Comparing other RTS games

[Jodwin]

Here I was, thinking that it could be both interesting and educational for us to talk about different RTS games we've played and analyze their pros and cons from our own point of view. Maybe this'll give Steve some extra input for WBC 4 (or maybe not :) ). Anyway, post telling what RTS games you've played, how much, which game modes and most importantly, what you think of those games.

I'll start:

Age of Kings (+ expansion)

Perhaps my personal favourite RTS game, I've played tons of it. However most of that was playing the campaigns and custom singleplayer scenarios; aside from cooping the AI I've played barely any multiplayer games in AoK. Personally, I like the economy model in AoK a lot since it's not over simplified and with some civs you can actually manage to do different strategies by emphasizing different resource early on.

The combat was a bit too unpolished in AoK, lacking commands such as "attack-move." But that aside, I liked the fact that there was some rock-paper-scissors aspect to the combat, but not too much of it. What I really liked in AoK was the technologies, since they weren't too streamlined, yet still pretty obvious and easy to figure out.

To sum it up, a pretty balanced experience, just lacking in combat controls.


Age of Mythologies (with expansion only)

...an other Ensemble title, AoM is the only RTS along WBC 3 that I've mostly played online versus other players. I spent a couple of months with AoM playing a few matches online each morning before going to school. Oh, and I did finish the expansion campaign too, but never got halfway through the original campaign.

The economy model being very similar to the one in AoK, I like it as well. There are some subtle differences with the economy models of each four civs, nothing too much but enough to set them apart in a good way. Actually, generally speaking, the four civs are all rather similar but with small differences, and those are just enough to make different enough to avoid being too repetitive. Also the major/minor god system adds a lot of spice to the different civs and allows reacting to other players' advancement with certain particular advancement options of your own.

Combat in AoM was pretty close to that of AoK, but now with the extra polish that AoK lacked. In other words, pretty darn good. The extra rock-paper-scissors introduced by myth units and heroes was a very nice touch as well.

Simply put, I'd say that AoM is a pretty easy game to play but with plenty of depth into it, just the way I like it. Oh, and it's also got THE best multiplayer lobby I've EVER seen, just to be able to get a game started with an equally skilled player via a single click of a button? Hell yes!!!


Dune 2, Dune 2000, Command & Conquers

Okay, a time for a break from the Ensemble titles (I'll be coming back to AoE 3 later ;) ), I'll give my thoughts for these in a very, very short "analysis":
I don't like these games. Period. The economic model, base building and whatnot are horribly, horribly simplified, just the way which I don't like. At all.


Starcraft

Hopping around the developers, Starcraft is one of those games I'm in a love/hate relationship with. On the one hand we have rather unique three sides and one of the best singleplayer campaigns in an RTS and on the other we have, I don't know, a game which just pisses me off.

Again, aside from some coop games against AI I never really played Starcraft online, so my comments come pretty much from fighting the AI. The economy model is ok, it could use a little bit more depth ala the Age of-games, but it's not bad. The races are all interesting enough on themselves and the upgrades you can get are interesting and the game isn't streamlined.

But I just can't shake off the disgust caused by having no difficulty options in singleplayer skirmish games. It just...ruined this game for me.


Warzone 2100

A scifi title I haven't played much nor have ever heard anyone else mention. This game was pretty cool because you could design your own units from different parts. Sweet.


Age of Empires 3

Well, since I said it was coming I guess I should keep my word. I never played a lot of AoE3, just finished the campaign(s) and played some skirmished against the AI until I "realised" that it was a rather bland and repetitive game on the inside (or at least that's how it felt).

However, I won't be too mean on poor little AoE3, since it's also got a plenty of nifty little features that I really liked. It's more like the game's got a ton of nice features, but they were badly misused. Which is sad. Anyway, the economy model goes along the good old Ensemble lines back from AoE1, but this time a bit more streamlined by removing the need to carry the resource off to drop off points. Better? Or worse? I really can't tell. Probably a bit of both.

Like I said, I really liked some of the features in this game. The natives, railroads, home city and so on, those are all pretty darn cool and a good use of them is made in the singleplayer campaign(s). But they never felt like having a big enough impact on spicing up the skirmish games.


Rise of Nations

Since I ranted about this on these forums a day or two ago, I'll just say that this game is too streamlined for my taste.


WBC

Well, it had to be coming, you knew that it was coming, didn't you? I won't bother doing a separate analysis on each WBC game since they all fundamentally share the same gameplay mechanics, but, anyway!

I'm in a love/hate relationship with the WBC economy model. It clearly puts emphasis on control over the battlefield, which is a very, very good thing. However, I end up thinking that maybe some of the races and game mechanics could be refined a bit to emphasis the actual control and battle over the battlefield instead of just promoting rampant generals and heroes running around converting mines. Although I'm obviously in love with the economy model from the Age of-games, I'd be happy enough to get married with WBC as well if that little "issue" got "fixed". :)

Although anyone who's been reading my WBC rants already probably knows it, I'll say it anyway: IMO the races are too similar in gameplay. Certainly, the elves and undead have a bit different mechanics, but that's about it. Also, the elven style is shared in between three different races, so it isn't that unique either. Something little (or not so little) would be needed to spice things up. Also the battles could use some depth, since for most races it's just a matter of massing the strongest troops available.

