normally becomes the nonhero guys from each side trying to kill the enemy hero while the other side tries to do the same, and then yes, clicking really fast is essential.

But you gotta give them the benefit of trying to make a new genre, wich is always hard.

Dawn of War, on the other hand, has one of the poorest AIs ever. And it manages to be even more multiplayer unbalanced than Warcraft. Anti infantry and Anti tanks. That's all you need to know.

EDIT:SolkaTruesilver:The problem with your idea is that the game is already hard to balance if both sides start with the same objectives and equal terrains. If each side has diferent objectives and terrains it would be much harder to balance.

Also, building units allows you to react to your enemy. Otherwise, you may discover your enemy combination screws your combination. And even among real world battles calling specialized reinforcments first thing after spoting the enemy is quite common.

Winterwind

2008-07-04, 06:28 AM

You would think so. However, the game falls in to the error of making the build plays in question a "respond or do not respond" situation.
That is, the builds do not need to react to the opponent, they are too precise and quick. Rather, the opponent needs to react to them. Do you stop the windwalk rush? Or do you hope your opponent is applying play build B this game? That's right, not "try to get information on your opponent and learn from their game - this game - to try to get in to their strategy." no, I must emphasize the word 'hope' here.
I emphasize this, because, after seeing the darkside of Warcraft 3, I must say, it's one of the most... silly levels of playing Rock Paper Scissors I have ever seen.

Now for StarCraft, oh how I love StarCraft...
Amazing they are by the same company.The actual main problem in WarCraft 3 is that you start with so many ressources that you have to get a couple of buildings right at the game's start, thus forcing you to commit yourself to a build-order before having the opportunity to scout (as opposed to StarCraft where you choose your build-order only around after a few minutes and probably had a chance to sneak a worker into the opponent's base to see what to do best).
Still, as soon as the opponent's strategy reveals itself, you can begin making adjustments to yours. And if you do not scout and miss, say, that early expansion your opponent is attempting, you are thoroughly boot (which poses the question - counter-expand, or attempt to bring that expo down?)

I know I am missing some key point, but a simple ressource-gathering followed by a force-buildup doesn't sound like much strategy to me. Oh, agreed - that's not strategy.
But RTSs are not like that, and somebody who attempts to play in this manner will be crushed by someone who does use strategy.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-04, 06:35 AM

EDIT:SolkaTruesilver:The problem with your idea is that the game is already hard to balance if both sides start with the same objectives and equal terrains. If each side has diferent objectives and terrains it would be much harder to balance.

Also, building units allows you to react to your enemy. Otherwise, you may discover your enemy combination screws your combination. And even among real world battles calling specialized reinforcments first thing after spoting the enemy is quite common.

(first paragraph) I understand what you mean. But I always though that it was the players who gave the best feedback about balance in a game. Since you whole army would be about "point-building" it, you could set between players how many points each player has for a set game, and always have a "balanced suggestion" of points when creating a game. then the players would agreed on how many points each side has, depending on the game objectives. Experienced players could offer more points to less experienced players, in order to try to maintain balance.

but I realise the biggest problem would set the proper unit/perk cost to balance the game. But that's what patches are for.

(second paragraph) You are right. But then, an army shouln't be a specialised warforce. In the kind of game I am describing, the natural reaction of players should be to balance their forces into intelligence gathering/anti-tank/stealth/anti-infantry. Also choosing the proper mobility, depending on your playstyle and objectives. If a set gamer has his favorite style, he should be wary, or other gamers will know his weakness and choose their own army dedicated to beat him, which IS THE POINT.

but then again, it should'nt be about "unit X pawns unit Y", it should be "Is the infantryman I just spotted on the hill a scout, or part of an ambush force?"

the players should think about the other player's tactics, like in chess, rather than about what is his force composition. "Why doesn't he have more unit defending that bridge? did he mined it? Rigged explosives? Or he's going to have reinforcement coming in any minutes?"

Winterwind

2008-07-04, 06:52 AM

the players should think about the other player's tactics, like in chess, rather than about what is his force composition. "Why doesn't he have more unit defending that bridge? did he mined it? Rigged explosives? Or he's going to have reinforcement coming in any minutes?"...all of which does happen in RTSs.

Seriously, a vast part of a RTS match consists out of exactly that kind of thinking. Where is my opponent's main force moving to now? Should I defend this location, this location, or maybe counter-attack right now? Should I try to attack over this bridge, which is obviously mined and defended by tank-fire, before even more reinforcements arrive and the bridge becomes entirely unpassable, or will I lose too much in the process? Or do I maybe have the time to go the long way around? Is this group of units attacking my expansion just a scout team, did they come to harrass, or is it my opponent's main army's avangarde and if I do not move significant forces there this instant, the expansion will be destroyed? And so forth...

factotum

2008-07-04, 06:56 AM

To my mind, RTS games only work when you take out all that base-building and tech-researching stuff. When they put you onto a map with a certain number of troops that cannot be reinforced, it makes sense; being able to build an entire base to produce dozens of troops in a couple of hours does not. Most RTS games have one or two levels where you're forced onto just the resources you have at the beginning, but I've never played one that was like that all the way through.

Of course, I'm talking single player here--I'm not a big fan of multiplayer games of any type (for all that I lost 14 months of free time to WoW :smallredface:) so your mileage may vary.

Oslecamo

2008-07-04, 07:06 AM

but then again, it should'nt be about "unit X pawns unit Y", it should be "Is the infantryman I just spotted on the hill a scout, or part of an ambush force?"

the players should think about the other player's tactics, like in chess, rather than about what is his force composition. "Why doesn't he have more unit defending that bridge? did he mined it? Rigged explosives? Or he's going to have reinforcement coming in any minutes?"

But this already happens, and Starcraft is the best example.

Your main force starts to be pinged by some mutalisks, and then you gotta decide:
1-Is the enemy just trying to wear down my army, in wich case I should go after him and crush the mutalisks?
2-is the enemy trying to atract me to a zone full of lurkers burried waiting to turn my forces to shreds, in wich case I should retreat and return with anti stealth?
3-Is the enemy trying to keep me busy while he sends an overlord loaded with zerglings to my base, in wich case I should send some of my troops there to counter the attack and protect my workers?
4-Is the enemy just trying to buy himself time while he actually has no army but has several expos under construction, so if I don't find them quickly he'll overwhelm me with sheer numbers?

You gotta know how to preview your oponent maneuvers. For example, I once saw an awesome game where the zerg player tought his army had the terran army pinned down by several hydralisks in a chokepoint and sent several ovelords to attack his base, only to discover the terran player had seen trough it and built several anti air towers wich shredded the overlords, followed by a wraith counter attack to finsish the survivors.

EDIT:Also, take in acount that if you remove the unit building, the game would probably degenerate into each player campiang, aka picking lots of sniper and ranged units, puting himself into a defensive position, and waiting for the enemy to come for them.

Resource gathering is the way to stop this. If you don't go out there and gather resources, you're gotta get overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

This actually is very important in real world wars. Stalin may have been an awfull strategian, but he made sure his facotories keep pumping tanks and guns all the time, wearing down the german army by sheer numbers.

Similarly, the Afrika Corps were defeated mainly because they couldn't get reinforcments trough the mediterrain, so ended up having to retreat due to lack of ammo and spare tank parts.

The roman empire had a very effecient recruitment and training system wich allowed them to get a steady supply of soldiers.

The most basic example of this is a siege. Your oponent needs to eat. If you stop him from geting food, he's gonna lose, no matter how smarter or stronger he's than you.

Grey Paladin

2008-07-04, 07:07 AM

Solka/Factotum/Prustan: So, in short, you all want to play RTT?

If so, you shouldn't complain about the lack of strategy, but the lack of tactics!

I'd suggest the Total War series, Company of heroes, and World in Conflict for these of you that hunger for more tactical options. Supreme Commander and Starcraft if you have a click rate of 2+ per a second.

Were-Sandwich

2008-07-04, 07:12 AM

EDIT:SolkaTruesilver:The problem with your idea is that the game is already hard to balance if both sides start with the same objectives and equal terrains. If each side has diferent objectives and terrains it would be much harder to balance.

Why does it have to be balanced? Surely making it interesting and involving is more important than making it fair.

Reinboom

2008-07-04, 07:12 AM

A good game I would think of:

- First, set asymetrical objectives, and always give the opportunity to a player to "retreat" in order to lesser his losses (except if the game is a "last stance" mode, like Berlin in WW2). Symetrical objectives can be a good idea, but only from time to time. I like the idea of having one side needing to defend.

I have agree and disagree. I think that could be a really neat alternative option. However, it shouldn't be made the main as, well, a considerable amount of competitive players who make up a significant amount of the gamer base in general don't usually get in to games with asymmetrical objectives.

I do think this can be expanded in to the choice being on the players end mid game, that is, there would be a multiple ends rather than a multiple paths to the same end. Assassinating the leader, for example, would be an interesting addition if done right.
Expand from there.

- Make the players buy at the beginning of the game a set number of units. The players could create a serie of games (a campaign) and the performance of their previous games could influence what they have available now.

The players could also buy perks. Like pre-game scouting, etc..

Netstorm: Islands at War

Fun game, with a VERY unique take on RTS genre. You received new tech for sacrificing the enemy's leader to your altar, which carried on to all future games. You lost by being sacrificed.
And that was not the only unique thing about the game. The fact that the game was also set in the sky, on floating islands and you had to bridge everywhere. And that the only mobile unit you control is your priest/leader and gatherers, all offensive units are buildings. The game is rather unique and deep... and so forgotten to time...

- No more unit addition if available. Off course, one of the perk someone could buy is reinforcement after 40 play minutes (depending on the objectives).

I'm strictly not a fan of this. Of course, I'm extremely paranoid about limited resources... it's just that, I don't want the medium of which I win through to be a limited resource in such a fashion.

It would also be nice if one side has a time limit, and the other side has location-restriction (like defending bridge A). So the first player knows he HAS to move in, and the 2nd cannot simply go hide around the map.
That would be interesting, but, see above comments.

Make the map big, but with quick movement of the soldiers, and if possible, hiding capabilities.
A take on this: I want to see RTSs make ambushes a lot more usable.

I also want to see retreating become more viable. It's really not currently in most RTS... StarCraft almost does it well in certain cases. That is, a unit running out of energy, your carrier losing its weapons, etc. so you pull them back quickly to fix it. WarCraft also does it decently with cheap healing. A reason to pull back is significant.
Since, retreating adds a lot more otherwise to the game. It makes ambushes a bit more viable and it makes flanking a rather significant tactic.
-aside, I went off on a tangent.

I know I am missing some key point, but a simple resource-gathering followed by a force-buildup doesn't sound like much strategy to me. Ok, it's a fun genre, I agree 100%. But there should be other sort of games. The one that focus on a developped combat. Ground Control 1 was peticulary great about it, with huge maps and set objectives. It had it's flaw, but I knew I was doing some real tactics.

This really depends on the game.

edit

Why does it have to be balanced? Surely making it interesting and involving is more important than making it fair.

When a game is labeled 'RTS', the most significant portion of its player base is inherently competitive.
This means that balance in some form is a near must. Otherwise, the game could very easily have significant selling issues. - Since, the reviews are going to kill it.

Oslecamo

2008-07-04, 07:21 AM

Why does it have to be balanced? Surely making it interesting and involving is more important than making it fair.

Eeerr, glad you think so, but unfortenately, 90% of the gamer population thinks otherwise.

People nowadays have the idea that no matter what you pick the end result should be of the same power of your oponent's choices. And gaming companies gotta eat, so they answer their wishes.

In the end, your veteran soldier squad with grenades, night vision and top notch machineguns will have no particular advantage against the teddy bear waving teenage girls in golden frilly dresses because they both cost the same. Wich I agree is really annoying.

So, untill the gaming population stops their balance paranoia, we're stuck with uber balanced games. Long live 3.X.

Murska

2008-07-04, 08:31 AM

That sounds more like a feature of one specific game, not a distinguishing feature between RTSs and TBSs. I know many TBSs where the troops will never run either, and there is nothing that would prevent the implementation of morale in RTSs, either.

Eh. Rome - Total War battles are RTS. The morale aspect is really important and the battles are really fun. Of course, it's not perfectly balanced, but still the sheer amount of possible strategies and counters makes it possible to win with any nation against any other nation, which is the point of balance anyway.

@^ If the game has little girls and veteran soldiers, it shouldn't MAKE them cost the same. Cheaper and weaker units against stronger but more expensive is the norm.

Oslecamo

2008-07-04, 08:44 AM

Eh. Rome - Total War battles are RTS. The morale aspect is really important and the battles are really fun. Of course, it's not perfectly balanced, but still the sheer amount of possible strategies and counters makes it possible to win with any nation against any other nation, which is the point of balance anyway.

No, the point of balance is that you could make an army of peasants and attack the enemy elite troops and if your army of peasants had the same cost as the army of elites it would be 50%-50% chance of winning.

At least that's the idea I get from what I hear around the forums. It's not enough that each faction can defeat another, every strategy has to be equally viable no matter what the situation.

Murska

2008-07-04, 08:48 AM

Winterwind

2008-07-04, 09:24 AM

No, the point of balance is that you could make an army of peasants and attack the enemy elite troops and if your army of peasants had the same cost as the army of elites it would be 50%-50% chance of winning.

At least that's the idea I get from what I hear around the forums. It's not enough that each faction can defeat another, every strategy has to be equally viable no matter what the situation.No RTS I know works this way.

Balance doesn't mean that every strategy is viable, it means that each faction has the potential of countering a strategy a different faction might throw their way, while mounting an equally dangerous attack themselves.

So, say, you have the elite knight cavallery - but the opponent has, for the same cost, spearmen specifically dedicated to defeating cavallery. In a fight, you will have no 50%-50% chance of winning, you will die horribly. But then, other aspects come up - the cavallery is faster, so, while you are at a disadvantage in the battlefield, you could try attacking far away villages and lands of your opponent to disrupt his income, while he is not capable of moving his main forces to the rescue fast enough, allowing you for hit&run attacks until you can build something that can deal with the spearmen. Of course, the opponent has myriads of ways to deal with this strategy himself; the question is, which one will he choose, and how will you deal with it?

Lack of balance, on the other hand, means that one side has a strategy at its disposal which, no matter what the other side does, is likely to score them the win. If the other player foresees the strategy, counters it perfectly, and still ends up with a 60% chance of losing - that's imbalance.

Erloas

2008-07-04, 09:26 AM

I never did like RTS multiplayer, at least highly competatively. With friends it was good, but for competition the barrier to entry was playing non stop for a few months until you knew ever single thing about every unit and their respective hot-keys. It simply isn't possble to be competative in a "real-time strategy" game with strategy alone. The "real-time" or build everything as fast as possible in exactly the right order for the first 10-20 minutes of the game greatly outweighted any strategy components to the game.

Sure once you got past that memorization and reflex barrier then the strategies started to come back in and evolve. But no amount of strategy would give you any chance in the game if you couldn't control building and force manipulation on 20 different objects at the same time.

All games have a learning curve and a time required to get the feel of how everything works but I don't think there is any other genre that requires so much learning the game rather then learning the tactics to win said game. Not knowing the levels in FPSs will put you at a major disadavantage, but knowing how the games work in general and having good skills will be enough to overcome the learning curve of the game specific changes.

When you compare RTSs to table top wargames, which is what they started out emulating many years ago, it wasn't about building an army as quickly as possible, it was about using limited resources in the most effective way possible. But for the most part RTSs have virtually unlimited resources and it doesn't make nearly as big of a difference if you try something and it doesn't work.

GolemsVoice

2008-07-04, 09:37 AM

How do people come to think a game should not be balanced? Maybe it's because there are different ideas of balance.

People nowadays have the idea that no matter what you pick the end result should be of the same power of your oponent's choices. And gaming companies gotta eat, so they answer their wishes.

In the end, your veteran soldier squad with grenades, night vision and top notch machineguns will have no particular advantage against the teddy bear waving teenage girls in golden frilly dresses because they both cost the same. Wich I agree is really annoying.
That is, of course, silly, but in what game is that really what happens? Take an example from DoW. You could build hundreds of Cultists, some of the weakes units in game, and they will get slaughtered against you elite units. No matter how much of them there are. But they bind the enemy in melee, and they can fore him to abandon his superb ranged weapons for his weak close-combat weaponry (think of the Tau), which in turn gives your real troops a chance to move in. (Keep in mind that I do not play DoW in Multiplayer, and that what I just said may be utterly pointless there, which I suppose it is)
And for the discussion builing troops vs. having a set number of troops. I enjoy both, and am currently playing GC 1, again, but I wouldn't wish all my RTS games to be like that. Because with the option to build new units, the game becomes more... relaxed, maybe. You know that not every single unit in the game is so important that you have already lost if you only loose about 1/4 of your forces, but you still feel the loss of units at the front. In most RTS games in which you can replenish your army (again, what I say mostly applies to Singleplayer) there will be two or more set bases, often heavily defended and hard to actually destroy. Than there will be zones where skirmishes and battles occur, where the player's armies crash with those of his fellow players or the PC's. Winning a fight here might give you control of useful new ressources, a terrain advantage or other useful gadgets (think of the neutral buildings in C&C 2). And, most of the time, no player will have more than one or two big armies, which contain his most potent units. So, losing units in the warzone makes you more vulnerable, because you've lost ground, ressource spots, important buildings, or left your base undefended, while leaving the opportunity for future fights, and a chance for you to still turn the tide of the battle, for example your enemies forces could also have sufferd so much that they won't suffice to get through your base defense.
That being said, I agree that RTS should be more than "let's see who is the fastes clicker/carries the biggest gun", which can be prevented by giving the players options to make strategic and tactic choices other than what unit/building to produce next (for example "should I use my once-per-game superweapon now, or could it be more helpful i another situation?", or "well, his army is superior to mine, but can I do anything to still win, e.g. by fighting on favourable terrain, or using my faster troops to attack his weak points for massive damage?")

Oslecamo

2008-07-04, 10:15 AM

No RTS I know works this way.

That's precisely my point. There are no perfectly balanced RPGs, at least by the majority of the population's definition of balanced.

