RTS essentials

[Nutmeg]

RTS Friends, I finished the campaign in Tiberium Wars (2007).

What a marathon. 36 or so missions. It's a very enjoyable campaign, and actually quite challenging. This is playing 1.08 hard mode blind. 1.09 hard mode is even harder as resource rates were halved for the sake of multiplayer balance, with no changes made to the campaign to compensate. I can't imagine doing very well playing 1.09 hard blind.

While success in the campaign very much so emphasizes the S in RTS (i.e. you better have a good plan going into the mission), this doesn't mean the missions were built with the "puzzly" cheese it or suffer approach common in the genre. That said, I know there is a way to cheese at least two missions (including the hardest in the game, the final Nod mission) from watching speed runs every now and then after I completed certain missions. Also, a handful of missions require you to be observant of any changes to the usual rules of the game (e.g. units that can shoot much further than they should, or run much faster than they should, or enemies that ignore your units) for a very easy time (as opposed to a very hard time, if you're not observant), but otherwise missions are watertight. You'll have to fight your way through them.

One pleasantly surprising source of difficulty is the AI, which, while struggling at "micro", is quite aggressive and good at identifying where your defenses are their weakest, and actually concentrating forces and moving them in formation, as opposed to trickling them in in what are unthreatening but very annoying mosquito attacks like in every other RTS. The AI is far from a formidable opponent though, especially on an even playing ground. Like in Generals (2003), the AI struggles against human control of air units. Less so against Orcas and Venoms, but very much so against GDI and Nod's bombers (Firestorms and Vertigos, though to be fair so would a human), and especially so against Scrin's Devastator Warships, which don't need to dock to reload and outrange everything.

The final source of difficulty is the bonus objectives. I almost always went for them and managed, but there were a couple of missions where I gave up on them, leaving them for a later visit (and a couple more where I seem to have missed finding some "intel", another more hidden, kind of bonus objective, that you usually pick up through the course of the regular primary and secondary objectives). Moreover, I am certain that in some missions where I completed the bonus objectives, I would have had a much easier time ignoring them.

Nod and GDI units are more C&C 95 than Tiberium Sun (more on that later), while I consider the new third faction a neat bonus (in the campaign, the Scrin appear in the final 4 missions or so in the GDI and Nod campaigns, and their own campaign is only a quarter of the length of the other two) although perhaps a bit too Starcrafty in their air units. Nod ground units especially are excellent C&C 95 fan service. The bikes, buggies, flame tanks and stealth tanks all look similar to and function fundamentally like their ancestors, but enhanced in some way e.g. buggies have an EMP weapon upgrade, bikes specialize in detecting stealth (I really like how stealth and fog of war function in this game), and the flame tank's weapon is even more devastating and has a great sweeping area of effect damage model. A more edgy "Scorpion" tank replaces the Bradley-like light tank from C&C 95, and can't crush without and upgrade, while artillery is gone (for NOD, and kind of for GDI too -- Juggernauts are intended to function as artillery, but far from in the same way as C&C 95 GDI's MLRS unit) altogether in the base game, for shame, given how important and iconic the unit is in Nod's arsenal in the original. That said, a Nod artillery unit is brought back in one of the Nod sub-factions in Kane's Wrath, which I have not yet played yet.

It's interesting to compare the game to Generals. Whereas Generals is a true step forward from and (I would argue, only true) sequel to C&C 95, this game feels more like a conservative modernization effort of the, at the time, 12 year old game. There's no radical departure like builder units or tunnel networks here, but they did include multiple production queues (cleverly managed by tabs in the GUI), and infantry units come in squads now, but here there's no squad replenishment or squad management in the form of individual squad upgrades (even Generals had individual unit upgrades), making it almost cosmetic. Those are the two most noticeable differences, the others are the large variety of building powers on hand, unit upgrades purchasable from buildings, garrisonable buildings, greater emphasis on the stealth game, and things like fog of war and air units giving visibility (remember, one of the quirks of C&C 95 is that air units do not, in fact, reveal shroud). That said, even with fog of war, you can feel the leash of C&C 95 tugging as areas remain unfogged for (what feels like) a good dozen or so seconds after units lose line of sight (remember, in C&C 95 there was no fog of war, only shroud, a primitive but not invalid design. I like Tiberium Wars meet at half way approach here. It's kind of a good way to go about it, and actually, would be nice to see more RTS games following suit). Likewise with garrisonable buildings, which aren't present in every or even most maps, and which have hard counters and cannot be repaired, de-emphasizing this aspect of the game a fair bit.

Another good comparison is with the Tiberium Dawn mod for OpenRA (essentially, C&C 95 but balanced for multiplayer and ever so slightly modernized) to which Tiberium Wars feels far more similar, than to Tiberian Sun, Red Alert, Red Alert 2 or Generals.

