I want an actual real time strategy game. All popular RTSs are actually just about tactics and micro. I mean every SC2 guide will tell you that up to a very high level of play, if you’re just doing more you’ll be more efficient and win regardless of strategy. Why can’t you just set a standing order of “make unit x” or “make unit x while we have gas until we get to 50 of them”? That’s strategy. Having to tab back to a building and manually queue a couple of units every several seconds is just creating busywork for players, but thats what’s necessary and optimal for playing SC2 and most RTS games well
Rise of Nations (originally released back in 2003) had/has some interesting ideas to reduce some of the busywork:
- Worker units will automatically try to gather/build nearby after a short (configurable) delay if they’re not doing anything.
- Cities (the main worker-producing structure) has a rally point option that’s essentially “all nearby empty resource gathering”, so you can queue a dozen workers and they’ll distribute themselves as they’re created.
- Production buildings can be set to loop over their current queue, letting you build continually without intervention as long as you maintain enough resources each time the queue “restocks”.
- Units that engage in combat without being given an explicit target will try (with modest success) to aim for nearby units which they counter.
For the most part, none of the implemented options are strictly better than micromanaging them yourself:
- You will always spend less time idling workers if you micromanage them yourself.
- The auto-rally-point doesn’t always prioritize the resources that you would if you did it yourself.
- Queueing additional units is slightly less resource-efficient than only building one thing at a time.
- Total DPS is higher if you manually micro effectively.
But the options are there when you need them, which I think is a a nice design. It doesn’t completely remove best-in-class players being rewarded for their speed as a player, but does raise the “speed floor”, allowing slower players to get more bang for their buck APM-wise, and compete a bit more on the strategy/tactics side of the game instead.
By far one of my favorite games!
Supreme commander was what you describe. You setup your factory to make a unit or a set of units and repeatedly build them until canceled or not enough resources. You could zoom out to view the whole map. it was very much a strategy game and not really tactics or micro.
Beyond all Reason in a similar space
I love this concept; I had a friend from school viscerally defend SC: BW as superior to SC2 because in his words SC2 removed skill because of not having the unit select cap that BW did. That’s just less, as you put it, busywork, and then the player is more free to consider army compositions and positioning rather than drawing tons of rectangles. Removing more busywork in favor of actual strategy would be amazing.
There’s no micro in Chess, just strategy.
There are types of time management which I think can still be interesting. For example, are you able to afford – in the resources of time and attention – optimally micro’ing this important fight? Or are you going to have to yolo it a bit so that you can do multi-task economic tasks at the same time?
Some (much?) of the problem is that (for better or worse) skilled players can and will squeeze the game to optimality in terms of win rate, and that tends to collapse viable tactical and strategic choices. Once those choices have been optimised (the game is largely “solved”), the main way to get better is by being faster, not by being smarter.
Yep, take some ideas from single player colony management games.
It’s astounding how much you can “automate” when fully using the filters and rules options in vanilla Rimworld. Mods increase that exponentially. Granted, different genre, singleplayer, and pausable while you configure things.
I think the challenge is balancing that with the real time events you have to react to, so it doesn’t further compress the meta to an even smaller set of “optimal” options.
Why can’t you just set a standing order of “make unit x” or “make unit x while we have gas until we get to 50 of them”? That’s strategy. Having to tab back to a building and manually queue a couple of units every several seconds is just creating busywork for players
I agree completely. Related: have you considered turn based strategy games?
Personally I like the PDX style where it’s “turn based” but the turns happen rapidly enough to feel like an RTS, and you can pause them at any time.
I feel like people dont understand, that the RT part in rts will always be the important part.
If you free up macro work, people will micro harder. WC3 got rid of most of the macro demand of SC and in consequence you will lose if you dont micro your units ik battle.
SC1 had build pipe lines and it wad still better to issue commands seperatley, because the player is more flexible.
A strategy is worthless if it csn be executed and the limits of execution create strategy.
Extraordinary pathing and all-select created the a-click deathball, that is one of the most boring ways to see, play and lose to.
Hell, I should be able to upload an economic playbook with hundreds of rules like the one you described, and load it on game start. Then all I have to do is the actual unit movements.
That is not true, at least in Age of Empires 2 which is the RTS I’m most familiar. Have a look at the limited viper series to see a good player destroy using only 60 APM. If you make good decisions, you don’t need to click as much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7moDQK1Yng&list=PLrFe08sgKX493Gax5DFNkpEbgICGDc0YJ
Why can’t you just set a standing order of “make unit x” or “make unit x while we have gas until we get to 50 of them”?