Lack of balance, on the other hand, means that one side has a strategy at its disposal which, no matter what the other side does, is likely to score them the win. If the other player foresees the strategy, counters it perfectly, and still ends up with a 60% chance of losing - that's imbalance.

And most current RPGs have strategies wich are just plain better than others.

Even in Starcraft there's the dread zergzilla. Expand as fast as possible to get a virtually infinite supply of units and then crush the enemy with endless waves of zergs. There's no known counter once it has started. Your only hope is to stop the zerg player from expanding in the first place.

Golemsvoice:Actually, cultists are considered the worst combat unit of the game. You can swarm the enemy with scouts, slugga boys, guardsmen, guardians, necron warriors, etc, but never with cultists. They're a pathetic unit and the only reason you'll ever need to build them is to capture points while you build your barracks to pump out your real combat units.

However, your definition of balanced doesn't fit most of the gaming's population definition of balanced. Most players nowadays don't want to think. They want pretty graphics and fast paced almost mindless action.

Just look at Dawn of War. Horribly easy to swarm, extremly luck based(units miss about half the shots even if they're shooting at a building) and everything is rock-scissors paper. But hey it has really really good graphics.

The last true RTS was Starcraft. Three completely diferent races wich allow completely diferent strategies, excellet balance(after a LOT of patches).

Everything from there may have better grsaphics, but really can't grasp the tatical feel of Starcraft, wich allowed a great variety of strategies, to the point there were no winning builds, and players were rewarded for improvising during battle.

It's been how many years since then? Why hasn't another game apeared that could match Starcraft in gameplay terms?

Because the new gamers don't want it. At least that's my opinion. What's yours?

GolemsVoice

2008-07-04, 10:27 AM

However, your definition of balanced doesn't fit most of the gaming's population definition of balanced. Most players nowadays don't want to think. They want pretty graphics and fast paced almost mindless action.

While I wouldn't put it that drastical, yeah, that's more or les what's going on at the moment, and it may be even worse when you look at games that emphasis graphics even more, like shooters. Note that I don't say I don't appreciate a pretty game, the better it looks, the more fun I have while playing it, and I also think that graphics are a very important part of most shooters (you will be looking at your environment much more, and from a much closer distance, and what you see really makes a difference in ego-shooters), but I would play a game that had bad graphics and good gameplay and enjoy it, while I won't bother with games that are the other way round.
But of course, not all hope is lost. HoMM 5 combined both beatiful graphics with a nice game system and a great story. (ok, the story is not over-the-top brilliant, but I found it thrilling and with a few unexpected plot-twists.)

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll

2008-07-04, 11:10 AM

I still love the Total war games. I have Medieval 2: Total War, and I have won, and lost, nearly Identical battles so many different ways. The AI isn't that good, but it responds, as kicks my sorry bum more times than one. The AI ambushes me, I withdraw to the hill. They draw up there line, I draw up my line. They advance, while being peppered with arrows. My cannon finally gets drawn up, and completely misses a shot. My spearmen meets their spearmen, while my light cavalry sweeps away there archers, while my archers fire uselessly at there heavy cavalry. There heavy cavalry engages my light cavalry, and kill half of them before my cavalry run. Their heavy cavalry then wipes out the rest of my beleaguered army.

It's fun, even though there's a clear Heavy Infantry>Spearmen>Heavy Cav>Light Cav>Archer precedence here, the responses of the AI make the battle much more interesting than a simple hackfest.

Pronounceable

2008-07-04, 01:28 PM

The article is completely correct on singleplayer. Very eloquently explains why I don't like RTSs. Multiplayer is irrelevant cos I don't do multiplayer.

However, your definition of balanced doesn't fit most of the gaming's population definition of balanced. Most players nowadays don't want to think. They want pretty graphics and fast paced almost mindless action.

QFT.

I play single RTS primarily for story and atmosphere. Renowned RTSs usually get a single playthru (with cheats for time and effort saving). Only RTSs I've ever played with regularity is both Dungeon Keepers and Dawn of War. DKs are quite unique with no babysitting my damned forces, rampant resource gathering or "production" of units plus the awesome factor. DoW is for the EMPEROR!

Saithis Bladewing

2008-07-04, 01:34 PM

Ronsian

2008-07-04, 03:36 PM

I don't quite see the brilliance of Total War Battles. I have Rome (with expansion), Medieval 1 (exp) and 2 (exp). I mainly played battles in Rome and Medieval Total War 2, until I got bored. Why? It was too easy. I would simply in all my armies mass heavy cavalry. I would take some guys and flank the enemy, and mercilessly crush them (I beat three full armies against me multiple times, it was that sad). But, you say, in multiplayer it gets better! Not really. I played my brother, who is probably better then me. It would be France vs. England, he would get a few more archers then me. So, we would have a shoot-out he would start winning, so I would have to charge him. Problem? He had higher ground, so I couldn't have won it. Then, I decided to do something different, and play Mongols. I massed cavalry with some elephants. He saw who I was, and got archers and spearmen. I won, why? I sent my elephants in to scatter his guys, and swept up the rest. Didn't require much strategy (you could say it did, opinion), opposed to his careful formations.

Other point: Warcraft 3. I stopped playing it, anybody who says you don't adhere to a strict build order hasn't played it. In AT, you either rush, or build up. The enemy, rushes or builds up. If I spend all my money on ghouls, and my enemy is teching, I will probably win, unless I screw up and vice versa. So, I'm stuck rushing and being bored, or getting my ass handed to me. If you try to stop a rush and tech, you're doomed. Explore, some people say, doesn't work too well, because you don't have enough time to react.

Company of Heroes, is a great game, but not balanced. So, my opponent and I could be having a great game, with me being better then him. Except, his side just so happens to have numerous easy buttons. British: Commandos Panzer Elite: Entire faction. Werhmacrh (sp?) and Americans are more balanced, and fun to play with back and forth battles.

My final point: Chess. People hail it as a great game, and has been played for hundreds of years. This is because in the beginning you have an opening, but then it becomes so un-predictable you have to outsmart your opponent, right there, not memorizing something earlier.

I think the article is right, but not so much. Starcraft, some of the tournament battles are amazing to watch. Also, I believe in Magic the Gathering in tournaments you don't fight your opponent, but a turn timer. You both should be able to kill each other by turn 3 or 4, and it's impossible to predict what deck and how they will kill you, you shouldn't even bother trying. More casual games are fun. That's just my two cents.

averagejoe

2008-07-04, 04:19 PM

Most games in most genres are mindless clickfests, some are just easy enough that even your average joe can spot the problem, what else is new?

No need to get techy. I'm not that bad at problem solving.

My experience with RTS's is neither wide nor deep, but I'll put in my two cents anyways. I do have a long time love of Starcraft, and would have enjoyed Warcraft III more than I did if it wasn't for the heroes. There are a few stories I could tell which would probably be less impressive to more experienced players, but suffice it to say, I know firsthand the real satisfaction of doing something radical and unexpected in a way that decidedly pays off; in other words, having to think on the fly and come up with new strategies. I can only conclude that the guy the OP quoted never bothered to play this deeply, or is speaking of such games from a mostly theoretical (as opposed to practical) point of view. Either way I feel bad for him more than anything else.

konfeta

2008-07-04, 06:29 PM

This guy is a fool and barking up the wrong tree. The real problem with the RTS genre is the divide between casual players and competetive players. It's far more evident than in other genres because of the vastly different requirements for each side of the argument.

A developer will not be able to appease both crowds, and needs to choose one. Unfortunately plenty of developers miss that point and end up producing trash games.

Levyathyn

2008-07-04, 07:49 PM

My problem with RTS's is my lack of experience. I love StarCraft, Age of Empires, Compny of Heroes, and Dawn of War. I've played quite a few others, including the C&C series and Empire Earth, and I think that the genre has yet to have a breakthrough game.

For one thing, the games are pedantic. They, understandably, take the first five to ten missions to explain every single detail to you in excruciating fullness. Of course, the few times (or more, mileage may vary) it does help you are great, but the entire rest of the mission is just the game telling you where to place your armies. For new players, this is wonderful, but when it takes a third of your game up with missions that are redundnt and boring the second time, it becomes a seeping wound in the game.

The layout, hell, the build of a game. More complex games, with bigger maps, often have the same downfalls, but even then it's too big a scale to let you work in your forces and really strategize. Examples include Civilization, which, while a great Civ builder, lacks military bonuses for flank attacks, home territory, strategic routes, and all of the other old familiars of strategy. Smaller focused games, like AoE and DoW, always rely too heavily on resource building. Age tries to force your hand by limiting the resources absurdly. Even for realisms sake, it just creatues problems, basically sending you out to explore and attack just when you've run out of stuff to mine/chop/kill. Even Dawn of War depends ridiculously on it's resources, and suffers from some of the problems of StarCraft.

StarCraft had impossible to beat AI. Maybe I got in there before some of the re-worked AI, but man...it underlines one of the main problems. The player who knows how to click faster, the player who has all the hotkeys memoried, who can switch from a battle to unit-production in less than a second, the player who knows the exact numbers of most efficient numbers of harvesters per resource, that's the player that's going to win. Using a computer with instant access to every control and instant knowledge of every situation creates a godlike enemy. Some StarCraft players are like this, and as I don't have reliable internet, I can't even get my ass kicked a few times for practice.

These games prove to me again and again, as I play my friends in skirmish mode, or destroy single player campaigns through grit and perseverance, that experience plays the winning hand. The road to that victory, though, is paved in action and confrontation more in keeping with the ideals of man and machine. Those few moments when I do draw off an enemy's defenses and whip in from behind to slay him, or hide an advance base just close enough to matter re the best moments. Until they make RTS's where reinforcements are realistically given without having your gunmen stop to farm for a few hours, where the map is big enough and diverse enough to actually shelter a hidden army, where strategy is more than when to attack and with how much, well, Third-Person Shooters are going to more tactical.

Fri

2008-07-04, 08:50 PM

That's why I prefer turn based strategy. Though it's kinda hard to find in pc now.

The only rts I play now is Company of Heroes. It still need a bit of fast click and hotkey hunting though.

By the way, someone mentioned the difference between real time 'tactic' game and real time 'strategy' game. Could someone explain further?

Demented

2008-07-04, 09:47 PM

warty goblin

2008-07-04, 11:15 PM

Real-Time Tactics (RTT) is just a slur for an RTS game where strategy isn't actually a part. From the perspective of the slur, this means just about every RTS game that was ever made. For the most part, the complaint about lack of strategy is the opinion of a few that strategy is related to outsmarting your opponent or some manner of logistical planning. However, there's oftentimes at least as much of that in an FPS game as there is in an RTS, yet the former doesn't have the word 'strategy' in the title of its genre. Hence, RTT is coined.

Edit:
Of course, there's always someone who will probably seize a random acronym and turn it into a marketing slogan.

I always thought RTT refered to real time games with (more or less) the maneuvering and command style of an RTS, but sans base building, resource gathering or re-inforcement, just two armies of 'equal' value and a map, last person standing wins. Basically Myth, in other words.

On the article, I think it highlights something very true about most RTS campaigns, that they are really devoid of strategy or tactics, and are just an exercise in arraying armies in order to beat stupid scripted events. The author's example raises a very good point in fact, that most of the time in a campaign you don't actually ever need to split your forces up, or flank, or anything else, just produce enough crap and throw it at the enemy's linear chain of defenses, knocking them out one by one et cetera. I think this mostly is because the player is supposed to win, the campaign is designed for this. If you are suppposed to win, it follows that you generally don't have to try too hard to do it.

I don't play multi-player, but in skirmish I don't find this to be particularly true though. For example I was playing CoH: Opposing Fronts the other night as the British with an American AI ally against the Wehrmacht and the Panzer Elite, and ended up pushed back into a corner of the map. My defenses were good enough that I could hold, but I couldn't produce troops fast enough, or keep them alive long enough to both build up a strategic reserve to counter-attack and hold the line. I was, in other words, screwed, since eventually my enemy would beat down my ally and then bypass my defenses. I then realized this all stemmed from the single decision on my part not to select the Royal Artillary Doctrine. If I had, I could have used a super-charged 25lbs. mortar on Overwatch to hold a critical chokepoint and so deny the Germans the ability to attack my defenses from their weakest angle en masse. This in turn would have allowed me to develop sufficient force to counter attack. That was a strategic choice and and a strategic blunder on my part, all because I wasn't supposed to win, I was given the tools to engineer a victory but failed to utilize them properly.

Fri

2008-07-05, 12:42 AM

What exactly the difference between Tactics and Strategy anyway? (at least in game/rts term)

About single player campaign, yes. In my opinion it's either a mass hack and slash or a puzzle game.

Demented

2008-07-05, 12:47 AM

Company of Heroes is nice. (I don't have OH).
The placement of territories forces you to defend entire fronts, rather than just pooling your defenses around town centers or chokepoints. The units and weapons, meanwhile, make it much easier to defend. An MG gun will stall an infantry attack almost immediately. A cheap AT gun or two will do a real number on any tanks that approach. Mines and walls are practically the icing on the cake. This forces you to spread your troops about, rather than just cluster them together and steamroll everything you see.

That's good.

(And if we want to reminisce about CoH moments... In one skirmish game I held off a group of tiger tanks for about 10 minutes with just two squads of infantry, right next to my headquarters. Of course, defeat was inevitable....)

Fri

2008-07-05, 12:56 AM

And you could blast a bridge or two to force your opponent to your favorable choke point. Don't forget to put a sniper to kill any engineer that try to fix the bridge :smallwink:

Can enemy AI repair bridges? If they can't, it seems cheating though.

Still.. is that tactic or strategy?

averagejoe

2008-07-05, 01:15 AM

What exactly the difference between Tactics and Strategy anyway? (at least in game/rts term)

About single player campaign, yes. In my opinion it's either a mass hack and slash or a puzzle game.

Well, I know in chess strategy refers to long term plans, where tactics refers to the short term. In other words, strategy refers to the shape of the game overall, where as tactics refers to exchanges with limited scope. In RTS I tend to translate this into strategy being the bit where you compose your armies, get your resources, place your defenses and such, where tactics tend to boil down to exchanges between troops, micromanagement, and such. I don't know if there's an "official" stance, though.

Demented

2008-07-05, 02:04 AM

LotharBot

2008-07-05, 02:28 AM

The last Terran Mission, I had found a specific weakness in all the Cerebrate's defence. The first one.... land 3-4 tanks, with about 10 Wraiths

2nd Cerebrate: It doesn't have any ground defence near him....

the 3rd was totally open from the eastern side....

I've found I can do that mission with zero losses (aside from the buildings in reach of sunks when it starts.) Crank out some tanks and supply depot-bunker walls to protect your base, then kick out about 3 battlecruisers. Send them out toward Cerebrate #1, park them over the platform, and wait for yamato to charge up. Fire that shot and then have them focus fire on the cerebrate, and he'll be gone.

Then send those cruisers, plus what you've built in the mean time (should be about 6) to the ridge with brown spores straight east of your expansion; ignore any leftover red stuff, shooting it just wasted time. Take out a couple of the spores at the end and either land a couple tanks or just keep the cruisers up... you can push right along the ridge and never face the bulk of his defenses. Puts you right behind C2, within tank or yamato range.

By the time you take out C2, you should have a dozen cruisers and be in position to yamato the spores on the east of C3. If you're quick, you can also yamato C3 before his units converge on you -- at which point they become mindless. Then you just need to put medics on the beacons and you win.

-----

The original post has a point: sometimes "RTS" games don't involve much strategy beyond "build a bunch of [big unit] and chuck it". But a lot of times they do -- particularly if you put yourself up against tougher challenges, rather than playing the same old same old over and over again.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-05, 03:46 AM

As relates to bridges in CoH, planning to destroy the bridges and building your forces around the chokepoints to exhaust your opponent would be a strategy. Actually destroying the bridges to stop your opponent from moving through them would be a tactic.

Can I nitpick?

I'd say trying to cut off the access point to the ennemy to concentrate his assault on a choke point is a strategy.

How you actually achieve this is tactic. Usually, as the general, you plan the strategy:

"Captain Blue, with your company, I want you to lure the ennemy to bridge Omega. The more you divide or distract their force the better. But you have to prevent them from crossing at any cost"

Then, the Colonel devise the tactic: He will send scouts and a fake attack. He will then cross back the bridge, and prepare explosive charge on it in order to blow it up with forces on it. He may even have planned an ambush for the forces who may have managed to cross the darn bridge.

Then again, I don't have any problem of Tactic Vs Strategy. That's not the point. I love both. I would absolutely love a game that offers you to do either, or both. If I ever create a Military Command game (I don't dare call it a "strategy game"), it would allow for an overseer general player who command subordinnates Commanders. The General has to win the war, the Commanders have to win his battles. The General would have to care about fighting the rights battles at the right time, at the right place, and have ennough supply to continue on.

the Commanders would have to care about not wasting ressources, and winning the engagements.

(in a perfect world, I would even allow Lieutenants players who lead the squads of AI on the ground, but that's becoming a lag hell, not to forget all the noobs who would suck and/or ignore orders and instructions.)

Strategy and Tactic. Both are extremely fun to play.

But.. Still. The whole game genre became more a "I bring troop X there and wait for them killing the ennemy. I hope I will kill them all". Still, even if you are VERY good, your tactical choice are still limited to:

- go somewhere and kill things there
- Go somewhere and start firing there to attract attention
- Go somewhere and kill something specific. try not to get killed in the process.

An air raid is usually used to destroy an opponent's base. While in a war, it would be better to try to cut his supplies.

SUPPLIES! Why is that it's one aspect of war (and not the smallest. I'd say it's in the top 5) that is almost completely ignored in most games! Why hasn't developpers taught of a good way to impliment supply lines, or trucks, or whatever so it would be a good idea to have your troops having a maximum number of bullet they can carry! Or a fighter to have 4-6 missiles, as it is often the case.

