Your top 3 RTT/RTS games?

Looking for suggestions/recommendations, primarily focusing on the single player campaign. What are the best you've played in terms of scenario variety, gameplay and story?

For me, Warcraft 3 ROC & TFT is just an absolutely phenomenally put together SP experience. I also loved Myth 2 - Soulblighter. Finally, Homeworld - Cataclysm did a damn good job of delivering a spooky lovechild of Event Horizon and The Thing.

Try World in Conflict and Conquest: Frontier Wars,

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance

I played Warcraft 3 and enjoyed but, but for what specific reasons do people hold it in such a high regard?

Total Annihilation is my #1 because it's just a blast.

Moddability

multiplayer and custom maps

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Company of Heroes + expansions is up there. Haven't played the campaign in years but I remember it being pretty good. Dawn of War 1 has a pretty fun campaign but mission variety is pretty low. World in Conflict has a pretty solid campaign.

Your best bet really is going into the RTS thread where someone will post a flow chart/ranking of RTS games and
just play the ones that appeal to you.

Here is graph.

Sage for doublepost.

Rise of Nations
Total Annihilation
Populous: The Beginning

I love TA but the campaigns are incredibly samey. Pretty much 1v1 skirmish maps for about 20 missions.

What is the difference between AoE 2 and Rise of Nations, I was looking to get it but I don't want the same game.

How do you play most RTS in a way that it feels more like a actual strategy game instead of a Nuke/best tech rush, that is what has made me drop almost every rts out there, except for sins of a solar empire

Quite different games and styles of gameplay, although both have a large number of races which are basically a core race with various buffs/nerfs and unique units/techs. I would say it's unique enough not to feel 'the same' although if you have experience with AoE 2 then you should get the game quite quickly.

AoE 2 is a very traditional RTS with discrete units, technologies (in a branching tree) and buildings you can produce/research over 4 ages (ancient to pre-renaissance). 4 types of resources are harvested in a discrete way also.

Rise of nations has a strategic layer, like a world map similar to the Total war games, and then a tactical layer, which plays out more like a standard RTS. 6 types of resources are generated continuously (like total annihilation) and there are 4 research paths spanning 8 ages, which go from ancient to modern.


Sins is like the weakest RTS out there. Three 'sides' that are essentially identical bar minor changes (despite being sold as Starcraft different) Techs mostly provide shallow % improvements rather than anything valuable. Once you have a few planets you have enough research stations to access the full tech tree…and basically just slowly colonise the surrounding planets without actually adding anything to the gameplay. There is zero depth. The most damning thing is the irreversible tax penalty you pay when boosting logistics.

Basically an RTS / 4x hybrid that does neither very well. I like the capital ships being able to gain experience, but that's about it.

well that is the reason SoSE isn't a rush simulator

I could crawl backwards on my hands and knees down a 3 inch deep canal.

Something being painfully slow doesn't mean it's automatically not shallow as fuck.

I wish to god the game had more, but the tactics at 20 minutes in are essentially the same as those at 2 hours in.

Yes, milord?

You know, nobody ever mentions Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends anywhere, I played it a few years ago and was very impressed by it. It has excellent presentation, great music, great assets, it has some of the lite rpg stuff in W3, the story is lame but the races are pretty awesome, you got a steampunk italian inspired race, an arabian/wizardry inspired race and the Coutl, which are mesoamerican/ancient aliens inspired, my favorites. Definitely worth playing.

compare it to other RTS game and see the differences

Lets take C&C Generals for example

C&C Generals is very straight forward in multiplayer, you can pick 3 nations and each nation has 3 "generals", basicly generals just give you small bonuses like unique unit or bonus to tech like nuclear weapon/tanks etc

other from that there isnt anything else, WC3 has 3 tiers for main building and 3 tiers for weapon/armor upgrades + supporting spell casters + siege weapons/units + shitton of other shit

Hero units are almost perfect and provide great impact depending on personal choices of ability choice during leveling or items

It launched 2002 and its still the best RTS on the market and people are still making custom melee/campaign/scenario maps to this day, that should tell you enough about it.

- Disgaea
- Final Fantasy Tactics
- Fire Emblem Fates
- Valkyria Chronicles
- Halo Wars

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PvP is where actual strategy shines. Figuring out what build your oppenent is going for, countering while also pushing your own plan, managing tech vs on field units. Play online and you need strategy to win.

Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings 2, Victoria 2.
I was never that good at other types of RTS, but am really good at grand strategy multiplayer so I like that.

The fact that there are something like 25 unique heroes and 100+ unique items, up to 6 of which can be held by a hero for passive/active bonuses, is just awesome.

Too many to pick just three, fuck.

1. Warcraft 3, Broodwar
2. Total Annihilation:Kingdoms
3. Dune2k

Even then stuff like Homeworld, Age of Empires, CnC, Red Alert, Dawn of War and plenty of stuff I'm forgetting trying to pick just three feels like I'm doing a disservice.

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Great taste

Seriously? I have heard nothing but negatives about this. Can you elaborate? (Haven't played it, but you seem to have half decent taste!)

How is C&C 3?

I've played Tiberium Sun, Red Alert 1 and 2, and some of Generals, along with a ton of other RTS games, but never got around to playing C&C 3.

Its alright, not as good as past ones, but still pretty enjoyable

Kanes Wrath is top tier though

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God I miss WC3. It's honestly one of maybe three or four games that I would pay full retail for a remaster of without any hesitation.

Honestly I think Cataclysm rivals the original plot-wise.

IMO Generals story wasn't super great. It was mostly political wankery. The gameplay was okay though.

Top tier taste. Another thing that was awesome was time dilation. You could move from 1/4 speed to 8x speed or so. Really made the campaign move at your pace.

Funny how that charlatan Randy Pitchfork is unable to remaster this…

They might somewhat fit into WC3. But boh oh boy what cancer they caused onto all of RTS.

And perfect? Far from it. They became the center of the game.

There should have been an option to not use them and instead maybe get something like bonuses to normal units.

Fantastic taste. I'd personally replace Empire Earth with Supreme Commander: Total Annhilation, is only because I've never really played Empire Earth.

Niggest of nigs
Yeah, it was nothing more but a satire/parody of news and propaganda.
It was enjoyable but nothing compared to the charm of the usual FMV cutscenes.

Kingdoms isn't a technically great game or maybe even a good, but it is an incredibly "comfy" game. It's almost like Myth if it had limited base building and really shitty pathfinding. It's not a spammy rush fest; there are a limited amount of single-resource gather points on every map & no gatherers so eco management isn't a huge distraction; the soundtrack is good, although Soule says he hated writing it because he was restricted in what instruments he used and there aren't dynamic scores like TA had.

A lot of the original negatives the game got were due to it running like molasses on current gen PCs (circa 2000) and there being almost no pathfinding (fixed now via community mods). Those issues are now fixed. I think it's the sort of game that some people just really love for the aesthetic and "feel," playing it realizing it has flaws.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Yeah, no shit. That was by design and an excellent choice. Loads of RTS games had hero units in the campaign missions, but generally it was a case of 'they are quite good but you insta-lose if they die, so you can't use them to their full extent since you are trying to defend them all the time'.

In WC3 you had way more incentive to actually get stuck in, particularly with the experience/level gains from combat and items acquired from killing creeps.

Heroes add another layer of depth onto the game. A possible fix for your problem would be to have an option to double the unit cap and disable heroes.

Time dilation was 100% necessary to clean out a map in reasonable time. Worked well during the slow parts of missions as well. The emergency hyperspace was great too; it really put you under pressure in several missions.

I heard that it was because Relic/THQ didn't actually own it; it was developed by Barking Dog Studios and Sierra holds the IP. Would be amazing if it did get a remake if only so I can play it in HD and actually be able to hear the music clearly.

1: age of empires 2, with expansions
2: warcraft 2+3, great storytelling for an rts
3: metal fatigue - GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS WITH CHANGEABLE PARTS

I really liked playing through c&c generals and expansion's campaign. It's like I'm moving little toy cars and planes around.

Did you miss the tons of titles trying to shove in more and more RPG elements and powerful heroes into RTS, just to fail or be mediocre ?
The rise of ASSFAGGOTS ?
It did good by having great modding, but as influence to other games ? Not good at all.

Depends on what you call depth and what you want in an RTS.

In multiplayer the default strategy being a blademaster attacking the workers gathering wood or a demon hunter/death knight doing that same thing is very far from my ideal of how I want to play an RTS game.
And all of that being possible because by design you can get heroes early and cheap but all of your other units have low damage at start.
We can pretend multiplayer is not how everyone should enjoy the game and we can just use singleplayer and mods. But that is still closing our eyes to what default strategies for skirmish mode are.

Not my ideal design. Not at all.

Hero units draw away from the army management and base building elements of the games to focus on singular special units, and not in the 'This is something big I built' way.

Just look at the horrible difference between the campaigns of Wings of Liberties and Heart of the Swarm.

Hey is Legacy of the Void's campaign any good? I'm still undecided if I want to get it.

Games like Kohan had xp / levelling with heroes before Warcraft.
Right, since Starcraft never had this…Seriously the only thing Warcraft 3 allowed to happen was ability to have an inventory

RTS games have early harassment. That's true with non-Hero RTS games.

You don't like fast paced RTS games then. Heroes are a strawman.

Defense of the Ancients was inspired by Aeon of Strife for Starcraft 1 that was inspired by Herzog Zwei and Future Cop LPD. Even if it wasn't for Warcraft 3 ASSFAGGOTS would have happened anyways.

Also, I'd say the use of heroes as they are in Warcraft 3 is pretty justified, with the current approach to RTS that lasted since the beginning the early game is usually pretty dull due to the need to build up the economy and military is extremely limited, so heroes add some depth and even if that means active sabotage of enemy economy becomes a viable tactic. I wish we would move away from this whole early game concept anyways, like you start off with a base based on your preference or something, but whatever.


If you played all three LotV might feel quite formulaic by now, atleast some missions, but the new units Protoss get, and General-esque global abilities, are super awesome. Also writing is way better than HotS because HotS was the low point in SC writing, unless you really hate the premise of protoss getting rid of this "mysterious dogmatic aliens" by abandoning their dogmas, but considering the fact SC2 campaigns are so much more, er, intimate than SC1, so it's kinda hard to keep them mysterious afterwards. Anyways they get rid of caste system because Rory Swann Karax managed to lead the forces during one of missions well and because nobody but them sues this or something, they abandoned their fear of advanced robotics because they had to resort to usage of Purifiers and they learned they rebelled because they were treated as machines not equals so offer them equality and the robotic imitation of Fenix proves they are willing to treat machine protoss fairly, they destroy Shakuras to stall the Amon's forces, they abandon Khala because they learned it can compromise their entire race and something something.
Anyways go ahead buy it, it's pretty fine and enjoyable.

It has been around for a long while. But WC3 definitely pushed it further and further into importance to the game.
Starcraft had a lot of modes. It wasn't dominated by hero ones.

Even in fast paced RTS games you don't have something that goes into your base, kills builders and then fucks off.
RA2 for example has extremely early harrasment, but it never involves running away alive. Units that do it either kill the enemy or die.

We can bring up SC1 AoS a lot, but true popularity for ASSFAGGOTS came with WC3.

Did Starcraft AoE even have levels or item management?
Hell, from what I remember, Eul's Dota originally had more RTS elements than Dota Allstars.

I said it wouldn't have not happened without Warcraft 3. Earlier or later this would become a genre, and would definitely introduce the exact same results.

Red Alert 2, Men of War (particularly in coop) and Supcom/TA with fan patch.

Definitely not in the same way. We might have gotten completely different RPG mechanics.

And what is the point of thinking of theoretical scenarios for ASSFAGGOTS developing ?
We live in this scenario and this is our reality.

We could have ended up with ASSFAGGOTS inspired by Dawn of War 2, with random loot drops, customizing out of battle and controlling a small team with unique varying abilities based off their equipment. Do I play an assault with a jet pack to hit their heavy weapons and melta grenades, or do I run terminator armour and tank through?

Inb4 someone says Demigod wasn't influenced by War3

PROSTAGMA

Okay anons Imma gonna buy Men of War with spare cash I have from cards, which game do you recommend? I have little interest in multiplayer, which has the most interesting campaign? I heard Vietnam has the smallest scale, but do you get to enjoy all the modern equipment goodness like helicopters? What about original, Red Tide and Condemned Heroes, I heard all games are hard as hell so which one of these is more fair, offers more interesting scenarios and less bugs?


I just don't find hating Warcraft 3 for something it's mods have spawned and devs have never intended reasonable. It's like hating on Quake for spawning Team Fortress and this whole Battleborn/Paladins/Overwatch/Lawbreakers character-based FPS boom.

That doesn't sound all that bad.

