RTS - Strategy....oooor not?

[FightThePower]

It depends on the RTS.

Red Alert 3 actually requires a fair bit of strategy in campaign and a lot in Multiplayer. Kane's Wrath requires much less; basically it's spam Scorpion Tanks.

EDIT: Rome: Total War. That requires a lot.

 

[Mad Maniac with axe-firing chainsaw]

In Empire Earth you potentially go from the stone age to the future age (with around 15 other ages in between) which required you to match up units to defeat each other. For the ancient to medieval example: shock troops defeat ranged but are defeated by piercing, who are in turn vulnerable to ranged. In the imperial era's and up to WW1, you get different ranged units who fulfil the same balance. In ship combat, there were again 3 different types of ship, and they all balanced. WW1 onwards, its riflemen, tanks, and other units who make up the balance until (get this) you get mecha's in the future. Aircraft come into the equation as well after WW1.

I can't remember exactly how that worked, but it certainly required some forethought into how you composed your forces, particularly on offense. Like in Age of Empires, you needed some foresight to get through defences. Got siege weapons? Great, if you can defend them. Otherwise your soldiers are almost hilariously poorly equipped to deal with walls, causing one damage per swing as the archers and artillery behind the walls rain sharp pointy death down to the point where even the shock troops are going to be dying like animals. (or whatever unit is good against extreme range units in the era you're in.) and thats not even discussing the turrets (hope you have long-ranged siege units, otherwise you'd best be in a position to say "we have reserves" because your attacking force is going to be brutalised even with close range siege equipment.)

To add to all this, instead of technology counting for all units, you could upgrade each unit individually. Your shock troops been in a few unlucky encounters with piercing units? Upgrade their piercing armour. Waves of enemy siege weapons threatening to overwhelm the defences before you can even reach them with your defenders? Take your fastest unit, give it a few speed increases. Turrets too weak? You can either improve their attack or their health. Brings specialisation to new heights, but note there are a limited number of upgrades you can use on each unit type.

I'm not usually a fan of RTS's, but I have to admit, I enjoyed that game, and it definitely involves more thought than most. You will get utterly ruined if you just build one type of apparently powerful unit.

EDIT: I've noticed a lot of people talking about Rome: Total war. Thats not really an RTS in the more traditional sense. It is supposed to be a turn-based/RTS mix. However, you build all your units during the turn-based phase, and can't build any more once out on the field in RT. So it isn't really comparable to your traditional RTS "build your legions of doom and send them out to crush all blocking your dominance of the screen" gameplay type. It is the closest you will get to running a real battle though, you will feel like a general, especially if you manage to pull off victory when outclassed. I would certainly recommend it. I'd also recommend Medieval II. I'm not in a position to recommend Empire: total war, having never played it due to not having the computer for it (my damn PC can't even run the Sims 3.)

 

[Gamer137]

Everything is simple when you boil it down to the basics. You also appear biased against RTS games. You simplified RTS gameplay, but not shooter gameplay. In reality, victory in shooters comes down to the individual kills. Not very tactical.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Everything is simple when you boil it down to the basics. You also appear biased against RTS games. You simplified RTS gameplay, but not shooter gameplay. In reality, victory in shooters comes down to the individual kills. Not very tactical.

As in with RTSs as well.

Perhaps though, I should rephrase my earlier statement. While the same amount of strategy is avaliable to both genres, the kind that will actually work in RTSs in far less than in other genres, because RTS units are not thinking, (semi)intelligent beings.

As fr those saying I'm biased against RTSs, I'm not. I enjoy them a lot - they're probably my second most played genre, after shooters.

 

[lostclause]

True enough but nothing stands in the way of a twenty caped imperial guardsmen horde equipped with Grenade launchers and all leaders attached, such is the folly of the game you can reinforce the majority of your forces as they shoot them down, its quite entertaining.

Try endwar or the total war series, but calvary usually wins the day, just like in those times, and pike men arnt as effective as you'd think they should be, as for endwar, whoever takes the centre Point at the start usually wins

Some armies are set up for stearm rolling. But I think a few squads of warp spiders would cut them down. They own infantry and with haywire grenades vehicles too. If it gets hairy teleport.
I like the ability to reinforce on the spot, it's a bit different. That's probably just me though.

Are you insane? Every match I've ever played consisted of everyone (including myself) of picking a couple unit types and just storming them into the battle. Usually works best and makes it more fun being that its a game of WAAAAAAGH

Now, Dawn of War 2? That's a game with actual stratergy (usually)

I haven't played dawn of war 2 yet. Some factions do that, orks are cut out for a rush sm for example need a while longer. Anyway I usually play against the AI, more room to experiment.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Since so many of you have sent me PMs (ok, two, but they were basically the exact same message), I suppose I should have given my RTS experience beforehand, to give some perspective on my position. So here is a list of all the RTSs I've played to date.


Starcraft
+Brood War

Command and Conquer 3

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 1,2,3

Command and Conquer: Generals
+Zero Hour

Star Wars: Empire at War

Sins of a Solar Empire
+Entrenchment

Halo Wars

LOTOR: Battle for Middle Earth II

Civilazations IV

Age of Empires

Spore (Ok, I guess that one is stretching it....but then again, that is what is it classified as)

Endwar

 

[Nutcase]

After watching Yahtzee's review of Halo Wars again, I thought of something. You know when he mentioned that his strategy was basically to stockpile the strongest unit and steamroll across the map, hoping the objective got squished along the way.

I realized something - thats basically the strategy in every RTS.

Now granted, I'm not talking aout high-level, "PRO" play.

So your big revelation is that bad to mediocre players are inflexible when it comes to strategy? That's true regardless of game and genre.

If you are to estimate any game's potential for strategic depth, you need to be looking at the best players playing against each other. Even then, unless you are one of them, you need them to spell things out for you. Strategy gets more subtle as it gets more complicated.

When is the last you actually had to plan a coordinated, multi-facted land, air and sea assualt on enemy position? Used accurate fire support to decimate enemy defenses? Used infantry more than 7 minutes into the game?

Be honest - you just do what everyone else does. Use the fastest, cheapest unit to win the game early, or build up a force of your faction's juggernuat unit and drive straight across the map, hoping you crush the enemy along the way.

I've planned, carried out and been a part of more complicated assualts and defenses in games like Battlefield than I've ever seen in any game of Starcraft.

You seem to have confused strategy, which is the art of winning, with performing complicated maneuvers.

"The essence of strategy is to fall upon the enemy in large numbers and to bring about his speedy downfall."
"In order to cut the enemy you must not make twisting or bending cuts. This is completely useless. In my strategy, I bear my spirit and body straight, and cause the enemy to twist and bend."
- Miyamoto Musashi

Even trying something like that in an RTS is a death wish - most of your vital units will vanish before they even hit the deck.

You just lack execution skill.

 

[Spirultima]

Endwars is basic, but you need to think of just about everything you do, including upgrades, and how anything can benefit.

C&C3 Kane's Wraith was a little more strategic i guess, but then again, i did (early on) built ridiculous amounts of Tiberium factories, steal all the Tiberium i could, then build an armada of Vertigo Bombers, 40 at a time, then over 50 Venoms to pick off any stragglers. Worked quite effectively actually.