Still, I stand my point. In games now, you it's mostly actions and reactions, there isn't any real strategy. In Starcraft, even for all the fun I had with it, the map was simply too small to really trying to outmanoeuver an ennemies. Supreme Commander was much better in that aspect. I think SupCom had more strategic/tactical options than a lot of game outhere. I just loved establishing an artillery/missile outpost to hammer down an ennemy's position. Or even baiting him into attacking that peticular outpost.. the game could have had more option, but it was a step into the right direction, I'd say.

averagejoe

2008-07-05, 03:49 AM

My opinion is that strategy is the planning, and tactics is the doing.
In chess then, strategy would be aiming to control the center squares, or deny them to your foe, until you've robbed him of his pieces. Tactics would be using your knights to harass any piece that poses any threat to your hold over the center squares.

Well, no, in chess strategy refers to the long term and tactics to the short. I was using the definitions used and accepted by the community at large. Which isn't to say that those definitions necessarily extend to other things.

Anyways, aiming to control the center squares is a goal not a strategy. It is useful (some might say essential) to keep goals in mind when preparing a strategy, but they are not the same thing. Tactics are involved in exchanges between pieces. Making an exchange where you sacrifice a material advantage in order to secure a favorable position would require tactics; however, the position itself would be important as part of your strategy.

Oslecamo

2008-07-05, 08:32 AM

SUPPLIES! Why is that it's one aspect of war (and not the smallest. I'd say it's in the top 5) that is almost completely ignored in most games! Why hasn't developpers taught of a good way to impliment supply lines, or trucks, or whatever so it would be a good idea to have your troops having a maximum number of bullet they can carry! Or a fighter to have 4-6 missiles, as it is often the case.

This has a actually already been done.

Earth 2160 Lost Souls.

A futuristic RTS game where you have to build plans for your units from a series of pieces.

So, for example, a tank would need a chassis, a main weapon, secondary weapon and an optional energy shield

The quirck is, all weapons had limited ammo.

The weapons were divided in two categories. Energy weapons, wich had very little ammo, but were able to recharge themselves. This made them better for hit and run attacks. Charge, fire some shots, then retreat into the shaddows untill your energy replenishes.

And then we had regular weapons like missile launchers, machine guns and artillery. Those weapons had a medium supply of ammo, allowing them to fight for a longer time, but once it was depleted, the unit wouldn't be able to fire anymore.

In order to recharge regular weapons, we needed an ammo factory, and special chopters wich would carry the ammo from the factory towards our units, recharging them one at a time. Those chopters weren't really very tough, so you needed to watch out for enemy units wich could try to shot down your ammo chopters.

Ammo also costed money, unlike energy, but regular weapons had normally better range and more versatile than energy weapons, so in the end it all balanced off. Also energy weapons could be stoped by energy shields.

I specially enjoyed the nuclear missile launcher weapon, wich had a single shot, and thus demanded a expensive recharge every time I shot it, making me think twice before using it.

The game was rather complex, and offered a lot of choices for the players, my favorite being the possibility of digging tunnels underground to try to sneack forcesbehind your enemy defenses. Also all buildings needed energy to work, so hiting the enemy power plants would shut down all their base. It also had a very interesting vision system, wich allowed you to hide any units in shaddows during night and they would only be detected if the oponent used searchlights(wich would give away their own position) or were literally over your forces. Fun fun fun.:smallbiggrin:

EDIT:But again, most players wouldn't enjoy this "inovation". Most players want to attack straight into the enemy, not having to worry about protecting supplylines or checking out how much ammo their units have shot.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-05, 09:05 AM

*sight*. I think this is one of the greatest problem of actual clickfest (because like it or not, real-time-rubbish games ARE clickfest. It just depend on your level of play. Anything else is pure actions/reactions conditionned by experience) People just don't want to waste time about getting their own troops ready. It's "generate and forget", once you paid the initial mineral and vespine, the unit require 0 more consideration outside of sending it to die.

(that, and the idiosyncratie of having theoricly unlimited supply of men and material based on how much mineral you mine. Not having to care for your wounded, or prisonners.)

Oslecamo

2008-07-05, 10:10 AM

(that, and the idiosyncratie of having theoricly unlimited supply of men and material based on how much mineral you mine. Not having to care for your wounded, or prisonners.)

I'll have to strongly disagree with some points here:

Wounded-It's a known fact in EVERY rts out there that you should reatreat damaged units from the battle. Then either you heal/repair them and send them back or use them to attack more vulnerale enemy positions. This will greatly enanche the total strenght of your army. Wounded units can still shoot, dead units not. So it's best to try to keep your troops alive as much time as possible.

Starcraft medics, bringing SCVs with your army to repair your tanks and ships, retreating carriers to refuel their drones, keep running from the enemy to give your shields time to recharge, ect, ect.

Unlimited supply of mens and material based on your money-
Wake up. Money all has always been one of the greatest power someone can have(the other being influence). As long as you can pay, there will be people out there willing to fight for you or get stuff for you. It was this way in the past, it's that way now and will be in the future.

Mercenaries, spies, traitors, new shiny weapons, they all acept cash gladly.

GolemsVoice

2008-07-05, 10:37 AM

Earth 2160 Lost Souls.
I've played it's predecessor, Earth 2150, and while I liked the whole idea of deciding between which ressources you used and which ressources you kept for later (because, between the missions, you had to build up a stock of energy to escape your dying planet, which you carried and expanded mission by mission.), but I found the game to be tedious. Such games require heavy micro-management, because if you fight in more than one spot, you had to watch and monitor every unit, which could just be as big a clickfest as those RT"S" you dislike. Still, the game gets bonuspoints for
1) being darn innovative, both in story and in gameplay
2) being challenging
3) recrutation videos. You've got to love them

warty goblin

2008-07-05, 12:46 PM

One thing that I think would majorly increase the amount of strategy in RTSs is to completely remove tactics from the consideration. The thing is most RTSs have such small maps that actual strategic level maneuvering becomes quite difficult, and most of them put more effort into creating viable systems of units, counterunits and special abilities than into reasons for long range planning, all of which favor a tactics heavy approach.

Here is an alternative view of what an RTS could be. Like a standard RTS, units are created and directed in real time using basically the same interface. The map however is much, much larger, like at minimum the size of Supreme Commander's largest maps. Instead of building a 'base' you build and upgrade cities and resource gathering centers on resource deposits. Cities generate both production, allowing you to make stuff,and manpower, which is used to create military units. The more of a city's manpower you use, the lower it's production becomes as the population is expended. Resource gatherers simply extract some sort of resource from the appropriate site, so oil from oil wells and so on. This is then moved to cities along supply routes you establish in order to be used for unit creation and upgrades.

This brings me to one of the most critical points in my hypothetical game design: resources are only ever on the map, and only ever usable from their current location on the map, never in some sort of universal ATM instantly available from everywhere at once. Thus in order to build a unit, say a tank, in a city, you would have to have the requisite production facility (tank factory), enough production, manpower, oil and munitions at the city. This means that if the enemy destroys the units delivering resources (say munitions)to your city, then you lose those resources, and if the enemy can do this long enough, completely styme your pruduction of units that require munitions at that city, once your city runs out of stored munitions. Critically, another city whose supply lines had not been cut could still produce units as fast as ever, since it draws on different resource banks.

The basic unit in the game would be the Army. Armies are simply a collection of units that move as one and act to support each other. This is done automatically, the player never issues an order for an individual soldier or group of soldiers to attack another specific soldier, you can only tell one army to attack another army, location or area. In order to keep players from microing hordes of units in size-1 armies, larger armies would recieve percentage effectiveness increases based on size and unit diversity, so an army of an Infantry and a Tank would be more effective than two armies, one made up of an Infantry and one of a Tank, at attacking a single target. In order to keep army size down there would be a cap to the number of units that contributed to the percentage increase (so for example although an army with 10 units in it would recieve a larger perk than one with 9, it would recieve the same perk as one with 11). Armies would also use resources at a constant rate for upkeep, and at an accelerated rate in combat, with each type of unit requiring different resources. Resources would be delivered to armies by supply units, which would move along automatically established (but player movable) supply lines. This would create a trade-off between maximizing unit diversity in an army for the greatest possible army perk, and keeping unit diversity down in order to simplify logistics. Bonuses for flanking and pincering an enemy army would also exist, again creating trade-offs between size and flexibility.

Combat would be very abstract, when two armies were in range of each other, they would simply attack, and inflict damage on each other over time based on their unit composition (so an army with lots of helicopters would do well against one with a lot of tanks), terrain, flanking, size and so on playing into things. Each unit in the army will be able to take damage before being destroyed, some of this damage would be permenant and require being sent to a city for refitting to heal, and some of it would heal naturally over time when not in battle. At any time the player could retreat one of their armies from combat for whatever reason, but it would take additional damage when doing so.

These combine to make siege and high level maneuvering a very effective strategy. If I can cut the supply lines leading into a city, I keep my enemy from actually building new armies there, and also can, assuming I myself am not cut off, eventually take it with minimal losses. Similarly throwing a fully supplied army at another fully supplied army on neutral terrain with equal numbers is basically a matter of luck, which is as it should be. Cutting off that fully supplied army however, and then attacking as it moves through poor terrain in order to re-establish supply is very likely to result in success. Note I said very likely, not certain, because occasionally there are odd results in a battle, and a truly good strategy will be flexible enough to allow for this.

Now that would be an RTS with some serious strategy.

Oslecamo

2008-07-05, 02:43 PM

Personal vision of RTS perfection

Altough it's a nice vision, the micro needed is so much that only the nerdiest players would want to buy such a game.

Now you don't only need to choose wich units you want to build and how you want to group them, you also need to keep transporting resources from one city to another and from the cities to your army. You'll need to be a micromaster to gather the resources you needed to build the forces you need when you need them.

Just like Golemsvoice said, you would have another clickfest. A very very slow paced clickfest as you lay siege to the enemy to waste his resources and have to wait to ressuply your own forces, and need to keep watch for a very very large portion of terrain and protect long vulnerable conbvoys of resources while looking for the enemy ones, and in the end you'll be very far away from something remotely close to "enjoyable" to the average Joe gamer.

You also removed the tactics component completely. When two equally sized armies fight each other, it's not only luck wich decides the victory. Employing the right kind of weapon, targeting specific units, positioning your troops in the right way, try to get a better position, it all matters in a battle, and more than one army was destroyed because it's comander was unable to outsmart the oponent in the middle of battle, despite having bigger strenght.

Actually, I think this leads to an important conclusion of mine

It's impossible to make a perfect RTS where the player alone controls more than a dozen of guys at once.

In real world armies, one human alone will never comand more than around a dozen of guys.

One human alone will control a dozen of guys wich by their turn control a dozen more each we are in charge of a dozen who are responsible by another dozen themselves and so on.

Our brain has limits. The chain of comand in real world armies is there for a reason. A person alone can't instantly grasp all the components of a large battlefield. You've got lieutenants and coronels and whatnot to take care of all the details.

Nevermind also that army comanders get days to think their strategies. Gamers get mere seconds.

GolemsVoice

2008-07-05, 02:44 PM

Your article is well-thought and the ideas you have sound very fine, yet I wouldn't want to (only) play games of this type. Why? Because about half of the fun I get from any RTS is seeing my units actually fighting, with explosions, drt flying through the air, planes flying by, the like. This is different from graphics > gameplay, in that I want to SEE something, otherwise I could just play a text based RTS, and let the PC calculate the results for me.
But maybe you could modify it so that on the large map, you make strategies, and whenever two armies clash, you get to duke it out the usual style, with actual units under your command. THis would also add a tactical element, because no matter how well-thought your attack plans are, when your units run into one enemy trap after the other, all ypur plans would be naught.

2008-07-05, 04:21 PM

Now that would be an RTS with some serious strategy.What you are effectively describing is Grand Strategy. There are a whole host of such games out there but if you want an excellent WWII strategy game without turn-based gameplay then I'd highly recommend Paradox's Hearts of Iron series

averagejoe

2008-07-05, 04:38 PM

and in the end you'll be very far away from something remotely close to "enjoyable" to the average Joe gamer.

Yeah, I've never been huge on micromanagement. At least, the interface would need to be improved relative to anything I've seen. I'd say it would be remotely close to enjoyable, though. I'd probably play it if given the opportunity.

Actually, I think this leads to an important conclusion of mine

It's impossible to make a perfect RTS where the player alone controls more than a dozen of guys at once.

In real world armies, one human alone will never comand more than around a dozen of guys.

One human alone will control a dozen of guys wich by their turn control a dozen more each we are in charge of a dozen who are responsible by another dozen themselves and so on.

Our brain has limits. The chain of comand in real world armies is there for a reason. A person alone can't instantly grasp all the components of a large battlefield. You've got lieutenants and coronels and whatnot to take care of all the details.

Nevermind also that army comanders get days to think their strategies. Gamers get mere seconds.

Actually, I've always thought that this would be a fun premise for an RTS game; make it so that multiple players control a side, all with different organizational tasks.

Fri

2008-07-05, 06:26 PM

averagejoe

2008-07-05, 06:29 PM

The one that got accounting task won't be pleased :smallamused:

My dream RTS is.. well... dunno. The closest thing might be Total War series (I never played it though)

Just one with large enough map so we can maneuver and flank and ambush.

This is something people keep complaining about, but I've never had problems maneuvering, flanking, or ambushing in any RTS game I've played, saving maybe the older ones like warcraft II.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll

2008-07-05, 09:38 PM

I've never pulled off a proper ambush in the game, but I've had some pretty sick maneouvering:

I was playing a custom battle on the Pavia map. On this map, you're positioned on the fringe of a wood, while your enemy is just behind a gently sloping hill. On your left flank, off to the side, is a raised embankment, with a ditch. My strategy is to transform that embankment into a mini-fortress. It can only be climbed at the back, the other sides being a stake-filled ditch.

To stop the enemy from engaging before I have time to reach there, and seal off the end with my pikemen and cannon, I send some poor sods, doppelsodners, with giant swords, to suicidally hold off the enemy. They perform brilliantly, half of them even come back. That was a tactical decision, as was my decision to fill the top of the embankment with my cannons, crossbowmen, and gunners. The enemy cannon gets a lucky shot in, destroying one of my two cannons as I am bringing it up to the ridge. The other one is destroyed soon after being emplaced.
The enemies tactic is to surround me, and pour shot at me. I was fine with this, but it turns out that half of my men cannot fire, because their too packed together. Once they bring their handguns into play, it turns into a charnelfest. They launch their infantry against my pikes, and manage to break through. My infantry can only plug up the gap for so long while my surviving ranged troops make a break for the woods, where they will hide and recuperate for a short while before reemerging to fight. Sadly, they are cut down on the plain.

Lord_Asmodeus

2008-07-05, 09:49 PM

warty goblin

2008-07-05, 11:59 PM

Altough it's a nice vision, the micro needed is so much that only the nerdiest players would want to buy such a game.

Now you don't only need to choose wich units you want to build and how you want to group them, you also need to keep transporting resources from one city to another and from the cities to your army. You'll need to be a micromaster to gather the resources you needed to build the forces you need when you need them.

Just like Golemsvoice said, you would have another clickfest. A very very slow paced clickfest as you lay siege to the enemy to waste his resources and have to wait to ressuply your own forces, and need to keep watch for a very very large portion of terrain and protect long vulnerable conbvoys of resources while looking for the enemy ones, and in the end you'll be very far away from something remotely close to "enjoyable" to the average Joe gamer.

You also removed the tactics component completely. When two equally sized armies fight each other, it's not only luck wich decides the victory. Employing the right kind of weapon, targeting specific units, positioning your troops in the right way, try to get a better position, it all matters in a battle, and more than one army was destroyed because it's comander was unable to outsmart the oponent in the middle of battle, despite having bigger strenght.

I'm not really sure that it neccesarily would result in a clickfest if it was done right. The first thing that such a game would need is a really accesible interface, no information should ever be more than a click away. Cities would display directly onscreen (no need to select) their current resource stores as well as their incomes. Supply lines would be highlighted and set themselves up automatically (so when you commission a resource builder, you also select it's drop-off point, then the supply line establishes itself and automatically builds enough supply carrier units), the user would still need to tweak their layout if they wanted the supply units to take anything but the most direct path, or if they were changing the target of a resource line, but after set-up it should be completely hands-off. Army supply lines would work in a similar fashion, and should be relatively low input except near the front lines. Another thing I would definately show is how far a unit could move in a given time interval simply by selecting (so for instance if you selected an enemy army, a series of colored concentric circles around it would show you how far it could move in five, ten, thirty and sixty seconds for example). Finally the game would scrap the annoying "like Starcraft, but with different colors" command panal which is so standard in RTS games, despite it's incrediably poor encapsulation of data. Orders like attack move and so forth would be hotkeyed or accessable from a radial menu on target selection et cetera. There's no need to show me stuff I'm not neccessarily going to be using.

Another thing is that a game like this would, out of neccesity, need to be much slower than most RTSs. Battles between equally matched armies would take a significant amount of time, units would move reasonably slowly, and it would feature a serious strategic zoom feature. In order to get that nice visceral combat feeling I'd imagine being able to zoom down and watch your troops hammer it out with the enemy would be a good feature as well.

As to the removal of tactics, that was rather the point of the design from the beginning. There's nothing wrong with tactics (you can pry my copy of Company of Heroes from my cold dead hands), but my overall goal was to design a truly strategic game, and in order to keep the game from being the ninth circle of microing hell, something had to go. Also remember that there are tons of tactical games, which would make any tactical combat that was simple enough to incorporate into the game seem shallow and half-featured. Note however that I specified that having the right units in your army to counter the enemy's is still very important, but the assumption of the game is that such matters are handled by your field commanders. The element of chance is there to simulate the neccessarily unpredictable nature of combat while still favoring careful and intelligent maneuvering (so the player who uses flanking and so on might not win every battle against one who does not, but will win many more than they lose, all things being equal).

One feature I had considered working into the concept was persistant commanders who could be transfered from army to army. You wouldn't run out of them like you do family members in Total War games (so your armies would always be assumed to be under competant leadership, and you wouldn't really be penalized for not having a notable general, but some leaders would be more competant than others), but if you had a general win a series of battles, they'd add a bonus to any troops under their command. I was worried that having to shuffle around generals however would make the game way too complicated, although the more I think about it, the more attractive the idea is. It would account nicely for tactical variety, and further force the player to make interesting decisions, like just how much risk they can put their prize Five-star general in, or whether putting their best field commander in charge of the defense of a critical city or commanding a vital counter-offensive.

