Your most Memorable Strategy game Expirence

[busterkeatonrules]

Failing bigtime at Dungeon Master. (EDIT: Dungeon KEEPER. My bad. It's been many years.)

Every time I played that game can be summed up in this manner, but the highlight has to be when I was playing a versus match against a friend and the very first thing I did was excavate his portal instead of my own. Yeah. So all I had was a dungeon with a single tiny room, a long corridor - and an infinite supply of enemy troops. I don't think my opponent even had to do anything!

 

[thejackyl]

The one time I played Starcraft 2 with a friend of mine. I'm horrid (Mid Bronze league), he if good (Upper Gold league). Together we made it into Upper Silver.

Match 1: (us)2x Protoss vs. Terran, Zerg - Forfeit. As soon as we connected they bailed.
Match 2: Same vs. 2x Terran - 4-Gate + Stalker(Me) and Void rays(Him) wiped them out
Match 3: Protoss(Me), Terran(Him) vs. 2x Protoss. - We played against 2 people in the MASTER LEAGUE. In case you don't know what that is, we played against two people in the top 2% of ranked players.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert
I was playing against my brother, and wiped out his whole army with one unit. Tanya ftw

 

[Driekan]

I've got quite a few...

Not that long ago, on a 2x2 Total Annihilation match. I played as I usually do, with some early skirmishes, pushing out some static defenses, and then hunkering down to build a mass of gunships. My partner, however, didn't seem to be doing much. He sent a few units to help out on one engagement that had gone bad, but mostly I'd just see him on the radar as his base slowly grew.

Eventually, my gunships were ready and I sent them off, feeling the happy thrill of victory that always followed.

It didn't work. It actually did the opposite of working. Both enemies had set up some very serious defenses all over their bases, meaning my usual strategy of picking off all the edges failed completely. Both launched a counter-attack, and I had to pour all my resources into keeping those defenses alive, I actually had to send my commander forward and manually D-Gun enemies, the defenses were falling one by one and on the radar, that big green blot that was my ally's base just sat there, quiet.

Eventually the enemy blew through the laser towers and Kbots and the rampage began as they advanced on my artillery. I got my commander out of there, started trying to build a last, final point of defense... And suddenly, that green blot moved.

I had never seen that many freaking units, hundreds upon hundreds of the most advanced, toughest, hardest-hitting units in the entire game. He just swarmed over their armies, blowing bits and pieces of them every which way before advancing on their bases, whose anti-air defenses did almost exactly nothing against him.

All of that while listening to TA's soundtrack. Mind-blowing.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Well I remember in C&C: Red Alert on the final level on the Sovient Union side, I exploited an advantage-
I got my engineer to capture one of the naval base and build a few cruiser of my own. I used the said cruise to bomband the Allies base.
Sometime later thier base was in ruin and the only units left alive (the cruiser couldn't reach it) was a few soilders at the hill at the top right corner of the map. I just used my paratrooper to drop in and excuted the rest which luckily none of my paratrooper were killed from it.
Funny thing is that I build a strong ling of defence in case the Allies try to attack the base when I was using the crusier but they did not attacked me at all (well ok I was playing the game on Easy but still I was expecting some kind of an attacked).

 

[worldruler8]

I have two, one a fight with an AI, another a fight with other players.

I have AoE3, which is based during the 1600-1800's, and I was playing on the Amazon map. I liked playing on this map in paticular because there was a river that cut the map in half, and if you controlled that, you essentially controlled the map. I had two allies, but they didn't seem capable in crossing the river (they had big ass armies, but just didn't want to land. Probably an AI issue), so I had to do most of the heavy lifting. Once the river was secured (didn't take long, the AI doesn't realize how important it is to secure it immediately), I built up my economy. Got hot air balloons to scout the enemy base, and for another reason that I'll go over soon, and had my boats patrol. There was the occasional case where they managed to make a ship, but my navy was vastly more powerful and numerous.

