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My take on various RTS games.


xgmx

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I've played various RTS games, here is my take on them. It should be noted that this is in response to "Starcraft vs SupremeCommander vs Dawn of War.".

 

 

 

StarCraft: Brood War

Fantastic game and personally, my favorite video game. It combines all the elements needed to make a successful game. It's still got about 1 million active players who log onto Battle.net each day and is still sold wherever games are sold (even though it was released in 1998, over a decade ago). Multiplayer Use Map Settings is what really separates this gem from the rest of the games out there, Multiplayer Use Map Settings on Battle.net, along with stat tracking, ladder, tournaments, live tech support, channels, automatic patching, a anti-hacking/cheating system, ignore lists, forums, friends lists, etc. make Battle.net the most popular online gaming service ever (statistics show that Battle has 10 times more players than Xbox Live).

 

 

 

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

Warcraft III is StarCraft, but 3D (and some hero units can hold items and level up).

 

 

 

Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition

Think of this as a pre-StarCraft form of StarCraft. For both races (including the Elves with the Humans), the Orcs and the Humans (which joined together with the Elves) are pretty much the same. There are however, a few small differences between the two races' units' statistics.

 

 

 

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

A fun game, I played it on single player. I tried it on multiplayer, it's sort of a rip off of Battle.net, but then again, so is pretty much everything else since Battle.net was the first online gaming services to have chat rooms, friends lists, etc. However when I logged in, I couldn't play games, some sort of firewall problem, I tried to fix it but, StarCraft is better so I haven't really gotten around to fixing the problem yet.

 

 

 

Star Wars: Force Commander

This game got horrible reviews, but don't let that fool you, it's actually a fun game. The game is (unlike most RTS games) not based around resource gathering. In fact, you don't even gather resources, you capture enemy (and neutral) Command Bunkers and get command points to create units, structures, etc. The multiplayer for the game could use a little work, it relied almost solely on the Internet Gaming Zone, which is now pretty much defunct (the service exists in name only, no games actually work on it, but it is still a technically a corporeal entity). The game is considered by many to be the first 3D RTS game ever.

 

 

 

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns

Take Age of Empires II: Age of Kings and rename the units "Lando Calrissian", "Luke Skywalker", "Princess Leia", "Chewbacca", and "Han Solo" and you have Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.

 

 

 

Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3

This game is alright. It is kind of a rip off of Command & Conquer though. The game is the "sequel" (more like spin-off) to G-NOME, which is a combination of a Mech Simulation, First-Person Shooter, and Third-Person Shooter. However, unlike G-NOME, this is a RTS. So you have the same four major factions (not including Sheridan Rebels, since they all died in G-NOME), these factions are the: Union (Human), Darken, Scorp, and the Bendian Mercenary Provisional Republic (Merc). The game is extremely glitchy and had several problems in development. One such problem was 7th Level (the developer and publisher of G-NOME and Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3) going defunct, as well as the company that picked up the title (Ion Storm not knowing how to make a game, just like the new publisher ( Eidos Interactive) didn't.

 

 

 

Age of Empires

Originally a good game, however, it needs better multiplayer.

 

 

 

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings

Age of Empires but with better graphics.

 

 

 

Strifeshadow

I've only played the demo of this, but it seemed like it had potential. It has a few problems though, there is absolutely no way of knowing what to do in the game (as there are no instructions), and nobody plays it. It has a system similar to Battle.net, however, unlike Battle.net, nobody is ever on Strifeshadow.

 

 

 

Star Trek: Armada

A fun game with a system similar to Battle.net (that system is called the World Opponent Network).

 

 

 

Star Trek: Armada II

Not as good as the first one.

 

 

 

Star Trek: New Worlds

Not worth buying, it doesn't even work (not right anyway) on Windows XP.

 

 

 

Supreme Failure (I mean Commander)

Chris Taylor forgot how to make a RTS and so he made a game that was worse than Cybernoid (don't download that game, if you do, you might kill yourself, but you have a better chance of killing yourself if you go on the official Supreme Commander forums). Unfortunately two forums modeled themselves after the official Supreme Commander forums, these forums are The Warcraft Occult (The Warcraft Occult isn't quite as bad however), Forum Sector (don't click the link to Forum Sector, it is a child pornography site [it used to be a StarCraft fansite, but then rustyslacker joined and started posting some stuff, including bad pictures]).

 

 

 

Total Annihilation

Extremely awesome, it's just like Battle.net, you can play for free on PhoeniX WorX.

 

 

 

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms

Not as fun as the first one, but still fun, nonetheless.

 

 

 

Golems

Don't buy this.

 

 

 

Majesty

It's pretty fun, and different.

 

 

 

Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Fun.

 

 

 

Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor

Fun.

 

 

 

Command & Conquer: Red Alert II: Yuri's Revenge

Fun.

 

 

 

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Firestorm

Fun.

 

 

 

Battallion Wars

Thank god I'm done with the Command & Conquer games, now then, Battalion Wars. Battalion Wars is a console RTS game (for the Nintendo GameCube). It is fun.

 

 

 

Dune 2000

A Dune game! But Frank Herbert's Dune Online is better.

 

 

 

Age of Sail

It is very slow paced.

 

 

 

Shattered Galaxy

A fun MMORTS game.

 

 

 

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans

Where is the Battle.net?

 

 

 

Theatre of War

One of the oldest RTS games that is still on the market. This came out in like 1994 and you can still buy it.