Oslecamo

2008-07-06, 05:26 AM

I'm not really sure that it neccesarily would result in a clickfest if it was done right. The first thing that such a game would need is a really accesible interface, no information should ever be more than a click away. Cities would display directly onscreen (no need to select) their current resource stores as well as their incomes. Supply lines would be highlighted and set themselves up automatically (so when you commission a resource builder, you also select it's drop-off point, then the supply line establishes itself and automatically builds enough supply carrier units), the user would still need to tweak their layout if they wanted the supply units to take anything but the most direct path, or if they were changing the target of a resource line, but after set-up it should be completely hands-off. Army supply lines would work in a similar fashion, and should be relatively low input except near the front lines. Another thing I would definately show is how far a unit could move in a given time interval simply by selecting (so for instance if you selected an enemy army, a series of colored concentric circles around it would show you how far it could move in five, ten, thirty and sixty seconds for example).

Many games already done this kind of resource controling, and it still feeds clickfests. Why? Because if it's automatic, then it's repdicatable, and if it's predictable, it's vulnerable to harassing. Remember WC3? The resource gathering is also automatic. Build peasants, direct them to the gold mine, and they go back and forth supplying you with gold.

And then the enemy hero comes, and starts slaughtering them, because they simply move back and forth, in a predictable way.

But in your case it would be a hundred times worst. You would have a dozen of "gold carriers" over a really big area, all mindlessly going back and forth, just awaiting a small group of fast enemy forces to appear, slaughter them and retreat, forcing you create a counter force and make it go back and forth in all your territorry to counter such harassments. Meanwhile, your cities automatically drain your precious resources to build new suppliers. But wait, what the enemy just slaughtered was the suppliers wich were supllying you with materials to build suppliers! So now you can't build suppliers and will need to find another city wich can provide the resources. And you better do it really fast, or the enemy will just overwhelm you with superior numbers.

What I meant to say, the supply lines greatly increase the area and number of units you need to worry about. The more area and units you have to worry about, the more clicks you need to do. Being automatic helps, but doesn't change the fact that the enemy can still attack them, and you'll have to react quickly or find yourself outresourced.

So either you try to rush the enemy as fast as possible, or you need to make all your army to establish a safe perimeter around your controled area.

Finally the game would scrap the annoying "like Starcraft, but with different colors" command panal which is so standard in RTS games, despite it's incrediably poor encapsulation of data. Orders like attack move and so forth would be hotkeyed or accessable from a radial menu on target selection et cetera. There's no need to show me stuff I'm not neccessarily going to be using.

Blasphemy! Starcraft wasn't the game who first created that kind of command panal! It was Age of empires! And anyway, making so much menus appear on the battlefield will just hinder the game. You want to see how well defended that base is, and you end blocking the screen with the resources menu, the status menu, the battle menu, the comanding general menu, etc, etc, and fail to see the enemy army coming out of the city becaus the panels are blocking your vision. Control panels are popular for a reason. They're effecient.

Another thing is that a game like this would, out of neccesity, need to be much slower than most RTSs. Battles between equally matched armies would take a significant amount of time, units would move reasonably slowly, and it would feature a serious strategic zoom feature. In order to get that nice visceral combat feeling I'd imagine being able to zoom down and watch your troops hammer it out with the enemy would be a good feature as well.

Non marketing viable. People already complain when a game drags more than a hour.

And anyway, can you take it? Can you really sit in front of the computer three hours straight playing the same battlefield, carefully managing your resources and troops, knowing a small error now may have huge repurcussions later? RTS demand constant atention in a very complex matter. Keeping constant atention to a very complex matter for more than two hours is really really hard for the average human being.

EDIT:But now, like the other guy said, maybe the best way of building the supreme RTS would be to divide tasks between a grou of players all controling the same faction. So for example half the players would be tasked with protecting the team's area, divided in diferent sectors. Then one player to conquer more cities, one player to spy the enemues and attack their forces, etc, etc.

At the top would be a comading player wich could choose to control the units of any of the payers under his comand, and also would be the one tasked to build and assign new troops to the other players depending of what was needed.

This, I believe, would lead to a truly epic RTS.

The closest thing I've seen to this is spring, based on Total anihilation. The more popular games are team games, with around 8 players per team.

So, the normal strategy is that half the team builds defenses and cheap units to harass the enemy, while the other half focus on developing their resources and building more advanced tech like long range artillery, nukes and tactical bombers, trusting their teammates to defend them from early attacks.

The game allows you to donate buildings and units to other players, so it's entirely possible that the players who are used as meat shield during the first parts of the game are later rewarded with advanced units from their teammates wich fast teched, meaning they won't need to spend resources to upgrade themselves. Also it's possible for all players to share their resources between them.

Reinboom

2008-07-06, 05:37 AM

And anyway, can you take it? Can you really sit in front of the computer three hours straight playing the same battlefield, carefully managing your resources and troops, knowing a small error now may have huge repurcussions later? RTS demand constant atention in a very complex matter. Keeping constant atention to a very complex matter for more than two hours is really really hard for the average human being.

I've done (many) 6 hour+ starcraft games before. I enjoy it.

Warty:
It sounds like you want to somehow combine RTS and Civilization... (but on a 1 war scale, instead of a civilization scale)

Were-Sandwich

2008-07-06, 05:43 AM

If anything could make RTSes more enjoyable for me, it would be an increase in subordinate unit autonomy. I shouldn't have to tell my Harlequin to use Dance of Death, it should just do it. Likewise, if my Marine squad's morale breaks, I shouldn't have to tell the sergeant to rally his squad, he should do it himself. Basically, stuff that you have no good reason not to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself should be automatic, not requiring me to step in.

Oslecamo

2008-07-06, 05:44 AM

I've done (many) 6 hour+ starcraft games before. I enjoy it.

Wow....You wouldn't happen to have the replay would you? This is, is there enough resources on the map on the first place for the game to drag so long?

And anyway, most people can't really afford to spend 6 hours in front of the screen nonstop. Ok, many people do this, but it's not exactly healthy.

Reinboom

2008-07-06, 06:15 AM

Wow....You wouldn't happen to have the replay would you? This is, is there enough resources on the map on the first place for the game to drag so long?

And anyway, most people can't really afford to spend 6 hours in front of the screen nonstop. Ok, many people do this, but it's not exactly healthy.

Me and my friends usually took a break after 2 to 3 hours of gameplay, for around an hour or so for food (usually Chinese), then returned. Also, the last time I got to do this was about 2 years ago. I don't have the time for this anymore, and I'm also 1,500 miles from that group of friends. *sobs sadly*

Would love to do that again though, I miss those times.

If anything could make RTSes more enjoyable for me, it would be an increase in subordinate unit autonomy. I shouldn't have to tell my Harlequin to use Dance of Death, it should just do it. Likewise, if my Marine squad's morale breaks, I shouldn't have to tell the sergeant to rally his squad, he should do it himself. Basically, stuff that you have no good reason not to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself should be automatic, not requiring me to step in.

I somewhat agree.
I think there should be the option for automation that can be turned on or off by default.
There are quite a few abilities I would hate to see... say... a Defiler in starcraft to use automatically.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-06, 06:36 AM

I somewhat agree.
I think there should be the option for automation that can be turned on or off by default.
There are quite a few abilities I would hate to see... say... a Defiler in starcraft to use automatically.

I had tought of creating a game where you could create a serie of macros, thu automating a group of unit (limited automation. Just taking out some nasty micro-management)

Oslecamo

2008-07-06, 07:13 AM

Me and my friends usually took a break after 2 to 3 hours of gameplay, for around an hour or so for food (usually Chinese), then returned. Also, the last time I got to do this was about 2 years ago. I don't have the time for this anymore, and I'm also 1,500 miles from that group of friends. *sobs sadly*

Ah, so it wasn't a single game. From what I understood from Warty, he wanted a game where the average battle would take more than one hour(oposed to the average twenty minutes of current RTS)

2008-07-06, 07:14 AM

Reinboom

2008-07-06, 07:55 AM

Ah, so it wasn't a single game. From what I understood from Warty, he wanted a game where the average battle would take more than one hour(oposed to the average twenty minutes of current RTS)

It was a single game each time, not a multitude of separate games. If we had kept a replay, it would have been a single very long replay.
We just paused it for the breaks.

You can pause games, y'know?

Oslecamo

2008-07-06, 08:23 AM

It was a single game each time, not a multitude of separate games. If we had kept a replay, it would have been a single very long replay.
We just paused it for the breaks.

You can pause games, y'know?

Well, but that's something wich you can only do with close friends. And unfortenetely the current trend is online multiplayer with people you don't know very well and aren't going to be willing to wait one hour to continue a battle.

warty goblin

2008-07-06, 10:59 AM

Many games already done this kind of resource controling, and it still feeds clickfests. Why? Because if it's automatic, then it's repdicatable, and if it's predictable, it's vulnerable to harassing. Remember WC3? The resource gathering is also automatic. Build peasants, direct them to the gold mine, and they go back and forth supplying you with gold.

And then the enemy hero comes, and starts slaughtering them, because they simply move back and forth, in a predictable way.

But in your case it would be a hundred times worst. You would have a dozen of "gold carriers" over a really big area, all mindlessly going back and forth, just awaiting a small group of fast enemy forces to appear, slaughter them and retreat, forcing you create a counter force and make it go back and forth in all your territorry to counter such harassments. Meanwhile, your cities automatically drain your precious resources to build new suppliers. But wait, what the enemy just slaughtered was the suppliers wich were supllying you with materials to build suppliers! So now you can't build suppliers and will need to find another city wich can provide the resources. And you better do it really fast, or the enemy will just overwhelm you with superior numbers.

What I meant to say, the supply lines greatly increase the area and number of units you need to worry about. The more area and units you have to worry about, the more clicks you need to do. Being automatic helps, but doesn't change the fact that the enemy can still attack them, and you'll have to react quickly or find yourself outresourced.

So either you try to rush the enemy as fast as possible, or you need to make all your army to establish a safe perimeter around your controled area.

Well, that is basically the model used in all 'classic' RTS games, Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires etc, and those games seem to do just fine.

That said, I think you do have a point, and off the top of my head I can think of two ways to solve this. The first is to have resource carriers built at the resource harvester using the resources present there, and the second is to have the supply lines able to shut themselves down when enough carriers had been destroyed along one in a given time interval. The second way is to increase the line of sight of most units/buildings. If you can see them coming, then you can stop them, particularly if you run your supply lines along roads, which would allow for more rapid movement of units. Also this would encourage the idea of pickets and commerce raiding, which is something that is more or less nonexistant in most RTS games as far as I can tell. Simply put, toss a small army next to your resource gathering building, and make your enemy actually have to commit a sizable force to the attack. Also I would point out that if your enemy out-maneuvers you sufficiently to cut supply to one of your major production centers without you being able to cause commesurate losses, then he's outstrategized you and you deserve the loss.

Blasphemy! Starcraft wasn't the game who first created that kind of command panal! It was Age of empires! And anyway, making so much menus appear on the battlefield will just hinder the game. You want to see how well defended that base is, and you end blocking the screen with the resources menu, the status menu, the battle menu, the comanding general menu, etc, etc, and fail to see the enemy army coming out of the city becaus the panels are blocking your vision. Control panels are popular for a reason. They're effecient.

Whatever, it's an interface I dearly hate. It is large (often the command panel is bigger than the minimap), contains very little information (like in Starcraft, I click on my command center, out of the nine spaces in the command panel, like three or four are used. Everything else is a direct impediment to me seeing, and hence controlling the game), and is generally full of wasted space.

Remember, most of those menus only show up when you actually want them to- the attack menu pops up when you order an attack, and I'd imagine the commanding general menu, assuming it's existance, would only pop up when you were swapping commanding generals. The interface you would see when you selected an army (before issuing it any orders) would be a simple block in one corner of the screen showing you it's unit composition, the health of it's units, it's supply consumption, it's projected combat supply consumption, and it's stored supplies, along with numbers showing how many seconds it could remain at full functioning capacity assuming all supply lines were cut, and it was fighting, or simply standing still. This would then dissappear when you deselected the army. Same thing with a city, when I select it, it would give a detailed breakdown of resource incomes, with a pop-up map-linked spreadsheet available for really deep analysis, so it would show that I was getting fifteen munitions/second from such and such, and I could click on the name and it would take me there. The city interface would also show production options and status. Again, this would disappear when you deselected the city. Sort of like Battle for Middle Earth II, where the build menu only showed up when you selected a builder.

Non marketing viable. People already complain when a game drags more than a hour.

And anyway, can you take it? Can you really sit in front of the computer three hours straight playing the same battlefield, carefully managing your resources and troops, knowing a small error now may have huge repurcussions later? RTS demand constant atention in a very complex matter. Keeping constant atention to a very complex matter for more than two hours is really really hard for the average human being.

I'm not sure about that. Sins of a Solar Empire has pretty long games (easily three hours on some maps), and seems to have done just fine for itself. Granted, online play really isn't the most popular thing with that game, but that's really not a deal, and I'm tired of games castrating themselves for the sake of multiplayer anyway. Even in RTSs, which, as a genre, is one of the more heavily played in multiplayer, I bet the actual percentage of people who ever take their game online never crests 50%, and the number who become serious online players is even lower.

As for the time thing, I personally hate it when I can win a battle in less than an hour, feels like the game it cheating me out of my fun somehow. Playing the game is fun and interesting and challenging, winning the game takes me to a screen that says "you won," which is neither challenging nor interesting, and certainly is only fun if the victory took enough time and effort to achieve that it feels like I actually did something. I've got no problem with a game that takes three hours to win, and if I don't have time, that's what the "Save Game" button is for.

Winterwind

2008-07-06, 10:59 AM

Mhh, I had a lot to say to answer the posts on the previous page... but no time to post it, and now it seems the discussion moved on. Oh well.

Just a brief summary then: All the careful manouvering, flanking and much greater scaled strategical manouvers are perfectly possible in the RTSs I know, and also absolutely necessary if playing against strong opponents. I would answer almost every single comment of what supposedly would make RTSs into strategy games but is missing right now with: But it's not missing! It's an integral part of the gameplay, absolutely necessary, I see it in every game, over and over again! If you choose to not use cunning strategy, to simply build up units and send them to die, without attempting at gaining a superior position for the battle, without trying to keep your units as effective as possible in the battle, trying to keep them alive whenever possible (unless sacrificing a pawn happens to be a better choice in that situation, which runs under strategy as well), then you should not complain about the lack thereof in the genre, because it's not the game that made you play in such a fashion, it was your own choice - and a poor choice at that, not only because it makes for a far less fun game, but also because you will lose this way against an opponent who does use actual strategy. (And I have hardly ever seen a map too small for manouvering. Typical StarCraft maps are large enough for all kinds of flanking several times over, and typical StarCraft maps don't even use the largest map sizes possible, which are so large that they typically aren't used simply for the reasons that the opponents will have too much trouble finding each other, the game would become too passive due to too large distances, and the armies would run past each other without noticing far too often).

As for details missing in specific RTSs - like supply lines - well, the existance of those changes the gameplay of the particular game, and thus makes it unique. I would gladly play the game warty goblin described (assuming the interface and grade of complexity are such that it's still playable and doesn't suffer from Master Of Orion III syndrome) and be glad about its unique features, just as I would play StarCraft and be glad it lacks those features (I happen to like tactics and a fast pace).

There have been quite a few valid criticisms of RTSs in this thread - like the high amount of clicking necessary, the large divide between casual and competetive players, or missing details (like supply lines). While I personally consider those to be advantages (I'll rather have a game that allows for fun and interesting strategies and gameplay than realism, and I see serious issues that could arise with supply lines, the likes of which Oslecamo already described, and while I do think these could be implemented in a fun way, this would need completely new games designed with this in mind - the inclusion of this feature in the games I know would not improve those, contrariwise), I can perfectly understand how somebody else would consider them disadvantageous. It's a matter of taste. But please, do not make false claims about RTSs not allowing for strategy or not containing well thought-through manouvers, because that's simply not true.

Finally, a disclaimer: While I have played many RTSs, the only ones I played against human opponents (which is where the real strategising sets in) were StarCraft and WarCraft III. I can say with certainty that those both include and reward strategy. I haven't bought any new RTSs (or other games for that matter) since WarCraft III came out; my assumption was that the genre had not devolved since that. Oslecamo's remarks about what gamers today allegedly considered as 'balance' make it sound as if RTSs had, in fact, evolved more into an 'everything works, just build and send in to fight'-direction. While I haven't encountered this mentality before, not having played more recent RTS titles I cannot verify if they have indeed deteriorated like this; if they have, keep in mind with regards to the above post that it was written with only a few RTSs which do still contain strategy in mind.

Would love to do that again though, I miss those times.Ahem... *points innocently to sig* :smallwink:

EDIT: Okay... just read warty goblin's last post.
You want projections of ammo usage, and such? While I still would try out the game you propose here out of sheer interest, I am getting gradually convinced that it would indeed suffer from Master of Orion III syndrome - becoming so complex and showering the player with such vast amounts of information that nobody could take it anymore. How much ammo per second a city produces, with who knows how many troops with differing per second individual usage being supplied by it? Frankly, I'm not even sure if this would be playable as a TBS, but as an RTS... wow...

Of course, our tastes and goals in gaming seem to differ greatly. I would never want a single battle to last for more than one hour, much less three. On competetive level, playing for 40 or 50 minutes (like the longest matches I have had in... years, likely) is already highly exhausting. Maintaining that level of concentration for three hours would be an insufferable chore.

Ronsian

2008-07-06, 08:53 PM

I believe the length of the game really varies on how hard it is to manage. Warcraft III, I spend most of my time building, and is simply boring to play for hours. Company of Heroes, where I spend all my time fighting, I could play for a long time, if it were balanced for really long games (Whermarcht can buy veterancy so all guys are better, other factions each squad dies and loses it). I really don't mind long game, as long as my interest is held the entire time.

