RTS: I could crush you :D

[Mister Earl]

Any RTS online fans out there? What is your favorite game, and what was your "Defining moment"? What are favorite strategies? (Be generic, not game specific!) Tell me about your amazing wins and your toughest opponents.

Strategy in general is a favorite hobby of mine.

[Fazor]

I hate RTS games :) Of course, many of them fail in that the only "strategy" is to build many units as fast as you can and crush the opponent by numbers.

I liked the Myth series by Bungie, and I've played Company of Hero's a bit, but really I don't get into RTS's as much as other games. The only online game I really play a lot is Counter-Strike: Source, just becausei can load it and be in a game in under a minute, and if I only get to play for 4 minutes its just as fun as if i get an hour to play.

[Mister Earl]

To answer my own post:
My favorite game was the original "Homeworld". It's kind of a space armada battle game. Graphics were amazing for its time, the interface was efficient, and the spread of technology you could learn was great. I usually bend towards the "Swarm" tactic... not to be confused with the "Zerg rush" where you take a large number of inexpensive units and try to overwhelm the enemy... what I do is break up my army/fleet/whatever into many small, independant, and highly mobile groups. Sure, the enemies' army/fleet/whatever combined can crush any of my little groups, but he'd have to leave his base to do it. Since he can't leave his base without being picked apart, I have control over more resources than he.

My defining moment was when I first tested out that strategy against one of the highest ranked people on the ladder at that time... I think he was fourth. I was new, and was very near the bottom. He was a good sport, though he didn't think my strategy was going to work, until I had ten seperate independant ship groups all spaced out around his area. He'd send a team or two out to chase off a cluster of ships, and I'd withdraw that group, and then set two others on intercept, another group or two at his resource collectors, generally throw so much at him that he'd pull his raiding force away to defend his fleet, and then I'd pull mine back after inflicting superior damage. In the end, I did win that match. I wore him down and when the combined strength of my "fire teams" severely outweighed his, I swept in and ended the match. He was shocked... he asked if it was OK that he had recorded the match, and posted it to his clan's forum. I told him sure. Then he asked if it was OK if he used my strategy. Kind of suprised, there, since even if I said no, he could've done it anyway. A good sport all around. He was also my toughest opponent; Before the match where I tested out that swarm strategy for the first time, he soundly defeated me each and every time. He had a flawless build order and would outproduce me every single time. He'd send in raiding parties tailored to counter exactly what I was fielding.

[Vermonter]

I used to play a LOT of Age of Empire II. With AoEIII out, I should start again. My favorite tactic was a controlled seige using trebuchets, backed up by a horde of cavalry and support archers, with footmen to deal with most of the riffraff. Proved to be quite an effective method. I usually played the Japanese or the Huns. Samurai were very effective melee units, and would level fortresses with ease even without trebs. :-) I'll pick up AoEIII this Christmas and play through it, looks like a lot of fun. I used to play StarCraft and the WarCraft series with my roommate last year...need to do that again. My suitemates have been getting into Worms Armageddon lately, that was always a fun game.

[Moose]

My work buddies and I used to play Red Alert back in the day when men were men (and women were too.)

My favorite attack was when I yanked the project lead's layered defense out from under him before he could so much as react. His land defense depended heavily on a pair of cruisers covering a trio of tesla towers. I'd spent a good ten minutes working a full dozen subs past his destroyers, one by one, until they were all in position.

I sent my migs to take out the lead destroyer (the true lynchpin of the whole defense, not the cruisers like he'd thought). As they appeared on the screen, all my victim heard was a very loud woosh as the subs all surfaced and opened up on the rest of the destroyers. Two salvoes later, I take out the cruisers. By the sixth salvo, I'd cleared the seas of all naval opposition, the shipyards, and suffered no losses whatsoever.

Before the subs had time to finish off the shipyards, I dropped a battlefield nuke on his power stations. His tesla coils went down just as my heavy tanks rolled in to gut his base.

Total time of Operation Get Newfie: just under thirty seconds.

Hearing my project lead joke-swearing at me from his cubicle as I mopped up his base: priceless.

(Edit: There may be an accuracy mistake in this. I seem to remember he something defending the coast besides the cruisers, which is why I dropped the nuke on his power stations after taking down his navy, but he was definitely playing allies... Hmm...)

[Doodler]

Homeworld geek here. Master of the "Recovery Corvette Zerg".

Resistance is futile. ;)

[collegeguy]

Surprisingly enough I don't play much games myself, except for Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm not sure if it's exactly popular I just never tried any other game. :)

[mickal555]

My work buddies and I used to play Red Alert back in the day when men were men (and women were too.)

My favorite attack was when I yanked the project lead's layered defense out from under him before he could so much as react. His land defense depended heavily on a pair of cruisers covering a trio of tesla towers. I'd spent a good ten minutes working a full dozen subs past his destroyers, one by one, until they were all in position.

I sent my migs to take out the lead destroyer (the true lynchpin of the whole defense, not the cruisers like he'd thought). As they appeared on the screen, all my victim heard was a very loud woosh as the subs all surfaced and opened up on the rest of the destroyers. Two salvoes later, I take out the cruisers. By the sixth salvo, I'd cleared the seas of all naval opposition, the shipyards, and suffered no losses whatsoever.

Before the subs had time to finish off the shipyards, I dropped a battlefield nuke on his power stations. His tesla coils went down just as my heavy tanks rolled in to gut his base.

Total time of Operation Get Newfie: just under thirty seconds.

Hearing my project lead joke-swearing at me from his cubicle as I mopped up his base: priceless.

(Edit: There may be an accuracy mistake in this. I seem to remember he something defending the coast besides the cruisers, which is why I dropped the nuke on his power stations after taking down his navy, but he was definitely playing allies... Hmm...)

Red alert was before my time(sorta), but I loved red alert 2!

:D :D

[Nicolas]

My favourite RTS used to be Total Annihilation, but only in multiplayer.

Now Supreme Commander is coming, which basically is exactly the same game :). They added some interesting gameplay aspects and upgraded the graphics (it was true 3D already in the original, but now the camera isn't fixed at 90 degrees). That might become my next favourite RTS :).

I also liked AOE I and AOE II a lot, especially the atmosphere when your town was still rather small. AOE fights are heavily strength/weakness unit match based. Total Annihilation in a way has this as well, but next to that you can also build superunits, and you can just build a huge army. Total Annihilation never felt dirty of a Commander unit, simple resources, huge armies and no really special abilities, and kept that principle for Supreme Commander. So it will be a complete no-go in the current RTS fashion, but at the same time I think it will be very nice to play. And as it seems they're keeping the magnificent interaction of tiny scripts that made the original absolutely amazing to play.

Also nice is that the original units were designed very facetted, stealth like, due to limits on polycount. Now polycount is no real issue, but they kept this facetted looks as a design aspect. So now you've got a facetted ship with a detailed 3D turret section on it, nice gimmick for those who played the original.

I moderately liked Commando's, but for these games I'm more for the FPS variants (great escape and the like).

[Moose]

Red alert was before my time(sorta), but I loved red alert 2!

:D :D


Oooh, I think I remember. I dropped the a-bomb onto his powerplants and satellite relay just before the naval battle. I'd been doing it since I'd gotten A-bombs to keep him paying to replace his intel operations, and to cover some of my own sleight of hand moves.

It culminated into the final attack to both distract him from the arrival of my MiGs, to try and tie up the last of his funds (by keeping him too busy to stop the repairs).

The ultimate point of that a-bomb strike was to blind him under the expectation that he might not have been thorough enough about exploring my tanks' approach route. I was hoping to buy just a little more "fog of war" time that while he was trying to react to my navy's assault, my tanks would be able to take out his key construction buildings.

It seemed to work well; he'd been unable to react in time to prevent any part of my attack from pushing him well past the point of no-recovery. :)

[Moose]

My favourite RTS used to be Total Annihilation, but only in multiplayer.

Ooh, yeah, we used to play that too on Network Wednesdays.

I'd lose myself in detail. My project lead, especially, was better at multitasking and micro-managing his units, and I never really got good at defending my bases.

One thing I did do well, however, was building stealthed mini-bases, usually around a couple of masked hidden Big-Bertha cannons. The trick was to get a transport flyer to pick up a jammer k-bot, and get the transport to follow the construction flyers to the hidden site. If you do it carefully enough, your victim never spots you until you're shelling his base with an overwhelming artillary barrage. The problem is that this is a one-trick pony to a decent player.