However, despite those shortcomings, I still like WBC (I really do!). It must be the heroes, they really add some extra depth to the game. And speaking of which, although I like the depth and...atmosphere of the WBC1/2 system, I like the fact that you could do some pretty obscure skill and spell combinations in WBC 3 to really add some extra spice to the game. The Minotaur runemaster is a nice example of one such hero.

To sum it up...as a pure RTS game if you drop off the heroes, it's a bit lacking, but with heroes it gets better.

[Kharn]

I've only played 2 different RTS games - well I did play Age of Empires 2 the Demo many years ago but never realy followed with it.




WBC:

I loved the many races and mnay units but alot of the units for me didn't realy proove to be of any use - I liked having them there as for more of a choice but that was about it. With some races I would never build a certain unit and would build the same units when against EVERY other race. I would have liked it if I had to build certain units against some races else it would be too hard to beat them with normal unit builds.

I also loved the many spells but the Hero system didn't seem too customisationable (Is that a word?) I would have liked mroe avatar choices and not just been given access to other race's avatars.

I would have liked more items and more images for items. Alot of the items looked the same and there could have been more types such as Whips and primative clubs for melee weapons also what about a range bow and arrow weapon?

With Jodwin's 1.03.23 patch I made a ranged weapon (It gave the user the fire missile spell) and it was pretty good :)




Dawn of War and its 2 expansions.

I liked the quick action of the game and the visual appearences of upgrades, I.E: When you upgrade Necron warriors with disruption fields, they had a green aura around them.
I also liked how the upgrades for units were only available later on in the game which meant I couldn't go straight away and buy up the upgrades without moving to a new tier (upgrdaing a Keep)

Also every unit had its worth and when there were unit role clashes, the better one had a cap on the amount you could have so you couldn't win the game with just them.
Another thing about this was how all normal units were terrible against buildings but then you could build units that specialised in building demolishion and you had to use them else it would take forever to knock down buildings.

I also liked how the buildings had HUGE amount of HP. Back with WBC3, I tried to modify the buildings HP to much higher but couldn't do it with the public tools. I realy don't like the idea that a few stabs from a Knight's sword could knock down a tower.

[Doomreaver]

RTS games I've played:

Starcraft. One of the better RTS I've played in balance, excellent number of units that are "different", and came with a robust variety of multiplayer maps. Only 2 resources that everyone needs for almost every unit gets a little boring, and little to do while building up in the first few minutes of a normal skirmish.

Warcraft 1. Horrible AI, as can be expected from a game as old as it was when I last played it, and it didn't even build up a base! (All AI players started with a complete base on most/all maps) Only 2 resource types again. (I think, can't remember if it had Oil like Warcraft 2)

Warcraft 2. Probably my first RTS, and therefore near and dear to my heart. One major problem is that the two sides were almost exactly the same as the other side. Only major differences were in the upgrades for their archer units and the spells for late-game spellcasters. 3 resource types, two on land only and one on sea only, but all 3 being needed to get up to the maximum build tier (tier 3).

Warcraft 3. One of the few RTS games I still play, with 4 seperate factions and highly different build trees. Too much focus on controlling your units well (micro) as compared to having a good economy going while fighting (macro). Also, just two resource types again.

Krush Kill 'n Destroy 1 with the Extreme expansion (KKNDX). Two factions, one resource type (oil power), units very similar between sides. Horrible AI, which like in Warcraft 1 couldn't even build up a base and therefore needed to start with one pre-build to be a challenge.

Krush Kill 'n Destroy 2 - Krossfire. Still only the one resource type, but with a second way to harvest it. A third faction, and a little more differential between different factions' units of the same tier. Also, an AI that on the hardest difficulties could squish me if I wasn't careful.

Age of Empires 2. I never really liked this game much, even though I met people who raved about it. The resource system felt a little clunky and the factions had very few differences between them that I saw in my playtime.

Age of Mythology. Never liked this one much either, for much the same reasons as AoE2. More differences between different sides, but it wasn't immediately apparent to me what each unit did or was good at from the tooltips and in-game help.

Metal Fatigue. Only one resource type to manage but multiple ways to harvest it. Main unit type was the "Com-Bot" which was a giant robot made from parts. (2 arms, a Torso, and a Legs) Customizability was good for the Com-Bots, and each of the 3 factions had significantly different pieces to put on their units. AI was very good at attacking underdefended resource gatherers.

Warlords Battlecry 1-3. Excellent games, with 4 types of resources to manage, but a simple enough system that it wasn't overtaxing. Heroes and Army Setup Points were a big plus, with things to do early on in the game other than just using workers, unlike most RTS's. I disliked the imbalances, but imbalances are almost impossible to completely remove in an RTS. (Even the vaunted Starcraft isn't completely balanced between the 3 races) Variety of races are a plus, as even though, say, the 3 elves are similar to each other, they aren't the same. Hero abilites that make the sides they choose play differently from different heroes is a good thing too. WBC3 is the RTS I play most often these days.