Something always turned me off of Age of Empires. No flanking. I would build my army, send it against my enemies, and they would sit there on a field and duke it out. Sure, I could click on my cavalry to kill his archers, but they would attack one archer, then attack his infantry next to it. But I couldn't do much like flank, get higher ground, or anything like that. Just send men into the meat grinder. There really aren't that many games like Total War in theory. In that game, it is very annoying for the cavalry I send to flank his archers walk up slowly and attack with swords instead of charging. Or, my swordsmen who halt in front of his exposed spearmen standing about looking tough. That is a discussion for a different threat.

Tola

2008-07-07, 02:18 AM

Hmm.

Since I've been playing Battle Realms, I can't help but think of it in relation to this topic.

The focus is more on the army than the resources, as your resources(Rice and Water) are effectively infinite(Water's just there, and if you need it closer to where you need it, you can build a well, rice grows naturally, and can be helped by watering it and by rain). Unit population is far smaller: population caps out at the highest setting at 40, including workers. Height matters(More damage for the one on the height, far greater range and sight on the height-it's this aspect that makes Watchtowers effective as base defence, though you're 'sacrificing' a unit to do so), walking through forests not only slow you, but can set off a ping to your enemies through disturbing the wildlife, BUT forests also block direct line-of-sight: ambushes are feasible.

Many unit abilities granted via upgrades can be very powerful(Example: the Serpent 'Bandit' can paralyse a target, leaving them unable to move or attack. There's a limit of 6 of these ranged-only shots before you have to get the upgrade again), and some have passive abilities on top of that.(Example-the 'Dragon Warrior' improves the effectiveness of other warriors. The effect doesn't stack for multiple Warriors.)

Then there's the fact that everyone has very good regeneration: Survivors of a battle, left alone for about a half-a-minute to a minute, will have recovered most of their health-except for the Wolf Clan, who are allowed to recover ALL their health by resting so. Of course, the Wolf Clan don't have healers like the other factions.

On the other hand, battles can be VERY swiftly decided. Damage as compared to health is quite high at times. Micromanagement is hampered by the fact that at red health, not only do your units move far slower(Makes sense-it's their wounds), moving about and fighting in that state actually damages the unit further-you can lose units by withdrawing too late or a lucky few hits.

I honestly like what they tried to do.

Oslecamo

2008-07-07, 05:40 AM

Something always turned me off of Age of Empires. No flanking. I would build my army, send it against my enemies, and they would sit there on a field and duke it out. Sure, I could click on my cavalry to kill his archers, but they would attack one archer, then attack his infantry next to it. But I couldn't do much like flank, get higher ground, or anything like that. Just send men into the meat grinder. There really aren't that many games like Total War in theory. In that game, it is very annoying for the cavalry I send to flank his archers walk up slowly and attack with swords instead of charging. Or, my swordsmen who halt in front of his exposed spearmen standing about looking tough. That is a discussion for a different threat.

That's not true. Flanking was essential to destroy enemy siege weapons, slow moving but able to deal great damage. The enemy would protect them with archers and whatnot and you had to send a cavarly force

Also you got a bonus to ranged damge if you attacked from an higher ground, and the enemy got a penalty. It wasn't explicity stated on the game, but it hapened. Units also moved faster when going down a hill and slower when going up, wich means puting your archers upon a hill would give you more time to shower the enemy with arrows, wich could make all the diference.

If you just sent your units to the meat grinder you would lose. You couldn't concentrate too much units in one point or you would be raped by area siege weapons. If you could surround the enemy army your own siege weapons would be much more effective. When assaulting the enemy base you needed to lay a siege. Simply throwing units against the walls would do nothing but a mass carnage.

Besides, there wasn't just one victory path. You could collect all the relics or build a monument, rewarding the construction of fortress.

Winterwind

2008-07-07, 10:14 AM

I believe the length of the game really varies on how hard it is to manage. Warcraft III, I spend most of my time building, and is simply boring to play for hours. Company of Heroes, where I spend all my time fighting, I could play for a long time, if it were balanced for really long games (Whermarcht can buy veterancy so all guys are better, other factions each squad dies and loses it). I really don't mind long game, as long as my interest is held the entire time. I find this assessment kinda strange... I don't know how much fighting Company of Heroes contains, but I just don't quite see how it could have that much more fighting than WarCraft III, out of all games, where basically every second your army doesn't spend either harrassing/attacking the enemy or fighting creeps, you are doing something wrong, and the building-part is reduced to a minimum - only a building every now and then, and quickly, since you have to return to your army immediately - every moment you are not fighting, you are not gaining experience, and thus coming closer to losing the game. While you could, in theory, attempt to turtle yourself in behind a wall of towers, if you tried that against human players, you would lose horribly.

warty goblin

2008-07-07, 11:49 AM

I find this assessment kinda strange... I don't know how much fighting Company of Heroes contains, but I just don't quite see how it could have that much more fighting than WarCraft III, out of all games, where basically every second your army doesn't spend either harrassing/attacking the enemy or fighting creeps, you are doing something wrong, and the building-part is reduced to a minimum - only a building every now and then, and quickly, since you have to return to your army immediately - every moment you are not fighting, you are not gaining experience, and thus coming closer to losing the game. While you could, in theory, attempt to turtle yourself in behind a wall of towers, if you tried that against human players, you would lose horribly.

I've played far more Company of Heroes than WC3, but here's my take. The difference is that in Company of Heroes it is almost never enough to just tell a unit to attack another one, or use a special ability, because terrain is incrediably important, like easily as important as it is in most FPS games. So ordering your Panzerschreck squad to attack that Sherman tank is good (actually, unless you have a tank of your own handy, it is vital, since normal infantry weapons don't even damage tanks at all), but it might be much better to move them to better cover first, and even better to get them in deep cover behind the tank for rear armor shots. Same with infantry, sure you can rake that enemy squad with your heavy machine gun squad, but annoyingly the enemy has hard cover behind a line of sandbags, meaning that they are in fact outdamaging the HMG. On the plus side that enemy squad isn't going anywhere, which means the thing to do is to flank their cover with another squad, chuck a grenade and watch the limbs fly.

There's also, at least in the expansion, very little base building to do. The British get literally three base buildings, all of which are mobile, and a ton of really good fixed defenses, which you naturally want to build fairly close to the front lines (trenches, after all, aren't much use in a location where the enemy's not shooting at you). The Panzer Elite get a bit more of a base, but as far as I can tell, pretty much no defenses. The base game is a bit more build-happy, both the Wehrmacht and the Americans have a small but decent building selection as well as lots of defenses, most of which can be built for free (as long as they are only defenses, and not fixed weapon emplacements).

As to your edit about my previous post, I'm afraid you might be right, that it would bury the player under to much information, but it's really hard to tell without playing something like it. Remember the only thing the player is doing is managing unit placement and resources. Unit movement is, if anything, much simpler than most RTSs, as is combat, although clearly resources are much more complicated.

One possible solution to the overlong game would be to change the victory conditions around a little bit, from "destroy everything on the mini-map that's red" to "crush their economy sufficiently." Capturing enough cities or resource points for example might be a good way to do this, since I'd imagine that whomever held a massive majority of these would have enough of an advantage that their victory would be inevitable.

Winterwind

2008-07-07, 12:21 PM

Ah, I see. Though fighting in WarCraft requires quite a bit more micro than just giving attack orders to units or using special skills, and still occupies some 90% of a match, this is an interesting aspect, and indeed a kind of tactics I haven't seen to such a degree in any RTSs I have played yet.

As for your proposed game, I think a fair amount of those informations wouldn't need to be displayed (and, for the sake of better overview, shouldn't be displayed either). For example, if you see how much supplies the unit has, you don't need a projection of how long it will be able to keep fighting - if you have any experience with the game you will know the rate at which this particular unit type uses up supplies, and hence can effortlessly make a sufficient estimate based on the amount of supplies alone. This would clear up the interface quite a bit.

With the inclusion of allowing the player to add combat units to supply convoys and some somewhat sophisticated means for recon/early recognition of approaching enemy troops it might be possible to reduce attacking the supply lines from gamebreaking to just one good strategic option amongst many. I think this could work... and it would be rather unique to see a game focus on pure strategy for once.

Destro_Yersul

2008-07-07, 12:35 PM

One possible solution to the overlong game would be to change the victory conditions around a little bit, from "destroy everything on the mini-map that's red" to "crush their economy sufficiently." Capturing enough cities or resource points for example might be a good way to do this, since I'd imagine that whomever held a massive majority of these would have enough of an advantage that their victory would be inevitable.

That's one of the things that really annoyed me about Age of Empires. You could have smashed their base to tiny bits, blown up all their workers, and decimated their military, but you haven't won yet, because there's a solitary fishing boat sitting in the middle of the ocean somewhere all by itself and you can't find it.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll

2008-07-07, 12:51 PM

Murska

2008-07-07, 07:28 PM

In the Empire Earth game, the original, I used that to my advantage. I would have a few settlers in odd places on the map. If my base was destroyed, I would make sure I always had enough resources to rebuild somewhere else.

In my honest opinion, the Empire Earth series has just been devolving. The first one is way WAY better than the third. I never played it on multiplayer, but I downloaded quite a few campaigns and scenarios, and they were mostly fun. The scripting allowed for stuff like RPGs, which were really neat.

About Company of Heroes, I think it's a really fun game, and when it gets properly balanced(I think it's already quite good) it'll be awesome. I haven't played it online YET, but the campaigns were fun, and the AI is good enough to pose a threat. I liked, for instance, the fact that infantry squads are really hard to annihilate completely if microed at all, but they also don't do that much damage by themselves. Tanks on the other hand, while impervious to small-arms fire, are quite fragile against larger tanks and AT weapons.

There's the high-tier tanks which are impervious to almost anything, take a lot of attention, tactical thinking and certain units to beat, but are so very costly that you really can't rely on them alone. Then there's the early game battles where keeping your engineers alive and slowing down the enemy expansion is very important. Infantry with anti-tank weapons are very effective, since they can flank the enemy tanks to get rear-shots(Tanks have different grades of armor on each side, top included.) and don't get destroyed that easily. A single infantryman might die instantly when you move toward the enemy tank, and it's difficult to replace in combat, but all six take time to crush, and they can be retreated back to base to heal.

Retreating your units is an important consideration. It's possible for a tank at 5% hp stay alive for a long time(tanks can get their engines blown, gunners killed, turrets destroyed...) even when shot at if the shots miss and deflect off the armor, but they can also die from one good hit. You will not have enough units, ever, since the popcap is quite steep, and the ones you have, you don't want to lose, but every unit that's recuperating in your home base is not on the frontlines where it counts. You need to decide if you'd rather have your veteran infantry squad try and finish off that enemy tank before it gets repaired or retreat it to save the veterancy bonuses and the AT weapons before the last two squad members fall. You have to choose between keeping a damaged tank defending an important territory of drawing it back to heal, or perhaps diverting an engineer from another tank-group to it to do combat repairs. You might have a valuable tank get hit by a lucky shot from an enemy AT-gun, leaving it unable to move, or even shoot, in the middle of enemy territory, and then you need to either leave it there and minimize your losses or send in some supporting units to hopefully get it operational and able to retreat. The same tank might, with slightly different conditions, blast through the slow-turning AT gun, flank it and manage to destroy a repairing enemy unit. Or it might make the enemy think you're committing serious forces to the assault, having him pull his units from far-flung territories to the point to defend...

Supply lines are simply, but effectively, handled by getting supplies infinitely from territories, which do not give the supplies if you haven't connected them to your main base. Some territories give more than others, and these are often sites to major battles. Others may give less but are crucial to keep your supply lines intact, and if you neglect defending them, they're easy to take(units capture points quite fast). Even if you retake it straight away, you'll have lost a lot of resources, had to pay attention to the spot for an extended period, probably had to create some defenses and the enemy didn't lose anything. All this because you made a tactical blunder and didn't keep anything guarding it.

All this is of course just praising the game, and if you'd have to form an opinion based only on this, it'd be rather glorified. For instance, I did not mention the accursed German infantry blobs crushing anything in their path...

Hawriel

2008-07-07, 10:50 PM

I never could handle RTS. I cant keep up with the computer. For every one unit i build the computer built 10. If I tried to creat a simple base and force to attack with I get mobbed and over wealmed befor I can explore. If I send units out in small groups to scout they just get mobbed and killed. meen wile I have even less units to protect my buildings. It just doesnt work. I know when the computer programed to cheat because your human. Civ does this alot. yes I know its turn based. The other side of it is it can be way to easy. I just build a bunch of units and go. The computer lets me. Eather way its no fun. Maybe I just suck. I just am unable to understand the planning aspects of the game. if it was turn based I could. I can gather units for what ever is needed at the time. I can build bases and gather resorcess effectively. I can plan a simple flanking menuver and diversion. I just cant when its all real time. It all falls apart. Units never do what they are told. If set to guard they sit and get killed with out defending themselves. if somthing is attacked its dead way befor I can react to it. When I am reacting the thing im managing falls apart. reading the manual 100 times does not yelp. Using help does not help. I just cant play thoughs games. I have enough time playing Civ 4 on noble level wich to me is all but unbeatable. Ah well. there are other games. Its to bad some of them look real nice.

As for adding to the lowest levels of game managment that can be called "strategy". In addition to the supply lines I would like to see communications. They do over lap to an extent but not completly.

There could be different types of communications. Land based: messengers, telograph. Radio: short wave, extended radio, satilight communications.
Think about it. if you have land line communication and it gets cut, maybe the units that are cut off get covered by fog of war. Even if its just on the mini and large campain map. Not the actual user screen. It could be worked so all or only a part of info is cut. Things like Unit possition, ammo, health, repair times all stuck at the last known setting befor coms where lost. Untill coms are reestablished units could only take defensive orders. Repair/heal, defend, fortify. No movement or attack options.

In old tech games hitting a supply line can brake communications. On higher tech games electionic warfar could be added.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-07, 11:57 PM

As for your proposed game, I think a fair amount of those informations wouldn't need to be displayed (and, for the sake of better overview, shouldn't be displayed either). For example, if you see how much supplies the unit has, you don't need a projection of how long it will be able to keep fighting - if you have any experience with the game you will know the rate at which this particular unit type uses up supplies, and hence can effortlessly make a sufficient estimate based on the amount of supplies alone. This would clear up the interface quite a bit.

With the inclusion of allowing the player to add combat units to supply convoys and some somewhat sophisticated means for recon/early recognition of approaching enemy troops it might be possible to reduce attacking the supply lines from gamebreaking to just one good strategic option amongst many. I think this could work... and it would be rather unique to see a game focus on pure strategy for once.

I like the way you are thinking. More territory to cover, a good overview interface. You have to plan for the terrain features and supply lines. I was thinking of using outposts as supply base for your frontline troops, so the players will try generally to get at the other man's supply outpost, bombing it in order to disable his fighting capability. If the adversary can disable the total supply line for, like, 5 minutes, you know your units in the regions are in a lot of trouble for the time being, and maybe it would be best to retreat.

That is why I prefer to get out the unit-building idea. Sure, it makes for more "flexibility", but I don't want that kind of flexibility. I have always been happy playing chess with the idea that any unit I loose, the loss is permanent. As long as it is true for my opponent, I have to add. Playing a strategy computer game with the same kind of setting is pretty much the same idea. You don't "create" a soldier on the battlefield. Ok, maybe you recruit it, train it, and send it to you. But that takes about 3 months. A good battle is supposed to last a week at most.

The best you can hope for is if your overseer commander has some troop in reserve, and thinks it would be better spent in your position.

So, the idea here is to get the most out of you set troops, and try to lure the ennemy into loosing units. Which is the whole point of strategy, wouldn't you agree? Not to outbuild him, but to outthink him.

I have played once a little game called "Defcon". Quite sadist game, I have to tell. The point is to cause the nuclear holocaust. But what I love is the strategic capabilities of this game. The maps are kinda big, you can try to outmanoeuver your ennemies, you have to try to discover their position and their weakness. The interface is simple, usefull. It is real-time, but on the other hand, the time speed can be adjusted to your liking to give you time to send orders to your fleets and ICMB.

(I always loved the way I managed to sneak 4 nuclear subs near India trough Cape Agulhas, while intercepting a Carrier fleet and sinking it..)

the game has it all. Time limit, fixed starting unit (but you can deploy them where you want), no unit addition. I recomment it to all sadist players around here.

Saithis Bladewing

2008-07-08, 01:10 AM

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-08, 01:13 AM

I've played a game called Europe in Flames which basically summed up all of what you guys are talking about (set pieces, supplies, communications, etc.) but wasn't a particularly awesome game, unfortunately.

I tried looking for the game in Wiki and Gamestats, haven't found it. Are you sure of the spelling? When was the game published?

Saithis Bladewing

2008-07-08, 01:28 AM

I tried looking for the game in Wiki and Gamestats, haven't found it. Are you sure of the spelling? When was the game published?

http://www.amazon.com/TalonSoft-Europe-in-Flames/dp/B00004T0QO

Yes, I'm quite sure. It wasn't exactly 'critically acclaimed'. It was definitely not for casual gamers, and even dedicated gamers struggled a little with its clunky interface. It was still good fun for awhile though.

West Front, East Front and Rising Sun should also ping on the radar as it's games - apparently it was a compilation of TalonSoft's TBS.

EDIT:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/westfront/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;review

Winterwind

2008-07-08, 10:17 AM

That is why I prefer to get out the unit-building idea. Sure, it makes for more "flexibility", but I don't want that kind of flexibility. I have always been happy playing chess with the idea that any unit I loose, the loss is permanent. As long as it is true for my opponent, I have to add. Playing a strategy computer game with the same kind of setting is pretty much the same idea. You don't "create" a soldier on the battlefield. Ok, maybe you recruit it, train it, and send it to you. But that takes about 3 months. A good battle is supposed to last a week at most. Well, it's always possible to find a reasonable explanation how building new units works - you said it yourself, instead of new units being "built" or "recruited" from ground-up, they could just as well be long ready and prepared units that come as reinforcements onto the battlefield. That's a significant aspect of real-life war campaigns, after all.

