Tug-of-War RTS'?

[BrotherRool]

A tug of war RTS, by my definition, is broadly speaking an RTS which requires pretty much constant aggression that typically has small gains that won't instantly end the match. Do people know any good RTS' with a tug of war focus?

(For example League of Legends is something of a tug of war game, because it's hard to win one battle and win the game, instead a win comes out of small victories piling up on each other.

Spoiler: Nexus Wars is a more literal example

But the problem with Nexus Wars is it requires no micro and the map has no micro potential, limiting your options in the game )

To me it's the most exciting form of an RTS (or even game) for the viewer to watch, there's a lot of tension because victories build up slowly and a slip at any point in the match can remove the progress so far and there's always a battle happening. The worst Starcraft matches are when everyone just sits back amasses an army, there's one giant battle and whoever wins that wins the game. And a problem with SC2, is a lot of the time, aggression either practically wins you the game or loses it, if you can't do significant damage it would always have been better to just save up your army.

So do people know games like this? And if not does this idea sound like a good basis for an RTS:

So when you build a building, it automatically produces units at a constant rate (but then you're free to control those units and it takes place on a normal map, unlike Nexus Wars) but each building has a fairly small population limit. So if you aren't using those units, you're wasting potential, sitting back and massing is pointless because these units will regen to hit maximum population very quickly after spending them. The only resources would be used to build more buildings and I think I'd have them generate automatically from the production buildings. So destroying an opponents building would give you an advantage that wouldn't win you the game (their reinforcements wouldn't have to walk across the map so defence would be easier) but it would give you a small advantage in the next fight which might turn into another building destroyed and another advantage etc...

It seems to me that this could create a fairly dynamic RTS focused more on micro than macro that requires keeping on top of your unit control all the time, fun to watch and fun to play. Could it work?

 

[Orange12345]

Well there was that one level in the Warcraft 3 expansion with Illidan in the cage that sounds similar to what you are talking about otherwise your idea sounds "ok" I guess? I think the problem would be that once people hit the skill ceiling they end up just trading slight win for slight win and the game would just go on forever.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Company of Heroes is the closest that I can think of to what you're asking for, but you do have to make all of your own units yourself.

 

[Ldude893]

World in Conflict has a multiplayer mode literally named Tug of War, and it involves competing with the enemy over a linear series of control points. It's a real time tactical game with no resource collecting, base building or production, other than dropping units onto the battlefield with a set amount of points.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

What you describe sounds a lot like many free 2D browser strategy games, you'll see a couple dozen variations of that on Kongregate.

I prefer more base orientated strategy games, like Command and Conquer (although later games in the series did get bogged down in micro management) and Age of Empires 2, which are supposed to give a solid base building gameplay (my favourite part of RTSs) with a rock/paper/scissors style unit balance, so your army needs to be composed of several different types in order to counter the various units your enemies base will throw at you, although it does fall into that "one massive battle" problem you purported at the start, and they usually kill balance by adding uber units that can counter virtually anything (meaning the best strategy is turtle until you can build a dozen tanks, and then take them from one side of the map to the other killing everything in between)

 

[Easton Dark]

Starcraft 1 has a lot of mods with the name "Tug of War" that are as you describe.

Natural Selection 1/2 is an RTS/FPS hybrid multiplayer game where map control is very important and you need to keep pushing.

 

[karma9308]

The best I know of is Company of Heroes. You usually can't just get one victory, you have to win some small victories. I've had several matches were the enemy had every point and was assaulting my base, but I managed to fight them back and slowly regain territory before winning. It's a lot more micro and requires creating your own units though so I'm unsure how you'd feel about it.

 

[mirage202]

Oil Rush is kind of what you are looking for.

You capture and hold platforms, and those platforms in turn will produce units, resources or give bonuses.

It's fairly basic as I believe the devs intended it as a tech demo of their new engine, however it is decently priced, and is good to play in short bursts.

 

[NewYork_Comedian]

World in Conflict has a multiplayer mode literally named Tug of War, and it involves competing with the enemy over a linear series of control points. It's a real time tactical game with no resource collecting, base building or production, other than dropping units onto the battlefield with a set amount of points.

This. Not to mention the fantastic multiplayer it has, the singleplayer campaign is also surprisingly stellar, better than most other AAA military games I would say.

Oh yeah, and it also has some of the biggest, baddest, and most awesome explosions of any game ever.

 

[Pulse]

Dawn of war 2. Big time. Even more so than Company of heroes.

Your base is effectively one extremely hard to destroy building.
There are points you need to capture and hold around the map for requisition, power, and victory points.
There's a suitable pop cap.
Turtling is a non tactic.
It's always a series of multiple engagements, with withdrawals, pushes, counterattacks that escalte throughout the match,
Games can be close all the way to the end, winning by a tens of points (out of 400 for example)


Watch some on youtube, search redneckrupee or harlequin casts.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Dawn of war 2. Big time.

After about 1000 hours or so of Dawn of War 2, I don't think I agree with this. There certainly is a "back and forth" nature to the game but, save for the extremely close match, (which is rare in my experience), most of the time the outcome is really determined in the opening moments of the battle. The first exchange determines the outcome of the match simply because of the tremendous advantage gaining T2 several minutes earlier than your opponent offers.

Still, as far as any RTS I've ever played resemembling a game of tug of war, I guess Dawn of War 2 matches as closely as anything else. The various MOBAs seem to be the better resemblance but since I don't actually consider those strategy games (they're fighting games in my mid) I suppose it matters little.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

DAWN OF WAR 2. That game is built around countering your opponents strategies. And you end up with chaos like this: