I've been thinking lately about how turned off I am by RTS games, and why I love TBS games much more, and I made a rather stunning observation about the nature of the average RTS game: they're nothing more than glorified games of Tetris! Think of how the simple gameplay of Tetris begins with a slow pace, allowing for more careful decisions and placement of tiles, and also how it progress in speed and requires less and less thought and more reaction or reflex based actions. This is the basic philosophy of RTS games. Start out base building and resource collecting, then prepare for an all out clickfest in the endgame. No wonder I hate RTS games! They tease you with a strategic setup to lure you in and then all hell breaks loose and it devolves into who can build the bigger army and overwhelm the opponent. If only RTS fans would realize that they're actually playing a glorified puzzler, maybe then the industry would stop churning out so many carbon copy RTS games and we could get some real strategy for a switch!
Also, thinking on your feet is for grunts. Planning out the grand strategy for the entire armed forces for the course of a war and beyond is a job for commanders. So, RTS="armchair grunt" and TBS="armchair general" natch!
no, planning out the grand strategy for the entire armed forces for the course of a war is a job for utter morons who don't believe the time proven truth that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Thinking on your feet is what every true commander does. a grunt does no thinking at all - they only do what they are ordered to, no more, no less. TBS="lazy idiot who can't take the heat of a real game"
that was for calling us Sinners "grunts".
AOE2 is very cookie-cutter. All the decent players have developed & practiced their own sub-3-minute build orders to tech up early and go from there. In that regard, AOE2 is really no better than a TBS except you have to rehearse the build order over and over again. This is a good example of how it really is more about the individual game than it is the genre.
My RTS experience tends toward the opposite: one mistake in RTS can sure screw you up quickly--but the difference is, in RTS, you had a couple seconds to make that good or bad decision. For that matter, just forgetting the right hotkey can screw you up in RTS. For example, failing to time your assaults with your partner in MP can and does mean the difference between winning and losing. In TBS, timing like that is virtually a non-issue.
that may be, but after those three minute build orders are up, then the real fun begins.
(i.e. the battles in campaign are very different from one to the next - in one, you can start out as a well-prepared city, able withstand a seige, and then the next, you are a small scouting force without villagers to build a town and must work your way through a huge enemy encampment.)
My personal favorite map is Islands (or team islands) because you have that ten minute grace period to build up your city and forces.
other than that, I agree with Zorak.
I too hate RTS games, and I find your analogy profoundly true. Their fun to a point, but then the weakness of the unit AIs forces the clickfest to go faster and faster. (or you have to use the units that just do well, such as ranged units, or units that regenerate, ect) Basically you're battling frustration in that you can't get them to do what you want...
Me personally, I wish RTS games would allow for much more customization of the unit AIs. I know not everyone out there is a programmer, but allowing you to write blocks of code to control the units would be sweet.
Why can't there be a new Mindrover(ish) game? That game ruled.
You see the analogy for TBS games earlier? (Be warned, at the time, I was a bit defensive, so my writing had a angry undertone, but the analogy holds true)
AoK has some high points, but it's not a strategic masterpiece. The absolutely fagtastic siege implementation ruins the use of formations that were so excellently designed otherwise.
Kohan almost has the strategic value of a TBS, your units are valuable, they don't die instantly. Saving them is possible, and they get a hell of a lot better over time if you do. You can actually build defensive lines that mean something too. Control zones prevent lame ass tactics, and micromanaging individual units is prevented by the squad mechanic. If you want to blow the mine up, you have to kill the guards, to raze the city, you have to defeat the militia. You can't just run through them, attack your target, and get the reward of having outplayed your opponent without having to actually outplay your opponent.
RTS games don't suck because they're in real time, they suck because they're designed to reward idiocy. The ones that don't are fucking wonderful.
I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I agree with almost nothing you wrote. It's impossible to "outplay someone without outplaying them." High lethality (in some RTS games), effective micromanagement, harassment, etc. are all desirable in RTS games for precisely the same reasons that they're desirable in TBS games. (Imagine only being able to select units in groups and drag them towards general locations, rather than individual hexes/squares; or not being able to raid cities to reduce their populations.)
That said, I agree that the reason that people have gripes with RTS games are usually due to implementation, rather than the fundamental principles of the genre.
As for RTS games with good strategic models, I'm surprised no one listed Sins.
Slow real time worked very well in the Europa Universalis games and I'd been hoping that someone would expand on that for a while. Sins was a very pleasant surpise (Stardock seem to be systematically targetting the genres I love), and the result is very good.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is excellent in that regard too. Since they nerfed mass fabricators and improved extractors, the game has become very much about territorial control. That means that, rather than having a long bulid up time to one massive battle, you're constantly skirmishing to get the upper hand, while your building efforts are always under pressure.