Ultimately, having or lacking the ability to create new troops just lead to two different gameplays, neither of which is superior over the other - in one case, you get an additional strategic component of being able to tailor your army for special manouvers (like, say, paratroopers who can get behind the enemy lines to sow chaos), more importance for recon (to find out what your opponent is planning to use against you), the need to anticipate your opponent's plans and a chance for surprise, and also the need to find the perfect distribution of your ressources between unit production, defense production and - in the case of the hypothetical game we are discussion - ammo and supplies, and in the other case you get even more focus on tactics and micro, trying even more desperately to save the units, and the ability to put all of the different units you possess to use with maximum efficiency (that last part is interesting; while in a game with unit production you will typically get only the special units required for the strategic goals you have chosen yourself - like, if you do not intend to have a force drop in the back of the enemy you are not going to build paratroops - in this scenario you would probably have some special units of all kinds, thus forcing you to come up with a strategy that utilises everything somehow).

So, the idea here is to get the most out of you set troops, and try to lure the ennemy into loosing units. Which is the whole point of strategy, wouldn't you agree?With this part, yes...

Not to outbuild him, but to outthink him....whereas this part contains a fallacy. Firstly, it is possible to outthink the opponent by building what he doesn't expect; the perfect counter to what you anticipate or have found out by scouting he is going to build, luring the opponent into thinking you are building a completely different army than you actually are by showing him some fake production buildings you do not intend to actually use, building a kind of units the opponent might not expect at this point (for example, stealth units to use in a location lacking detection yet), and so forth. Secondly, the possibility of building units does not eliminate the need for tactics. It doesn't matter in the least that you have reliably cranked out your tanks if the opponent flanks them, if you do not employ the higher ground to your advantage, and so forth, unless your opponent is a much weaker player than you. And if you do not take care of your units, do not send back wounded units immediately back to the base before they die so they can be repaired, then being able to build new ones will not help you in the least - the next time you fight your opponent you are going to have the units you built, whereas he will have the units he built plus the units he saved and repaired. And if the game contains an additional aspect of gaining experience for kills, you are utterly booped.

I have played once a little game called "Defcon". Quite sadist game, I have to tell. The point is to cause the nuclear holocaust. But what I love is the strategic capabilities of this game. The maps are kinda big, you can try to outmanoeuver your ennemies, you have to try to discover their position and their weakness. The interface is simple, usefull. It is real-time, but on the other hand, the time speed can be adjusted to your liking to give you time to send orders to your fleets and ICMB.I don't know of any RTS that does not allow and, in fact, even require you to outmanouver your enemies, try to discover their position and their weakness.

Prophaniti

2008-07-08, 10:44 AM

I've found personally, that I vastly prefer Turn-based Strategy to Real-time. It eliminates quick reflexes as even a minor factor. Quick reflexes are for FPS games. I've watched some Starcraft tournaments and such, and it's always the guy who has his build order the smoothest, uses keybindings and such to zip around his base and get the first rush out that much quicker who wins. I've seen these games end before anyone builds anything beyond the basic units, and that to me is not a fun game. Add that to the fact that in the single player campaigns of most of these games, not only does the AI start with a vastly superior position and numbers, but gets extra resources at the start (proven in Starcraft, at least), and you see why I usually only enjoy these games when using cheat codes.

Now, I'm gonna buy Starcraft II, and there are titles in the genre that I do very much enjoy, but most days I'd much rather play a game of Civilization or Wesnoth or Heroes of Might and Magic.

That's just my 2cp.

warty goblin

2008-07-08, 10:50 AM

Well, it's always possible to find a reasonable explanation how building new units works - you said it yourself, instead of new units being "built" or "recruited" from ground-up, they could just as well be long ready and prepared units that come as reinforcements onto the battlefield. That's a significant aspect of real-life war campaigns, after all.

Agreed here, although some games handle the building new troops better than others. Dawn of War gets particular kudos for actually showing the soldiers/vehicles arriving via dropship. Company of Heroes does something more or less similar with reinforcing squads that have taken losses- you can only do so near your base or a halftrack, and you can actually see the new soldier run out of the base/halftrack to join the squad. The exception to this is paratroopers, who can have new dudes dropped in to join them anywhere on the map.

Ultimately, having or lacking the ability to create new troops just lead to two different gameplays, neither of which is superior over the other - in one case, you get an additional strategic component of being able to tailor your army for special manouvers (like, say, paratroopers who can get behind the enemy lines to sow chaos), more importance for recon (to find out what your opponent is planning to use against you), the need to anticipate your opponent's plans and a chance for surprise, and also the need to find the perfect distribution of your ressources between unit production, defense production and - in the case of the hypothetical game we are discussion - ammo and supplies, and in the other case you get even more focus on tactics and micro, trying even more desperately to save the units, and the ability to put all of the different units you possess to use with maximum efficiency (that last part is interesting; while in a game with unit production you will typically get only the special units required for the strategic goals you have chosen yourself - like, if you do not intend to have a force drop in the back of the enemy you are not going to build paratroops - in this scenario you would probably have some special units of all kinds, thus forcing you to come up with a strategy that utilises everything somehow).

Agreed here again, although I think you are missing one exception. World in Conflict used a simple point system for units, but every player had the same maximum number of points, and points were automatically refunded after a unit died. I didn't play much of the game, but it really made it feel sort of empty to me, since losing a unit only threw me back like thirty seconds, and killing an enemy unit only threw them back thirty seconds as well. It also removed a ton of strategy, since the unit cap was pretty small, and weirdly enough made the tactics feel sort of moot as well, since no loss I could inflict or take actually permenantly cost my enemy or me anything.

I don't know of any RTS that does not allow and, in fact, even require you to outmanouver your enemies, try to discover their position and their weakness.
Well, most RTS campaigns fall firmly into this catagory from what I've seen. They generally go something like this "here's a huge base filled with top tier enemy units and protected by formidible defenses. Here, off in the corner is the second base which consists only of basic guys and a few defensive structures. Located within this base is the [INSERT PLOT DEVICE] which will disable all enemy defenses if we capture it. Notice that although we have made no pretext at stealth, the enemy will send only rudimentery scouting forces at us, leaving their elite units to sit around and cool their heels until such time as we can disable their defenses, then start killing them with whatever form of artillery this game possesses."

Bottom line, you might have to exploit the enemy's weakness, but you seldom have to find it. That's what helpful voice overs and small badly animated portraits in the top right of the screen are for. It is also, not coincidently, why I stopped playing RTS campaigns as a matter of principle.

Winterwind

2008-07-08, 11:56 AM

I've found personally, that I vastly prefer Turn-based Strategy to Real-time. It eliminates quick reflexes as even a minor factor.Which is a perfectly valid opinion, though a matter of taste. As for me, I like being forced to make my decisions on the fly; it makes the game more exciting and immersive to me. A fast pace, never having to wait for the other to finish his turn, the chaos of battle at multiple fronts at once, all of that emulates a real battle much better in my book and keeps the adrenaline high (I enjoy TBSs quite a lot, too, but they are hardly adrenaline pushers). Also, micro (controlling the units to maximum effect in battle) is one of my favourite aspects of RTS - there's nothing like facing a couple of zealots with nothing but half their number in dragoons, and managing to kill all of them without losing a single dragoon by having the dragoons shoot and retreat, not allowing the zealots to ever attack. That would not be nearly as exciting or even possible without real-time (and if it was possible without real-time, it would be possible at all time to anyone, not being something one can improve in and be challenged by). I perfectly understand how some people prefer to focus on pure strategy solely and cut out additional aspects like this - in which case TBS is evidently the better choice - but saying reflexes are something solely for FPSs seems somewhat short-sighted, for it forgoes all the parts that make RTS fun in the first place.

I've watched some Starcraft tournaments and such, and it's always the guy who has his build order the smoothest, uses keybindings and such to zip around his base and get the first rush out that much quicker who wins. I've seen these games end before anyone builds anything beyond the basic units, and that to me is not a fun game. This is simply not true (and for the record, yes, I have watched a fair amount of those tournaments as well, and still do). Progamers are just about the worst example you could have chosen for your argument - they typically know their build-orders perfectly and have enough speed to maintain a nigh perfect degree of control over their units. They are exactly the people whose games are decided far more by strategy and tactics to the exclusion of everything else than any other gamers you might have chosen. Also, progamer matches are very rarely decided by the first rush. The possibility to conduct a rush - usually rather to damage the opponent and put him into a disadvantage from the start than to kill him - strikes me as a good thing, for it is an additional strategical option amongst many. You can attempt to rush, which puts you at a disadvantage economy- and tech-wise, so you have to hope to do enough damage with the rush for it to pay off; it also ensures the game is going to be action-laden and dominated by aggressive actions. Since it is risky, it is not an obvious choice - like I said, another option amongst many. Hardly any rush manages to kill a strong opponent, almost all StarCraft matches last until the top tiers of technology.

Now, amongst weaker players... yes, a player who fumbles around for 10 minutes trying to get his first unit out is not going to stand a chance against a player who knows what (s)he is doing and has the speed to pull it off.
That's because RTS have more aspects in addition to strategy (though not its detriment, as has been claimed in this thread before) that arise straight from the real-time aspect. These aspects being micro and the capability to do what one wants quickly and efficiently. If one doesn't enjoy these aspects... why play RTS instead of TBS? And on the other hand, since TBS exist, and so people who do not like these aspects have their way out, why complain about these aspects in RTS? There are people out there, after all, who like the synergy of all these aspects, which incidentally are the entire distinction between RTS and TBS...

It's as if I said "I like lemon-flavoured icecream but hate chocolate-flavoured icecream. Wouldn't the world be much better if all chocolate tasted just like lemon? What, I have nothing to gain by it, but people who happen to like chocolate-flavoured icecream would lose with such a change? Um, yeah, what's your point?".

Agreed here again, although I think you are missing one exception. World in Conflict used a simple point system for units, but every player had the same maximum number of points, and points were automatically refunded after a unit died. I didn't play much of the game, but it really made it feel sort of empty to me, since losing a unit only threw me back like thirty seconds, and killing an enemy unit only threw them back thirty seconds as well. It also removed a ton of strategy, since the unit cap was pretty small, and weirdly enough made the tactics feel sort of moot as well, since no loss I could inflict or take actually permenantly cost my enemy or me anything.That... does indeed sound fairly bad.

Well, most RTS campaigns fall firmly into this catagory from what I've seen. They generally go something like this "here's a huge base filled with top tier enemy units and protected by formidible defenses. Here, off in the corner is the second base which consists only of basic guys and a few defensive structures. Located within this base is the [INSERT PLOT DEVICE] which will disable all enemy defenses if we capture it. Notice that although we have made no pretext at stealth, the enemy will send only rudimentery scouting forces at us, leaving their elite units to sit around and cool their heels until such time as we can disable their defenses, then start killing them with whatever form of artillery this game possesses."

Bottom line, you might have to exploit the enemy's weakness, but you seldom have to find it. That's what helpful voice overs and small badly animated portraits in the top right of the screen are for. It is also, not coincidently, why I stopped playing RTS campaigns as a matter of principle.My apologies; that's me forgetting to shift to other people's perspective again, limiting myself to competitive multiplayer. All of my arguments in this thread refer solely to a human player/team playing against another human player/team. As for singleplayer campaigns, aye, many of them fall into a simple scheme of build and kill (which is usually so boring I stop playing the campaign); some manage to include some more interesting content to keep it diverse or have a sufficiently interesting story, but no singleplayer campaign I know ever managed to capture even a fraction of the strategy and depth involved in the RTS in question when playing it multiplayer.

Were-Sandwich

2008-07-08, 01:36 PM

Even if nothing else comes of this thread, I now want Company of Heroes. It sounds like they took all the good points of DoW, took out all the bits I don't like, and put it in my favourite genre.

Destro_Yersul

2008-07-08, 02:05 PM

Play Sins of a Solar Empire. it has no campaign, it's certainly has real time strategy elements, and the AI is intelligent enough to handle itself in a fight, though you'll want to micromanage if you're at a disadvantage of some sort. It would be best in multiplayer though, because of the bounty and alliance mechanic. If you have a peace treaty with someone, you can't attack them. You can, however, offer money anonymously to anyone who does. And the resource gathering and stuff requires that you tell a ship to build an extractor, after which point it is automated.

Takes a hell of a long time to play though.

averagejoe

2008-07-08, 02:33 PM

My apologies; that's me forgetting to shift to other people's perspective again, limiting myself to competitive multiplayer. All of my arguments in this thread refer solely to a human player/team playing against another human player/team. As for singleplayer campaigns, aye, many of them fall into a simple scheme of build and kill (which is usually so boring I stop playing the campaign); some manage to include some more interesting content to keep it diverse or have a sufficiently interesting story, but no singleplayer campaign I know ever managed to capture even a fraction of the strategy and depth involved in the RTS in question when playing it multiplayer.

In defense of campaign modes, I find them useful for an introduction to the game. I dislike being bombarded with large quantities of information, and I find them a good way to get used to the games system and different factions/races, try out the limits of special abilities, and suchlike. I nearly always think of the campaign as the game's introduction. That's just me, though; I know other people can get a handle on a new system more easily than I can.

Oslecamo

2008-07-08, 08:17 PM

I don't know if this was already said, but even in real world war, knowing how to issue orders fast is very important. More than one army has been defeated simply because it's comander paralyzed for a moment and didn't react fast enough to the enemy maneuvers. So an RTS demanding the players to have quick reflexes isn't necessarly a bad thing.

RS14

2008-07-08, 11:43 PM

As for me, I like being forced to make my decisions on the fly; it makes the game more exciting and immersive to me. A fast pace, never having to wait for the other to finish his turn, the chaos of battle at multiple fronts at once, all of that emulates a real battle much better in my book and keeps the adrenaline high

I agree, but I find that I like to have my "micro" separated from my building. I can't effectively control troops in any manner beyond swarms while maintaining an economy. My favorite RTS (of sorts) is Close Combat II, played at full speed. It can go from a dead-silent crawl to heavy firefight in five seconds or less, often at very close range, where smoke and hand-to-hand combat may be more effective than machineguns. The attentiveness required to respond to a sudden encounter or charge just isn't possible while building.

On the other side of the coin, in most more traditional RTSs, I prefer a long build and focusing on wearing down enemies by dominating production. I loved Sim City too. I get bored directing units to get healed and making my units attack the right enemy (i.e. micromanaging cavalry to attack archers, and not fight infantry as soon as they've killed a single archer), so I wind up just producing more and sending them all into the meat-grinder. I'm not sure why game designers have insisted on always combining both empire building and micromanaged combat in real time, but I find it frusterating.

As for a "RTS" which is more stategic than tactical, I enjoyed Battle of Britain (by Rowan). Putatively a flight simulator, it included a strategic game as well. A 1940's style RAF table plots all flights, naval convoys, aviation industry, cities, and airfields. You command those flights of almost any number of planes to intercept, patrol, etc; you manage the readyness of the airfields to keep pilot morale up. As the Luftwaffe, you send out reconisance and bombers. It's all (theoretically) playable in real time, and I've always thought it would be fun on a PDA over the course of months. Realistically, however, it is played at 8x or 16x or more until something appears on radar.

Winterwind

2008-07-09, 11:02 AM

In defense of campaign modes, I find them useful for an introduction to the game. I dislike being bombarded with large quantities of information, and I find them a good way to get used to the games system and different factions/races, try out the limits of special abilities, and suchlike. I nearly always think of the campaign as the game's introduction. That's just me, though; I know other people can get a handle on a new system more easily than I can.For clarification, I like to learn how to use the units in the campaigns too, and I do enjoy them; but their gameplay usually has only very little to do with how a match between skilled human players looks like. Especially with regards to how much strategy is involved; campaigns typically are more about building a lot of the right stuff and using it well than proper scouting, manouvering and outthinking the opponent. Even such basic strategies as drops and harrassment are usually massively devalued, because the computer's bases tend to be heavily fortified with short response times to the attack, and the damage dealt to the computer's economy is, no matter how heavy the blow, often quite irrelevant due to the computer having nigh infinite ressources at its disposal anyway.

Triaxx

2008-07-09, 01:15 PM

On Strategy versus Tactics: Chris Taylor said it best: Strategy is what you do before the battle, Tactics is what you do during the battle.

Starcraft isn't really a good example of strategy. If you haven't engaged the enemy thirty seconds after the game loads, you've already lost. The scale is also too small for anything other than tactics. Twelve units at a time isn't exactly a grand army.

I don't have a problem with multiplayer. But when it's so prevalent that it takes away from the design of the campaigns, it's annoying. And storyline in an RTS is sort of pointless. TA had awesome campaigns. Why? Because all it gave us was an excuse and the enemy. Sometimes there were challenges, like the enemy base on the cliff, or capture this unit/weapon and then eliminate enemy forces. This was made more interesting because you had to capture the units with the one unit that you always had to protect. So you'd normally end up killing off all the enemies, then capturing the unit in question. Mind you some times the hardest missions were because the enemy was scripted the way it was. At least one mission required you to defend a large building from an invading naval force. But they'd hit it with bombers, and amphibious forces as well, after distracting you with the navy. And instead of trickling tech levels at you, you'd get almost the full brunt of the navy on the first mission.

I like my strategy a little more grand than the typical fare. I love the way Supreme Commander does it. Start with a small map and slowly increase the size until you're on an enourmous map playing with the most powerful units in the game. On the other hand, when the AI is nuking you...

SAMAS

2008-07-09, 01:37 PM

A few thoughts on improving the "Classic" RTS. I know that some of you can probably name a game that may have some of this, but I honestly believe some of this stuff should be standard to the whole genre, not just individual examples.

No or limited base building. This isn't to say there aren't bases, but the whole rush to tech 3 is removed. Your base is pre-set to whatever the tech level is. You may be able to build/place watchtowers, gun emplacements and the like, but the HQ, Armory, and stuff like that would be pre-set before the mission already began.

Alter the purpose of "Tech" buildings. either get rid of the whole "Research Unobtanium Armor" or "Phlebotinum Shells" thing, or alter it's effects. For example, Instead of a small boost I have to research, make it an option that provides a substantial boost, but also increases the cost. Alternately, make it a place where upgrades and modifications are done manually, but allow for waypointing to allow a player to have his new stuff go there automatically for the upgrade.