Visually the game is very nice, and here it's clearly a love letter to the whole series, with environments ranging from Red Alert 2-like blue zones, to C&C 95 Nod campaign-like yellow zones, to Tiberium Sun-like post apocalyptic red zones, all done very well, sometimes spectacularly so, bordering on kitsch. I like the unit models and their visual designs, again more so Nod than GDI, though GDI infantry are quite nice too, especially from a readability perspective. Shame they didn't make the Mammoth tanks less boring somehow given how iconic they are. The game runs on the same excellent SAGE engine as the BFME games and Generals, and like those, it still looks great today, through perhaps even more so than the others due to more detailed models, textures, and nicer particle effects as it's a newer game. It also plays more zoomed out by default and is designed with aspect ratios other than 4:3 in mind. Unit voices range from OK to cool, IMO, with GDI units sounding like the war on terror era American stereotype (and quite similar to the US faction from Generals), and Nod units sounding manic (fanatics, flame tanks), "bro" and "hoohah!" (militia, rocket soldiers), highly professional (vertigo bombers), or full of zeal (black hand). Music I didn't even notice, which is a shame because every other game in the series has excellent and very memorable music. FMVs are great and deliver what is a very basic plot in an entertaining way, though I am not the best judge of such things. I heard the expansion "fixes" some issues in the plot and world building department, but I just don't really care about this at all.

Anyway good game. Very conservatively designed and perhaps lacking for it when comparing to games outside the series, or even Generals, which remains my favorite within the series, but very refined.

----------------------------------------------------

This completes my tour of SAGE engine game campaigns, for now. I have the first BFME, the Generals base game, and Kane's Wrath to look forward to, perhaps after I play Empire and Universe at war, or perhaps after a break from the genre. Also, I found out RA2 and Tiberium Twilight run on SAGE 2.0, which means I omit them at a clear objective boundary, which is always nice.

 

[L'ennui]

Thank you for the write-ups, this is pretty interesting.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Do you guys mostly enjoy rts games for the campaigns or the vs?

Back when I poopsocked these games (I played WC3 pretty 'seriously' on ladder for years and took it very seriously, although I was never very good at it) I used to only care about multiplayer and look down on people who played the campaigns, which I never even touched.

However, as I've grown older I have revised my position and now consider that placing an absolute priority on MP has ruined these games (with all the attending e-sports crap, etc.) and is a large part of the reason why they've died out.

Although competitive play is interesting on some level, it leads to extreme degeneration and a narrowing down of options into what is perceived into optimal play; it tends to restrict the range of possible design, and ends up shackling developers into an arbitrary notion of balance, which quite frequently stifles creativity.

Now when I replay old RTS games I'm much more open to campaigns and creative scenarios. One of the reasons why I love Myth 1/2 so much.

 

[Nutmeg]

I really like how dynamic the SAGE engine games are in multiplayer. All three Generals, BFME and C&C 3 encourage such messy and creative games full of improvisation. Much more interesting, IMH(umble)O than something like WC3's extremely tight formulaic race to power by fighting neutrals followed by one big showdown (which reminds me a lot of multiplayer HoMM3 incidentally, there are other design parallels too, WC3 can be thought of as real-time HoMM without being too wrong).

 

[Lucumo]

Empire Earth (2001)

Played fresh, finishing all the campaigns.

Highly forgettable, and broken, skin over AoE2, which I played more as a lulzy sandbox, back when such things were novel.

Not a skin of AoE II. If you want an actual skin, go with Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (it's a solid title IIRC).

The fun of Empire Earth lies in the number of epochs and as such the diversity of units. The graphics were unfortunately somewhat meh, due to it being a mix of 2D and 3D. It's best played in multiplayer but when it comes to campaigns, the German one was the best. The add-on unfortunately isn't worth it and, in my opinion, it made the base game worse.

 

[Lucumo]

Starcraft is perhaps the best you can ever do with its kind of simplistic combat, control and spatial model, for a certain type of competitive gaming, but I'd argue that even within these confines there are alternatives that are just as good, though in a different, IMO, more noble way.

Everything you said is why I prefer Age of Empires to Starcraft.

It's still a "basic" RTS on the surface, but it relies much less on quick micro (of course, on the pro level, good micro can win a game, but it's not as necessary across all levels as in SC) because you have:
- larger armies
- simple terrain factors like height bonus adding damage
- a more spread-out economy that requires defending across wider fronts

Then Warcraft 3 went ahead and made micro even more important by adding toggleable abilities to many units, and of course the heroes and their skills. WC3 is all about microing your small squad of units and less about tactical maneuvers. It's the logical evolution of Starcraft.

That's just wrong though. As someone who has watched a lot of professional Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft III games over the years as well as watched competitive 1v1 and 4v4 AoE II matches (not to mention other RTS games), I have seen enough to know what's important where.

