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Benjamin Franklin posted:By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Welcome to the Strategy Games Megathread!!! This thread is for your strategy game posting pleasure. If you have a question about a certain game, what game to play, or just want to regale the thread with tales of how you imprisoned your cheating wife and repeatedly raped her in a dungeon, leaving her nine children to die with her in a cell. Crusader Kings is hosed up. This OP is very much a work in progress, and I plan on spicing it up with pictures and stuff. If you have suggestions, PM me or post them or something. Strategy game? What’s that? Wikipedia posted:Strategy video game is a video game that focuses on skillful thinking and planning to achieve victory. It emphasizes strategic, tactical, and sometimes logistical challenges. Many games also offer economic challenges and exploration. They are generally categorized into four sub-types, depending on whether the game is turn-based or real-time, and whether the game focuses on strategy or tactics. 4X 4X stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate. These games are typically highly complex, with the player usually having to intensely micromanage things like economies, how cities are built, composition of armies, diplomacy, technological advancement, and fighting wars. There’s a lot of flexibility in this genre with some games being ridiculously complex (the aforementioned Crusader Kings/anything released by Paradox), and some being more streamlined or focused on one aspect, such as Sins of a Solar Empire. These games are typically turn-based, but some are real-time with optional pausing. It depends on the game. If you like taking hours of your life learning complex game systems and crafting a strategy and watching things fall into place/horribly fail because you didn’t scout your enemies, this genre is for you. Notable entries/series Civilization, Master of Orion, Crusader Kings/Hearts of Iron/Anything by Paradox, Endless Legend, Galactic Civilizations, Sword of the Stars, Dominions, Sins of a Solar Empire, Heroes of Might & Magic, Master of Magic Grand Strategy Grand strategy games are similar in a lot of ways to 4X, but have some key differences. Most notably, in a 4X game, you start in a randomly generated world with no idea of what’s out there. In Grand Strategy, you’re usually taking the place of a historical nation, starting in the same place in the same time frame, with the same people around you. Forums user and part-time third world neo-fascist dictator StoryTime elaborates: StoryTime posted:Not to be super anal about this, but people usually distinguish between 4X and Grand Strategy or Map Games. The major difference is that in 4X you start with a single settler/planet/whatever, and you eXplore and eXpand through a fog, and the world is randomly generated. In a Grand Strategy game you start (usually) within a historical scenario, and proceed from there. A good example is Stellaris vs Europa Universalis 4. Both are similar paradox games, but Stellaris is 4X since you start with a single planet and know nothing about the randomly generated galaxy. In EU4 you start in the year 1444 in a historical setting, and with an established nation. Notable entries/series Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron. I don’t play these games so suggest more in the thread or something if I missed a huge one. RTS RTS stands for Real-Time Strategy. These games typically focus more on building a quick economy and churning out armies, using micromanagement and skill to defeat enemy armies. Generally much faster paced than an RTS. A 4x game can last dozens of hours, whereas an RTS match usually takes 20-60 minutes based on which series you’re playing and how much you suck at it. These games focus on quick decision making and even faster reaction times. At the professional level, one minor misclick or poor decision can cost you a game. Don’t worry, most people don’t reach that level. Most people just get mildly competent and enjoy blowing poo poo up. Some games, like the Supreme Commander series or Planetary Annihilation: Titans, focus more on the macro over micro, and let you queue up orders while you focus on the killin’. If you like fast-paced decision making, keeping track of 5-10 things at once while managing a battle, and changing your strategy on the fly based on what your opponent is doing this genre is definitely for you. Notable entries/series Starcraft, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander, Stronghold, Rise of Nations, Total War (which is awesome), Age of Empires, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, World in Conflict, Freedom Force. Tactical Tactical games tend to focus either much less or not at all on unit production, and instead focus on the usage of a limited number of units and resources. These can be turn based or real time, are usually super intense and, on higher