Once I made in to the Fourth Age, I made monitors, my favorite unit in the game, which can bombard buildings and units from a very far distance. I had effectively everything but a small sliver of the map within range, and I was full well ready to use them. After taking out their outposts and such, I began getting ready to land a force to set up a forward command, making multiple barracks, artillery foundries, and a Fort, which would defend against any counter-attacks. Then it finally happened, they no longer had their town within my range. They had slowly built farther and farther from the river, their town was destroyed, no longer having a towncenter, but they had an army, and they wouldn't surrender without a fight. I looked at what they had, and they had at least 50 culverins, a type of cannon designed to destroy ships and other cannons (the latter reason being why I almost never use them). I probably should have made an army of cavalry, but I assumed they wouldn't last long, so I made an army of 100 musketeers. Culverins didn't have the same aoe effect that other cannons did, so I assumed they wouldn't win. I sent my army to take them out.

"Any last words before I destroy your army?" the enemy AI said. They make threats and such whenever they see your army. I had them say this before, when it was them that were destroyed. Bu this time was different. I launched the assault, but the cannons kept moving back as soon as I was within range. My musketeers were dropping like flies! So I had no choice, but to send them into a bayonet charge. Only about 30 survived the charge, but the cannons became less effective. When my army was dead, their army wouldn't last long. I made a standard army of cav, musketeers, and falconets (standard cannons) and charged their position. They didn't last long, but that fight made me realize how good AI can be when it came to micro managing.

The second story is much shorter, but it's the reason I no longer play Halo Wars with other players. My friend and I got another friend to join us, and we decided to play multiplayer 3v3. An enemy warthog scout went next to my base, and I noticed the distinct glowing line of a mac blast. Then another. Then another. Only one was necessary, but my base was struck and immediately destroyed. I lost within the first 90 seconds. We left shortly after that. We never played again.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well there was the one time I was playing the original Starcraft and was doing the mission in the Terran campaign where you're evacuating Mar Sara and have to survive for 30 minutes. When it came down to the last few moments I was down to just my command center and had lifted off to try and avoid destruction but it was still getting wailed on hydralisks, but it was still more or less intact when the timer hit zero so I still won. Go me.

 

[mastermarty]

Must be a game of red alert 3 I had with a friend. We bassicly decided to give each other about 2 hours to build up a massive army, and all the defences we could build. During that time, we wouldn't attack eacht other, so in the end we both ended up with huge armies. He was the Allies, I was the sovjets, the map was sub zero.

In the end I had about 20 Kirov airships, 20 Apocalypse tanks, a hundred or so Hammer tanks with 50 bullfrogs loaded with conscripts. On the sea I had 10 dreadnoughts, 20 submarines and more bullfrogs with conscripts. In the air there were about 50 helicopters and 20 fighters. But let's not forget the defences. Walls everywere, tesla coils at every turn with anti air, and bears patrolling the whole thing.

Meanwhile, my friend was building up a massive airforce. He ended up with about a hundred century bombers, and another 50 just to paradrop infantry in my base. Protecting that was a escort of another hundred fighters. And on the ground, he had a few hundred tanks and about 300 GI's. On the sea he enden up with 20 airships and 50 dolfins.

When we decided to finaly start the attack, things just got epic. Our tanks met in the middle, and created an incredible chaos. In the air, planes were flying around and falling on both sides, on the sea ships sunk like bricks, and it became a complete mess. in the end I won, only because my kirov airships were still left. It might not be the most strategic game ever, but it was the most fun I ever had in a game.

I think I might even have the replay somewere...

Spoiler

Here's the map, to make things more visual. We bassicly decided you could do anything you wanted in your area, wich was the from the north of the map until the small island on the left of the landbridge in the middle ended. For him it was from the south until the northern point of the southern island. The middle was neutral ground. In the end the minimap was just a blur of red and blue coming towards eachother.

 

[Naeras]

One of my tournament matches in Company of Heroes. I have never, ever, played as fast as I did in that particular game, and I was so mentally exhausted afterwards that I had no chance to keep that up in the next game. However, it felt incredible, and it was clear afterwards that I was able to stand toe-to-toe against some of the best players in the CoH community.

