Poll: Defense or Offense?

[Ilikemilkshake]

I generally try and fortify my position as best I can, or I'll go on the offensive and try and secure a more defensible position.

I tend to have more fun fighting off waves of enemies in my fort.

This is fine against AI in most RTS but against a player offence will always beat even the best defence eventually so against other players the best defence is offence, attacking them in order to divert their forces away from attacking you.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

or I rush the enemy base with a drone and start building turrets in their garden.

This is fun to do in Sins of a Solar Empire. It's usually worth building a few star bases (when upgraded they're possibly the toughest thing to kill in the game) as 'forward defences' outside enemy planets. Unless they kill it quickly that planet is lost and you've already got a star base as defence there making it hard for them to take it back.

 

[Flames66]

Your inability to correctly name chips sickens me.

I second that - you are the reason we can't have nice things.

OT: I suck pretty hard at RTSes. I get too locked into one thing - be it offence or defence and I usually lose because of that. I just plain blow giant donkey balls at macroing. It's more often offence, though.

What is "Macroing"?

OT: I prefer to be defensive in RTS games, building a base, setting up defenses, getting nicely organised units of troops. I never do well in online games because I only ever aquire a small amount of villagers or whatever the things that builds things is. I also don't like clearing all the trees for resources.

 

[Joccaren]

You spelled defence wrong in the poll but right in the post.
Defense.

Well, if he's speaking proper English he spelt it correctly in the poll, but incorrectly in the post.
It all depends on which version of English you're using. Something we can all agree on, however, is that he spelt one of them wrong no matter which version you go by

 

[babinro]

I play both depending on the game or level.

Warcraft 3 requires an offensive playstyle to be the most out of heroes.
Starcraft 2 is also offensive to benefit from campaign achievements.

When left to my own casual devices, I will almost always take the base building defensive route though. As is the case for many C&C games, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, Warhammer 40k.

Voted defensive.

 

[DoPo]

Your inability to correctly name chips sickens me.

I second that - you are the reason we can't have nice things.

OT: I suck pretty hard at RTSes. I get too locked into one thing - be it offence or defence and I usually lose because of that. I just plain blow giant donkey balls at macroing. It's more often offence, though.

What is "Macroing"?

Macromanagement. Sort of the opposite of micromanagement, as the name suggests. It's about knowing and being able to manage construction, as well as armies and harvesting and whatnot. Building another barracks at the correct time, how placing defences, switching from foot soldiers to tanks and so on. The bigger overview of the game. I fail at it when I'm playing - I just get locked into a smaller section and usually forget the rest, so for example, I'll train an army and send it off but won't be building anything in my base, or maybe I'll be building turrets but won't be training an army - that sort of thing.

 

[Joccaren]

What is "Macroing"?

Think of it as base management. Managing the large scale things.
Microing is controlling your individual units in an effective manner, the small scale stuff. Getting your spell casters to cast their spells/use their abilities when and where you want them, manoeuvring your units into a better position - all micro.
Constructing buildings, training units and researching upgrades generally falls under the macro label.
If you suck at microing, your armies are likely to die to an enemy who is good at microing.
If you suck at macroing, you probably didn't have an army to begin with.

At least that's my general understanding of it.

This is fun to do in Sins of a Solar Empire. It's usually worth building a few star bases (when upgraded they're possibly the toughest thing to kill in the game) as 'forward defences' outside enemy planets. Unless they kill it quickly that planet is lost and you've already got a star base as defence there making it hard for them to take it back.

Hehe, so many things are fun in Sins.
Something along these lines in Rebellion is the good old Vasari Loyalist Strip rush.
Just rush "Stripped to the Core", run out to all planets near your enemy, colonise, Strip, and leave them with a dead asteroid. You take massive amounts of resources, and leave them with worthless planets to expand to.
Still not as OP as the Rebel's jumping starbases though. Those things... More powerful than a Titan, cheaper, and not effected by fleet supply. Oh, and their Jump Destabilisation ability doesn't get removed when they leave a planet, so just travel to every planet with one and every time the enemy jumps they'll lose 30% of their health. Yay!
Hopefully that gets fixed soon. On the plus side, I haven't heard that many complaints about Big Red Button being OP since Rebellion. I'm guessing that'll come up after all this though

 

[Flames66]

Your inability to correctly name chips sickens me.

I second that - you are the reason we can't have nice things.

OT: I suck pretty hard at RTSes. I get too locked into one thing - be it offence or defence and I usually lose because of that. I just plain blow giant donkey balls at macroing. It's more often offence, though.

What is "Macroing"?

Macromanagement. Sort of the opposite of micromanagement, as the name suggests. It's about knowing and being able to manage construction, as well as armies and harvesting and whatnot. Building another barracks at the correct time, how placing defences, switching from foot soldiers to tanks and so on. The bigger overview of the game. I fail at it when I'm playing - I just get locked into a smaller section and usually forget the rest, so for example, I'll train an army and send it off but won't be building anything in my base, or maybe I'll be building turrets but won't be training an army - that sort of thing.

Oh that stuff that I never do. I hate using tanks or mounted units or vehicles most of the time, I like to stick with troops. Also, my base has one barracks, one stable/vehicle thing and so on.

WTF is a curate's egg captcha?

 

[SuperNova221]

I used to be super defensive in RTS games for the past... 13 years or so. As in, I could only beat easy, sometimes medium, AI because I'd spent forever just arranging my base almost obsessively comulsively so it all looked nice and I couldn't possibly die.

Then I got big into StarCraft 2 which sort of forced me out of that, so now I mostly play aggressively, but even within SC2 I'm still relatively passive. All other RTS I try now though, easily too aggressive.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

In SC2 i will turtle up while pumping out reapers to harass while my teammates start building up. It is also one of the two strategies ive found to work against the AI on the hardest possible difficulty (the other being to rush right after an assault)

What about vs zerg? Queen buff makes it pretty hard to reaper/hellion harass now.

OT: Offensive. Until I got sc2, I would have said defensively, but playing defensively gets you nowhere but bronze on ladder. And I play zerg, and zerg units are so fun to attack with and our defensive structures suck ass.

Any other rts or against AI, I'll go defensive. But playing defensive on starcraft really doesn't work too well, because they end up getting complete map control and when you try and expand it always gets shut down.

 

[Da Orky Man]

I tend to play with what I call an 'active defence'. Essentially, I use a number of fast units to patrol as much of the map as possible, especially around resource sites and the like. Mixed in with the small patrols i have a few larger groups. The idea is that i can make my army seem such larger than it actually is. It also forces most people to give each resource site a substantial guard to protect it from my roving bands. I use the larger groups to ambush any patrols of theirs.
Then, as soon as they have enough troops out protecting the few resources sites they managed to hold, I mass my army and go right for the lightning-fast assault. Since they have way less troops defending their base than I have attacking, it doesn't take long for victory to be had.
Disclaimer: works well against other players, not so well against bots.

 

[Aprilgold]

I play RTS's the same way I play Civilization, spend all my time building up a unbeatable defense line, then spend even more time upgrading all of them so that their more then that, THEN build the perfect solider and his hundred other brothers and then send them at the enemy and see what happens. If they all die I still have my defense line to stay alive long enough to do it again.

 

[II Scarecrow II]

So I just started playing Dawn of War and realised why I suck so much at online rts's. I am way to defensive. I rely way to much on buildings and turrets while the asshole is busy building 10 barracks and making 100 footmen to kick down my door. So are you Offense or Defense?
Captcha: Fish and chips. Yeah I'm in the U.S we call 'em french fries.

Yeah, I tried playing DoW 2 multiplayer and I just physically can't manage the number of troops individually. I find that I will always commit to building the biggest thing available to me, and no matter what I do, I just get destroyed by superior enemies. TLR, I play offense, usually mobbing or zerging.

 

[Hosker]

One doesn't win by defending! I try to strike some kind of balance. Although I only play one RTS game.

 

[Doneeee]

Oops that's what I get for not reading the pole properly.

 

[NeutralDrow]

These are chips:

Heresy. Those are potato wedges.

AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

THAT'S RIGHT. NOTHING.

 

[Tayh]

I'm a turtler.
I always give the most priority to defence and research, building only a few high-end units for token offence.
I mostly lose too, unless it's against an AI.

 

[Ryotknife]

In SC2 i will turtle up while pumping out reapers to harass while my teammates start building up. It is also one of the two strategies ive found to work against the AI on the hardest possible difficulty (the other being to rush right after an assault)

What about vs zerg? Queen buff makes it pretty hard to reaper/hellion harass now.

OT: Offensive. Until I got sc2, I would have said defensively, but playing defensively gets you nowhere but bronze on ladder. And I play zerg, and zerg units are so fun to attack with and our defensive structures suck ass.

Any other rts or against AI, I'll go defensive. But playing defensive on starcraft really doesn't work too well, because they end up getting complete map control and when you try and expand it always gets shut down.

havent played in awhile. A year ago or so, zerg were probably the easiest to harass. Protoss were the hardest due to colossus and due to the AI spamming the frick out of templars. I would create my marine/thor army, start attacking their base and literally 5 seconds into the fight im in full retreat back towards my base with about 30 templars chasing me leaving a trail of psi storms behind me. PSI STORMS EVERYWHERE!

 

[teebeeohh]

in RTS very aggressive in an out-eco kinda way, be fast, lock down resources and just roll the advantage aver the enemy.

 

[Shock and Awe]

Defend and then counterattack after static defenses have broken the back of an enemy assault. Even if your troops are outnumbered the fire support from defenses helps a lot.