difficulties, very punishing. Interesting to note is that while a lot of previous genres are mostly on PC, you’ll find a lot of these on consoles and handhelds. I don’t play many of these, so if you have a better description then post it! Notable entries/series Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy Tactics, Commandos, Ogre Kingdoms, Fire Emblem, X-Com, Into the Breach, Advance Wars. City Builders Everyone’s played one of these. You boot it up, wondering how the hell it could ever be entertaining, and then next thing you know it’s 2 am and you just have to get that sewer system working properly and god dammit I have to work today. You build and plan a city, making sure your citizens are happy and paying their drat taxes so you can keep building. Some games, like Tropico, place you in the role of dictator, and then you can just imprison your people if they don’t like you! Notable entries/series SimCity (duh), Anno, Cities: Skylines, Tropico, Evil Genius. Talk about strategy games! Talk about how poo poo/good you are at them! Tell us how you wasted a couple dozen hours on a game of GalCiv 2 only to get completely hosed by an AI who totally outplanned you! Challenge each other to a 1v1 and then post the replays! Find a co-op partner for that old game nobody plays! MOBAs gently caress MOBAs. Pretty sure they have their own thread anyways. J.R.R. Tolkien posted:It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.  Effort posts worth reading! Mordja educates us about Total Annihilation! Jossar focuses on construction in Age of Empres 2! Jossar ascends to the Astral Plane and teaches us about Eador: Genesis! Jossar has too much time on his hands and tells us about The Impressions City Builders! Jossar conquers the thread and posts about Empire Earth! Jossar reveals he’s a Confederate sympathizer and fights in Sid Meier’s Gettysburg!  FREE STRATEGY GAMES Star Ruler 2 Zero-K Luminous Cow fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jul 5, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2018 03:36
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This post reserved for upcoming strategy releases to get hyped about, pre-order, and then be utterly disappointed by.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:37
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Does anyone still play Planetary Annihilation: Titans? That's my current strategy jam. I can't seem to unlock more commander loadouts in the Galactic Domination mode or whatever it's called. I know I beat Metrarch the Machinist pretty soundly, and went on to complete that campaign, but his loadout is still locked. Did I miss something?
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Sep 26, 2018 03:40
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I would like a HoMM where my success does not end at a single major battle loss. Does such a thing exist?
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Sep 26, 2018 04:20
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Awww yisss. Strategy games are my jam. You want to know how much my jam? I did my Master's in Strategic Studies because I got into real military theory and history thanks to strategy videogames. Not that I'm good at them, lord no. I'm not a young man anymore, I'm an old woman now. The days of stomping everyone in Red Alert 2 and Starcraft are long past. Hoping that some Banished-esque games let me build a medieval city soon. Ostriv or something.
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Sep 26, 2018 04:33
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RTS games are extremely my poo poo, basically the first genre I ever really played. I've got my particulars though. Pretty apathetic towards Starcraft/Warcraft, they just feel so artificial. Total Annihilation just blew those games completely out of the water, imo, and even Command and Conquer due to the very simple fact that units can miss one another with their shots. The former of those two is still definitely one my absolute favourites and it's aged amazingly well and has some pretty drat impressive mods still being worked on. I've played all of its spiritual successors, but none of them have that same tactile edge that TA still has. Zero Hour and its mods are the best C&C game, fight me. Also big into Relic's style of Strategy (DOW3 never happened dammit), and COH2 and to a much lesser extent DOW2 are the only RTS games I've really put any time into PVP. Not gonna lie, the majority of my experience with the genre consists of skirmish matches and compstomps and playing mods and if you're noticing a trend, I am big into mods. I might do a write up of TA: Escalation and Mental Omega one of these days, because they've got a type of variety that commercial games could only dream of. I've also played (or tried to play) just about every obscure, lovely RTS around, including greater-than-one Korean Starcraft clones, so I'd be surprised if someone came up with something I've never heard of.
