So I've been looking for a good RTS game to play for awhile now. I have a game to play in every genre when I get the itch except for this one. Does anyone have any recommendations? There is no limit on how old the game can be, as long as I can get it to run on Windows 7 x64. I don't care about anything other than the fun factor, it doesn't matter if it's modern, sci-fi, or high fantasy. Honestly, I wouldn't mind one of each.
I'll also say that I've played tons of them, even if only briefly. As far as personal preference go, I'd rather play a large scale, slower game (think Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander 1) than a twitchy micromanage fest (Starcraft 2, The more recent Command & Conquer Games)
A few winners (from other sites) that I'd love more personal feedback on are:
World in Conflict
Rise of Nations
Age of Empires III (Bad reviews kept me away, despite loving 1 and liking 2)
So if you feel like helping me out, post a game and a short paragraph about why it is/was so good. I'll go ahead a make a short list of games that can be omitted since I'm sure they'll be popular answers. This is however not even almost an exhaustive list, but please feel free to suggest games that are here anyway since others may find it useful. A full list of RTS games I've played would be ridiculous, and I can't risk my wife seeing something so condemning. 8)
War/Starcrafts
C&C Games
Company of Heroes
Dawn of Wars
Homeworlds
Total Wars
Age of whatevers
SoaSE
If I can't find some good ones I'll just reinstall and love some old classics again. I'm just always looking for something new -to me at least.
Rise of Nations is in my opinion the perfection of the RTS formula used by Age of whatevers as you call them. Its certainly leans more to the Starcraft/Age of Empires/Empire Earth side of the genre (compared to say Total Annihilation), but a streamlined and rather automatic economy (just build a collects and citizens, the game will automatically put idle workers to work at available resource collectors after a certain amount of time) and the often large scale battles (at least for the turn of the century) makes it play a bit differently, and you can enjoy the meat of the game at most difficulty levels without a ridiculous amount of micromanagement. Mechanics like national borders, city assimilation, rare resources and in the expansion governments add a bit of depth that the earlier games clearly lacked.
Some people may not like the lack of a traditional campaign. Rather than a series of scripted levels like C&C or starcraft, RoN has a sort of board game like turn based campaign, sort of like Risk but where you settle the battles in the game. While the default world wide campaign only includes partly randomly generated maps for this campaign, the expansion adds 4 new more specific campaigns, with the Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Cold War Campaigns having many unique pre-designed levels that you'll need to play multiple campaigns in order to fight them all. Also if you are in to that kind of thing it has an awesome scenario editor, and I still mess with that and with some custom Conquer the World maps I made.
All in all I say you should get it, not the least because I'm sure its dirt cheap now and a piece of RTS history.
Didn't like it. Its biggest offender is the pace & gamespeed. It wrecked the game for me.
If you play on Normal or slower gamespeed then the units move jerkily, stopping and waiting to move for 0.2 seconds before continuning to their next animation. It looks so ugly.
If you play on Fast (which is the fastest speed I think) then the units do everything perfectly fluently (just like in the AAA RTS games!) but the gamespeed is on steroids which is too fast for me. And slowing it down makes the animations horrible....
The constant upgrading and stuff can be interesting but I didn't like it....too much stuff to keep track of which doesn't add to the gameexperience.
I would call Rise of Nations more of a management game than a strategy game.
Then the actual units....You move lots and lots of units around but it feels like core units in Warhammer Fantasy. Most of'em will die and you won't care about them unlike Company of Heroes, Dawn of War or Dawn of War II where losing units makes you go "ARGH! Not that one!" or "Not that many rifles lost.... "
I played all the tutorials and then I tried the Alexander The Great campaign on the hardest difficulty and was run over like a complete and utter n00b....but I had already decided I didn't like the game.
Too much macro and too little micro.
I will post more tomorrow but I must sleep now. Will get 4h of sleep....URGH!
I always played it on the default speed (which I don't think was fast) and didn't notice this, that sounds like a technical issue.
I still can't play that campaign on the hardest difficulty, and I've been playing RoN for years. What in the world make you think that was a good idea?
Well you see I would call Dawn of War II and Company of Heroes more a tactics game than a strategy game. If that's the kind of game you want then certainly, RoN isn't for you, but don't be saying its not an RTS. Management game makes me think of Railroad tycoon or something.
