RTS Games

[Roship]

I've always been in love with the RTS genre. Red Alert 2, Age of Mythology, Company of Heroes. I grew up loving games with base building. I know the genre is mostly dead now a days outside of Starcraft, which is one of the saddest things to happen to gaming. Places like Hiveworkshop are a treasure trove for custom maps/campaigns for these older games, and keep them alive a little bit, but new content comes sparsely.

Seems like the good, old-fashioned, RTS genre died out of nowhere 10 years ago or so. I would like this to be a thread for people who also grew up loving RTS games like these to come together and share their thoughts on newer ones and possibly share any hidden gems with the rest of us they might've encountered over the years.


My current library consists of:

All Command and Conquer games
Warcraft/Starcraft
Age of Mythology/Empires and all Expacs
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
All Dawn of War games
Heroes of Might and Magic(most of the them)
Rise of Nations
Battle for Middle-Earth 1&2
Spellforce 1&2
Impossible Creatures
All Company of Heroes
Several Total War games(I hated them all)

[MrPaladinGuy]

The last two I played that were worth it were Command & Conquer 3 and the base Starcraft 2 campaign, expansions seemed like afterthoughts.

C&C4 was a pile of dung.

[ls-]

Seems like the good, old-fashioned, RTS genre died out of nowhere 10 years ago or so.

I love RTS, but they didn't die out of nowhere. They died because MOBAs appeared, it's the last nail in the coffin. RTS is a mix of macro- and micro-managements, but turned out that most people didn't like mixing those. People who loved macro always had 4X (Anno, Civ, etc) to rely on, but micro had not genre of its own, but then MOBAs came to be, and as soon as they went mainstream, this "issue" got fixed.

So RTS became a jack of all trades, but a master of none in strategy family.

I was really salty when EA cancelled new Generals title

I actually enjoyed recent Act of Aggression game, it's not the best one, but it's fairly good, much better than, let's say, C&C: RA3.

I'm looking forward to Northgard though.

[Deleted]

...and possibly share any hidden gems with the rest of us they might've encountered over the years...

Homeworld Remastered should show up in Steam sales for 5 or 10 €. It has a nice story, excellent audio production and tons of flair. Give it a try if you don't mind a - mostly empty - full 3D environment, somewhat clunky controls and a quite unforgiving difficulty level. Halo Wars 2 might work for you - I got it during a sale but didn't play it yet. A remastered Age of Empires is currently in beta. Or join us on the dark side and switch to MOBAs.

As to why they are mostly gone, @lightspark summed it up very well.

[OnlineSamantha]

Have you tried GreyGoo? I haven't gotten too far, but it seems a bit Warcraft-y. I have heard it's pretty slow though. The cinematics are fantastic as well.

[endersblade]

Have you tried GreyGoo? I haven't gotten too far, but it seems a bit Warcraft-y. I have heard it's pretty slow though. The cinematics are fantastic as well.

Little known game. Really loved Grey Goo, completed the entire campaign, loved it!

RTSs died because of shit like Starcraft, as well as MOBAs. I.E. they became uber competitive, twitch-gamer addictions that casuals can't really compete with. I hate it, because RTS games are hands down my favorite type of game. I just can't play at 100+ clicks a second while hitting 20 hotkeys at the same fucking time. It's stupid what they have become, I'm kinda glad they're dying. No more piles of garbage like C&C 4. Most of the classics still function on modern PCs, and that's good enough for me.

[ddengster]

Strange that people don't mention Tooth and Tail as an RTS that caters towards low apm casuals - they're complaining quite a lot and yet don't stick to innovations like these. Perhaps the imposed playstyles of RTS game are doomed to trend towards more slow and economic playstyles and we'll still be stuck to Starcraft 2 decades later for our high-apm RTS fantasies. I'll definitely miss micro intensive RTS games like these

[ls-]

Little known game. Really loved Grey Goo, completed the entire campaign, loved it!

RTSs died because of shit like Starcraft, as well as MOBAs. I.E. they became uber competitive, twitch-gamer addictions that casuals can't really compete with. I hate it, because RTS games are hands down my favorite type of game. I just can't play at 100+ clicks a second while hitting 20 hotkeys at the same fucking time. It's stupid what they have become, I'm kinda glad they're dying. No more piles of garbage like C&C 4. Most of the classics still function on modern PCs, and that's good enough for me.

I don't think that many RTS games require that high of an APM, 70ish is more than enough to play anything on a decent level.

As for GG, it had serious balance and performance issues when it's released. It still has balance issues even now. But it's an okay RTS.

That's prob the problem w/ the genre atm, games are just okay, given that genre doesn't attract that many people devs don't push that hard anymore, they don't want to and simply can't do so.

[Shinrael]

I reaaally loved playing Rising Kingdoms as a child. It was the very first roleplaying/medieval fantasy (as well as RTS) game that I ever played. And it was so much fun playing around with the map editor. The graphics were sooo pleasant to the eye. Vibrant green, dynamic, realistic, beautiful. The gameplay was fun too. Strongly recommend this.