[SteveFawkner]

Thanks guys, that sort of analysis really does help, with everything compared together. It's not unlike the documents we write up at the start of a project to analyze our competitors.

Cheers

-Steve

[Ahatch]

Well I've played a few different RTS but I still like good ol turn based :)

In The Order I played them:
PowerMonger
Hated it! Crappy game end of storey! :lol:
Warcraft 1
At the time this was a great game. Played it on my ol Tandy 2500 SX :lol:
Lots of microing of individual troops and peons chopping wood and carrying gold. Good for it's day though.

Warcraft 2 / Tides Of Darkness / Battlenet Edition
A classic game really great balance fun gameplay not great AI mind you but played online a bit with modem and was stable. Lots of other players online playing the game so wasn't hard to find an opponent. Also the game was marketed so well I played aggainst friends and cooworkers from my home town.

Age Of Empires /Demo
I played the demo from PC Gamer demo disc. Didn't like farming and killing deer for food thing as my farmers were allways standing around :lol: The one thing I did like was formations. The troops actually kept them so your army looked more organized.

Warlords Battlecry 1,2
Well when I heard this game was coming out I was already a huge Warlords fan as I played all the turn based Warlords games. Basically after playing it I unistalled Warcraft 2 and never looked back :).
Warlords Battlecry 2 was a good success as there was a vibrant community not hard to find other players. A good game lobby!

Impossible Creatures
This game intrigued me it was a cool concept so I gave it a whirl. Sadly the funnest part of the game was the creation part and when the gameplay started I was already spoiled by WBC gameplay.

Warlords Battlecry3
Continued where the others left off. Still have it on my harddrive and play the odd skirmish here and there. Never played much online games as I live in the country.

[summoner49]

Hm, let me dig it up...

Alright,

Empire Earth-

I was young, and was impressed by the different civilizations available to be played. To be honest I wasn't very impressed by the overall gameplay, and I felt like the campaign was blah and trying to make something out of nothing, but I think this is where I learned I like fantasy games rather than games attempting to base their game off realistic events.

Sacrifice-

I am not sure if this is really an RTS, although once you summoned your army it sure played like one. I found the basic concept very very original and interesting and loved the campaign very much. This is pre-online play for me, so single player is where games lived and died with me, and I was very much impressed with this one.

WBC2-

I had DLR and RoH as a small kid and loved the land of Etheria and the story of Lord Bane and Sartek. So when I came across some money I searched the internet to find that WBC2 had just been released and it was by the same makers and included the same basic world of DLR. I jumped right on it and fell in love. I loved each and every race (excluding Fey) and found each build strategy fascinating while I tried to build my own. What hooked me though was the helpful online community as well as the online personalities, cwmagee for his forum help, psycho for his online battles, and UN's Wotan which got me interested in hero builds instead of build orders. I did find the campaign a bit bland, as I do very much prefer well written storyline based campaign. I also disliked the severely off balance of certain units (WE sprites). But overall this game is what got me going, and will probably always be my favorite.

WBC3-

I separate these two games because to me there is a very different feel from WBC2 and WBC3. I did participate in the beta test with a few fellow wbc2 players, but straight from the beginning I had issues.

-I felt like the hero system was too dumbed down. I knew i2 wanted to change the system so it didn't require a calculator to build the perfect hero so there were no unused or wasted AP's but I felt like I was playing a completely different game and it took some of the fun out of the heroes.

-The graphics and interface was too dreary. I know that one of the issues with WBC2 was that people complained it was too cartoony (or at least cyber6net wouldn't shut up about it), but I felt like I literally had a mood swing to depression when I booted up WBC3. The units, the terrain, the interface, all dull brownish and dead. Hated it.

Warcraft III-

Played this when it came out, and I liked it only because I was so used to UBI.com and Enlight's lobby that battle.net looked like somebody did something amazing, when really they just made something that worked. I liked the base movements from gold mine to gold mine as just a stationary base didn't ever get you very far, but the hero system just played like a kids version of WBC2. I played for a few months and then uninstalled.

[Sir Vic]

1. WBC 1-3

WBC1 is one of the first RTS games I've played. I actually was pretty addicted to the demo. It had a feel of continuity which is great! By smelting RPG & RTS. WBC1 had a pretty good campaign. The graphics served their purpose. While WBC2's graphics were the best IMO. Overall their really great games which lots of replay.

2. Warcraft 2 Battle Net.

This is actually a very good game. Very strong gameplay with good online mutliplayer. At the time, the graphics were excellent. It has some concepts of "heroes in the RTS world". Overall these games sure do please.

3. Battle Realms w/ Winter of the Wolf Expansion

This is right here is one of my most favorite 3D RTS. The graphics crazy good at its time. A lot of new RTS concepts were integrated. You basically start off with some peasants and to get stronger units you train the peasants in the "training" buildings. The peasants BTW are builders. As resource, you collect rice and water. You can collect other resources such as horses to be used to mount on or help with harvesting. You can summon heroes also but they don't level up. They are four very distinct clans(races). The Dragon, The Serpent, The Lotus, and The wolf. Overall this a fantastic game.