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Sep 26, 2018 05:32
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Mordja posted:RTS games are extremely my poo poo, basically the first genre I ever really played. I've got my particulars though. Pretty apathetic towards Starcraft/Warcraft, they just feel so artificial. Total Annihilation just blew those games completely out of the water, imo, and even Command and Conquer due to the very simple fact that units can miss one another with their shots. The former of those two is still definitely one my absolute favourites and it's aged amazingly well and has some pretty drat impressive mods still being worked on. I've played all of its spiritual successors, but none of them have that same tactile edge that TA still has. Zero Hour and its mods are the best C&C game, fight me. Also big into Relic's style of Strategy (DOW3 never happened dammit), and COH2 and to a much lesser extent DOW2 are the only RTS games I've really put any time into PVP. Not gonna lie, the majority of my experience with the genre consists of skirmish matches and compstomps and playing mods and if you're noticing a trend, I am big into mods. I might do a write up of TA: Escalation and Mental Omega one of these days, because they've got a type of variety that commercial games could only dream of. Please do write ups for TA because I have never played them and I want to live vicariously through you. I'm the same way with RTS, I never do multi unless it's some weird map or comp stomp. I tried doing ranked in SC2 for a while but I don't think I ever even climbed out of bronze
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Sep 26, 2018 05:39
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https://twitter.com/tshirtsbot/status/1044830264537616385
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Sep 26, 2018 07:42
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TA is more sim, Warcraft/Starcraft are more straight game. I liked both a lot but for very different reasons. Multiplayer was definitely more fun in Warcraft/Starcraft.
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Sep 26, 2018 07:53
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Cool, I like me some strategy games!Luminous Cow posted:
Not to be super anal about this, but people usually distinguish between 4X and Grand Strategy or Map Games. The major difference is that in 4X you start with a single settler/planet/whatever, and you eXplore and eXpand through a fog, and the world is randomly generated. In a Grand Strategy game you start (usually) within a historical scenario, and proceed from there. A good example is Stellaris vs Europa Universalis 4. Both are similar paradox games, but Stellaris is 4X since you start with a single planet and know nothing about the randomly generated galaxy. In EU4 you start in the year 1444 in a historical setting, and with an established nation. Obviously there's some overlap, since even in EU4 you can choose the new world to be randomly generated. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to put games that, for example, concentrate on a single battle, in the 4X lot.
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Sep 26, 2018 08:13
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RTS FFA games are some of the best LAN/bullshit with friends experiences and it sucks rear end that they're an unpopular part of a dead genre. I have had lots of friends who like strategy games but very few that would ever play them in 'normal' versus modes, so aside from comp stomps (which I've always found really boring) big FFA games were the only multiplayer I could get going. Some friends did want to try MP Civ 6 and I played a few games with them, but it was more or less a disaster.
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Sep 26, 2018 13:39
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My taste in RTS games leans toward Wargame/Steel Division just because they actually let you zoom out and in freely- the only other one that does that really is SupCom.
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Sep 26, 2018 13:41
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StoryTime posted:Cool, I like me some strategy games! Thanks for the suggestion. I'll mess with it when I'm at my computer
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Sep 26, 2018 19:12
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Star ruler 1 is an insanely complex RTS game that can be hard to get into but Star ruler 2 is probably one of my favorite strategy games in the last few years. Fixed many of the more obtuse issues ! did while adding very novel and unique functions that added tons to the game. Its a cross between 4x and RTS gameplay where you manage almost everything in your planetary empire including how the ships are made hex by hex. Ships can literally be the size of stars which also can be destroyed. Due to almost no press on release the devs went under after releasing the 1 planned expansion, however they did release the source code earlier this summer with everything but the music tracks included (soundtrack is awesome). The devs were goons who posted a ton about the game before and after release and pretty much delivered everything as promised they had hoped for. https://github.com/BlindMindStudios/StarRuler2-Source source code direct from the devs
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Sep 26, 2018 22:39
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Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander are my fav two RTS games. It's a shame TA: Kingdoms and SC 2 were both garbo. Is Planetary Annihilation bad and is Chris Taylor ever going to make another game?