Brood War is, outside of rushes and ZvZ, first and foremost a macro game. It trumps all else but is still complemented by build order (early to mid-game), strategy and tactical thinking. There have been excellent macro players who weren't as good in micro but still completely outclassed other players with superior micro skills, also sometimes using good multitasking abilities.
While the builds matter, overall, I would say that Terrans require the least amount of micro, followed by Protoss and then by Zergs. As such, when it comes to skill ceilings, Zergs have the highest, followed by Protoss and then by Terrans. As for the game itself, Brood War is far above all other RTS games when it comes to the skill ceiling. It's the reason why it was so extremely popular, before Blizzard stepped in to kill the professional scene, so that players would switch to Starcraft II.
Both Brood War and AoE II have a population cap of 200.
Height differences matter in Brood War, as well as the map layout, of course.
In Brood War you typically have expansions, so it doesn't really matter whether you have 4 resources or 2x minerals + gas. And you also defend across wider fronts because map control is important. Add to that dropships which can deploy units near your workers and wreck you and scouting is really important. Brood War is also faster than AoE II, so it's a lot more intensive.

In Warcraft III, micro is extremely important while macro takes an absolute backseat (becoming the least important skill). It's very much different from Brood War. However, it made microing much easier by adding smart-casting which Brood War didn't have. So you don't have to pay attention to that and simply focus on the microing of units (and possibly the multitasking). Single units are much more important here. Since they are beefier and the game is slower than Brood War, an excellent player can often times save almost all the units and heal them up again. Needless to say, there is also a lower population cap of 100 with added mechanics of "upkeep" which means going above certain thresholds reduces your gold income. That's why tactical and strategical decision on when to spend money and when to save up etc are important. If your enemy bulks up and you fail to scout it, he could definitely crush you, as "small" differences in population actually make large differences in combat which is often big armies clashing against each other, possibly with a hero or some special units harassing the economy or buildings. Heroes fit perfectly into how the game is played (while they wouldn't at all in Brood War).

Warcraft III is not the logical evolution of Brood War. They are two very different games with very different focuses. In Brood War, your entire army can melt in 5 seconds while in Warcraft III, maybe one unit would die. Meanwhile, AoE II is neither of the two. It is its own game which is why it was always heavily played alongside those two.

And since there is now a table in the OP: I wholeheartedly support Starcraft + expansion for being great games all around and, in my opinion, the best competitive RTS game to simply watch being played. There is a reason the competitive scene has survived so many things over the years. No to the remaster.
Basically the same with Warcraft III + expansion. Great all around. Very different from Brood War. However, it has the advantage of custom maps being more sophisticated and as such it gave us DotA and other great maps. Also no to the remaster.
And yet the same again with Age of Empires II + expansion...though, even the original + expansion are still great. Lots of polish for all these games and especially AoE II looks still great after all this time. Thematically, it is very different from the two above and with different flavors, additional mechanics and some modes, it's a very different player experience (personally, I always liked the "Regicide" mode the most). Never played the fan expansions (looked very janky) or the then official fan expansions, so I don't recommend those.

 

[Nutmeg]

the German one was the best

Yeah I kinda remember it. It had the Bismarck battleship and the Red Baron. I also remember spending a lot of time in the map editor. Made some cool ambush missions using sniper units (or something like this, it was a very long time ago after all and I was only in my early teens)

 

[Nutmeg]

RTS friends, I have completed the Rebel and Empire campaigns in Empire at War (2006).

The campaigns are in the "Galactic Conquest" format, which is a real-time take on the usual turn-based "risk-like" outer game that was in vogue in mid 00s RTS design (in the same year, BFME2, Rise of Legends, the Dark Crusade and Empire at War would have this type of outer game, the expansion to 2007's Tiberium Wars and also Petroglyph's own Universe at War, likewise).

Galactic conquest itself is a neat idea, and I especially like how they made a real attempt at "asymmetric" warfare between the Rebels and Empire with game rules such as raids, and teching, and of course how each sides' units function -- I especially liked how clinical you can be with the Empire (both land and space battles), and how messy you had to be with the Rebels (more so space battles than land battles, but also land battles if you're doing raids and looking to win).

However none of what the galactic conquest mode tries to do really shines through in the campaigns, as the map evolves through campaign events to a far greater degree than competition between players. So I can't really make a judgement on it, except to say it's an OK, simple, map painter, with all the addictive qualities of any map painter.

When fleets or ground forces meet in the galactic conquest mode, a space or ground battle occurs, which are short and enjoyable, but due to the size of the campaign map and the way the campaign proceeds, quickly turn into busy work to shore up position as an insurance policy for the campaign's next event (when playing blind). I imagine in a real game of galactic conquest, you would only focus on planets that actually matter in your competition with the enemy playing by some kind of predictable rules. As a result, at some point I started autoresolving the "busy work" to more quickly make my way through the campaign. Unfortunately the game doesn't allow you to reject autoresolve results, so I had to learn when to opt to take command myself, which was a bit too much in the Empire campaign -- fighting the same tech 2 space battle against the very uniform pirate enemies over and over.

