No more strategy in our RTSFollow

Now I enjoy RTS, I am tired of the build build build, spawn, spawn, spawn, attack attack attack that almost every RTS out there seems to have. Sure you have some strategy, but really you could train a monkey to play WC3 well.

I want a game that is a throw back to the original Myth: The Fallen Lords games, games that give you 20 soldiers and said use strategy and cunning to kill these 500 zombies and it was so, you would bait them, you would lay down bombs, and flanking the enemy and using surprise tactics had an effect on the outcome of the game. Also your formations had an effect, it was like a constant game of trying to find what formation would work the best against your enemy, if they were a tight woven pack box them in, use dwarves to take out there middle. Scattered? Well that was just asking for a trow to tear through, there we a thousand different ways to engage in combat, you could break your squad into two formations, one to distract there soldiers and die with honor while you took another force to pick off there archers.

Some of my fondest memories were "If I had a trow" I probably spent 100+ hours playing that map over and over and over.

I remember hiding reinforcement zombies in the water and have them pop out to flank the enemy, I remember having to leave archers near your Dwarves cause you just knew a force of goblins would be trying to take them out, I remember the day I found out you could use (Those lightning casting guys) to rain down Moltov Cocktails from your dwarves, I remember when an enemy snuck his Trow around the back of my army and took half of them out before I could realize what was happening, I remember having that lone archer run flow blown through my ranks to fire that one flaming arrow into a dwarf laying mines BOOM, I remember sending that one suicide dwarf into there ranks to clear out the riff raff.

I remember having to retreat because the enemy had terrain advantage and I knew I wouldn't have a chance, do you ever retreat in WC3? Hell no, you send in the forces you got to die then start building more, BAH.

Are there any games like Myth still out there? Or should I just re-purchase that? Does anyone still play it?

I dont think you will quite find that level of strategy in Ground Control, but it does give you a static amount of units to work with and things live having the high ground, being in shadows, etc do give you significant advantages. The game was to my knowledge the second RTS to incorporate a completely 3d enviroment (the first being homeworld, IIRC). IMO The graphics IMO are better than those in command and conquer: generals I believe it was released in 1999 or 2000, so you can probably find it in bargain bins for 10 dollars. Even better is that i believe Seirra offers a free exspansion pack for it through mail or by download which adds another side.

The only dissapointing part of the game is that there is no skirmish mode, and multiplayer is basically rush your units at the enemy. wait to win/lose. if you win rush the remaining units at someone else. If you lose wait for another dropship to give you reinforcements, and rush them.

Aside from the lack of decent multi-player the game has an excellent single player.

Tactics play a major part in Homeworld 2. Sending fighters in against corvettes and frigates is tantamount to suicide. But fighter/bombers to resonably well vs Destroyers. Formations also play a major factor. Delta formation for fighters when going against other fighters, or when doing strafing runs against much larger targets. Wall formation ROCKS for frigates and destroyers. Always make sure you have fighter or gunship support for your larger ships, the AI in the game is really good and will take advantage of stuff you miss, like and escort for that lone carrier. Not many people use troopships, but I think they kick major ***, you can take over enemy ships with the, the more the better. Just make sure you have some anti-fighter support. The shield frigate also kicks major ***, if you use them right you can lay waste to a much larger force than your own. Ok, I think that is enough pointers for now.

Yeah, I've been playing Homeworld 2 for awhile now

Well, I've never been super impressed with the "strategy" part of RTS's in general. The Real Time bit exists solely to make real strategy difficult and/or impossible. The winner is almost always going to be the guy who's just a bit faster at producing and sending troops towards the enemy. Don't get me wrong. There's strategy (sort of), but it's more like following rules (use this combination of units against that sort of defense sort of things). Once you know the terrain you're in, the play is somewhat automatic. This is going to be true of any RTS just due to the nature of RTS's.

If you want "real" strategy, you need to play turned based games. In a turn based game, it's not about who happens to be looking at the right thing at the right time. Time is taken out of the equation. You don't surprise someone because he wasn't looking. You surprise them because you use some facet of the rules and terrain to prevent them from knowing what you are going to do until it's too late. Combats aren't about zerging the other guy (ok, not always). If you and the other guy have the same starting positions, and time is taken out of the equation, then the winner is always going to be determined by who used the best strategy.

That's just my preference. I like RTS's for the "twitch" factor, and I enjoy playing them in multiplayer mode (cause you can finish a game pretty quickly). I get bored really quick when playing against a computer though. Each level (or whatever they call it) depends solely on figuring out the weakness the computer AI has in the map you are playing and exploiting it. I don't think of "finding the trick" as the same as strategy. But that's what usually passes for strategy in most RTS games...


You want pure strategy? Play Diplomacy sometime (I have no idea if an online version exists though). Now that's a strategy game. Um... But I suck at it, so don't pick on me. Honest! :)