Strategy games

[afewhours]

In contrast to Starcraft, I only saw a stupid, immature and predictable story with cliche characters.

Whoops! I'm the Lich King!

 

[denizsi]

Is this only for the RTS games with a resource management aspect? I was going to suggest Close Combat series.

 

[crufty]

epic40k: final liberation, the only representation of the best tabletop game EVER.

hits *ALL* op checkboxes. not the best ever but certainly very good. I think it could be best ever but then im a fan so...*shrug*.

 

[Wolfstan]

Let's see...

GalCiv2, Kohan Series, Sacrifice, Rise of Legends, Ground Control 2, AoM, Alpha Centauri, Praetorians, Warzone 2100, Medieval 2: Total War... the rest escape me, atm.


I hated Starcraft, tbh. I generally dislike games where unitspam > all. I also favor tactical variety in my games. Most RTS generate a large fanbase led by a cabal of elite players who are good at playing the game with rigid, cookie-cutter playing styles, imho. Those are usually the games that lack real variety. In short, I hate click-fests. When a game comes down to who can click/access hotkeys faster, it ends up being bland. Strategy games should be an exercise of wit and creativity, not rote performance of the same build order, ROCK PAPER SCISSOR, every damned game.
It's funny, because I rarely play an RTS for the campaign. Multiplayer is quite important, for RTS more than anything else.
I would like to say that the Civ series is good, but I can't get my head around the combat. I can play the games well, but the battling is rather poor form. Alpha Centauri made more sense.

My favorite RTS to date is Praetorians. That game is the epitome of tactical, real-time strategy. Haven't played an RTS to date that fosters that micro-level of challenge and ingenuity in combat, except, perhaps, for the Total War series... I really would like to find more RTS with tactical depth.

 

[Destroid]

I just tried the original war demo, it looke like loads of fun.

 

[Riso]

Sins of a Solar Empire. It's like an RTS with 4x elements.

 

[Destroid]

I just finished up my first game of that and it seems kind of.. crap. Just like Haegemonia really, except you have hero units (capital ships) and annoying NPC pirates. There really is no 4x to it, it just has fixed locations that you can build. This game has far more in common with Rise of Nations and Warcraft 3 than with Master of Orion. And the art is horrible.

 

[Texas Red]

Jarlfrank, it just hit me but walls actually should be "dumbed down" in AoE 3 because of new technologies.

 

[JarlFrank]

Jarlfrank, it just hit me but walls actually should be "dumbed down" in AoE 3 because of new technologies.

Then cannons should get a lot more attack value against walls. But compared to AoE2, even normal infantry is a lot better against walls than they were in the previous game.

 

[Texas Red]

What's the deal with Dragonshard? It got good scores but the forums were already on the verge of death when the game was just a few weeks out. I enjoy fantastical RTS more than historical and I'm hoping there is something worthy out there besides Age of Mythology(a game I now love).

EDIT: What do you people think about Rise of Legends? Probably the original Rise of Nations owns everything away as a strategy game, but I just don't like the fact that there is no real campaign and I have imagine myself goals in random maps. Legends seem to have a fantastical setting and a campaign, plus Rise of Nations mechanics. Perfect? It looks like nobody here recommended it.

 

[Disconnected]

Dragonshard was fairly pretty for its time and has stronger story elements than most similar games.
Unfortunately most of the missions are boring (think the worst of WC3 spaced with a couple of skirmish maps), the story isn't the least bit interesting, the hero units are massively overpowered, and the unit-level-up thingy gets in the way of strategy and tactics.

The basebuilding is sort of similar to the Lord of The Rings RTS, which a lot of people didn't like (I did though).

I'd say something useful about Rise of Legends, but I've never tried it.

 

[Elwro]

Dragonshard also had severe technical issues. The demo just didn't run on many PCs meeting the official requirements.

 

[Texas Red]

So what about Rise of Legends?

 

[Thalkirst]

A suggestion: Emperor - Battle for Dune. It is quite decent as an RTS, has nice graphics and works well even on an Radeon 9600.

 

[Thalkirst]

Has anyone played Star Wars: Empire at War? Is it good or crap?

 

[NiM82]

Has anyone played Star Wars: Empire at War? Is it good or crap?

A bit crap imo, despite being Star Wars it has no character, the battles are pretty dull and it just feels very hollow. Dunno how good it is mp, or what the balance is like, never felt compelled to bother with that side. Star Wars: Rebellion was a much better SW RTS.

 

[GeneralSamov]

About AoE II (with The conquerors expansion), which mission in the campaign did you find the hardest? Mine has to be the last in Saladin's campaign, the one where you defend Acre.
Due to a miracle, I once managed to beat it on hard (conquest, not wonder).

What about the other strategists in here?

 

[Delirious Nomad]

Battle Realms and its expansion Winter Of The Wolf, set in Asian history, feature fine tuned, working gameplay mechanics. Plus it runs flawlessly on every system and while being 3D there are no camera issues. Oh, they have long campaigns with a slight RPG feeling.

 

[Shannow]

It's quite hard when you play on hardest difficulty which my friend did cause he loved the game so much. I personally enjoyed seeing his reaction when the AI start pummeling him from 3-5 directions.