Because while this will make casuals that will play the game for 3 hours and drop it happy, the typical RTS fans will not enjoy this. There is a trade off between queuing a lot of units and having more resources available for other techs. Having units auto produce without any disadvantage is just kind of boring. Then you are just watching the game, not really playing it.
Maybe you should try turn based strategy, if you don’t like real time strategy. In the later, like the name implies, time is the most important resource. You don’t need a lot of clicks, but you need to use it wisely.
RTS did go mainstream and it indeed turned into games very different from old school SC et al.
Plants vs zombies and LoL are the descendants of the genre and are or at least were, HUGE. Tower defense and moba are the two evolutionary paths that RTS took.
Tower defense is super mainstream, but moba, while huge isn’t really mainstream in my opinion. But one things for sure, they don’t have much in common with SC except the lineage.
moba feels like superfast mmorpg. the only reason i don’t like it.
As far as I’m concerned, the genre peaked with Battle for Middle Earth II.
God is that ever true. A remake that’s true to the spirit of the original could have all my money
IMHO also the pinnacle of LOTR-related video games.
RTS games going mainstream are what killed my precious baby boy Command and Conquer.
God damn EA. Tiberium Wars was blegh, but what they did with Twilight… Thats just molestation of a corpse.
I liked tiberium wars.
One of my favorite games actually.
Okay, and?
You’re allowed to like and enjoy things, even bad things… Hell, theres entire fandoms around liking bad things (like B-Movies), that doesnt make them less fundamentally bad. and it doesnt make you wrong for liking them.
I wish I could play a game where I could talk in real time instead of click, prepare attacks with my generals before the battle and settle a strategy, and where the fastest tabber-clicker is not the one who always wins.
Why? Because I’m getting old, that’s why, and anyone who ever played a competitive RTS knows exactly what it means.
Try the Total War games, especially the older (non-Warhammer) ones. Units take time to carry out actions, there is no point and not really a way to do insane actions per minute counts, as if a unit is engaged in melee, it can’t really disengage without losses. There is also a great scale to the whole thing. I loved Shogun 2 for example.
I also like Eugen games like Wargame, Steel Division or Warno if a modern shooty type thing is more your game. Maybe try Regiments, that one is also good and maybe a bit less complex than Eugen titles.
Neither of these has base building, both are more of a “this is how many soldiers get for this battle, use them wisely” type game.
You have just perfectly explained why I loved Shogun so much! It was much more forgiving to learn, and to then excel at. Very much a fun RTS. Atleast the original was very well made, I should try the second one.
Shogun 2 is arguably the best TW game imo.
Thanks mate
Going to throw a shout out for Against The Storm.
It takes my favorite part of Age of Empires (setting up the dang base) and distills it into the perfect game.
Now if someone can figure out how to make the other half (the combat) really good.
Removed by mod
If you miss that old style of game, that’s fine, but there are probably tons of ways to morph the RTS genre that solves its old problems, finds it more success, and still scratches that itch. I’m quite fond of Cannon Brawl, and Tooth and Tail had its issues but was on the right track.
Star Wars: Empire at War is a classic with more nontraditional gameplay and light 4x elements (no diplomacy). The modding scene is rich too, with Thrawn’s Revenge for the EU and multiple Clone Wars mods.
There was one on Xbox original where you talk using the headset. It’s military with tanks, etc. Its like "unit 3 attack objective A… All units hold… Unit 3 patrol… It was awesome but the campaign was short and as far as I remember there was no skirmish/play with PC.
Tom Clancy’s End War?
Endwar! I remember yelling into the mic to attack because it never understood me lol
I think that is a separate genre of games now, I’ve seen a few different games like that.
I’m wondering if better AI could save this genre. I always hated the fragility of any soldiers I wasn’t actively controlling, having idle workers, workers trying to chop wood in the middle of enemies, etc.
If the computer can take your high level commands but also put out logical low level ones, and maybe also punish high APM, it might restore some of the moderate-paced feel of the game.
Why would you punish high apm? Thats punishing people for being better.
If you free up actions, good players will use the free space for other options.
If it only taked 50% skill to defend an expandion, people will double expand or expand and attack at the same time.
It’s a question of whether to reward a player that can see that the opponent is using rock, take a step back, start building paper, and send them out even if they take time doing it; versus a player that just super-optimizes building an army of rock to send against armies of paper, and give them the best chance of winning by perfectly kiting every attack on the field.
There’s certainly an argument that some groups would like the tournament of APM, but I think a lot of people didn’t bother with high level StarCraft because they saw Koreans clicking 15 times a second and figured they can’t keep up. It’s like how fighting games work to demonstrate they’re not rewarding button mashing.