Now, I mentioned Modifications before. If you've never checked out Forge World, Go ahead and check out the Imperial Guard tanks section here. (http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/acatalog/IMPERIAL_GUARD_TANKS.html) Note that many of the kits are the similar tank(s) with different armaments. Battle cannons, Lascannons, Plasma Cannons, and the like. I'd like to be able to do that. Alter a tank's main gun to slaughter infantry, or make an anti-aircraft variant.

A Barracks instead of generating infantry, would work more like a Farm: You have to build them to house your troops. Troops not being used would actually be stored there (and blowing it up kills them off), but you can use an Emergency Deployment command that arms all unused infantry with the basic troop kit and deploys them (Like the "Call To Arms" command in Warcraft III).

There would not be a vehicle factory, unless the faction calls for it for specific units (Like if they had a salvage unit that could pick up corpses or debris, and take it to the factory to make drones or zombies or stuff like that), or as objectives in the Single-player campaign (and some asymmetrical Multiplayer missions). New troops and vehicles are requisitioned, but dropped at regular intervals.

Adjust Damage. Make attacks hurt more, but maybe less accurate. If you include Critical Hits in your engine, make it do something like Immobilize an enemy vehicle, take out a weapon system, or even kill it outright. Infantry should take horrendous damage if not in cover (or a hero unit or something like that).

I can't stress this enough: Infantry units without anti-vehicle weapons should not be able to hurt anything other than the lightest vehicles. At all. Full stop. This should never be an exception, but rather the rule for all games from now on.

No More Hovering Jets. Please. Starcraft should have been the last game to get away with that. If you can't make your aircraft behave like aircraft, don't have them.

Improve individual unit AI. As noted before, units should know to take cover nearby (or go prone if none is available), and use their special abilities.

averagejoe

2008-07-09, 02:47 PM

Inhuman Bot

2008-07-09, 02:52 PM

After reading this, one point:

Let's examine games.
A) real sports: You move a ball. (or puck)
B) RPG games: You kill the same generic monster over and over again.
C) Racing: you hold a button and turn a stick/wheel
D) Shooters: Shoot a guy. Move away. Throw a grenade. Run up and club him with your gun. Dead. Shoot next guy. Hey, didn't I just kill him a minute ago?
E) Fighters: No matter what people say, you just mash buttons.
Weee.....

So why on RTS games specificly?

Kane

2008-07-09, 04:38 PM

Well, I'm afraid I haven't read through the whole thing, (sorry) but I have read most of the posts on this page. That said, I think I have a few examples to defend my precious genre.

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Not the newest, and, as far as I've seen of multiplayer, it has fairly simple faction-specific rush tactics, with the fastest-clicking wins. I must admit it. However, I may just be bitter because I get pounded into the ground whenever I play it.

Single player, however, is different. Two (three actually. Shhh!) campaigns, that take place at the same time. Beat them both to unlock the third.

That said, yes, you do tend to start out with a base, and have to research everything, build everything, and such from the ground up. However, the missions are many and varied; Once, there's a tactical raid on a Nod supply depot. It's highly tactical. (then again, the line between tactics and strategy is kind of thin. It could be said that nothing short of Civilization or Risk is strategy.) Especially on hard mode, many of the missions you can only survive for so long unless you know exactly what you need to do. (trial and error.) In one mission, they send periodic assaults at you along the east side of your base, and you start out with enough units to repel them. However, they all-too-soon increase to ridiculous power.
Commando strikes, sabotaging, region regrouping, and other such things make the campaign varied and interesting, (to me), if incredibly unfair, on occasion.

Planes fly around, unless landed or VTOL type crafts. (Or alien.) (Someone mentioned this above.)
One of my favorites, infantry come in squads, not individual units. Also, if a member of the squad dies, congrats, that's the squad's new maximum health. (Though GDI have a building that can restore squads to full health.)
Infantry can, I'm afraid, take down vehicles. Even if all they have is an assault rifle-type weapon. In one mission, something went screwy, and an enemy base built so much basic, anti-infantry infantry that not only did they take down my tanks ridiculously fast but it made my game lag... On NORMAL.

Okay, I think I may have wandered a bit, but the point I'm trying to make is that, I don't know the games you play, but the games I play seem to have significant strategy in them, and worthwhile single player campaigns.

Triaxx

2008-07-09, 08:37 PM

I don't think I'll go any further into Starcraft. Too easy to get banned.

You want to stream line the gameplay? Take a page from Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. Eliminate pointless technologies. Just give us the units. Want better units? Just build better ones.

But who even needs units? Just build defenses across the map. Expand, yes, but forget mobile defenses, just build artillery pieces and crawl across the map. Smash the enemy with long range weapons. Sometimes the best strategy is not to get dragged into a battle at all.

King_of_GRiffins

2008-07-09, 11:07 PM

A good game I would think of:

- First, set asymetrical objectives, and always give the opportunity to a player to "retreat" in order to lesser his losses (except if the game is a "last stance" mode, like Berlin in WW2). Symetrical objectives can be a good idea, but only from time to time. I like the idea of having one side needing to defend.

- Make the players buy at the beginning of the game a set number of units. The players could create a serie of games (a campaign) and the performance of their previous games could influence what they have available now.

The players could also buy perks. Like pre-game scouting, etc..

- No more unit addition if available. Off course, one of the perk someone could buy is reinforcement after 40 play minutes (depending on the objectives).

It would also be nice if one side has a time limit, and the other side has location-restriction (like defending bridge A). So the first player knows he HAS to move in, and the 2nd cannot simply go hide around the map.

Make the map big, but with quick movement of the soldiers, and if possible, hiding capabilities.

I know I am missing some key point, but a simple ressource-gathering followed by a force-buildup doesn't sound like much strategy to me. Ok, it's a fun genre, I agree 100%. But there should be other sort of games. The one that focus on a developped combat. Ground Control 1 was peticulary great about it, with huge maps and set objectives. It had it's flaw, but I knew I was doing some real tactics.

To me, this sounds almost exactly like one games skirmish mode; Total War. This game had me thinking quite some about actual strategy and tactics when I entered into a battle. Your units are determined beforehand by what you bought at the beginning, the objective is either to capture a fortress or rout (not obliterate) the opposing force, 'swarming' was never a valid tactic, even suicide in a way and not economically feasible in the first place, and if you needed (or was losing badly) you could retreat. I enjoyed the game and had differing levels of success when I played either due good or poor tactics (or whenever all the christians in Mediaval:TW ganged up on me :smallsigh:) Sometimes, my puny force was able to defeat a much larger force, just by using a good tactics.

I just purchased LotR:Battle for Middle Earth a few days ago for a cheap price. Playing through the campaign required almost little thought beyond "I'll need a siege weapon to break the wall faster" or "I'll need more units". Swarming once or twice would do the job, and though the AI would stage some of it's own attacks, it wouldn't be much of a problem after putting some small effort into defense. Point and click just isn't that fun. I'm hoping playing multiplayer with my friend will be a bit more interesting, otherwise, I'm beating him over his head with a stick for making me buy it...

As for Starcraft, I haven't touched it in ages, but I recall that the campaign as fairly difficult. Well, for me anyway. Rushing managed to work for the first few times, but by the 3rd to 5th mission, that just didn't seem to be cutting it. I think the single player campaign would be a good example of Real-time tactics done right. However, I've never seen any of this in multiplayer. Every game resolved in around 1-2 minutes, right after the zergling rush. There's nothing tactical about building faster than someone else.

Just my thoughts.

Leper_Kahn

2008-07-10, 12:31 AM

Starcraft: A Mind Game (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=71558)

This doesn't really fit in anywhere. I just thought I'd mention it.

Dervag

2008-07-10, 02:01 AM

Infantry can, I'm afraid, take down vehicles. Even if all they have is an assault rifle-type weapon. In one mission, something went screwy, and an enemy base built so much basic, anti-infantry infantry that not only did they take down my tanks ridiculously fast but it made my game lag... On NORMAL.You know, in real life, very brave 'rifle infantry' do sometimes manage to knock out armored vehicles. However, they don't do it by firing their rifles repeatedly, so I see why you'd be frustrated.

SolkaTruesilver

2008-07-10, 03:00 AM

One of my favorites, infantry come in squads, not individual units. Also, if a member of the squad dies, congrats, that's the squad's new maximum health.

If I remember right, that's the same kind of system Warhammer : Mark of Chaos had. you had units of infantry, which were composed of soldier. The health shown in the mini-menu was the average health of every soldiers in the unit, so it was hell to know if your unit was clobbered or not.

(god that game was nice.. Charging with a pointed formation of cavalry trough your ennemies' archers, and then following up to his siege engine.. hehe..)

Triaxx

2008-07-10, 05:47 AM

If you look hard enough there are stories of tanks being disabled by grenades, or improvised sticky bombs. That's why I like games where the infantry have a secondary weapon.

The most realistic one I've found when it comes to Infantry V Tanks, is actually a mod for Total Annihilation, called World Domination. Without air support, or hordes of AT, regular infantry is completely obliterated by armor.

Winterwind

2008-07-10, 01:34 PM

On Strategy versus Tactics: Chris Taylor said it best: Strategy is what you do before the battle, Tactics is what you do during the battle.Aye, that's the definition I am most familiar with, too.

Starcraft isn't really a good example of strategy. If you haven't engaged the enemy thirty seconds after the game loads, you've already lost.Nonsense. Fast expansion builds thrive on avoiding early battle, and are amongst the most popular opening moves available.
The dynamics of many StarCraft matches are that one player is playing defensively, trying to get his natural expansion, build up in the base and push out at some point, while the other is attempting to contain him in the base, expand all over the map to get a massive economical edge, hold off the push and overrun the base ultimately; the first player then has to come up with solutions how to prevent the second player from expanding or deal enough damage to negate the second player's economical advantage.
Of course, any good player will play aggressively, if only to not allow the opponent to have her/his will, and try to take advantage of any temporary weakness the opponent shows, but rushes are far from obligatory or an every-single-game-occurence.

The scale is also too small for anything other than tactics. Twelve units at a time isn't exactly a grand army.12 is the selection limit, but only a fraction of a typical StarCraft army, which usually numbers some 80-150 supply*1 in the mid to late game (with units taking up 0.5-2 supply on average).

*1 Workers not included.

I don't have a problem with multiplayer. But when it's so prevalent that it takes away from the design of the campaigns, it's annoying. Ironically, I was just thinking the other day how much better The Battle For Wesnoth would be if not for the campaigns intruding upon the design of multiplayer, messing up balance (and no, I'm not using the 'all units must be identical'-definition of balance Oslecamo supplied before here). :smallbiggrin:
I'm wondering though... what would be an example of multiplayer intruding upon the singleplayer campaigns' design?

And storyline in an RTS is sort of pointless.What? Why? :smallconfused:
Most RTS games I played had a story ranging from fairly decent to awesome, with the story's presentation tied in rather well into the gameplay itself. Why would one want to kick out a well-presented and interesting story, that adds to the game's atmosphere greatly, out of the game?

I don't think I'll go any further into Starcraft. Too easy to get banned.Huh? I'm fairly sure last time I checked not liking StarCraft was not an offense but a personal opinion to express which you are perfectly entitled. :smallconfused:

You want to stream line the gameplay? Take a page from Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. Eliminate pointless technologies. Just give us the units. Want better units? Just build better ones.

But who even needs units? Just build defenses across the map. Expand, yes, but forget mobile defenses, just build artillery pieces and crawl across the map. Smash the enemy with long range weapons. Sometimes the best strategy is not to get dragged into a battle at all.My apologies, but I really cannot tell... are you being sarcastic here?
What you describe here would hardly qualify as strategy game in my book anymore; without mobile forces allowing you for manouvers, surprises and quick reacting to the opponent's moves, what is there left that would be worth being called strategy?

However, I've never seen any of this in multiplayer. Every game resolved in around 1-2 minutes, right after the zergling rush. There's nothing tactical about building faster than someone else.I have not seen a game end like this for hundreds of games*2. Zerg rushes are not that difficult to hold off, which is why most Zerg players don't use all-out rush strategies anymore, except as a surprise once in a blue moon - they put the Zerg player in too much of an economical disadvantage if they don't do enough damage, which they do not succeed at reliably against equally skilled players. By the time the Zerg has zerglings out using any half-way normal strategy, the opponent will usually have some troops as well.
Unless, of course, the Zerg's opponent did something risky and, say, tried to expand before getting troops or stationary defenses. But in this case it's not the Zerg's ability to build quickly that kills the opponent, it's the opponent's conciously chosen risky strategy that proved to be a bad choice.
Sorry to say so, but it seems to me as if the Zerg player(s) you witnessed playing were either vastly more experienced, more talented or both than the rest. Matches between players of equal level last some 20 minutes on average.

*2 With a single notable exception in the progaming scene, where the Zerg's opponent took a gamble and lost.

warty goblin

2008-07-10, 04:08 PM

Ironically, I was just thinking the other day how much better The Battle For Wesnoth would be if not for the campaigns intruding upon the design of multiplayer, messing up balance (and no, I'm not using the 'all units must be identical'-definition of balance Oslecamo supplied before here). :smallbiggrin:
I'm wondering though... what would be an example of multiplayer intruding upon the singleplayer campaigns' design?

It's hard to come up with one for RTS, simply because I can't think of the last RTS of any note not to heavily feature multiplayer. However a successful RTS has to have more or less balanced sides and generally favor rather short battles. Balance for a multiplayer game really does often come at the expense of the single player.

For an example of this I'm going to have to step into the TBS genre instead of RTS- but look at Galactic Civilizations II, a game designed from the ground up as single player. This means that the AI is extraordinarily good without cheating, and the sides (after the second expansion) are pretty much the most varied things ever seen in a game to my knowledge. The races however are not particularly balanced against each other, and the game is so horrendiously, gloriously complex that it would be nearly impossible to condense into a multiplayer experience (it often takes me the better part of a couple weeks to play a game). Compare this with a game like Civilizations IV, which is designed to at least accomidate multiplayer, and the difference is clear. The AI is not as good, there are far, far fewer costomizations options and so forth.

Also, balance is, from a single player perspectice, over-rated. Look at games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, for example, which is completely unbalanced in all manor of ways. Since the player gets to choose their experience however it really doesn't matter that Alteration is a better skill pick than Security. Similarly in single player it doesn't really matter that in Battle for Middle Earth II, the Elves are pretty much harbingers of the pointy-eared apocalypse. If I want to win easily I play elves, if I don't, I play goblins. Simple as that, the ramifications of my decision only affect me. In multiplayer however there's hell to pay for that sort of imbalance.

Besides options, there's the simple reality that games are made with a limited budget, and every dime spent optimizing net code is money not spent on the campaign or skirmish AI.

SAMAS

2008-07-10, 06:23 PM

My apologies, but I really cannot tell... are you being sarcastic here?
What you describe here would hardly qualify as strategy game in my book anymore; without mobile forces allowing you for manouvers, surprises and quick reacting to the opponent's moves, what is there left that would be worth being called strategy?

If you wanna get technical, anything you do to achieve victory is a strategy (or, again if you wanna get technical, a tactic). So yeah, if the game allows you to build a creeping wall of defenses, they can go ahead and try. I can't think of many games where that would be remotely viable, however (Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander are the only two to come to mind, maybe C&C Generals) It only only be a bad thing, in my opinion, if the strategy were somehow too potent to reliably defeat.

----

Although that does remind me: In like the first post on this tread, the OP asked if Eisenhower(IIRC) ever Tank Rushed. It got me to thinking: Would Eisenhower have Tank Rushed if he could have? And I think that yes, if he could build, man, and replace tanks like your average RTS player can, he probably would have crushed the Germans under a neverending wave of armor.

----

Another thing I would like to see in RTS games: Terrain that's more than window dressing. I wanna see swamp land that slows down infantry and mires and sinks tanks. I wanna see sand that favors light dune buggies. I want snowy weather that actually kills infantry if you leave them away from their base for too long, and blizzards that blind your view, obscure your radar, and keep your flyers from taking off.

I wanna see terrain and settings that actively alter the tech tree, or at least the troop choices the player makes. Think GI Joe for a second. Remember how the Joes and Cobras had all kinds of vehicles and troops, for swamps, arctic battles, mountain terrain, and the like? I want mountains so steep, you gotta deploy spider-legged walkers with grappling hooks instead of tanks. Underground maps where flyers and artillery are useless. Radioactive or Plague-ridden wastelands where your Tier 1 infantry won't survive five minutes unless you spring for hazmat gear that adds an extra 15% to their cost. Swamps where the game provides you with armed airboats specifically for that terrain set.

Stuff like that.

SAMAS

2008-07-10, 06:29 PM

Also: More options for Multiplayer. Even FPS games have branched out from "Deathmatch" and "Capture the Flag." How about missions where one side has to affect a landing operation on the other's territory? Or where one side has a collection of Hero and/or tier 3 units, and the other has a limited base and defenders to stop them with?

Poison_Fish

2008-07-10, 06:36 PM

Was Myth or Myth 2 already mentioned?

Limited units, formations, etc.

Different then your standard unit producing RTS's.

chiasaur11

2008-07-10, 06:40 PM

MeklorIlavator

2008-07-10, 08:26 PM

Actually, Eisenhower won using the controversial "Zergling Rush" tactic. Many other generals said alien death bugs in huge numbers as a primary tactic was "totally crazy" but history has shown the man to be a visionary.

Lets see if we can expand this:
European Theater:
Eisenhower: Rush
Patton: Tank Rush
German Early stages: Rush(duh)
Late stages: Turtle
Soviets: Zerg Rush

Pacific:
There really isn't a good standout tactic here, but the end of the war was definetly a tech up/advanced age victory.

I think that the reason that the standard strategies(rush, tech up, turtle) aren't as evident in Real World Battles is that the armies are fighting over much larger areas. Really, Most RTS Battles would probably be a simple skirmish in the real world, simply due to the fact that the area involved is so constricted.

Albub

2008-07-10, 09:41 PM

Yeah, the Germans went for both a mass expansion and a rush early on, but as starcraft has shown us, it's hard to have a strategy that incorporates both of those and stays effective.