Supreme Ruler Coldwar
or
Supreme ruler 2020
I'm a big fan of the supreme ruler series personally (not to be confused with supreme commander). Its more of a grand strategy game with RTS combat mechanics. Its not your average RTS of collect resources build units etc. Its certainly not a game for everyone.. Long play sessions and a steep learning curve and graphics no one will mistake for top of the line aren't for everyone. But in my opinion the depth of units. nations, a more robost economic system than most games of this type etc make up for it.
Supreme ruler Cold war is the newest of the series.. its on sale at gamers gate this week I believe. Sr2020 is a bit older in the tooth and lacks some of the features of SRCW but can be found dirt cheap.
The good: 3000+ different real world unit types ,500+ techs spanning from 1949 til 2100, No artificial unit limits(you can't have more units than you can supply military personnel to man but thats easily solved by annexing other nations) . Full world map, supply and logistics system is hugely important a unit without fuel and or ammo is a sitting duck, Tax rates, Domestic mark ups, Robust economy system. Espionage, diplomacy all in an RTS engine. (shameless promotion) My mods
The bad: Slower paced gameplay than most other RTS's outside of combat, No tutorial, steep learning curve, SRCW still has some minor bugs. and SR2020 has even more speed problems being an older engine. AI could be better.
If your a graphics junkie or a twitch gamer you won't find your fix here. If you enjoy depth, options and an open sandbox type game then you'll most likely enjoy it. (btw BG really needs to update its sceenshots.. i Just looked and they have SS from like the alpha lol)
There is a demo of Supreme Ruler ColdWar floating around but its from a few patches ago so its probably missing some features etc. Give it go.
Distant Worlds is definitely one to check out. It's easily the best real-time 4x space strategy game out there.
Let me present you the following:
Empire Earth (along with its expansion pack, if possible):
This is the first RTS game I know (and maybe the only one) that has such a variety of ages. You start from prehistoric age and you can reach a sci-fi futuristic space age! Pretty well known and interesting game, its mechanics will remind you the Age o Empires series.
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms !
This is by far my favorite Real-Time Strategy ever made! It is the second part of the Total Annihilation franchise, however it was butchered really hard from both the reviewers and the original TA fans for no good reason, if you ask me. It includes unique gameplay, four completely different races (Aramon, Taros, Veruna, Zhon) with the expansion pack Iron Plague adding a fifth one (Creon), epic storyline driven by documentary-styled cinematics, various of different units and much more! It is played online even today (check http://takuniverse.webs.com if you wish!).
Dark Reign: The Future of War
One of the best RTS of all time, and I am not the one who says this, since it is by no means my favourite. It has two futuristic races with a same tech tree but with different units (the Freedom Guard and the Imperium) and it includes a double campaign (a campaign in which you can play each mission with a different side) rather than two completely different ones. Pretty good RTS indeed!
Star Command Revolution
Its old, from cca 1997, but it has utterly brilliant gamplay/single-player campaign, very, very underrated game. I know for sure it works under DosBox.
Here is a little review of the game:
Star Command Revolution is a fun and highly underrated real-time strategy game with some interesting ideas, most notably the addition of shoot 'em up gameplay into the strategy mix. The thorough review at Games Domain does a good job of explaining the pros and cons:
"The game is set in a star system contended by four races - the Computrons, Nomads, Triumverites and Terrans all fight for control of the precious material called solinite, a material which is in limited supply. Gathering solinite is vital for shipbuilding, but also each race has another unique material needed to build its own ships, so harvesting your "own" resource can be just as important as denying an enemy access to theirs. So rather than both sides collecting the same resource, there's a little variety and some challenge in hunting out and collecting what you need. More so when the only ship capable of harvesting is your mothership, and if you lose that, the game is as good as over.