Some months later I discovered WoW and some years later I decided to play through WC 3 and TFT. And enjoyed that as well. And I've been searching for similar games for so long but can't find anything that gets my attention. All the RTS' I've seen are either modern war/sci-fi themed and I really dislike those themes. I want a medieval fantasy. Wizards, dragons, elementals, paladins, archers, beastmasters, stuff like that. Also I like vibrant green and pretty landscapes. Not barren battlefields (now, I like zones like Barrens in WoW, but WoW has sooo many pretty zones that having some barren zones actually is a cool thing. But if all zones in the game are deserts and so on... well). Also, most RTS' I've seen are turn-based which my brain cannot comprehend. I saw the post of the guy who suggested Northguard and I checked it out just now. I must say it looks quite like what I am looking for. Sadly, it seems like there won't be much of a map variety (ye, I get it they are generated and thus always different, but I mean, like, theme variety, jungles, islands, forests, valleys, deserts and so on.) But we shall see. Bought it and downloading now, let's see how it goes. Thanks

[hellhamster]

Homeworld. Get the remastered edition, thank me later.

Company of Heroes 1/2.

[XDurionX]

I wouldn't say that RTSs are dead, in my opinion there haven't ever been more titles on the market, but most of them are very mediocre and add very little to the table. The genre has become very bland, generic and uninteresting. My latest disappointment has been Dawn of War 3, they removed everything that made DoW 2 great and it became a huge snorefest.

And as others have said Grey Goo is one of the better ones. Has anyone played Spellforce 3 yet? The first ones were very badly balanced, but fun.

[zealo]

No thread like this will ever be complete without a recommendation of Supreme Commander, even if the sequel was a bit of a stinker in comparison. Same thing for Total Annihilation.

As for newer stuff, maybe not quite as conventional an RTS, but I had a decent amount of fun with Steel Division released last year too.

[Deleted]

I love RTS as well. Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires 2 were the first 2 games i played as as kid. RTS are not so common nowadays but they are around. We know that a new Age of Empires is comming up. Also i am recomending 'They Are Billions' to any RTS fan. It's not your typical RTS game (atm only single player mode), but everyone who likes old-school RTS is gonna love it. I think its on early access on stream at the moment.

[ParanoiD84]

Total War serie is my favorite pc serie together with Battlefield, just something about thousands of men charging and slaughtering eachother, plus history and you get both real time with the battles and turnbased on the empire building map.

[Yunru]

I still play Ra2 Mental Omega.
http://mentalomega.com/

Much more fun than any rts that came out recently. (only minus is that you cant save game due to engine)

(not sure why this guy plays on such slow speed)

[Ravenblade]

In my opinion, if you are into RTS still and don't like APM-based gameplay then Sins of a Solar Empire should be right up your alley.

[Rhovanir]

If you liked the Red Alert Series I would suggest this old game:

War Front: Turning Point

It's a similarly structured RTS game with an alternate reality setting in WW2. Hitler was assassinated somewhere at the start of the war, so Nazi Germany acted less crazy and managed to invade Britain. Without allied bombing it developed its technology more and in turn both of the other factions did the same. You can play as the Germans, the Allies (US+GB) and the Soviets.

No naval units/battles, only ground and air. It has standard units (like T34, Tiger and Sherman tanks) and some alternate reality/sci-fi stuff for fun (Sound-Wave Tiger tanks, Giant Armored Zeppelins, Maus Tanks, Earth Quake bombs, Cryo Tanks, 5 Turret Soviet Tanks and more).

It was pretty fun, though it's not on steam so I'm not sure where you could find it now. it's from around 2007.

A trailer I found and some screenshots:











I would also recommend a few other games, namely:

R.U.S.E - which was awesome fun with good graphics and interesting strategy options, but Ubisoft removed it from Steam due to some licensing stuff and I'm not sure if you can buy it anymore sadly.



World in Conflict - Parachuting Soviet Tanks in downtown Seattle is always fun. it also has a couple of fun mods if I remember correctly. No base building though. Is on Steam



Tom Clancy's Endwar - I played the game a bit and it was fun but I played others way more. Futuristic with 3 factions, but as I recall no base building Is on Steam.



Universe at War: Earth Assault - A Sci-Fi game about aliens invading Earth with 3 alien races. Was really fun but it wasn't that well made but had a modding community. You can't find it on steam anymore unfortunately.



Star Wars: Empire at War - It was a favorite since you could have Star Wars space battles and it has quite a modder community to keep the game going. It is on Steam if you want to check it out.

[I Push Buttons]

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Get it noobs.

[Skizzit]

I don't really have anything to add as far as RTS recommendations go, but don't give up hope on the genre! Adventure games were nearly extinct for years and then we had a resurgence a few years ago. It has happened with other things as well. All it takes is one small indy dev team to take a chance with a fondly remembered genre and be a break out success and then the lazy AAA devs will see easy money and try and jump in on the fun.

[Afrospinach]

I was really salty when EA cancelled new Generals title

The new c&c moba? It was a mercy killing really.