I'll write more later...

[warlord4484]

Hmm.. I'd have to think about that one..

WBC1 - I was also addicted to the demo. I was amazed at it when I got the full game. It did seem a bit overwhelming at first when I had all the new races. Only Undead and Humans in the demo.. The thing I loved so much about WBC1 is that it had such a specific feel to it. A feeling that no other game could do. There's been few games that have really done that for me. UT2004 but not as good as that. It made me want to forge a sword and search in dark caves. Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how Steve and the team did that.. lol. A lot of it was the music.. The gameplay was very unique to me. Especially since that was the first RTS I'd ever played. And one of the first stat based RPG's I think. I think a lot of the feeling comes from lore. The story of the campaign, the in game quests.. It's a feeling of being involved maybe.. partially. Other than that I thought the gameplay was great.
When we moved on to WBC2, the feeling was still there. Not as stong for me, but I think that may just be because you could never duplicate the origional.. and 3 is great and still has it's own feeling.. but not as strong as the other two.. I think that's a key element.. Get the game to have its own unique feeling. Not just in gameplay but.. like ambient elements we might say..

Tsar - I really liked this game for its time. It had many features which I'd never seen in another game like a spy which could infiltrate bases and such. The gameplay did get a little repeditive though.

Age of Mythology - I liked this game for about 3 battles. I don't know why, but it just sucked to me. too repeditive, too.. boring gameplay..

Age of the Empires - Another 'unique feeling' game. AoE 1 and 2 were great I thought. This game (in the campaign at least) kindve forced you to change your style from time to time. And winning this game against your friend out of nowhere was the greatest feeling ever. I remember one time me and my friend seemed to be in a stalemate in late game, with many towers surrounding our bases and stuff, and I snuck builders to the other side of a lake that went partially into his base, built a few quick transport ships, and unloaded my whole army inside his base.. *sigh..*. He ended up quitting before I could destroy him...

Command and Conquer - Have I really not seen anything about this? thats suprising.. I havnt played this game too much, (I think its CaC2 actually), but it was very fun the time that I was on it. One thing that really made it fun, was the number of ways you could possibly win. Some games, you'd do the same thing every time to win.. Build a bunch of this type of powerful unit and rush.. or something.. But it seemed like there was many ways you could win this.. Or you could combine certain aspects of everything. paratroopers outside their base while theres tank and infantry cover from behind, Atom bomb their important building and use that one strong tank to transport troops into their base and helicopters and lightning storms.. Very unique feeling. Very good game.. even in it's old age.

Empire earth - lol.. *see age of mythology*

Warcraft 3 - I liked this game, it just seemed a bit slow paced.. maybe that was just because I sucked? I didn't spend a lot of time on it though.. Maybe about a month or two.. For the elven race, the Buildings (Trees) that could move and attack were amazing though.

mmk thats all I can think of right now. i'm too tired.. almost 3 a.m.
later

[Doomreaver]

Other RTS games I've remembered playing since my last post:

Dark Reign 2. Amusing little game despite only two factions. Factions had some similarities, but it was nice that each side had some things the other didn't. Only one resource type (Taelon) that always seemed in short supply for me and high supply for the AI's/other players. (Though I might just have been very bad at the game) Linear campaigns for each of the two factions were somewhat nice, but I prefer campaigns where I can go do whatever I want to like WBC2 or WBC3 over linear campaigns.

Kohan 2: Kings of War. Very interesting game, with its resource system where you have gold, various types of support, and your gold is reduced by the amount you go over the various types of support. Upgrades were based on faction, so for races with more than one faction, you could have different research than another player of the same faction. Annoying how powerful Heavy Infantry of most races was compared to Archer type units of most races. Having units come in "companies" where you don't lose the units permanently until the whole company is destroyed was an interesting twist on the normal method. Also interesting were the Kohan, which were powerful leader units for companies. I liked having neutral buildings that defend themselves and give bonuses when captured. I also liked that all your towns put up a fight based on their build level and how long they've had to repair/replenish after the last time they were attacked.

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. I quite enjoyed this game, I played it over Gamespy Arcade pretty often. Each of the 4 factions (a fifth with the Iron Plague Expansion, though the fifth wasn't supported by Gamespy) had their own units and buildings. It was annoying that to add an "Attack-Move" command you needed to edit a file, without that being mentioned in the Readme with the game. I didn't like that certain units in each faction were nearly useless or even detrimental, such as the Executioners of Taros that would damage your own units if you had a lot of them around an enemy. Certain units of some factions, like the Trebuchets of Aramon, were extremely powerful and hard to counter.

Machines. This old game was mildly amusing. It had just one race, but in that one race you could build a wide variety of units, and their were two upgrade lines. You could only get the "best" units of one line in any average game. Unfortunately, units didn't follow orders very well, and the resource gathering didn't seem very... integrated to me.

I'm not sure if everyone would count them as Real-time Strategy games, but they're in real time and they require some thought and advanced planning, so I'll include them anyways.

Dungeon Keeper 1. One of the first computer games I've played where you take the side of the bad guys, which was a nice change. Interesting range of creatures to recruit into your dungeon. Amount you could interact with your creatures was a bit limited, as it was sometimes hard to tell a small strike team of powerful creatures to "go attack here" without your whole dungeon taking up arms and going there. Infinite gold exploits with the Workshop were an annoyance.

Dungeon Keeper 2. Improves on the original in many ways. Better creature balance, fixed the Workshop infinite gold exploit, made traps more valuable. Very important improvement is that it added more single player modes in addition to a campaign, which the original lacked. Stability of multiplayer was an issue.

Sacrifice. Quite a unique strategy game. Unlike most strategy games, this one was from a viewpoint behind a wizard who you make run around casting spells, instead of the normal top-down or isometric view of RTS. Balance seemed decent for the most part of what little multiplayer I did, but it had the major problems of version errors when trying to play online. When I first tried to play it online, I couldn't join any games because I hadn't patched my game, but it didn't tell me that. I needed other players to tell me to patch my game.

Seven Kingdoms 1. Old game, so I don't remember a lot of it, but I liked the way towns and empires were built up in it. I enjoyed that there were 7 different playable factions that each had their own strengths and weaknesses. The AI was brutal though, I had a very hard time staying alive even without giving the AI extra resources or advantages.

Seven Kingdoms 2. Adding the 7 Fryhtan Races and another 5 Human factions added more variety. I still never managed to do all that well against the AI though.

[Demicore]

Hi again guys, dunno if anybody remembers me.
I've played through tons of RTSs in my gaming life, actually I've played through nearly all of those that were released up until 2005 (cause my current comp can't handle the new ones!).

My favorites for online competitive play will always be Tiberian Sun and WBC3, although I won't go into why now since it would take too long and nobody would care anyway. What I'll say is this: frustrated by WBC3's community, or rather its lack thereof, I decided to try and play Warcraft 3 competitively. I knew beforehand that it would be a clickfest of massive proportions, but I figured it probably was the only game with at least some amount of strategy in it that had balanced races, a supportive developer with tons of cash, a big community and a great server for online play. WELL BIG MISTAKE. It does have all this, but at its heart it lacks something it will never have and that WBC3 had in spades: real strategy gaming. WC3 online play is refined to a point in which all the races have been narrowed down to one or two cookie-cutter strategies that you HAVE to use if you want to stand a chance. All of these are fairly balanced, which leaves only one thing to determine the outcome of the games: micromanagement. Which basically turns the whole game into an ACTION game, pretty ironic.

WBC3 had imbalance, bugs, a shitty online server, and a small and inactive community (aside from the modding guys, you rock, well some of you do, and by some of you I mean Jodwin), but it was a real strategy game at heart and when I think that so many people in the world are ignoring it in favor of crap games such as Warcraft 3 I'm sure somewhere a kitten dies.

Anyway I'm not sure why I chimed in to say this. I guess the morale of the story is that if Steve ever turns the next WBC into a microwar game I'll have to burn down his mansion and all his ferraris that he bought with the Puzzle Quest money.

[Jodwin]

...but it was a real strategy game at heart and when I think that so many people in the world are ignoring it in favor of crap games such as Warcraft 3 I'm sure somewhere a kitten dies.

Yes, please think of the kittens. :(
http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/Sidebox-Kitten-Thinks-R.jpg

[Kharn]

Hi again guys, dunno if anybody remembers me.

Why does everyone say that?
I clearly remember everyone from all the WBC3 forums, even the old Enlight orangey, brown forums. :D

......I can even remember your past avatars as well. :shock:

[Demicore]

I guess I should be flattered but it's kinda creepy :lol:

[Campaigner]

Starting with the first ones.
I played C&C The First Decade a few months ago and replayed every C&C there is (Except Renegade).

Command & Conquer

I rented it on my Playstation (don't remember if I ever bought it) and played it until I completed both campaigns (was no skirmish mode).

I liked the different missions, countersystem, faction difference, increasing difficulty , available techlvls as you complete more missions and above all, the theme and atmosphere.
One thing I especially liked was that micromanagement was rewarded. If I had two GDI Medium tanks and faced of against some NOD Light tanks I first wnet forward with tank #1 and focused fire on one Light tank at a time with both tanks.. I then retreated a Medium tank when it gotted yellow health (if large amount of enemies present) to save it and sometimes some enemies followed it so my other troops took down the pursuers. Then when no enemies was left I went home and repaired my Medium tanks.