Nobody said we have to agree on what to dislike.
I loved it back in the day, but looking on it now, the long term effect isn't good and blizz dropped any meaningful support for the game after some time.
It could have been very alive even now, had they not done that.

Pretty rare genre. The last one I played was Full Spectrum Warrior, and that was…what, over a decade ago, I think.

Future cop LAPD…holy shit it's been a while since I played that on the PS1 but you're absolutely spot on.


Why single out warcraft then? All it has done is build up on what came before. As said, something else would have come along instead.

You realise it had Dota right?

Level 1 heroes have a hard time killing units. You are not very good at the game if you get them killed. The point is to disrupt economy, not necessarily kill units. These kind of harassments early game exist in loads of other RTS games so you're talking BS.

To be honest… despite my love for the genre I can't think of a single RPG that is alive and well to this day. Red Alert 2? Left with terrible balance making everyone cheese cheapest tactics and rushes. World in Conflict? No more multiplayer. Dawn of War had the balance ruined by expansions, DoW2 needs rebalancing mods and Company of Heroes was never balanced. Starcraft is alive but thanks to competitive gooks so it's a ravenous undead zombie hunting for brains to kind of alive.

It seems mods are the only salvation of this genre. CnC Generals has RotR and other goodies, DoW has Armageddon, DoW 2 has that elite balance mod, Warcraft 3 has more custom maps than you could count, and still too many if you filter off all the garbage, Red Alert 2 has Mental Omega which despite offering it's own balance issues is just that awesome, and Starcraft 2 seems to have a map editor too so something decent might just come out, eventually.

Sorry I meant Ultimate Apocalypse, I blame Steel Legion for this!

Noice noice.

I totally agree about the early game thing. It's sort of strange when you think about it that no one has tried moving past this.

Also, what would you say to RTS trying to move away from the gook click by utilizing more automation or unit A.I.? I feel that is a massive hamstring right now.

Tanktics
Fanta Scape
Inochi Mijikashi Tatakae

Close Combat were really good RTT games

I actually once had an idea of an RTS where you are given some starting territory and you get to deploy tech and production facilities, bases and even alter the portion of terrain - say create indestructible walls that can be climbed but not destroyed, or dig out some canals for ships. There's some time given for all these deployments, after which leftover construction points are converted into regular game points, and while you still get to deploy structures, you cannot modify terrain beyond repairing damage or something. Anyways once regular game starts you can train units and do research and construct structures, like in a regular RTS.

The main problem unique to this design would be, of course, proper balancing - like, you need a few viable tactics to counter players who just wall in with walls and water canals or something. My idea would be making zone control outside of the base essential for progression and permitting a quick nuking option that makes wall cliffs "climbable" and collapsing the water channels or something, while preventing the air units purely walled-in player could use from taking them over. Alternatively, instead of control point the game has automated resource collector units that can only be ships and ground units, not aircraft, with the HQ being the only dropoff for resources, which means you gotta keep your bass accessible, same with construction spots and structures requiring repairs.

As for AI, when it comes to micromanagement minimization such as autocast when possible and units auto-targeting most viable targets, but you still gotta offer some meaningful decisions to players. Also, I'd rather look into the UI because as it is now it could use some improvement, like why can't we access all selected unit abilities and have to scroll trough them with tab, for fuck's sake?!

This part of the game has the highest risk/reward, there is nothing more satisfying than pulling of an early game play that cripples the enemy.

Probably would have to be
Dawn of War 1
Men of War
and either Rise of Nations or Command and Conquer Generals.

I didn't think Halo Wars was THAT bad

rise of legends had a fun campaign, not the best, but i want to throw it out there.
stronghold and warcraft 2 will always hold a place in my heart.

Bullshit, early game offers the least options, the different rush tactics are situational as competent player can counter them most of the time, so in general it's like a gamble because everything depends on whether enemy is prepared for rush/sabotage or not.

What exactly are you calling bullshit to? Nothing in my post counters anything you are saying?

Right, sorry, nevermind.

Gaylo Wars is top loli of the yer x~DD

There will be lolis in Halo Wars?

Earth 2150
Metal Fatigue
CnCRA2
DoW1

Fuck new games, especially for RTS the old games are way better than anything out there today.

AoS was the original name of the genre which they now call MOBA/ARTS too (and neither of these names are indicative).

Yes. ASSFAGGOTS is the only name that defines the genre as it is.

Also SS2

Empire Earth
Age of Empires 1
Starcraft 2