I suppose, thinking about it, Tetris does end up having that same 'decisions under pressure' feel to it, and that is what makes it great. It does lack the more long-term strategies that a good RTS allows for.
Zagfel, two games. A TBT and RTT of your choice. I don't care which. Take two melee units with the same movement and run one past the other while it's under attack. What results do you get?
My typical results end up like this. In the turn based games, the guy that tries to run past his enemy dies, fast. In the real time games, he gets to where ever he's going with a single hit being placed, at best. There isn't any brainpower in this exercise, no logistical feat has been accomplished, it's pure idiocy. A catastrophic mistake in any remotely realistic situation is instead a highly rewarding method of play. You don't need to draw the enemy away from your objective or defeat them, simply ignore them and attack it first. As long as you have the necessary firepower for the task, you're all set. It sums up most of what passes for tactics in the typical RTS game, it's depressing.
Really plz tell us what your basing your asumption off of. Try warcraft 3 starcraft or supcom. I think warcraft 3 has the most need for alot of units and it has a way to stop rushing.
My typical results end up like this. In the turn based games, the guy that tries to run past his enemy dies, fast. In the real time games, he gets to where ever he's going with a single hit being placed, at best. There isn't any brainpower in this exercise, no logistical feat has been accomplished, it's pure idiocy. A catastrophic mistake in any remotely realistic situation is instead a highly rewarding method of play. You don't need to draw the enemy away from your objective or defeat them, simply ignore them and attack it first. As long as you have the necessary firepower for the task, you're all set. It sums up most of what passes for tactics in the typical RTS game, it's depressing. Rushing is a legitamate strategy and if your paying attention easy to stop but at least if your playing an RTS it is a strategy where as your choices in a TBS are limited. most of the combat in TBS come down to what unit is stronger. In an RTS if your good a weaker force can beat a supurior one showing the value of tactics.
Rushing is a legitamate strategy and if your paying attention easy to stop but at least if your playing an RTS it is a strategy where as your choices in a TBS are limited. most of the combat in TBS come down to what unit is stronger. In an RTS if your good a weaker force can beat a supurior one showing the value of tactics.
I totally agree with your first statement, but completely disagree with the rest. There definitely is pressure, though admittedly not as much as a RTS game where time is always against you, and the micromanagement statement is completely false no questions asked. Games like Master of Orion II and Civ4 provide large amounts of micromanagement. I tend to side with TBS because to me RTS games are more or less quick mouse movements and key presses in a learned order. I love both types of games but prefer the higher planning and strategy of TBS.
All in all, I enjoy both genres and see both sides of the discussion.
Didn't you see my little winking smilie guy there? I wasn't meaning to use fightin' words when I started this post. Thus far, I think there's been some really good discussion about the differences. It could be that I'm actually lazy and don't like the excess busy work an RTS game requires. I do like to play games at a leisurely pace. I like to relax when I game, not get all in a frenzy. Having said that though, there are times when I'm playing something like Total War and the micromanaging is getting pretty tedious and I think to myself "Am I actually playing for fun or doing actual work here?" I can handle micromanagement though, as long as it doesn't require sweaty palms, a racing pulse, and frenzied clicking.
This happens to be a reality in two of these, I haven't made myself pick up WC3 yet. In Starcrap, how long did people bitch about zerg rushing? Would killing the workers be the most effective use of that zerg rush against a protoss? In Supcom, catch the enemy commander outside of shields with some T3 bombers, poof. No more commander. Getting one shot off before they go down isnt that difficult even with air defenses in ample supply. Supcom is one of the examples of how not to fuck up an RTS too, it's far more involved than most. The speeds are slow, the damage high, and everything is ranged so the melee problem doesn't exist specifically. If you ignore entrenched defenders there and try to walk through to the center of the base, you'll arrive with nothing there. Of course, this isn't true in DOW, the CNC series, Warcraft series, the various Age of Empires style games, all the little Warcraft and CNC clones out there...
Yeah, I know, I don't like Blizzard.
Trying to pretend that the RTS market isn't riddled with that tactic is just a denial of reality.
Okay, well... if your going to let me choose the terms... Assuming the melee units start within contact of one another (because otherwise, assuming the speeds are even, obviously one is not going to catch the other), I'll take a goblin sapper chasing a peon in Warcraft II and an axman chasing a tank in Civ II (both melee in the sense that they have a range of one hex).