I also found that because the galactic conquest map plays out in real time, switching between the game modes can be painful. For example, you are in the middle of issuing build orders, but the AI suddenly attacks you interrupting what you were doing and you have to either autoresolve or take to the field. Since you know autoresolve won't be kind to you, you decide to take command of the battle, you win and come back to the outer game, but forget to pause as you re-orient yourself and before you know it, another raid whose outcome you already know, but have to ensure (its not like the battles aren't enjoyable, it's just how it breaks your train of thought that's annoying). Slightly frustrating, like mosquito bites. In a turn based outer game, this wouldn't happen.

Back to the campaign, it proceeds in the aforementioned events, which have you move a fleet (perhaps with a certain hero) to a certain system to play a pre-made mission, in between doing map painting and shoring up of forces near unrevealed planets (again, only as insurance due to the fact that you don't know if the next event is going to spawn an enemy doom stack, or reveal a bunch of powerful well developed enemy planets that will quickly spawn doom stacks). The missions themselves are very OK and serviceable, and not too distant from the usual Westwood singleplayer fun, though nothing that sticks out either -- a lot of the early ones in the two campaigns are just normal battles with a decent strategy to them spelled out through objectives. On the whole, the campaigns feel like tutorials and fan service, but otherwise an afterthought.

So those are the campagins and what I suspect is a bastardized galactic conquest mode, but there are also two other modes: space skirmish and land skirmish. In galactic conquest, teching, building (units and structures) and earning resources is done solely on the galactic map, but in the skirmish modes, these two aspects have been shifted in to either type of battle. I've not played these modes, but I imagine they're quite good as the fundamentals of combat present in the space and land battles in galactic conquest are great and OK respectively. I also know that (basically only) space battles are popular competitively. IMO, if you get one good competitive game in a product, even if it is just one of three modes, it's worth it, and you can think of the other two modes as a bonus especially as neither seem to be "bad", just not particularly good.

The game was made by Petroglyph, who, to my understanding, were a bunch of ex-Westwood guys that split off from EA after Command & Conquer Generals. The Alamo engine they made for Empire at War, as it was in 2006, was not as nice visually as the earlier SAGE engine (presumably worked on by some of the same people before they left EA), as used for BFME2 in the same year, which would have been after 3 years of additional development by their ex-colleagues (the ones who opted to stay at EA). That said, the engine is serviceable. Now, I couldn't get anti-alaising overrides working for the EaW executable using either the Nvidia control panel or the more advanced options in Nvidia profile inspector, but the expansion Forces of Corruption does have in-game anti-aliasing options, so I guess that's something I will enjoy when I return to the game a second time (EDIT: Actually, the in-game options did nothing for me, so I had another go at setting anti-aliasing through the Nvidia profile inspector, and managed, I had to add the correct executable (StarWarsG.exe) to the profile, and use the value 0x08401041 for the DX9 anti-aliasing compatibility flag). As for audio, EAX is supported and the game is indeed a directional aural treat when playing with DSOAL and headphones, and probably likewise on actual EAX hardware.

As an aside, the game is a buggy mess. It crashes frequently, and there are more rare, but ever threatening, game breaking bugs like heroes disappearing forever (I had C3PO and R2D2 disappear in the Rebel campaign and no save from before it happened, forcing a restart, so save often and keep old saves around). However this could be because I was playing with the Empire at War executable (as it is the only way to play the original campaigns) and that the game may be a lot more stable and less buggy using the Forces of Corruption executable. So, again, reserving judgement.

Anyway, back to art and music, it's original trilogy era Star Wars, which I don't love or even like (except the Empire, I do like the Empire and Empire themed games like TIE fighter, mainly due to the character voices), but it is better than later Star Wars, so that's nice. Music and visual design in the game are obviously taken from Lucas Arts own work from their better years, so these two aspects of the game are great.

I feel I will have more to say about the game when I put a bit of time into the skirmish modes and galactic conquest proper (i.e. non campaign) using the Forces of Corruption executable. But, one, general, opinion is slowly forming and that is that the inner game necessarily suffers the more is moved to the outer game (if present) (though the outer game is better for it). If the whole experience is better or worse for it than a more complete inner game, well I learn towards worse, though I will form my opinion after I have played through Global Conquest mode in Kane's Wrath, the War of the Rings mode in BFME RotWK, FoC's Galactic Conquest, and whatever the equivalent is in Universe at War (I have already played Rise of Legends campagin, part of Rise of Nations' campaign, and Dark Crusade and Soulstorm campaigns), and played some skirmish for comparison.

 

[Nutmeg]

No one else here playing any RTS games right now huh?