The bad things with this game was that GDI was overpowered compared to NOD. I found out that you only needed the rocket launcher vehicle and Medium tanks to deal with everything NOD had. Throw in a Mammoth tank to absorb damage and you're set. The Orcas was overkill.
It went like this: Medium tanks killed Stealth tanks 1v1 which was NODs highest tier unit. NOD Light tanks only shot away 1/3 of a Medium tanks health before being destroyed. NOD Attack Bikes was an expensive scouting vehicle that could only kill the GDI APC.
The GDI rocker launcher vehicle killed ALL infantry in one hit. Three infantry units died for every burst of the rocket launcher vehicle.
The Orca wasn't needed for GDI and was therefore overkill. It forced NOD to bring Stealth tanks with their strikeforces so as to not get hammered by Orcas on their way to the GDI base.

Another bad thing with the game was that the harvesters had to sit in the refinery while unloading which took 10 seconds.

In all, it was good for its day but would fail miserably today with its simplified gameplay and balanceproblems.



Red Alert

Gotted this on my Playstation as well. This game is so much like C&C in gameplay mechanics that I'll only list the important differences.


The Ore trucks unloads in 1 sec which is much better then the C&C harvesters
The two sides are more differentiated which adds to replayvalue


The worst thing with this game is that it becomes a macrofest where it boils down to clicking on the "Heavy or Medium Tank" button as soon as a tank finishes. With todays UIs that allow for autoqueing or atleast to queue up 5 units it would have been much better.
The macro focus of the game takes away from the micro aspect of the game which makes it boring to me and thus dismissed.

Conclusion: It was fun for its time but today it's hopelessly outdated and boring.


WarCraft 2

Let me start by saying that I've never played the original WarCraft so I don't have any "this is better/worse compared to the first one".

Unlike the C&C games, WarCraft 2 got this "magic" with it that makes it fun. Eventhough the sides are identical and the skirmish mode against the A.I is a bore, the campaigns, story and atmosphere saves the game. The differences between the spellcasters also do there part in that.

For its time it was great. Today it's hopelessly outdated and wouldn't get 20% in a review....this is because all the UI improvements of today isn't in WarCraft 2 such controlgroups, autoqueing, queing, smartcast and autocast.
Add that the squares the units move in and buildings get built on are large and this game is too outdated.

To conclude, it's a fond memory but lets keep it that way.


StarCraft

THE RTS game. From the first moment I tried it to the VODs I will watch in 30mins this RTS is still the king.
It has nearly everything:

Unique, interesting, balanced races
Engaging story
Great campaign
Fun gameplay
Perfect netcode and a good online service (Battle.Net)
Big community

Only thing it doesn't have is an updated UI that would make the game easier to play. But StarCraft 2 will solve that :D

Conclusion: Still the king!


C&C 2: Tiberian Sun

The hype was big. Much was promised. Expectations were huge.

The result was a grand disappointment!

Tiberian Sun is an abysmal failure as a sequel to C&C.

Westwood and Blizzard competed with eachother since Dune 2 was released but their competition didn't heat up until C&C was released in 1995.
Dune 2 was the first real RTS that had all the principles of an RTS (basebuilding, resourcegathering and armyproduction). Blizzard released the original WarCraft two years later and thus the rivalry in the RTS genre between Westwood Studios and Blizzard Entertainment was born.

Now, it would take a few games before a winner would be crowned, but in this time, no one could predict the winner.

Westwood released C&C the year after which made them worldfamous. Blizzards response didn't wait and in Dec 9 1995 WarCraft 2 was brought to the stage.
The height of their competition though was on April 30 1996 which is the date when the expansions to both WarCraft 2 and C&C were released.

Westwood came with Red Alert soon thereafter and two expansions to it. Almost like they tried to drown out Blizzard. However, Quality always beats quantity and when StarCraft came in April 1 1998, Westwood took a serious hit and went down for the count.

The C&C community could not dismiss StarCraft (though ofcourse they tried) but said instead that Tiberian Sun would be soo much better then StarCraft.

Tiberian Sun came in August 27 1999 and people had extreme expectations only to be completely disappointed. This abysmal failure of an RTS could not compete with StarCraft in any way. Yet, the fanboys of the C&C community (who remain today) say that TS is their best RTS (......) and that TS allows for STRATEGY!!! as opposed to the "clickfest" that StarCraft is....(oh jeez....)
Well, I don't tell the lunatics at the asymul that they're dead wrong and I don't tell foolish fans of either until they provoke me with rubbish talk so I'll let them stay in their little bubble of the internet where TS is the latest and greatest.

Conclusion: OMG what a grand disappointment....


Age of Empires

Eventhough it was praised I hated it. It was SLOW and boring. It took 10min to get to the second age and really start attacking which was such a sucky designdecision....

Four resources, lots of units and technologies and a RMG could not save this game. It was still slow and boring compared to StarCraft and thus it fails.

Conclusion: Slooooow....


Age of Kings

Played the demo and hated it from the very beginning. Still slow.

Conclusion: Slow as AoE. Nothing more to say.


Age of Mythology

Best AoE game so far. Finally some pace in this slow franschise.
And unlike the other AoE games, this one had distinctive, interesting factions. The gods and myth units was a great addition as well and really made me finish the campaign.