 

 

 

 

Shogun: Total War

I haven't really had much experience with this game, so I can't say much about it.

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I haven't played a whole lot of RTS games, beyond the Age of Empires Series and Empire Earth, but Halo Wars is pretty fun, if simple compared to say, Empire Earth.

 

However, Empire Earth, and Age of Empires tie for the most awesome theme song EVER.

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I can honestly say that I believe the Total War series to be the greatest set of RTS games released to date. I would vote Rome as the best, but that is due to a preference for the period and the fact that I haven't yet played Empire!

 

The sheer scale of battles and the level of control, coupled with the depth of the campaign map puts AoE and EE to shame, in my view. Total War requires careful planning in placing armies, both offensively and in defence on the campaign map, as well as with units on the field. Diplomacy is also far better developed, with many factions haveing varying levels of trustworthiness, or willingness to deal with you. Finally, I always found much of AoE and EE to be very samey, in the sense that it was largely just your faction name that distinguished you from your opponents, except where there were differences in building styles. While later installments may have made attempts to fix that, Total War has always boasted a mass of different and unique units for each of its factions.

 

I would also suggest Star Wars: Empire at War be looked at - while not having Total War's depth, it is still fun to take command of the Empire and crush Rebels in an RTS format! Space battles are the best fun in that title.

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject. :)

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I can honestly say that I believe the Total War series to be the greatest set of RTS games released to date. I would vote Rome as the best, but that is due to a preference for the period and the fact that I haven't yet played Empire!

 

The sheer scale of battles and the level of control, coupled with the depth of the campaign map puts AoE and EE to shame, in my view. Total War requires careful planning in placing armies, both offensively and in defence on the campaign map, as well as with units on the field. Diplomacy is also far better developed, with many factions haveing varying levels of trustworthiness, or willingness to deal with you. Finally, I always found much of AoE and EE to be very samey, in the sense that it was largely just your faction name that distinguished you from your opponents, except where there were differences in building styles. While later installments may have made attempts to fix that, Total War has always boasted a mass of different and unique units for each of its factions.

 

I would also suggest Star Wars: Empire at War be looked at - while not having Total War's depth, it is still fun to take command of the Empire and crush Rebels in an RTS format! Space battles are the best fun in that title.

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the subject. :)

The Warlords Battlecry series is better. Scratch that, the best.

 

Buy number 2, it has all those things, it even has Titans which are like, mega-powerful. The only thing it lacks is storyline, but 1 and 3 make up for that, and all 3 are absolutely awesome.

 

About how each faction has different units and stuff, Warlords Battlecry II has 13 different races to choose from, each with alot of unique units, and even more that can only be gained through special ways.

 

Buy it, Buy it now.

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I find it funny that your main complaint about Supreme Commander seems to lie in it's forums, which aren't fantastic, but hardly horrible (yes, I visit them on a regular basis, got stuck in a fanfic as bad as wheel of time but just as addicting). Note: my defence of supcom is only valid if you have forged alliance, as this ironed out 98% of the issues I had with it.

 

You see, I never got into the microfest that is SC, and while I think it's a fun game, it's a different beast entierly, which is why I don't expect fans of one to like the other. So, without further ado, here are my reasons (that I have time to write in the middle of the night) for prefering the supcom style over the SC.

 

1: Something for everyone.

I.E there is basically a unit for every niche imaginable. For instance an accurate, splash, power, range, speed, armor, stationary or a combination of theese in an artilery unit able to fire distances from your mailbox to the other side of the planet. While this means that there is not a perfect balance at all times, after FA came out, it's balanced enough that creative use of vildly different units is rewarded (for instance using Czars (air unit) to temporarly defend vital units/structures from artilery).

 

2: A cynics economy.

Every member of your army has a subjective value alive, but an objective value dead, a value which can be captured by any graverobber (engenier, ACU, SCU) who to the corpse. This means that your every strike must calculate not just what you/your opponenet loose, but also who will get the spoils. So you have to choose your battles carefully. You might well destroy 80% of your opponenets army while loosing just 50% yourself, but if the corpses are in his base, you better prepare for the mother of all counter attacks.

 

3: Do or do not, there is no try.

Since every game is all about destroying one big, mean, heavily customized badass who can be capable of not just setting up a base in no time, but everything from launching nukes to turning into a ninja with a death star laser, the game is never over. Nothing quite beats the terrifying sense of dread as you hear the words strategic launch detected from a destroyed base, or the chill of seeing one cybran ACU entering omni range.

 

4: The sky is the limit, pity you'll kill yourself when impacting with the roofs of other games.

Supcom has strategic zoom, and while yes, I know other games have had this, supcom has streamlined it, to the point that I didn't notice I had it until

. It's simply that well implemented.

 

:D

 

@:SW: agreed

 

@Rabish: While a good game, I lack the fine motor skills to make it excelent

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@Rabish: While a good game' date=' I lack the fine motor skills to make it excelent[/quote']

You're the first person in the entire LFN that I know of to have palyed it. +10 awesome points.

Although I would like some clarification on what you mean by "I lack the fine motor skills to make it excelent"

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I lack the micro skills, so I always ended up frantically trying to get my mages to fry foes fast enough. Still played it for a while (funnily enough until I got supcom). And if unit diversity is your thing, you should definetly check out supcom (with forged alliance.

 

Almost forgot, though I'm not sure it qualifies as an RTS: the overlooked awesomme that is Evil Genius

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