Star Command Revolution has two modes of play. In standalone battles, players each control a force and scrap to the death, with a mix of up to three other computer or human opponents. In these battles players can choose their starting race and are plopped down into one of 10 battle maps, either of their own choosing or randomly supplied. The AI has 3 ability levels, the best of which is certainly quite competent. These battles have limited resources, so games tend to be over quite quickly - I've had games range from 5 to 30 minutes, beyond that I would guess is quite rare. So it's no problem that you can't save multiplayer games. In campaign mode one (or two) players travel between sectors in a quest to destroy four dreadnaughts and the evil Warlord Narvek. The multiplayer campaign means two players can team up to fight the bad guys, which is an interesting idea. They do, however, have to argue over who grabs which resources. The campaign is fought over some 30-40 maps which you can visit non-linearly - each sector has green hyperspace exits and these take you from your current sector to a new one, where you can view the galaxy map to check your progress. Completing a sector gives you a new ability, like level 4 Nomad ships, disabled enemy gun platforms, or larger material deposits. Defeating a dreadnaught has extra benefits, allowing your mothership to regenerate damage.
While there are 64 different ship and "building" types present in [the game], only a handful are available to you at the start of a battle or campaign. The startup ships available are your mothership (which builds new buildings as well as harvesting), a space station (which builds new ships if you have the materials), a research building and a scout ship. To learn new ship and building types you need to leave your mothership adjacent to the research building, but while you're doing this you can't harvest resources unless they're very nearby as the mothership's cute little gathering droid only has a short range. Success is down to using good combinations of ships. If you can deploy multiple race fleets then fighter bases escorted by Shield DOCs and Point Lasers can be deadly, if they can travel to where you want; some maps have narrow passages to stop the large fighter carriers passing through. Each carrier has three fighters which can fly off to do damage to enemies at quite long range. They thus also make good defences for your main base and mothership. The variety in ships is enough to make you need different unit types deployed in combination to do well; no one unit is a killer unit, each has a weakness against something.
Star Command Revolution is a unique blend of shoot-em-up action and strategy. As such, it has a refreshing feel to it. There's plenty of ship types to play with, and lots of variety to the action, which itself is smooth and very fast-paced. Bullets, rockets, lasers and other weaponry blazes across the screen at breathtaking speed. Battle is not for the feint-hearted. There are a few downsides, notably the single save slot in campaigns, the mysteriously vanishing solinite debris, and the lack of a scrolling speed adjustment. There's plenty of gameplay in the long campaign, though the enemy AI isn't a threat by intelligence but more so by volume. Thus the campaign tends to become more of a chore than an engrossing affair - perhaps GT Interactive needed to work more on the campaign AI to keep it up with the high presentation standard. The long campaign is also broken for 2-player to all intents and purposes because the reload option simply doesn't work. But in one-off battles, particularly multiplayer, the action is quick and ruthless, with games being pleasantly short to complete. Star Command Revolution isn't just a clone game, it has enough novelty in style and presentation to warrant a close look." Highly recommended!
Distant Worlds without a doubt!
Submarine Titans is also an extremely underestiamted and underrated game. Worms 3D is maybe the best turn-based strategy ever (yes, I remembered that by staring at Das123 avatar, lol).
However, nothing can beat Total Annihilation: Kingdoms! I can write a whole book explaining ehy this game is pure awesomeness!
We still play TA:Kingdoms online after 13-14 years and we have a pretty decent community! Check this link if you're interested: http://kingdoms.heavenforum.org/!
If you care about Worms series, you shoud first check the official site of Team17: http://www.team17.com/.
Unfortunately, I have no links to provide for Submarine Titans. By the way, do you know if someone plays Submarine Titans today?
Nah, the old 2D Worms World Party shits all over this newer 3D versions. IMHO.
True at some point, that's why I've said "maybe". However, I love and enjoy this new 3D versions of Worms as much as the old ones, sometimes even more!
Distant Worlds-My new GalCiv! Get the expansions too! Ya I also agree best 4x out there right now.
Rise of Nations and the expansion- If Age of Empire and Civ had a baby! Wonderful!
Homeworld Series- I already praise this series enough.
Empire Earth and expansions- I bet if you find it now its dirt cheap go for it!
Supreme Commander and/or the expansion, Forged Alliance. The expansion will run without the original game, but not allow all factions playable for MP.
I second Total Annihiliation: Kingdoms. Genuinely 5 distince races. Not at all cookie cutter AND unique units are limited in number and must be used carefully. No just plowing them through the ranks unless you want them dead as a doornail.
I've been playing the heck out of this.
http://wargame-ee.com/
I would love to play it, but in https://www.matrixgames.com/store/ the game with both expansions costs 98.62 USD (after 20% discount on expansions). That's a lot of money.
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