Help for an RTS newcomer?

[Jodah]

You may also want to look into the Warhammer 40k series. It is an easy start point as it doesn't have as much to manage. You still gather resources to a degree but you capture points instead of building stuff and the smaller armies make it easier to micromanage.

 

[Fenreil]

Try Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, more strategy seeing as how instead of gathering resources, you capture strategic points. You also have a limited amount of units you can build which makes building the right units all the more crucial.

This. Dawn of War and Company of Heroes are great RTS games, plus they've got Harlequin [http://www.youtube.com/user/HarlequinCasts] there to show how to play, via awesome casts.

 

[gideonkain]

Starcraft 2 is a great game, even if Blizzard is the devil.
I play a round or two of Starcraft 2 every month...I'm ranked 20th in my Bronze league, a.k.a. I really suck and can never seem to get better, but it's always a blast.

 

[Yokai]

I will say that RTS multiplayer is pretty much uniformly vicious and super-fast paced. I've been playing RTS games for seven years and I still suck at multiplayer in any game you care to name. But I'd basically just suggest playing skirmish on easiest settings, and once you can beat the opponent four times out of five, move up a difficulty level, rinse and repeat.

Dawn of War (the first one) is an excellent introduction to the genre, as well as being incredibly fun. It's faster than Age of Empires, slower than Starcraft, and with just the right balance of combat and base-building. I'd definitely give it a look.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Learn shortcuts.

I know some terran players (who are terran 'cos .. err .. they played the campaign) who were frantically going from building to building making stuff.
Their complaint: "how do I build stuff and not queue and still control my units?!"

I said, "try putting all your barracks on the 4 hotkey. Add new barracks to 4 immediately when you start building them. Set a common rally point by pressing 4, then right-clicking a location. Make marines by pressing 4, AAAAA."

All of a sudden, they went from bronze to gold league.

 

[NightlyNews]

The easiest of the three to learn would be Age of Empires, I think. Although, that depends on what Total War games you have. Napoleon and Empire can be hard for some people to get into, while Rome is quite easy to learn.

If you're interested in SC2, then watch Day9's newbie tuesdays, as they're aimed directly at helping new players. I think Husky Starcraft has some tutorials of the extreme basics, too.

Husky is funny, but he is one of the all time worst starcraft players. Please take any advice from him with a grain of salt.

He's in diamond, so he's not that bad. Also, when I say " extreme basics " I really do mean it. The tutorial was for people who had never even picked up Starcraft before. How is he going to understand Day9 if he doesn't understand the basics?

No offense but it is incredibly easy to 4 gate into diamond and guess what Husky is a huge fan of ...

Although he is self deprecating he clearly cares more about apm and winning than actually knowing the game. Toss is one of the most fluid races in that you can make almost any unit work in your unit compositions (besides carriers) and I see him go mass stalker every time :/

 

[auronvi]

My advice is simple: Learn the hot-keys and use the keyboard.

This is across all RTS games. You should be playing with one hand on the mouse, the other on the keyboard and the hand on the keyboard should be moving as fast if not faster than the mouse hand. Watch videos online of other players in your game of choice. I recommend Starcraft 2 because it is the most current and most competitive RTS out there. Great ladder system, huge community and lots of tutorials and videos[footnote]http://www.youtube.com/user/ForceSC2strategy [/footnote] to learn from.

 

[omega 616]

I have always tried to get into RTS games but always fail because I can't really learn to do well and keep up. I always can pass the tutorials but after that I am lost. Could anybody direct me to any helpful websites/videos that could help me with my problem? Also, I have Age of Empires 3, both StarCraft games, and some Total War games, what do you suggest is the easiest to learn?

STARCRAFT 2 all day long, why? It is the hardest game to be best at but there are so many ways to improve.

First of all go to youtube and type in daytv, good god will he help you be an awesome player. He is so good, so funny and he goes over everything a good number of times so it gets drilled into you! (pylons and probes! Always build pylons and probes!).

Teamliquid, hundreds of people including some pro S2 players (yes, they earn cash off it) all on this site. It has everything from how to read build orders to live streams of the pro's playing SC2.

There is also a coaching site run by pro's, you can pay a pro SC2 gamer to teach you how to play. Yes, they are expensive 'cos they see it as time that could be used for preparing for comps or running there own comp. (I am pretty sure it's "gosu coaching")

The ladder is also awesome, you suck? Get stuck in the bottom league so you don't get owned by awesome players. Your an awesome player? Get challenged by equally awesome players.