WarCraft 3

I thought this game was going to be like the other WarCrafts and I even bought it at release day 00.00 without trying it beforehand and MAN was that a mistake! The campaign was great but the skirmishes was boring. Those damn heroes destroyed the game. Resourcemanagement was also screwed up....
WarCraft 3 was pure micro, that is for certain. A bit too much micro.


WBC 3

It suits as a campaigngame but it doesn't work in skirmish since it isn't balanced. And heroes have too much impact. But without heroes singleplayer would get boring.

The WBC series is pure macro and doesn't encourage micro and that I don't like.

A great thing though is autoqueue and I NEVER thought that a budget game would have such a great RTS feature.


Check this (http://www.gamereplays.org/showstories.php?id=174903) link for history of RTS games.

[shai-hulud]

Dungeon Keeper 1
Amazing atmosphere. Loving to this day the whole ironic dark spoof on dungeon crawlers that was going on. An awesome game. had a lot of interesting features and broad room styles and units you could build/train. Only problems were that the tech tree was so narrow that there was no real way to mix up the game start except with minor variation. Thus the high-speed skirmish play had a hard time reflecting the more unique styles of the single player game. Also the whole “build your own dungeon” theme was having trouble with butting heads with some of the faster paced elements of the game.
Dungeon Keeper 2
Ew, what can I really say here? They killed it for me. Cut away a bunch of the features, slashed away at some of the unique game play styles, and pretty much forced everyone to play exactly the same way or else. Ruined the “build a dungeon” style with having to manage moral and relationships. Plus they destroyed the entire atmosphere of the game, replacing the goofy but dark and ironic setting with a gritty hardcore goth-wanna-be world. Speaking of slapping workers, I’d like to slap them!
Starcraft
A real classic this one stands out as one of my favorites. The asymmetrical teams and wide range of not just units, but also training and construction style creates a dynamic game environment to play in. My only real problem was resources, but I could live with it for such a fun game. My only issue was that the species were different enough (though it seems SC2 will be fixing this.)
Brood War
Great expansion, added some cool new units to the line up already available, just wished the new air units hadn’t been so similar.
Warcraft 3
A lot like Starcraft, and I enjoyed the heroes unlike a lot of people. The factions and units had a broad range of cool differences and powers, and the different economic models were an awesome twist. I also really liked the well-made armor and weapon system, which made the game balanced without making it about hard counters. Always a good way to balance a game. My only wish was that the factions had been even more different from each other. Also it had a lot of cool custom made games and maps.
Frozen Throne
Egad what happened here? Scrapped the nicely balanced armor weapon system for a more hard core spam fest because, or so I heard, people didn’t like having to build siege to bust down towers or use powers/combined arms to beat enemy units. New changes and additions pretty much just made all the factions almost complete carbon copies of each other, plus a lot of the units and powers were made null by changing the armor system, yet were still left in as junk filler.
Kohan and Kohan: Arhimans Gift
An interesting take on the RTS game style, trying to explain this in simple terms would be pretty hard. Things I liked were the rich atmosphere and single player stories, as well as the variety of neutral species and monster lairs you could conquer to help your empire. Getting tech by slaying the appropriate monster nest was a pretty neat twist. Problems were that resources meant nothing compared to sheer gold value, massive imbalance of ranged units, and as usual that the factions were not different enough. The only one with it’s own set of units and style was the “evil” faction. The “good” factions were all the same with 1-3 extra units tacked onto the build list.
Conquest Frontier Wars
The whole space theme was interesting, but other than that it was just a badly made Starcraft knock off with even less distinction between teams.
Warzone 2100.
The tech tree was convoluted and the units often worthless in combat. The only thing done well in this game was siege. But god dang was it done well. Wow, if only artillery was like this in other games. I mean wow. The base defenses were almost impassable, the aircraft swooped and dived as fighter tried to gun down bombers and the howitzers could shoot clear across the small and medium maps. Never got much online play in, but from what I read other players felt the same way and most all games involved massive forts deploying aircraft and just duking it out with artillery duels until the other players died. Freaking sweet. But yeah, still a cruddy game in other respects.
Command and Conquer Generals
The general points system was spiffy and the teams almost had some meaningful differences between them. But alas, to many of the powers were too similar, and the factions still didn’t have enough differences for my taste. But still not too bad (starcraft levels, which is ok.) The real thing that bugged me was the massive under utilization of urban combat, which would has been amazing for and RTS game. But it was just tacked on for atmosphere.
Warlords Battlecry
A fun game. Like games before, the factions were different, but not as much as I would have liked it. I really liked the way economics worked (even if four different ones was a bit too much for a game like this) and the hero system was fun. Putting greater emphasize on map control would have been an MAJOR improvement. Plus, with so many resources to deal with, I often found myself buying unit types that had nothing to do with my strategy at the time just so I wasn’t sitting on unused wealth.
Warlords Battlecry 2
Even more teams, I would have preferred the demons had been left out as they were cooler as something you could summon by sacrifice with the Dark Elves. But that is just nitpicking. I loved the new building graphics and all the art, and the conquest campaign was pretty fun if a little limited. The major thing that bugged me was the new units, many of which seemed like nothing but bigger versions of existing units tacked onto the list. Still my favorite WBc, despite being small enough to be an expansion pack.
Warlords Battlecy 3
A lot of the changes were so limited this really seems more an expansion like above, only worse because many of the changes were so skittish that many of the pieces of the game don’t even seem to fit together graphics wise. I mean, look at that dark elf spider priestess. What the heck was going on there? At this point in the series there are so many similar factions that there are almost no meaningful game play differences between them. And what, then, is the point of having different teams? And what happened to that cool skill book?
Earth 2140
Pretty much a CnC rip off from what I hear, I really liked the way infantry could capture building seamlessly.
Earth 2150 and The Moon Project
Like Warzone 2100, this game had a design your own unit option, but better since it didn’t have all those useless techs. But other than that it wasn’t so hot.
Alpha Centauri
A pretty awesome game. A lot of the high end takes were so hard to get that they never came up in game play, and some of the features like government didn’t provide enough of a difference for your faction beside a mild stat bonus. Despite having very similar factions, they still manage to pull it off pretty well.
Outpost 2
Interesting use of colony building features, but combat seemed tacked on and some of the weapons were pretty bland. I did like the alternate win condition where you could build a giant super priced space ship and escape the planet for the win. One of the things I still love about this though is that the factions were split by, of all things, environmentalism issues. Yeah I know, weird.
Machines
Never got past level 6 or so in the campaign, and always lost in the campaign. I sucked at this so bad I don’t even know if it was a good game or not.