 

[mastermarty]

Not sure if grand strategy counts, but this one I also remember.

I've been playing a single game of Europa Universalis III now for about a year now with a friend. We started in 1399. He started playing as the Byzantine Empire, wich was almost completly smashed by the ottomans. I started as Venice.

My friend started out almost completly ruined: the ottomans were comming for him, and he only had the eastern part of the byzantine empire left. So, I made him a proposel: I used my fleet to make sure the ottomans couldn't take Constantinople. In return, he would help me to conqeur some citys in Italy and to keep Austria in check. This worked out pretty good for both of us. He enden up with the byzantine empire restored and a good army, while I got some rich citys, and tons of gold thanks to my monoploy of the Italien market and my trade in constantinople. After that I was the richest country there was and funded my friend while he bassicly fought my wars. this went on untill about 1450.

Around then I started to make my way to america, investing huge amounts of gold in settling colonies all over america. My armies were small, but my fleet was big enough and in 1550, I controlled the entire east coast of the America, and all the islands. My friend meanwhile had been conquering the whole north african coast, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, Italy and most of the old roman empire. only north spain, france and the holy roman empire were left standing. I had only the city of Venice left in europe. The rest I traded with my friend so I would have unlimited traderights to hs county, wich made me even more money.

In 1650 I had conquered the whole of the America's (yes, all of it), Monopolized all the trade in Europe, conquered large parts of India, Indonesia, Japan and China and bassicly controlled all the commerce in the world. My friend Meanwhile had conquered France, spain and large parts of the Holy Roman Empire. He bassicly owned Europe, apart from Venice ofcourse.

We're now in 1694, and were now at war for the third time. My fleet keeps his armies from my land, but in Europe and the Americas there's no fighting. In asia on the other hand, were bassicly fighting everywhere to decide who can keep indonesia. He has waaay bigger armies then me, but I have the larger fleet and more money. So yes, this is a great game for both.

 

[Timedraven 117]

Nice stories all of you. Its great to read about so many interesting games. I'm surprised i have not seen Rise of Nations yet.

 

[Sinocenturion]

I have played thousands upon thousands of RTS matches in my life (it is my preferred game type), across almost every single RTS made, from the first Command & Conquer on my friend's LAN to the modern RTS of today. But I'll never forget this one Company of Heroes match I had way back when...

I was at my friend's house beating each other up on some 1 on 1 CoH when we decided to go online to do some 2v2. We played a few matches with some random groups (where we wiped the floor with them) and then finally we were matched with this duo and got placed on this map where the two sides are on opposite sides of a river that runs down the middle of the map. There are two bridges, one on each side of the map, and a ford location in the middle of the map. Units can only cross the river at the bridges and at the ford.

We were playing annihilation, which means that the game is over only when one side's structures are completely destroyed. We were playing American, with me as the airborne and my friend as the armor, against the German side. So the two sides took easy control of the areas on their side of the river, and then me and my friend started doing our standard builds and attacks to wipe out the others like we usually do. When we were set, we crossed the river with my friend headed through the middle while I went over one of the bridges, hoping to hit them on two fronts, our usual strategy, which usually works. Only this time, it didn't work. Both of us met well built defenses that pretty much decimated our attacking forces. Not only that, the enemy blew the bridge I was crossing when the last of my forces we crossing, forcing my survivors to retreat through the heavily defended middle. We retreated with what was left of our forces, blew the second bridge, and threw down some defenses for the inevitable counter attack. Luckily for us, our failed attack also hit and destroyed their own retaliation force, which pretty much saved our asses because it delayed their assault and gave us time to put up good defenses. Also because both bridged were blown, we knew that they would have to come through the middle so we could concentrate our defense. When the attack came, we halted it at the river.

So far, what happened is nothing new for us, sometimes attacks fail. But what happened next was truly amazing. For the next few hours, both sides tried and failed to cross the river. We built up forces, sent them across, and were wiped out. Our enemy suffered the same fate. Both sides tried different tactics and unit make-ups, and every time, attacks were repeled. We tried dropping troops behind lines and sending tanks to link up but they prevented us linking up and that failed (like it did at Arnhem). They tried a pure tank blitzkrieg which we wiped out with our nested lined AT guns. We sent rocket fire, they sent artillery. Bridges were re-built and bridges were blown. There was attack across the river every time either force became big enough, and both sides kept the pressure on at all times. There were snipers and aerial recon missions keeping both sides informed of enemy movements. There were plenty of Oh Shit moments (like Oh Shit, a Tiger!). Attacks came dangerously close to succeeding (we held one attack down to our last gun, and one of our assaults came within inches of destroying their HQ). The middle ground became a WWI style no man's land of pillboxes, tank traps, emplaced guns, and craters from the non-stop shelling. Every tactic was tried and was repulsed.

We kept at this for hours, until the sun rose. Finally a draw was offered, and falling asleep, we took it. It was the first and only time I fought a RTS to a draw.

It was the first time I played a RTS where I felt we were using real life tactics of maneuver, defense, feints, recon, combined arms, etc. Both sides were completely evenly match in both game skill and tactical skill. We could both figure out what the other would be doing and were able to prepare for it. And best we could fight each other to a standstill.

And the most amazing thing of all, this match-up was completely random. I never even knew who we fought.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

Mine would be my very first experience with an RTS.

My stepbrother created a custom game for me in Age of Empires II where I made him spawn 5 of every unit and order them all to attack. The enemy were in a walled off area along with wolves and my troops were totally massacred. I pulled a retreat of my workers, elephants, priests and their converted back to my base but the enemy was coming at me in full force. The priests didn't make it and the workers died in the base. My saving grace was my brother spamming the spawn car cheat which I thought was pretty cool at the time. I think I survived with a bunch of cars and one elephant.

That's not a very good story but it's my most memorable one.

 

[Timedraven 117]

Epic post Sinocenturion! Long, interesting, and a great ending too! I wonder if we will see their post on this forum.....

 

[Tsekatsu]

I have a few stories, i think one of the most memorable was when we were playing
Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth 2
we were playing vs AI, both of us on the same team, and we found Smeagol and killed him, so decided to have a race to see who would get it first, we both sent out heroes but unfortunately the ring was closer to him so he got the ring. so I got pissed off and started arguing with him, then he said "dude, the ring is tearing us apart, we are fighting over it." and then we both just started laughing hysterically.

 

[Pharsalus]

Too many desperate battles in Napoleon TW to count.

The best was back in Rome though, my Egyptian empire had gained a foothold in Greece. After a costly attack they seized the city of Thessalonica but then became bottled up by stack after stack of armored hoplites. Less than two hundred good spearman (including a unit of Pharoahs Guard) a smattering of bowmen, chariot archers, and skirmishers and three catapults, managed to send off those endless lines of walking bronze for years before i could get a field army up to relieve them. By leaving a hole in a wall i created a bloody canyon they had to march down, geting blasted by my catapults before meeting the die hards of my spear line. Good effin stuff.

 

[Violator[xL]]

-Surrounding about 60 divisions of the Red Army in Hearts of Iron 2 yesterday. Goodbye Soviet Union!

 

[MrGamerMystique]

Starcraft: Brood War. I had an interesting match against the AI in which I experienced something I never had before. Nearing the end of the match, the Zerg AI was slaughtering my friends (Who were also in the game), and when I moved in to assist with my Battlecruiser fleet the Protoss AI began their attack. Their fleet was massive, easily 50-Strong of Carriers. Of course, I couldn't exactly bail out, so I just stuck through. My entire fleet was being destroyed, one ship at a time, and there was nothing I could do about it. In the last fleeting moments of my final Cruiser's life, the Protoss holograms started dissipating. Yeah.

So, to summarize, a Protoss fleet that was way too large to begin with flew sidelong into my Battlecruisers, obliterating them all, and then 80% of them fizzled out of existence. Oh, how I miss Starcraft's ridiculously smart and cheat-y AI sometimes. Rarely, but sometimes.

I might never forget that match. I still have that replay somewhere, too...

These other stories are great, too. Brings back memories of Supreme Commander, which I haven't touched for quite a while. I guess it was just a bit too slow for me.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I have a couple. The first one comes from the Dawn of War: Armageddon Steel Legion Mod.

4v4 match against hard computers. My side, 3 Steel Legion and 1 Imperial Guard. Their side, 2 Chaos and 2 Orks.

The artillery bombardment. My god. One of the things the mod does is add an advanced enemy AI that makes it super aggressive. The Steel Legion's infantry are horrible, even compared to regular IG troops, but their tanks are godly.

I had 3 Basilisks, five Medusa Siege Tanks, a Stormblade and a couple Leman Russ tanks. We couldn't push forward, so we held the line. You would not believe how intense the artillery shelling became. We must have killed thousands of Orks and Chaos Marines. And all the while, more and more resources keep flooding in.

While the Steel Legion troops suck, their Stormtroopers do not. So once I had enough resources, I bought as many squads of deep striking Stormies as I could. Then, I did a tank rush into enemy territory, blasting past the Ork defenses. Then came the drop.

Ten Valkyries dropped off my Stormtrooper squads, airlifted Leman Russes were deployed. It was like fucking Starship Troopers, raining hell on the Orks and completely routing them in a massive battle.


My other victories were not individual battles, but an entire campaign in Rome Total Realism, version 6. What I liked to call the Golden Legion. One army, 4000 Legionnaires and a couple horsemen. They were levied in Sicily. They conquered all of africa and then swung around and wiped out the Iberian peninsula. All of them had at least 2 gold chevrons worth of exp. Nothing could beat them in combat.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

I have many such stories.

Rome; Total War;

My utterly epic Brutii campaign was progressing without incident until just after I had taken Sparta. Some rebels turned up nearby and I decided to send some guys to kill them, because why not? I had no generals there, so the army was just given a random captain. Turned out the rebels consisted of a group of peasants and some archers. We had cavalry. I deigned to fight the battle myself instead of auto-resolve. We swiftly ran them down, losing only 2 men to a thrown horseshoe and a lucky arrow. My captain got promoted to a full general and married into my family. He became one of my best guys.

After conquering the rest of Greece and Macedonia we encountered the first real difficult enemy, Pontus. After several difficult battles I began the invasion of turkey and it all came to a head in this 1 particular siege (Can't remember the towns name now, the one right in the middle of Turkey). I had about 1000 men in 2 armies (1 general, didn't want the AI using the others, so the second force acted as reinforcements), Pontus had at least twice that. I began the battle with catapults and flaming arrows, softening them up and scaring their cavalry. They sent chariots out to get me and having never faced them before I didn't know what to fend them off with. They hit my heavy infantry and immediately tore 1 unit to pieces, but I was able to trap them and only 1 chariot escaped the slaughter (its 2 riders would be the only Pontian survivers). I then began systematically breaking down their walls and moving forces through in multiple places, flanking the enemy as they came to stop me and slowly surrounding them. At the same time I sent my catapults around the edges of the city, chasing down more units.

Eventually my progress began to slow as more and more enemy units were pulled into the battle and I was worried my army was about to break under the numbers, when I suddenly remembered my reinforcemets. They had appeared on the far side of the city and had slowly been walking towards the centre. The enemy units on that side had just left their post to take on my main force, just as my reinforcements met up with my catapults and JUST as a sandstorm rolled in. Under cover of the storm we smashed an entrance and my reinforcements piled into the city. Now I had their entire army flanked and their morale completely broke. Most units routed but had nowhere to run except towards the city centre. All thoughts of tactics broke down as I just had every unit pile into and chase them to the centre. We killed them to the last man whilst the city burned and a storm raged on.