 

[cgmetallica1981]

I have always tried to get into RTS games but always fail because I can't really learn to do well and keep up. I always can pass the tutorials but after that I am lost. Could anybody direct me to any helpful websites/videos that could help me with my problem? Also, I have Age of Empires 3, both StarCraft games, and some Total War games, what do you suggest is the easiest to learn?

STARCRAFT 2 all day long, why? It is the hardest game to be best at but there are so many ways to improve.

First of all go to youtube and type in daytv, good god will he help you be an awesome player. He is so good, so funny and he goes over everything a good number of times so it gets drilled into you! (pylons and probes! Always build pylons and probes!).

Teamliquid, hundreds of people including some pro S2 players (yes, they earn cash off it) all on this site. It has everything from how to read build orders to live streams of the pro's playing SC2.

There is also a coaching site run by pro's, you can pay a pro SC2 gamer to teach you how to play. Yes, they are expensive 'cos they see it as time that could be used for preparing for comps or running there own comp. (I am pretty sure it's "gosu coaching")

The ladder is also awesome, you suck? Get stuck in the bottom league so you don't get owned by awesome players. Your an awesome player? Get challenged by equally awesome players.

Day9 seems like he has 500 videos, where the hell do I start?

 

[SultanP]

I have always tried to get into RTS games but always fail because I can't really learn to do well and keep up. I always can pass the tutorials but after that I am lost. Could anybody direct me to any helpful websites/videos that could help me with my problem? Also, I have Age of Empires 3, both StarCraft games, and some Total War games, what do you suggest is the easiest to learn?

STARCRAFT 2 all day long, why? It is the hardest game to be best at but there are so many ways to improve.

First of all go to youtube and type in daytv, good god will he help you be an awesome player. He is so good, so funny and he goes over everything a good number of times so it gets drilled into you! (pylons and probes! Always build pylons and probes!).

Teamliquid, hundreds of people including some pro S2 players (yes, they earn cash off it) all on this site. It has everything from how to read build orders to live streams of the pro's playing SC2.

There is also a coaching site run by pro's, you can pay a pro SC2 gamer to teach you how to play. Yes, they are expensive 'cos they see it as time that could be used for preparing for comps or running there own comp. (I am pretty sure it's "gosu coaching")

The ladder is also awesome, you suck? Get stuck in the bottom league so you don't get owned by awesome players. Your an awesome player? Get challenged by equally awesome players.

Day9 seems like he has 500 videos, where the hell do I start?

Go through his archives and focus on his Newbie Tuesday videos to begin with. It's a thing he started not too terribly long ago, so it shouldn't be too overwhelming.

Edit: Also, I'd suggest day9tv.blip.tv over youtube.

 

[omega 616]

I have always tried to get into RTS games but always fail because I can't really learn to do well and keep up. I always can pass the tutorials but after that I am lost. Could anybody direct me to any helpful websites/videos that could help me with my problem? Also, I have Age of Empires 3, both StarCraft games, and some Total War games, what do you suggest is the easiest to learn?

STARCRAFT 2 all day long, why? It is the hardest game to be best at but there are so many ways to improve.

First of all go to youtube and type in daytv, good god will he help you be an awesome player. He is so good, so funny and he goes over everything a good number of times so it gets drilled into you! (pylons and probes! Always build pylons and probes!).

Teamliquid, hundreds of people including some pro S2 players (yes, they earn cash off it) all on this site. It has everything from how to read build orders to live streams of the pro's playing SC2.

There is also a coaching site run by pro's, you can pay a pro SC2 gamer to teach you how to play. Yes, they are expensive 'cos they see it as time that could be used for preparing for comps or running there own comp. (I am pretty sure it's "gosu coaching")

The ladder is also awesome, you suck? Get stuck in the bottom league so you don't get owned by awesome players. Your an awesome player? Get challenged by equally awesome players.

Day9 seems like he has 500 videos, where the hell do I start?

Newby tuesday, basic stuff. Pretty much ignore funday monday 'cos it's funny as fuck and not educational at all.

There is also daily number 252, which is all about hotkeys and mechanics and all the stuff no other pro will tell you.

BTW day[9] is an EX pro gamer of 12 years, who has won comps. So it's not like some wannabe telling you loads of bull shit. If he says it believe it ...

Actually ... enjoy!

 

[The Funslinger]

Snip

For Rome: Total War (if you have that) I would recommend starting with the Prologue campaign and use the tutorial pop-ups. It's the only one of that series I have, so if any others have a prologue campaign, or alerts like that, that's what I'd recommend.

 

[bbad89]

Try the Total War games. The best kind of RTS's in the genre, IMO.