Obviously, I'm joking since those aren't exactly "fair" examples, but I'll address the crux of your criticism below.
I'll break this down into two objections.
1) It isn't realistic.
Certainly. There are numerous historical examples in which commanders have decided to pursue some objective rather than directly engaging the enemy. But more importantly, even if it weren't, so what?
2) It doesn't require thought.
It does. The most likely scenario is that the attacking unit is attempting to perform some sort of early-game (probably economic) harassment. In order to even attempt to accomplish this in the first place, the attacking player has to make a series of potentially game-breaking strategic judgments: 1) determine whether the loss of the unit is worth the benefits of pressuring her opponent, 2) determine whether the benefits of pressuring her opponent are worth the costs to her own defense from counterattack, 3) determine whether the benefits of building the infrastructure for producing that unit are worth the benefits of building economic infrastructure instead. In addition, there are a number of tactical skills that need to be exercised, including: 1) scout the opponent's base to determine the location of the objective in relation to her defenses, and 2) move the unit to a location where it can rush past the defending unit without that opponent noticing and countering.
And raise you another.
These are exactly the same sorts of decisions that go into early-game harassment in TBS games. The only difference is the graphical representation. ie. Player A's unit decides to rush into B's base and attack a target, while accepting that eventually B's units will kill A's unit, versus Player A's unit deciding to attack B's base to weaken some target while accepting that either B's defending units will kill A's unit either immediately or next turn.
I am sympathetic to people who hate the frenetic pace of most modern RTS's. But that doesn't mean that I don't recognize that they involve significant cognitive skills.
I thought TBS type game is like Risk/Chess with a million variables involved. At least the play outcome reflects a person's ability to think strategically. In military circles, they used turn based board games as simulated war games to test plausible military scenarios, well that was before they utlize computers as a tool for war game simulation. I am sure both types of RTS and TBS are involved, and i am sure they don't think RTS type of war game simulation is some kind of glorified tetris. Besides, programming the AI for RTS is a billion times more complicated than programming tetris. And the same goes for TBS style of games. Sooo there are no comparision between Tetris and RTS as far as similarities goes.
Blah Life is glorified game, and this game is glorified chess. And and and....
Blah.
Okay, what about a TBS-RTS game like any of the Total War series ???
RTS games for TBS players:
Command HQ by Danni Bunten. This game is about 20 years old but still runs in XP if you can find it, or at least dos box. It's multiplayer over serial. One of the first RTS games ever, it avoids many of the common pitfalls common to the genre through a clever build system and resources, slower pacing, and extreme fog of war. Clever strategy can put a much over-matched opponent on top, leading to some battles where the clear front runner changes hands several times. Command HQ simulates World war I, II, III (cold war), IV (cold war with random countries), V (rebuild after nuclear war). All on a world wide scale.
Close Combat by Atomic Games, Gettysburg by Sig Meir. These games have a lot in common. They have no unit production, they simulate a single battle, not a war. Morale factors in heavily and both have complex models for morale. In fact, the main avenue for victory is to break the enemy's morale. Position and timing are key in these games. Like Command HQ, fog of war is severe.
All three of these differ from the original RTS description in two important ways. Firstly, the action is intense right from the get go. Second, there is no "Zerg rush". I have only ever won these games do to bold maneuvre, feints, etc. In Command HQ, it's the surprise invasion of a too-lightly defended coast. In Close Combat, it's shifting a heavy machine gun to flank an attacking squad. In Gettysburg, it's marching a regiment right through the enemies line before he's fully formed up.
I found Sins to be far less reaction-based than previous RTS titles - a very nice meld of the two genres. Then again I have yet to play it multiplayer and would imagine at the super-competitive level where everyone knows every unit and every trick in the book backwards it comes down to reaction time.
Which would be dull.
Blitzkrieg, anyone?
This is a dishonest statement, period. Name one time in the recorded history of the world that an army has run through another without fighting to attack a target on the other side of the enemy.
You see no difference in the quality of thought required to position your forces in a TBS compared to an RTS? I'd never have been able to go pro or anything, but I was a very good RTS player when I was active. Thinking was not the primary factor, rapid and accurate movement was. Making a judgement call on whether an intellectually void, tactless assault is effective or not isn't the same as successfully deploying your forces in a manner that leaves an actual hole in your enemies defenses and lets you walk through unopposed instead of just undamaged by your futile pursuers.
It's not the pace, it's the system. Focus firing on far from visible units in the middle of a crowd isn't pacing either.
Pacing has other issues, like every engagement being total destruction of one side or the other.
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