What made my campaign epic later on though, was my plan to ultimately win the game. I was getting close to the end game; the Roman council were giving me harder and harder missions and my popularity with them was dropping, but my popularity with the people was nearly full, meaning the inevitable civil war was about to begin. I began creating armies closer to home so I could move swiftly to take Rome and fight off the Julii, who had a lot of armies close to the motherland. I then bought the only Scipii city in Italy, confining them to Sicily and North Africa. With enough ships being built, my intention was, when the war came, to destroy all their fleets (after strategically positioning mine close to all of theirs) and then blockade every port, leaving them stranded and unable to invade italy, whilst also removing their entire seaborne trade network. Meanwhile, I was in negotiations with the Gauls to convince them to attack the Julii, keeping them busy as I unified italy. Rome was not impressed with my decision to buy the Scipii town though, and gave me orders to return it to them, or be branded a traitor, so I basically had a countdown of when the war was going to begin. Unfortunately I never got to put the plan ino action, but I think it would have worked.

Some other memorable moments; Red Alert;

Playing with a friend many years ago, our mission was to destroy a Soviet base and then infiltrate a bunker. Everything was going fine until we accidentally aggroed the entire Soviet army, which proceeded straight to our base. Naturally we started to fight them off, but there were a lot of them and they slowly pushed closer and closer. Then a V2 rocket launcher fired, straight at our SatCom building. I remember it clearly, the missile seemed to move in slow motion and we realised what was going to happen a moment before it hit. BOOM, the entire building is destroyed in 1 hit, and the map suddenly goes dark. The ENTIRE map, all of the fog of war reappeared in an instant and we were blind beyond the confines of our base walls, as more and more Soviet vehicles came rolling in. The battle lasted another 10 minutes and we had no idea how much more they had to throw at us or what was coming next the entire time. Serious battle for survival.

Another RA one, on a skirmish map, with 7 AI opponents. On a map we had built specifically so we could gain the advantage and everyone else would have poor starting areas, because the way the AI worked in skirmish was to have all the AIs attack each other straight away, then they would ALL attack the player. The poorest of these initial starting locations was an island in the middle of the map, with only a single forded entrance. Unfortunatly, due to an error in setup, WE ended up starting on the island. Laughing at our mistake, we decided to play on anyway, knowing we were doomed. Sure enough, the sounds of battle started from beyond the fog as everyone else started on each other, before suddenly stopping. Then they came for us. 7 enemies, all trying to get over 1 bridge. We had prepared a defence, and a contingency. The defenders did pretty well, and the enemy units had trouble getting over the bridge to the island (in hindsight, it turned out that funnelling 7 players across an entranceway only 2 units wide was actually more advantageous). It didn't last though, and eventually they broke through, but we were prepared, we had built transports and ships to defend them and we started evacuating the base of any and all vehicles and hardware we could. There was only 1 thing we were missing, an MCV. We built 1, but it was too slow getting to the transport and was destroyed. They destroyed our base, but we had survived, and now we existed only as a roving band of battleships and tranports. At this point we were at a loss as to what to do and we considered starting over, but then we saw our salvation; an enemy ore miner. A plan formed. We allied ourselves with this AI and then moved into their base. We then discovered that, if you attack their stuff with a weak enough unit, you can remain allied with them. We had a lowly infantryman start shooting their construction yard and had an engineer on standby. It took a long time, but we got there eventually, taking over their base and all of their stuff, and rebuilding our own. We ultimately won.

Perhaps the funniest moment we had though, was on a mission where the objective was to simply kill every Soviet enemy and building. We had successfully done so after a several hour long match, but the victory message hand't appeared. Obviously, we had missed something. We began scouring the map for a good 10 minutes until we found the single enemy unit that was left. It was an attack dog, hidden behind a tree in the bottom corner. We sent 3 attack choppers to end him.

 

[L0dest0ne]

I remember playing this one mission in Fire Emblem on the GBA. It was one of the later missions, in the 20's. I was losing badly, with my entire force surrounded and two of my units about to die. After a good 15 minutes of thinking, I acted like a true master of Kobiyashi Maru and was able to save my entire force without losses. Sure, I retreated to the end of the map and it took me half an hour to fight back to the other side, but a victory is a victory.