Anyway, completed Kane's Wrath (2008). It's made by BreakAway games, who are the same guys who did Rise of the Witch King (2006), which is also an expansion, also to a SAGE engine, EA LA created base game. Unlike the latter, where the expansion campaign is a million times better than the base game's (by virtue of the base game's campaign simply being very bad), here I would say they're equivalent, with maybe the edge going to the base game, at least when not playing either strictly for efficiency. For the most part, this is due to a number of missions having the same "twist", where, after completing some number of primary objectives, you are revealed another, ultimate or penultimate, primary objective where the game simultaneously puts you on a timer, expands the map, and spawns a large wave of enemy units bee-lining to your base, or the things you're meant to defend to meet this fresh objective. After it gets you the first time, you see it coming from a mile away, and it's very easy to counter -- just gain control of the map and delay advancing through the primary objectives until you spent 5 minutes building up a massive army and placing it in key locations over the map (near the objective, near your base, somewhere in the middle, near the edges in all compass directions). There, trivial. That said, not every mission is like this, and it's not easy to gain control of the map in those that are, so the missions remain (quite!) challenging and fun. The campaign is Nod only, which, IMO, is a good thing as I consistently like the way Nod plays in C&C games over GDI, and in the case of Tiberium Wars, the Scrin too.

The new units and sub-factions are cool and bring a bit of Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun flavor to what is a very C&C 95 throwback base game.

Kane's Wrath looks the same, and sounds the same, as the base game Tiberium Wars, with the exception of the first mission teasing you with C&C 95 music remixes before the rest of the game goes back to boring Tiberium Wars music. I think people who like the story in Tiberian Sun will also much prefer what they did here. The story is all about the tacitus and AI again (you are the AI), while the Scrin don't feature much at all (strictly speaking they appear in two missions, but practically just one). Also the Marked of Kane and the Steel Talons sub-factions are clearly modeled after the Tiberian Sun NOD and GDI respectively, too.

So, it's a good expansion with a good, but not watertright campaign. I will return to it later to try the "global conquest" mode, and maybe also some skirmish and less likely multiplayer too.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I used to really love RTS games, played them all the time up until SC2.

Then I got into Dota and unfortunately became addicted and my brain shrunk. Sorry. But I find your reports very entertaining.

 

[Nutmeg]

I managed to avoid the MOBA curse despite immense social pressure, and even got my IRL friends to play CoH with me instead for a while after they got tired of DOTA.

Anyway, as I suspected, Kane's Wrath missions look like an absolute treat to play for efficiency.



Absolutely beautiful play, exploitation of weak spots, use of neutral structures and speedy collection of crates in the early stages while the bonuses they give still matter. When I did the mission, I figured out the flame tank rush on the two expansion bases, but I didn't dare contest the blue tiberium field after that or capture the silos, instead I opted to use the resources that would have been spent on engineers who might die on their way to this goal, to hunker down my base with defenses to repel the waves of predators and rocket soldiers GDI was overwhelming me with. Also, it never occurred to me to destroy the base walls in north east corner of the main base with a flame tank, instead I kamikaze'd it through the entrance to take out a gun turret, so a commando I built later could take out the war factory and barracks, which completely neutered GDI and allowed me to assert control over the map at my leisure. I didn't get to the crates at the docks until it was irrelevant.

 

[Lucumo]

I used to really love RTS games...

Then I got into Dota and unfortunately became addicted and my brain shrunk. Sorry. But I find your reports very entertaining.

Same, except I jumped into DotA in 2005, so basically when RTS games were already dead. Still played Star Wars: Empire at War afterwards and also Company of Heroes in multiplayer (6 people via Hamachi). But then...basically nothing, except for taking a look at Supreme Commander.

 

[Nutmeg]

I used to really love RTS games...

Then I got into Dota and unfortunately became addicted and my brain shrunk. Sorry. But I find your reports very entertaining.

Same, except I jumped into DotA in 2005, so basically when RTS games were already dead. Still played Star Wars: Empire at War afterwards and also Company of Heroes in multiplayer (6 people via Hamachi). But then...basically nothing, except for taking a look at Supreme Commander.

2005 is far too early to declare the genre dead. 2006 was a great, highly innovative year for RTS:

• Battle for Middle Earth 2 and Rise of the With King
• Company of Heroes
• Dark Crusade
• Empire at War and Forces of Corruption
• Rise of Legends

All of these games advanced (or attempted to advance) the genre in significant ways or were iterations on a recently released genre advancing game (in the case of Dark Crusade and BFME2).