Oh yeah, you guys should check out battlecorp. It's an RTS and the trial is free as a bird. It's browser based so any computer should be able to run it. The thing is, it's really slow paced. You and up to I think 5 other players fight for control of 2 middle provinces on a map grid consisting of about 25 provinces. You don't have any info on the other guys, but you can hire spies to find troop compositions etc. and also pay huge amounts of money for satellite surveillance. it's really deep, and hard to describe in full, but it's really friggin cool.

yoshi927

2008-07-10, 11:13 PM

SAMAS: I think that maps bring strategy depending on how long they're played.

For instance, take Boxer vs. Joyo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7iA7SFv8Cw&feature=related).

Boxer loses all of his expansions and is in a hopeless position. The map is just a bunch of islands, a low resource map. You can only move units through the air. Instead of giving up, he pulls off a brilliant strategy and snipes off all of Joyo's air, including his shuttles. Joyo runs out of money, and has no air to speak of. Boxer can now float a command center to the one remaining expansion and build two SCV's to start mining, and Joyo can't do anything about it. He manages to strategize and come back from the brink of defeat by using the features of the map to his advantage.

And take Othello, where you have a ledge above the natural expansion where amazingly destructive siege tank drops can happen.

True, these are better-designed maps than the standard map-pack, but you understand the point I'm trying to make.

SAMAS

2008-07-11, 01:19 AM

That's certainly part of it. But the point I was getting at was more of the... what word am I looking for here... I guess "tileset" would be the operative word here. Where, to put it in Starcraft terms, a map set on Char would have to be played differently than a map set on, say, Auir, even if the shape or layout were as identical as you could get.

warty goblin

2008-07-20, 02:37 PM

Well, I played a truly excellent game of Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts last night, and in doing so have reaffirmed that actual strategy is alive and well, at least in that game.

I was playing British against Panzer Elite on a rather open map with 3 victory points set to 500 total points (for those not familiar with CoH, on a victory point map each side starts with a certain number of points (in this case, 500), there are a couple victory sectors on the map, holding more of these than the enemy causes them to lose points. The first player to run out of points looses).

Anyway, I rather bungled my opening which can be a pretty lethal mistake against the PE, who are, to put it mildly, very fast. In this case they were messing me up with lots of halftracks and scout cars early game, which were doing terrible things to my infantry. Normally I would have used the British's improved defensive ability to keep the enemy at bay, but the map was way too open for that. Instead I rushed Stewart light tanks, which suck against most armor, but work just fine against light vehicles. The enemy responded with Panzer IV Infantry Support tanks, which are missnamed, because they work just fine against light armor, and are crazy tough. Fortunately I managed to destroy most of them using a Stewart as a damage soak, then flanking with an anti-tank squad, who, as a bonus, could then repair the Stewart. Nevertheless by the time I managed to actually start to hold my own the enemy controlled a lot of the map and I was down to about 50 victory points to their 500.

Then I adopted a new strategy, deploying units in a mix of a squad of rifleman/sappers (preferably with anti tank weapons) and a Stewart. The Stewart handled halftracks and scout cars, while the infantry capped points and protected the Stewart's flanks. This was fairly conventional, except that normally I would have used a heavier tank in place of the Stewart, but simply put I couldn't afford the Armor Command Truck, let alone a Cromwell. These strike forces were reasonably mobile, allowing me to quickly recapture two victory points and some resource dumps, by which time I was at about 28 victory points. Fortunately my counter offensive seemed to take the AI completely by surprise and I smashed my way through a ton of their fast attack vehicles with basically non-existant losses, and by the time the PE began to build their heavier units, it was way too late. Bottom line, I won, but I was literally within seconds of defeat, and I only did win because I changed my strategy from my conventional take, hold, advance to a more mobile doctrine.

Cybren

2008-07-20, 03:32 PM

Most wars are wars of attrition. The larger army, the better supplied army with the better weapons wins. Rarely does one win a decisive victory through maneuver when the chips are stacked against you.

The allies won WW2 because they controlled more resources, had more capacity to use those resources, and thus, had more guns. Napoleon lost at Waterloo because he commit to a daring attack to defeat a larger enemy before they could properly fight him. It was a throw of the dice and it failed. Ghengis Khan created the largest contiguous land empire in history by rallying together disparate tribes into a single force. By chance they happened to be militarily superior to anything of their day. A combination of mobility, technology, experience, and psychology made sure that any enemy they faced was their inferior.

One can win starcraft with a feint and by using a small number of troops in the most effective way. But, just like real life, it's far better to win by maximizing the number of your troops, ensuring that they at least achieve parity with the enemy in quality, and by using them as good as you can.

Triaxx

2008-07-20, 07:58 PM

Nonsense. Fast expansion builds thrive on avoiding early battle, and are amongst the most popular opening moves available.

The dynamics of many StarCraft matches are that one player is playing defensively, trying to get his natural expansion, build up in the base and push out at some point, while the other is attempting to contain him in the base, expand all over the map to get a massive economical edge, hold off the push and overrun the base ultimately; the first player then has to come up with solutions how to prevent the second player from expanding or deal enough damage to negate the second player's economical advantage.

Of course, any good player will play aggressively, if only to not allow the opponent to have her/his will, and try to take advantage of any temporary weakness the opponent shows, but rushes are far from obligatory or an every-single-game-occurence.

If only because a purely defensive strategy is doom. I'm not talking a fast expansion, I'm talking about hitting first and crippling the opponent's ability to produce. Whether it's a Zergling fueled attack on SCV's, or a quick Marine manuever to eliminate drones, the entire purpose of that first attack is to slow the opponent's economy. Marines are the best at this since they don't have to chase the workers to harrass them.

Similar tactics occur in all RTS's with active resource collection. IF it's being carried by a unit, someone is going to attack the carrier. Games like TA, and SupCom with passive resource collection cause the resource buildings to be the prime targets.

12 is the selection limit, but only a fraction of a typical StarCraft army, which usually numbers some 80-150 supply*1 in the mid to late game (with units taking up 0.5-2 supply on average).

Exactly. You can only move elements of the army, where other RTS's allow you to command the entire force. It reduces you to the control level of a field commander, instead of a general.

Ironically, I was just thinking the other day how much better The Battle For Wesnoth would be if not for the campaigns intruding upon the design of multiplayer, messing up balance (and no, I'm not using the 'all units must be identical'-definition of balance Oslecamo supplied before here). :smallbiggrin:
I'm wondering though... what would be an example of multiplayer intruding upon the singleplayer campaigns' design?

Wesnoth could do with a seperate MP balance system. If you don't pick that one strongest army, you're screwed. SP forces you to use the strong army. So the balance is skewed.

I don't have a handy example, but it's a case where the Singleplayer just feels tacked on to the MP game.

What? Why? :smallconfused:
Most RTS games I played had a story ranging from fairly decent to awesome, with the story's presentation tied in rather well into the gameplay itself. Why would one want to kick out a well-presented and interesting story, that adds to the game's atmosphere greatly, out of the game?

I mean with a few rare exceptions, it's not possible to affect the storyline in an RTS, like you can in an FPS, or RPG. It's generally just an excuse to kill things. TA did that well. On the flipside, Supreme Commander had a beautifully intricate and well detailed plot. In the end, both of them, and most RTS plots boil down to: 'Kill every living thing that isn't you.'

My apologies, but I really cannot tell... are you being sarcastic here?
What you describe here would hardly qualify as strategy game in my book anymore; without mobile forces allowing you for manouvers, surprises and quick reacting to the opponent's moves, what is there left that would be worth being called strategy?

You've never witnessed a Missile Tower crawl. Individually a single missle tower is a very fragile, and easily destroyed opponent. Three missile towers built together are virtually unstoppable without being able to out range them. They aren't rapid fire, but three of them will tear all but the strongest tanks apart. A single line of them won't do it though. You have to play to the terrain, the advantage is wasted if you try it through a trench, since the bombers will get you.

The strategy comes from being able to pull off two of them. They are incredibly powerful without being real super units. It's almost psychological warfare. The feeling of watching doom descend on you. It's the reverse of the fast expansion and the turtle at the same time.

In Battle For Wesnoth, it's the equivalent of moving a single space with every unit, so it becomes an advancing wall. You can't hit any one unit with more than two opponents and can't have one unit hit by more than two opponents. Absolutely demoralizing when it works. Awesomely stupid when it fails.

I have not seen a game end like this for hundreds of games*2. Zerg rushes are not that difficult to hold off, which is why most Zerg players don't use all-out rush strategies anymore, except as a surprise once in a blue moon - they put the Zerg player in too much of an economical disadvantage if they don't do enough damage, which they do not succeed at reliably against equally skilled players. By the time the Zerg has zerglings out using any half-way normal strategy, the opponent will usually have some troops as well.
Unless, of course, the Zerg's opponent did something risky and, say, tried to expand before getting troops or stationary defenses. But in this case it's not the Zerg's ability to build quickly that kills the opponent, it's the opponent's conciously chosen risky strategy that proved to be a bad choice.
Sorry to say so, but it seems to me as if the Zerg player(s) you witnessed playing were either vastly more experienced, more talented or both than the rest. Matches between players of equal level last some 20 minutes on average.

*2 With a single notable exception in the progaming scene, where the Zerg's opponent took a gamble and lost.

A proper Zerg rush shouldn't be aiming to win through destruction, but through attrition. Make him stay home to defend his economy. Harder on island maps, and particularly against Terran. 'I'm under attack! To the skies!'

Cynan Machae

2008-07-20, 10:38 PM

A proper Zerg rush shouldn't be aiming to win through destruction, but through attrition. Make him stay home to defend his economy. Harder on island maps, and particularly against Terran. 'I'm under attack! To the skies!'
I just read the first pages of the topic, but this comment drew my attention.

A 'Zerg Rush' as you call it, aim to win quickly or else the Zerg will be in a position in which the gap between the other player and the Z player will just widen as time passes. And what does the Terran expect to do with his buildings 'to the skies'? It doesnt matter that the Terran can lift off :P When a Terran is forced to lift off his base, he's dead.

A lot of stuff here on StarCraft is making me cringe. Pl-eeease. :smalltongue:

MeklorIlavator

2008-07-20, 11:02 PM

I mean with a few rare exceptions, it's not possible to affect the storyline in an RTS, like you can in an FPS, or RPG. It's generally just an excuse to kill things. TA did that well. On the flipside, Supreme Commander had a beautifully intricate and well detailed plot. In the end, both of them, and most RTS plots boil down to: 'Kill every living thing that isn't you.'

Not sure what you mean here. Most FPS's fall into that category, as well as RPG's. In fact, if you distill everything down, most games that involve violence fall into that category.

Dervag

2008-07-20, 11:59 PM

Although that does remind me: In like the first post on this tread, the OP asked if Eisenhower(IIRC) ever Tank Rushed. It got me to thinking: Would Eisenhower have Tank Rushed if he could have? And I think that yes, if he could build, man, and replace tanks like your average RTS player can, he probably would have crushed the Germans under a neverending wave of armor.That comes pretty close to what he did in real life. Eisenhower took advantage of the vastly superior industrial capacity of the Western Allies to swamp the Germans in materiel, just as the Soviets swamped them in manpower. US and British troops would use artillery like it was going out of style. They used massive waves of bombers to flatten German cities. They built enough transport planes to paradrop forty or fifty thousand soldiers behind their lines in a single night. The Western Allies had several times more tanks than the Germans in the field, and they needed them- those German tanks were heavy models crewed by elite veterans of the fighting on the Eastern Front.

However, what Eisenhower did not do was throw away his troops to gain an advantage or to use small rapid attacks to disrupt them. I think he was using an "expansion" tactic. He used his unattackable resource bases to manufacture an overwhelming army that didn't come into play until late in the war.

Another thing I would like to see in RTS games: Terrain that's more than window dressing. I wanna see swamp land that slows down infantry and mires and sinks tanks. I wanna see sand that favors light dune buggies. I want snowy weather that actually kills infantry if you leave them away from their base for too long, and blizzards that blind your view, obscure your radar, and keep your flyers from taking off.Some of this has been implemented in various games, but not all in one game like you want. It would be great, and it can definitely be done.

Lets see if we can expand this:
European Theater:
Eisenhower: Rush
Patton: Tank Rush
German Early stages: Rush(duh)
Late stages: Turtle
Soviets: Zerg RushNot sure I agree. Eisenhower was an expansion builder, as I argue above- he relied on good logistics to defeat his enemies. Instead of rushing with small armies, he waited until he'd built up a very large, very well equipped force that the enemy couldn't stop.

Patton was a tank rusher, yeah.

The Germans in the late game went for a "tech up" strategy, with the turtling being a way to buy time for that to work, but it didn't work well because the US and British managed to disrupt operations at their expansion bases.

I think you've got the Soviets pegged pretty well.

Triaxx

2008-07-21, 10:39 AM

If you aim to win quickly and fail, you're in that gap. If all you're after is to cripple his production, the gap works for you.

If you've brought Zerglings or Zealots, the airborne buildings are safe until the ground is safe, or they can move to another location. Marine's can still shoot you down, so it's not a good idea.

Winterwind

2008-07-22, 09:23 AM

If only because a purely defensive strategy is doom. I'm not talking a fast expansion, I'm talking about hitting first and crippling the opponent's ability to produce.I know that. I was the one who brought up fast expansion as example to refute your claim that
Starcraft isn't really a good example of strategy. If you haven't engaged the enemy thirty seconds after the game loads, you've already lost.I don't really see how your desription of what a rush is relates to my point.

Whether it's a Zergling fueled attack on SCV's, or a quick Marine manuever to eliminate drones, the entire purpose of that first attack is to slow the opponent's economy. Marines are the best at this since they don't have to chase the workers to harrass them.Ya, well, and again those are not manouvers that are employed every single game or are, even, necessary to win. Marines, for instance, are not all that often deployed in large numbers against other Terrans or Protoss, since the effectiveness of their attack is uncertain and their usefulness against the opponent's higher tech units doubtful at best.

Similar tactics occur in all RTS's with active resource collection. IF it's being carried by a unit, someone is going to attack the carrier. Games like TA, and SupCom with passive resource collection cause the resource buildings to be the prime targets.Umm... yes? I agree, obviously, but what's your point here?

Exactly. You can only move elements of the army, where other RTS's allow you to command the entire force. It reduces you to the control level of a field commander, instead of a general.Not really, since even though you can only select 12 units at once, you command a number of units many times larger than that, and send all of them at once to attack; for Zerg a number potentially up to several hundred units at once.

Wesnoth could do with a seperate MP balance system. If you don't pick that one strongest army, you're screwed. SP forces you to use the strong army. So the balance is skewed.While I wouldn't go as far as to say it's not possible to score a victory even with the weaker factions in Wesnoth, I agree that a seperate multiplayer balance system would be a well welcome feature.

I mean with a few rare exceptions, it's not possible to affect the storyline in an RTS, like you can in an FPS, or RPG. It's generally just an excuse to kill things. TA did that well. On the flipside, Supreme Commander had a beautifully intricate and well detailed plot. In the end, both of them, and most RTS plots boil down to: 'Kill every living thing that isn't you.'Many (most?) FPSs and RPGs aren't much different in this regard though. But yeah, I see what you mean.

You've never witnessed a Missile Tower crawl. Individually a single missle tower is a very fragile, and easily destroyed opponent. Three missile towers built together are virtually unstoppable without being able to out range them. They aren't rapid fire, but three of them will tear all but the strongest tanks apart. A single line of them won't do it though. You have to play to the terrain, the advantage is wasted if you try it through a trench, since the bombers will get you.Ah. I see.

The strategy comes from being able to pull off two of them. They are incredibly powerful without being real super units. It's almost psychological warfare. The feeling of watching doom descend on you. It's the reverse of the fast expansion and the turtle at the same time.

In Battle For Wesnoth, it's the equivalent of moving a single space with every unit, so it becomes an advancing wall. You can't hit any one unit with more than two opponents and can't have one unit hit by more than two opponents. Absolutely demoralizing when it works. Awesomely stupid when it fails.I see.

Humm, but it's a large commitment of ressources to static locations. I don't know what game this particular strategy is from (some C&C or other, I suspect?), or how said game's mechanics work in detail, but in most games I would simply ignore the towers and focus all my ressources at the most weakly defended point, which he wouldn't be able to reinforce, given all his ressources are bound in immobile structures. If not possible, since his defences would deflect an attack from any direction, I'd use the time he'd need to build that massive defense ring to expand all over the map, gain an economical advantage and break the defenses with tech or vastly superior numbers of siege units.

If you aim to win quickly and fail, you're in that gap. If all you're after is to cripple his production, the gap works for you.

If you've brought Zerglings or Zealots, the airborne buildings are safe until the ground is safe, or they can move to another location. Marine's can still shoot you down, so it's not a good idea.But if you are forced to lift off your buildings, where should the reinforcements to make the ground safe again come from? And if you keep your buildings airborn for a long time - possibly for a time long enough to reach a different location - you will be so far behind that you might surrender immediately just as well.

Oslecamo

2008-07-22, 10:52 AM

The Germans in the late game went for a "tech up" strategy, with the turtling being a way to buy time for that to work, but it didn't work well because the US and British managed to disrupt operations at their expansion bases.

False. The main reason the germans lost was because their mad comander decided to tech up WHILE sending his troops in suicide attacks when they should be turtling.

He who must not be named couldn't admit to lose terrain to anyone, so when the russians started pushing him back he ordered his troops to counter attack at all costs or die trying. And die they did. When he finally admited he had to retreat and turtle, the russians had already crushed most of his war machine, moral was low, and the russians simply didn't stop applying pressure, pushing them all the way back to their main base(Berlin).

Remember kids, all strategies are viable, but that doesn't mean that using all strategies at the same time is viable.

They were building submarines when their land was on siege, they were sending V bombs to kill nonmilitary targets when they desesperately needed anti air, or, well, anything wich actually killed enemy soldiers. They had lost most of their resource gathering capacity, so their tanks simply ran out of fuel and the weapons out of ammo.

Stalin, on the other hand, had the mind to order the construction/conversion of hundreds of war material factories in the back zones of Russia where the germans couldn't reach. This allowed him to defeat the germans with sheer numbers, since he assured his unit producing building and resource gathering were working at full power all the time. German reports of WW2 tell of their comanders desesperation of fighting an enemy wich seemed to don't run out of weapons and soldiers.