You can use the same trick with a carrier bay to stealth a fleet, which worked fairly well for me once.

[Nicolas]

was better at multitasking and micro-managing his units

Oh the joy of pressing the control button, giving a whole range of commands, and after say fifteen minutes looking how far along the units or groups are. Excellent!

Was that already included in the original, or only through packs?

What I liked about things such as Big Bertha, was that excluding mountains, it didn't really matter where you placed her on medium sized maps. Quite a range :). Oh and the "recoil" in your energy budget when she fired, lovely! :D

I said it before in another thread, but it is unbelievable they made such a complex RTS back then, that was true 3D on top of all that! Had they made the camera not at 90°, it would have looked like a decade ahead of the rest. I assume they kept it at 90° because of

-low poly models
-overview
-nothing else had been done in RTS gameplay at the time

So they used true 3D especially for balistics and the like, not so much for visuals.

[Fazor]

TA wasn't the first RTS to use a 3D approach. But I think it did it more sucessfully than most of the time. Use to play it a little with my roomies, but I can't remember much about it. As I said earlier, i never really have gotten into RTS's.

I did like some of the early Close Combat games from my old arch nemises Microsoft. Oh, and I liked Dawn of War, i think it was the second one that I played but I can't remember the full title. *shrugs* I'd be interested in Homeworld or Homeworld II, but haven't played them yet.

[Nicolas]

TA wasn't the first RTS to use a 3D approach.

Which was the first full 3D RTS according to you?

btw there used to be a discussion whether or not there were humans inside TA's robots. Adding moral value to a game called "total annihilation" might seem strange in itself, but discussing whether or not a collection of tiny polygons is or is not supposed to contain humans is totally weird :). I thought the consensus was that the Core were pure robots, but the Arm were (in general lighter built) man controlled robots. This alone shows the stupidity of the argument: nowhere in the game do you get any hint pointing towards this difference. No people, no blood, no nothing. Just riding, rolling, sailing and flying robots that shoot each other and explode. The only organic deaths I saw were forest fires :).

[Fazor]

[QUOTE=Nicolas;882676]Which was the first full 3D RTS according to you?
QUOTE]

Well, it could be argued that TA itself is not a full 3d rts game based on the stationary camera.

There was one, Ground Control maybe? I think that was the name. It had 3D units and a movable camera. Myth was tactically 3d (world was 3d) but the units were sprites.


---Now that i've wasted my type typing that, I did some searching and I'll retract that. :) I didn't know TA came out in '97, as I didn't start playing it until '01 when I was in college. Thought I remembered it as being new, but apparently I was mistaken.

[Nicolas]

Well, it could be argued that TA itself is not a full 3d rts game based on the stationary camera.

Can you make this argument please?

edit: saw your edit as well, but anyway.

If all objects and the world itself are 3D, and all objects can move freely in all 3 geometrical dimensions (don't start! ;)), than it is a real 3D game in my book. Even though the camera pans in a 2D plane above this 3D world. That would be a bit like arguing your aquarium is not 3D when you're looking at it with your nose touching the glass.

I didn't know TA came out in '97
To put that in context: Castle Wolfenstein 3D came out in 94. Quite a leap for just 3 years! But hey, compare Fifa 94 to 97, and you see that things really got off then. Add the introduction of 3DFx a bit later, and you're getting close to what we see now. Things like HDRR and advanced physics (ragdoll, all dynamic objects) seem to be the next stage.

[Fazor]

Was there a sequil to TA? perhaps we played that. Anyway, I agree that games took a huge leap in the mid 90's. Also agree about the "next stage" in game evolution: the advanced physics and lighting and such is out there already, but I have yet to play a game that utilizes it in a way that actually changes how the game is played. Even HL2's physics-based puzzles really didn't make it anything more than a shooter with puzzles.

But anyway, just found out the other day that I'm 7th on the list for the Wii at the local store. That's what I'm look'n forward to :)

[Nicolas]

Was there a sequil to TA? perhaps we played that.
You had expansion packs such as "core contingency" and some freely available on the net. You had TA: Kingdoms. I don't know about other sequels. As far as I know, TA: Kingdoms was not as good as the original. Stepped away from the "massive army" concept :).