2007 was also not bad, though less innovative:

• Supreme Commander
• Tiberium Wars
• Opposing Fronts
• Universe at War

Out of these only Universe at War stands out as something quite different (and quite amazing, from the little I've played, though ofc. it's not completely unrooted in the past. IMO, it's a stealth sequel to C&C Generals, mixed with a bit of Empire at War space)

Then in 2008 PC gaming in general dies. The number of PC releases, let alone PC exclusives, is really quite pitiful, across all genres. A combination of the GFC, and the Xbox 360 (with MS putting up huge sums as incentive money, especially to big publishers, and investing heavily into tooling to lure smaller developers) seem to be the main reasons. Already in 2007, Tiberium Wars and Universe at War were released on Xbox 360 as well, and in both cases the console release was clearly a box ticking exercise to get the incentive money -- the games were not designed around console play at all. 2009's Halo Wars OTOH was clearly designed for console first.

As for the hypothesis that consumers lost interest in RTS games around this time in favor of MOBAs and this affected things? Could be true, it certainly is a common anecdote. It would need numerical analysis of some kind, and it is a different matter if it affected revenue expectations. Even if players don't spend their gaming time on RTSes as much as they used to, that is entirely separate from if they spend their *money* on RTSes as much as they used to. Lots of people buy games and don't play them much or delay playing them. This is also assuming that game makers are primarily chasing profits, as opposed to simply looking to recuperate costs and fulfill creative desires -- another possibility is that the people making games in the genre ran out of inspiration.

 

[Lucumo]

I used to really love RTS games...

Then I got into Dota and unfortunately became addicted and my brain shrunk. Sorry. But I find your reports very entertaining.

Same, except I jumped into DotA in 2005, so basically when RTS games were already dead. Still played Star Wars: Empire at War afterwards and also Company of Heroes in multiplayer (6 people via Hamachi). But then...basically nothing, except for taking a look at Supreme Commander.

2005 is far too early to declare the genre dead. 2006 was a great, highly innovative year for RTS:

• Battle for Middle Earth 2 and Rise of the With King
• Company of Heroes
• Dark Crusade
• Empire at War and Forces of Corruption
• Rise of Legends

All of these games advanced (or attempted to advance) the genre in significant ways or were iterations on a recently released genre advancing game (in the case of Dark Crusade and BFME2).

2007 was also not bad, though less innovative:

• Supreme Commander
• Tiberium Wars
• Opposing Fronts
• Universe at War

Out of these only Universe at War stands out as something quite different (and quite amazing, from the little I've played, though ofc. it's not completely unrooted in the past. IMO, it's a stealth sequel to C&C Generals, mixed with a bit of Empire at War space)

Then in 2008 PC gaming in general dies. The number of PC releases, let alone PC exclusives, is really quite pitiful, across all genres. A combination of the GFC, and the Xbox 360 (with MS putting up huge sums as incentive money, especially to big publishers, and investing heavily into tooling to lure smaller developers) seem to be the main reasons. Already in 2007, Tiberium Wars and Universe at War were released on Xbox 360 as well, and in both cases the console release was clearly a box ticking exercise to get the incentive money -- the games were not designed around console play at all. 2009's Halo Wars OTOH was clearly designed for console first.

As for the hypothesis that consumers lost interest in RTS games around this time in favor of MOBAs and this affected things? Could be true, it certainly is a common anecdote. It would need numerical analysis of some kind, and it is a different matter if it affected revenue expectations. Even if players don't spend their gaming time on RTSes as much as they used to, that is entirely separate from if they spend their *money* on RTSes as much as they used to. Lots of people buy games and don't play them much or delay playing them. This is also assuming that game makers are primarily chasing profits, as opposed to simply looking to recuperate costs and fulfill creative desires -- another possibility is that the people making games in the genre ran out of inspiration.

Like I said, "basically dead". I played two of those after all but had no interest in the others due to a friend having Rise of Nations and it being ok'ish, me not being too interested anymore after the first Dawn of War expansion and I had played Battle of Middle Earth. 2007 was even worse and I only looked at Supreme Commander because a friend gave it to me. No interest for Tiberium Wars, despite liking the C&C series in general (even Renegade which a friend played online).

Both are tied together. A small part comes down to lack of innovation/been there, done that and the spread of the internet aka people playing online all the time. That meant that people played games for much, much longer and as such did buy less and less new games. That was especially true for RTS and FPS but MMOGs (including browser games) generally tore into all genres heavily. The gaining popularity of the internet also allowed for free games and the spread of those (like RPG Maker stuff, Battle of Wesnoth etc). More and more draconian DRM for PC games didn't help either (online activation, limited installs etc).
Personally, it was a combination of all of those things. The DRM made me less willing to buy games, the lack of quality games releasing made me less interested in buying AND playing and the internet made me play online most of the time. That's why, starting in 2009, I basically sticked to watching competitive games, MMOGs and also started playing emulated (console) games. The digitalization and Steam (DRM) made me completely stay away from new games and only in 2016 I caved in and registered on GOG, making me able to play older PC games like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. But I never returned to RTS games and the last one I played was Age of Empires II in the early 10s on Voobly. And while I love watching the competitive aspect, I personally much prefer playing campaigns.