Issues with the genre in general
Slow start up, lack of variety between factions, and over complicated systems beyond reason or need (like too many resources.) Man, I have issues with faction variety huh? The more bizarre and different they are from each other the better as far as I am concerned (assuming they stay in theme with the games overall design of course.) Something I noticed is people think of different build orders and techs being a big enough difference. But to me, I would like it to be more than just build trees and orders. I want them to have deep functional differences in how they get their resources, how they build, what they build, and how they use those things once they build them. Maybe I’m too much of an extremist. It seems to me that designers rarely ask, “how will our factions work” and instead ask “how will our faction be different from the other factions in our game” which isn’t always bad, as long as it fits.

[tench]

I liked WBC1 the most propably because it was my first RTS but it also had a great soundtrack and the world seemed huge to me. also SHIPS!! i thought that was f*3k!ng cool. WBC2 online play was really fun and it had its own atmosphere which i enjoyed. WBC3 mehh.. new races were pretty cool and new heroes, but i didnt like the atmosphere and like someone said earlier, it did feel dull and sorta 'dead'

oh and i remember most of you :) except some of the new ppl

[Joahkun]

I'll stand by WBC3 as being the best RTS I have played to date (and I have played nearly every RTS there is).

Though minor bugs sometimes hampered the experience, the level of detail, excellent gameplay management (save for the sh*tty retinue system, add-on like races and back and forth resource management), and huge variety has made this my king of king RTS games. The only other games that I see come close to this are Total Annihilation, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander and the Total War series.

Just don't get me started on Warcraft 3. Urrrgghhh....

[Kharn]

To me, the envioment makes a HUGE impact on the game. This can be things from the back ground music tracks right down to the actualy bisualls of the terrain.

WBC1 seemed amazing in this aspect.
Great music - the best in the series and the terrain was very, um, well I can't describ it but it set the scene amazingly.
Sure WBC3's terrain and music are very high quality but it doesn't set the scene as good as WBC1 did.
WBC2 had some pretty good envioments in the way of the visuals (not the music though, it didn't really make me feel like I was playing a Warlords battlecry game)

Do any of you understand what I mean? :?



One of my ways of countering this and fixing this for myself was to use the old WBC1 music from that UBi soft website still lying around and also making my own tiles, well importing old classic tiles and reforming them to fit in with the rest of the WBC3 stuff.

I got the old WBC1 church back, the WBC2 bridges back....and I was going to get the old WBC2 sand terrain back as well as adding in a sand coast tiles.
Infact I made them but never got them ingame (The actual tile and .ter files were all done)


Anyway, I hope that WBC4 can recreate the old great feel of WBC1 with beaches, pathing tiles, grassy stuff etc...

[markgil]

I'll stand by WBC3 as being the best RTS I have played to date (and I have played nearly every RTS there is).

Though minor bugs sometimes hampered the experience, the level of detail, excellent gameplay management (save for the sh*tty retinue system, add-on like races and back and forth resource management), and huge variety has made this my king of king RTS games. The only other games that I see come close to this are Total Annihilation, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander and the Total War series.

Just don't get me started on Warcraft 3. Urrrgghhh....

i was rather disapointed that the next total war game will not be in the fantasy genre as it was speculated to be. i dont know if CA will ever do a fantasy TW but i think it would be a great game if they did. at least Siltherine is still working on Arcane Legions (and redoing the whole thing from the bottom up); link: www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3414

[thesheeep]

Anyway, I hope that WBC4 can recreate the old great feel of WBC1 with beaches, pathing tiles, grassy stuff etc...

Chances are there, since I2 will have to make everything from scratch.