You now have an internet community making the original in 3D.

Even HL2's physics-based puzzles really didn't make it anything more than a shooter with puzzles.

Well, it does change things. When (in HL1) I threw a grenade onto a pilar, after which it bounced back and landed behind a corner I couldn't otherwise hit, I knew physics were gameplay. This is also the case in for example Burnout, where all the dynamic objects really are influencing how you ride your laps on the track, and you can even use it against your opponents. In HL2, the physics indeed mainly are involved in puzzles. Though for example the gravity gun is a nice example of physics in gameplay. Though I would have changed its reach a bit, now it is or extremely powerful in throwing things, or it can't even pick it up.

Advanced lighting in gameplay: not a lot. Yeah, when you're in a dark alley you can't see what's going on in the sun outside, that's nice. I don't think you can do much more to incorporate lighting into the gameplay.

And now you've got the official game "Supreme Commander" coming up, which is made by the creators of TA, and very heavily based on TA.


Enjoy you Wii! It looks nice, 100% gameplay. Do take care of the strap though, there have been cases where it broke and people hence accidentally smashed their TV with the free flying Wiimote.

[Dragon Star]

I used to play a LOT of Age of Empire II. With AoEIII out, I should start again. My favorite tactic was a controlled seige using trebuchets, backed up by a horde of cavalry and support archers, with footmen to deal with most of the riffraff. Proved to be quite an effective method. I usually played the Japanese or the Huns. Samurai were very effective melee units, and would level fortresses with ease even without trebs. :-) I'll pick up AoEIII this Christmas and play through it, looks like a lot of fun. I used to play StarCraft and the WarCraft series with my roommate last year...need to do that again. My suitemates have been getting into Worms Armageddon lately, that was always a fun game.

AoE III fan right here at your service.:D

Although my friend ruined the game for me by introducing the cheats...man that viper is awesome! :lol:

[Nicolas]

AOE III let me down for not supporting SM2. I miss half of the visual glory that way. Though I doubt my PC would be fast enough to run it with HDRR anyway (there you are, sitting behind your 1 gig Ram, 3 GHz cpu and 128 MB graphics card...)

[Dragon Star]

PFFT...I'm in a 2.4GHz sys with 256mb RAM and a built in POS graphics card.

Be glad you're capable.;)

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

Its not exactly RTS but the only game I found that is worth playing is Civilization IV. I dont feel my time playing it is *wasted* which is good since I don't have a lot of free time.

[davidlpf]

aoe II and civ III are my favorites

[cjl]

Civ is awesome :D

I've had every version since II :)

[davidlpf]

At one time I had civ I and bet it one emperor level.

[Mister Earl]

Lots of responses! Looks like I'm not the only strategy geek around. Had another victory, of another kind, last night. Playing World of Warcraft, I have a level 21 "Rogue" (I prefer the term assassin) and happened apon an enemy of the other side. A Troll priest, level ??. I figured, what the heck. It wouldn't hurt to cut into him a bit and see if I could damage enough to take him down. He started fighting a tiger of some kind, letting me land an easy ambush. After the first two hits a level 30-something dwarf ran up to watch, and I ended up taking out the priest. I asked the dwarf what level the priest was.. . he told me I had just taken out a level 30. O_o

A win that never would have happened without the right tactics.

#EDIT# Pretty obvious I'm on a PVP/RP server hehe.

[Fazor]

So, in WoW, are there servers where the Orc side and the Good side populate the server so players from each can fight each other? And do they battle for control of the regions? I started playing WoW a bit when I had the free trial and kinda liked it but didn't have enough time to really get into it. All my experience was player vs NPC, but being able to do it along side of other players on ur same team.

[Mister Earl]

On a PvP server, there are "Contested areas" where you can attack the opposing side with abandon. Also, in the capital cities, there are NPCs you may speak to, which allow you to join PvP style events, like 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 duels in the arena, or Capture the Flag in Warsong Gulch. Lots and lots of fun. I'd never join anything other than a PvP server. Fazor, I can easily see why they're almost at the eight million member mark... the amount of content they have in this thing is staggering. There's always somewhere to go or something to do.