 

[Alex]

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but since some people mentioned Warcraft 3, I wanted to comment I've never found it very fun. Somehow it always looked like the scale was too reduced somehow; and that rubbed me the wrong way. I also am not a big fan of hero units either; although I don't find them annoying in DoW 1 for instance.

 

[L'ennui]

Warcraft 3 is so reduced in scale because Blizzard had initially envisioned it as a small-scale tactical combat game with RPG-ish elements rather than a classic base-building RTS. It would have been like Myth but with fancy graphics and the Warcraft universe. I remember reading those previews in PC Gamer magazine before they redesigned the game into a more traditional RTS title, albeit with hero units and comparatively small armies.

 

[JarlFrank]

No one else here playing any RTS games right now huh?

Been playing some AoE2 Definitive Edition. Completed all the campaigns, I have every achievement except for "Masterpiece" where you have to win solo against 3 human opponents (gotta ask people to play with me for that one but not in the mood for multiplayer right now).

After finishing the official campaigns, I downloaded a few user-made ones.
Started playing Apranik, a campaign following a female general leading Sassanid troops during the Arab invasion of Persia. I saw it recommended by a veteran AoE2 player.

And holy shit, this is HARD.
It's got some very creative new mechanics, but the difficulty is brutal. I usually play on moderate (the second difficulty) but had to go down to standard.

First mission has Apranik start her military career.
You begin with only barracks unlocked and have to destroy Arab outposts to level up. As you level up, more soldiers will join you, which unlocks additional buildings: archery range, stables, castle, monastery.

All the while you keep being attacked by the Byzantine Empire and by Armenians, who will likely go up to Imperial before you and keep attacking you with armies of rams, paladins, and swordsmen.

You really have to rush the Arab outposts to level up Apranik and unlock military buildings, because once the Armenians attack in force you'll need to have your high tier units unlocked or they'll annihilate you.

HARD as fuck, but satisfying when you finally crack it.

 

[Nutmeg]

I just finished the China campaign in Generals (not Zero Hour). I'm very glad I decided to go back to Generals after spending time with Tiberium Wars (and Kane's Wrath, clumped together here as the former) because it really pronounces the differences between the two games, in a fuzzy, by impression, way. So much so that I have a need to record some initial thoughts on the matter.

First and foremost, the units in Generals feel more distinct from eachother across game roles, faction roles, faction matchup roles, and inter-faction equivalences. Conceretely this means units are harder counters to each other, and utility units are more situationally important. There are no blobs of death in Generals. Actually Generals is even tighter than its expansion as far as the China campaign is concerned -- you don't have the Helix, and the missions where you have the Overlord are full of obstacles making using them effectively an exercise in micro, too much attention to which, in the final China mission, can cost you the game. And here is the rare thing I missed from Tiberium Wars -- an easy way to face (and arrange groups of) units.

Generals also inverts the usual C&C macro game, which is heavily pronounced in Tiberium Wars. Builder units means bases are free to sprawl (vs MCVs which concentrate the base around themselves), but small supply stashes (vs sprawling tiberium or ore fields) mean resource gathering is concentrated. Furthermore, the third, infinite, source of income, through a unit (hacker) or building (black market, supply drop) gives a completely novel (to the series) economic-spatial dynamic to the late game.

To say nothing of the marked difference between kill unlocked, costless global abilities and building unlocked, pay per use abilities.

Generals really is the much more advanced game from a (meaningful) strategic complexity perspective. With regard to controls, Tiberium Wars is more advanced, but not necessarily in the same direction that at least some of the designers of Generals might have taken, as evidenced by the similarly lacking in some ways, but obviously more advanced in others, controls in Universe at War.

Lastly, while the graphics in Generals are more technically primitive than the graphics in Tiberium Wars (though they are just as functional, and the clean simple look has its own charm), and neither game has directional audio (for shame in the case of Tiberium Wars, as other post-Generals SAGE games did have this), the audio design, from sound effects to unit voices to narrator voice and especially to music, in Generals is much, much, much nicer (though this is a matter of subjective taste), than in Tiberium Wars.

 

[Nutmeg]

You begin with only barracks unlocked and have to destroy Arab outposts to level up. As you level up, more soldiers will join you, which unlocks additional buildings: archery range, stables, castle, monastery.

All the while you keep being attacked by the Byzantine Empire and by Armenians, who will likely go up to Imperial before you and keep attacking you with armies of rams, paladins, and swordsmen.

You really have to rush the Arab outposts to level up Apranik and unlock military buildings, because once the Armenians attack in force you'll need to have your high tier units unlocked or they'll annihilate you.

HARD as fuck, but satisfying when you finally crack it.

I really like missions that have direct time pressure of some kind, but also and maybe even moreso when there's indirect time pressure as you describe.