No its not. The difficulty setting doesn't change anything about the how hard the game is.

I once made a really long rant in the strategy forum about it, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Basicly it boils down to these simple facts:

In almost all missions:
1) You have unlimited recources and the ability to build an unlimited amount of troops (im aware of the pop limit, Im talking about rebuilding as much troops as you want)
2) The enemy has a limited amount of troops, replaced destroyed troops at best or more often doesnt build any new troops at all
3) The enemy is static. He is just sitting there on the map, waiting for you to destroy him with your endless amount of troops. He doesnt attack your base except when its scripted, he doesnt cut you off from recources (even if he did, well you get tons of them for free even without capturing resource points), he doesnt do ANYTHING to make your life hard.
4) Even in "tactical" missions without base building you get unlimited reinforcements. Wait, isnt the point of such missions actually managing a fixed amount of troops and getting the mission done without being to build/order new ones? Duh...

This is INDEPENDENT from difficulty setting. The difficutly setting only gives them enemy troops more hitpoints and stuff like that, it doesn't change those fundemantal design flaws.

There were two challenging missionsi n the original campaign. The one where you have to defend that hill, and where you have to capture that hill. The latter only if strive to stay within the time limit. Without imposing the limit on yourself the mission is also boring...

I beat the campaign on expert mode, got most of the medals (including the capture the hill in 30 minutes one) and most of the campaign was just boooooooring.

Yes, it is
I'm currently defending that damn hill and I might suck at this game but I'm finding it quite hard.
1) The enemy also has unlimited resources and most of the time more map control than you (I) do. So, this doesn't really influence the difficulty.
2) Don't know what game you were playing but the enemy has been reinforcing his troop in every single mision I've played. He also keeps hitting me from different sides and I have the feeling that he has a higher unit cap...
3) On some maps he was quite static but most of the time he snuck around my troops with one or two units. With them he attacked my base forcing me to constantly send some units back to mop them up.
4) While I would have prefered a Close Combat style game your unlimited reinforcements are countered by the enemy's reinforcements. So again, that doesn't affect difficulty. I even destroyed enemy bases and still they got reinforcements through scripted events.

 

[Atrokkus]

Battle Realms and its expansion Winter Of The Wolf, set in Asian history, feature fine tuned, working gameplay mechanics. Plus it runs flawlessly on every system and while being 3D there are no camera issues. Oh, they have long campaigns with a slight RPG feeling.

Hey, I liked Battle Realms. Progaming-wise it's crap, of course (balance issues, dynamics a bit odd), but singleplayer-wise (and maybe friendly skirmish) it's pretty damn fun. The general art and setting design is also pretty fresh and interesting, and the graphic implementation is fantastic.

 

[Suicidal]

Try Total Annihilation and/or Supreme Commander (TA's spiritual successor). They're pretty fun RTS games. However Supreme Commander requires a supercomputer in order to run without lag since it has great graphics, gigantic ass maps and a max unit cap of 1000, so you can imagine the size of battles that take place in that game. It ran slowly-ok on my dual core Athlon 64 4200+ with 2 gigs of RAM and a Geforce 7900 vcard so be advised that it's a major system hog. However, I've heard that the engine has been improved in its expansion and it runs better now but I didn't try it, so I can't tell.

If you feel your PC is not up for the job, just go with TA, it's basically the same game only with smaller maps, armies and no fancy special effects.

Oh and, by the way, Dragonshard is utter shit - it's like WC3 only with AD&D monsters, less base building and army making and more dungeon hacking.

 

[Texas Red]

A suggestion: Emperor - Battle for Dune. It is quite decent as an RTS, has nice graphics and works well even on an Radeon 9600.

It's made by the same company which developed C&C games, right? It looks exactly like them. I don't like C&C since there is zero base building, no technology trees etc.

I found AoE 2 to be quite difficult. Am I just a failure or is it actually considered hard? Also, I can't stand these missions where you are given a certain number of units, no base and you must accomplish some goal by losing minimum men. AoE 2, a good RTS, is unfortunately completely packed with them. I also disliked that many times you are given already a prebuilt town with many discovered technologies and advanced ages. Starcraft, my first RTS, got it right for me since almost every time you start from zero.

OK guys, do you have anything to say about Rise of Legends? I'm interested in Codexian feedback which is legendary in its insight.

 

[Suicidal]

Total Annihilation is definitely the game for you then - you can build in every mission.

 

[Thalkirst]

It's made by the same company which developed C&C games, right? It looks exactly like them. I don't like C&C since there is zero base building, no technology trees etc.

Yes, it was done by Westwood. Well, as far as I remember, you had to build a base in almost every mission and there is a tech tree... It has three separate campaigns also, one for each house.

It is similar to Dune II in gameplay mechanics and fun factor, it is considered to be Dune III.

Here is a pretty detailed and good description of this game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Battle_for_Dune

 

[NiM82]

Emperor was one of the better Westwood games imo, lots of neat stuff in it like rocks providing cover for infantry and natural weather phenomena, like dust storms/twisters, to keep you on your toes. Only thing that pissed me off was them bloody Leeches, MP games tended to boil down to who could build them the fastest. There's a lot of base building in it, more than most CnC games, Walls play quite an important role (keeping leeches out) as do turrets.