[Fazor]

I'd like a MMORPG where the whole world (or close to it) is contested. But i guess you could end up with balance issues, if one side had the entire map then no one would join the opposing side etc. etc.

I may haveta get into WoW...i need a new game. But this time of year I haveta steer away from spending money on myself, so many presents to buy, so little time. :-P

[Wolf-S]

There were quite a few RTS games I liked, here are some I remembered, most of them pretty old:

Civilization 2, with hundreds of addons and maps - made some myself. I enjoyed the process of building large empires, the result was not important. Most games ended in nuclear war anyway.

I loved Battlezone and its expansion pack Battlezone: Red Odyssey, if they qualify as RTS games. I liked making really protected bases and then finishing missions alone. Battlezone 2 was quite a disappointment for me, as everything took place on totally alien worlds, and Cold War ended. Most of the planets and moons in the first part were from Solar system - my favourite was Venus.

Didn't play AOE much, but for some reason I liked AOE1 more than AOE2, although the latter had some interesting stuff also, like castles. But, on the other hand, I absolutely enjoyed Age of Mythology - it was quite similar to AOE (albeit the graphics were true 3D) but the campaigns were much more interesting. I also played the addon, I believe it was called The Titans.

I tried Total Annihilation in multiplayer mode a couple of years ago, and the only thing I remember I always lost rather quickly, with all the machinery attacking me.

[Mister Earl]

Actually, you can kill the opposing side anywhere. Contested areas are a non-level restricted combat zone, but regular areas and cities you'll have to be of a similar level to fight. Of course, you can challange others to a duel reguardless of level at any area and reguardless of faction.

[Vermonter]

Usually in World of Warcraft, if the difference in player level is three or greater, the higher will almost always win. There's a big difference in numbers at that point.

There are essentially two server types: Normal and PvP. Normal means that the server is more geared towards Player vs. Environment, and you cannot be attacked by a player of the opposing faction unless you specifically flag yourself for it by typing "/pvp". PvP servers means that while the game is still Player vs. Environment, you can be attacked by other players if you are either in contested territory (where both factions have bases in the zone) and in enemy territory (which are usually starting/lowbie zones for low-level characters to get used to to the game). There are several zones where Player versus Player becomes a common ocurrance: Stranglethorn Vale, Hillsbrad Fields, and a few others. Usually characters stay in faction-controlled zones until level 20 or so, then they move on to the contested areas. There is some debate on the neutrality of this, some as Horde members think that the Alliance is pampered, in that they aren't shoved into PvP until later than them. Hillsbrad is a good example of this. Horde members generally go there between the mid to high 20's or so, while Alliance members typically go there in the low to mid 30's. This creates a balance problem.

[mickal555]

I'm having lots of fun with this one atm:
www.travian.com it's browser based...
Join S7 in the NW! :D

[Nicolas]

an enemy of the other side

That game also has enemies of the same side?

I assume you didn't mean the "other side" ;).

[Mister Earl]

I have a few enemies on the alliance side.

[Vermonter]

Well, there are players within my faction that I despise...but you can't kill their character :(

[Nicolas]

The game's terrain is a two-dimensional rendering with a matrix of height values mapped over it.
Thisis why in 1997, Total Annihilation could have a very natural looking, detailed, smooth 3D terrain without any visual deterioration due a limited amount of polygons, nor increased cpu load. The only limitation it resulted in was the need for the camera to be at 90 degrees in order to keep the illusion.

btw the illusion was perfect. Hills appeared to be real, even very high ones such as those in the desert maps.

Supreme Commander will feature a true 3D, tessellated map, and on top of that a normal map for additional detail (used to place the units, for physics such as line of sight and shell impacts, etc). I don't fully get this part, as apparently the 3D map and other game aspects will use the normal map, so the 3D map is the only 3D world used in the game, as far as I understand it then.

At least it's not a 2D map with an invisible 3D height map on top such as TA used to have. The difference betwween the visible map and the 3D map in Sc is unclear to me though

[Mister Earl]

No, but you can duel them. Right now my plan is to get to 60 at a devent pace, so I can start doing solo-raids... I'm going to try to sneak in to the enemy capital cities, and thin thier ranks from within thier own walls, where they feel safest.