 

[JarlFrank]

You begin with only barracks unlocked and have to destroy Arab outposts to level up. As you level up, more soldiers will join you, which unlocks additional buildings: archery range, stables, castle, monastery.

All the while you keep being attacked by the Byzantine Empire and by Armenians, who will likely go up to Imperial before you and keep attacking you with armies of rams, paladins, and swordsmen.

You really have to rush the Arab outposts to level up Apranik and unlock military buildings, because once the Armenians attack in force you'll need to have your high tier units unlocked or they'll annihilate you.

HARD as fuck, but satisfying when you finally crack it.

I really like missions that have direct time pressure of some kind, but also and maybe even moreso when there's indirect time pressure as you describe.

The second mission in this campaign is one where you don't build units, you just have to gather a bunch of loyalists before the Arabs come and then escape across the mountains to the plains of northern India.

That one also has time pressure, as your food will slowly run out as the mission goes on (your people need food to survive the harsh mountains), but you can replenish it by destroying enemy buildings (and loot the food inside) and killing animals.

I had to restart it several times because you don't know exactly which way leads to India at first, and while there are many valid paths, going into an entirely wrong direction will likely drain your food and not leave enough time to make the journey!

It's a really hard campaign, but the maps are incredibly well-designed and use scripting in interesting ways.

The Apranik campaign was designed by a certain Jacqueline Sailer, who made a Tomislav campaign before it, where you play as a completely new custom civ - the Croatians!
Her two custom campaigns were so good that she was hired by Forgotten Empires as a level designer.

 

[Nutmeg]

RTS friends, I made short work of the rest of the Generals campaign. The China campaign was the most challenging, with GLA being a close second, and the US campaign not very challenging at all, this is played on "Brutal". In the case of the US campaign, it's due to the AI not knowing how to counter an air game (which was my complaint about the China Zero Hour campaign), and to a lesser extent the mission design (there was one mission where you could trivially delay a map expansion trigger and build up your forces with impunity). For China, I'd say the base game has the better campaign, for US vice versa, and for GLA they're both very good. Speaking more generally, I like all the match-ups except playing as the US vs GLA in both the expansion and base game (too easy), and China vs the GLA in the expansion (again, too easy, and for the same reason -- the AI just can't deal with massed helicopters).

Anyway Generals and its expansion are excellent games. And to think I almost never would have played them as they looked goofy, and uninspired in their unit and faction design, from the outside. How very wrong that impression was. Thanks fellow Busin fan d1r for pushing it up my backlog. You are a man of good taste.

 

[Arbiter]

Command & Conquer (1995)

Second, the choice of alternate levels during the campaign.

Dune 2 already had that feature.

Third, missions that put the player in charge of a small composition of troops and vehicles with the only way to gain more by reaching scripted points on the map. Actually, Warcraft had these as well, IIRC, but they were much more frequent in C&C, and unlike Warcraft, in some of these the player would reach a base at some point, (albeit sometimes without a construction yard) gaining the ability to (at least) construct units mid-mission.

There is a human mission in Warcraft that you start with a base but without any peons and therefore you cannot construct or train anything until you free workers from an orc camp.

Fourth, a varied air game consisting of callable air strikes

You can produce ornithopters in Dune 2, but IIRC they automatically select targets to attack.

Warcraft 2 (1995)

Its own more ambitious innovation - the naval aspect - on the other hand, feels disjointed and the game might have been better without it.

I guess Blizzard wanted to have troop transports and in a medieval fantasy setting ship transports make sense. I have fond memories of island maps that you could not simply win by A-moving a ball of death.

 

[Lagi]

I enjoy warcraft 2 naval part of the campaign. Each ship type has distinct role, not like ground units.

Where footman/grunt get obsolete almost immediatly, the strange upgrades of late, fast melee units into casters throw out of window any army composition in favor of this single "kitchen sink" units (pala/ogre mage... and haste+bloodlust is much better, so it is also ogre-magi imba, if you into multiplayer).

I do think extraction of oil is awkward, and this 3rd resource push game into water in quite forced/unnatural way.

 

[Arbiter]

Warcraft 3 is so reduced in scale because Blizzard had initially envisioned it as a small-scale tactical combat game with RPG-ish elements rather than a classic base-building RTS

Another reason is that early 3D cards had problems rendering multiple models at the same time with reasonable performance. Doom 3 features encounters with fewer, tougher enemies for the same reason.

 

[Nutmeg]

Warcraft 3 is so reduced in scale because Blizzard had initially envisioned it as a small-scale tactical combat game with RPG-ish elements rather than a classic base-building RTS

Another reason is that early 3D cards had problems rendering multiple models at the same time with reasonable performance. Doom 3 features encounters with fewer, tougher enemies for the same reason.

Serious Sam precedes Doom 3. A whole host of RTS with large amounts of 3D units, from Emperor Battle for Dune to Total Annihilation precede Warcraft 3.