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Sep 26, 2018 22:47
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Aww yes! I'm one of those people that tends to play all these games single-player or at best co-op, so keep that in mind... Warcraft III is in my opinion kind of a poor RTS due to the heavy focus on hero units. If you got ahead early you'd just keep getting ahead. That said, the map editor is the best thing ever. I spent over 6 years of my life making a custom single-player campaign for Warcraft III (https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/to-the-bitter-end.202289/page-21) which is generally highly regarded and which I'm very proud of. Several people have done 'Let's Plays' of it - here's one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6irRJchAOpM It's not really an RTS though, more a top-down action RPG. Which honestly Warcraft III is better suited for. Dawn of War 1 is my favourite from the Dawn of War series. The battles are huge and over-the-top, and there are so many clever mechanics (you can shoot AND move? You have both melee AND ranged attacks, with different attack values? You get resources by holding points, not by having peasants walk back and forth? Morale?) Dawn of War 2 was fun but just doesn't hold a candle to 1. Dawn of War 3 (except the trailer) does not exist. Dawn of War 1 has the best mods. I've contributed to the unofficial bugfix mods for Dark Crusade and Soulstorm, and I'm currently providing voice acting for some big mod that Thudmeiser is working on. I'm going to be the screamy voice of a Chaos Knight (Questor Traitoris), among other things! Starcraft II never really gelled with me. I didn't like the pace or the aesthetic. Have played it but it's shelved now and I don't see myself coming back to it. Command & Conquer never really grabbed me either. The whole idea with Tiberium terraforming earth was cool but it was just executed wonkily. Most of the Red Alert series were just more boring versions of Command & Conquer to me... But Red Alert 3 was amazing. In all honesty I bought it when it was on sale just becuase I'd found out it had Tim Curry in it. Turns out the whole thing was an insane gonzo game with psychic schoolgirls, combat bears, and awesome music. I just couldn't dislike it. You should give a mention to the Myth series by Bungie (I liked them before they were cool) - those are Tactical RTS building (ie, no base building, otherwise RTS) and were WAAAAY ahead of their time. Really impressive physics, weather effects etc. Tiny details made a huge difference - eg, a unit getting hit would usually 'flinch', which interrupts their attack, meaning that having two units ganging up on one made a big difference... as would having a really high 'flinch damage' threshold. Projectiles were modelled accurately and could result in misses and/or friendly fire. Units gained veterancy that improved them if you kept them alive. The single player had a great, bleak story and was told by a brilliant narrator. Lots of really great stuff. In the turn-based arena I'm overall pretty dire, but I love Master of Magic. The game is like the best combo of Civilization and Magic: The Gathering. It's also horribly unbalanced and buggy as poo poo, but since it's not competitive multiplayer I don't care. For those that don't know, there's an unofficial patch that fixes so much stuff it's not even funny: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=8411 I'm absolutely abysmal at Sword of the Stars. I love the concept of all these different races with different tech trees and completely different space navigation methods, but I get so creamed in it that I think I'm just approaching it completely wrong. Soul Reaver fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 01:03
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Whatever the absurd controversy is over Rome: Total War 2, it reminded me that I skipped that one due to the bad reputation on launch and people complaining about the dlc strategy. I played a ton of Rome 1 and heard that the updates they've made were good, should I get it now?
Thordain fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 01:37
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il serpente cosmico posted:Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander are my fav two RTS games. It's a shame TA: Kingdoms and SC 2 were both garbo. Soul Reaver posted:Dawn of War 1 is my favourite from the Dawn of War series. The battles are huge and over-the-top, and there are so many clever mechanics (you can shoot AND move? You have both melee AND ranged attacks, with different attack values? You get resources by holding points, not by having peasants walk back and forth? Morale?) Dawn of War 2 was fun but just doesn't hold a candle to 1. Dawn of War 3 (except the trailer) does not exist.
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Sep 27, 2018 01:40
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Star ruler 1 is an insanely complex RTS game that can be hard to get into but Star ruler 2 is probably one of my favorite strategy games in the last few years. Fixed many of the more obtuse issues ! did while adding very novel and unique functions that added tons to the game. Its a cross between 4x and RTS gameplay where you manage almost everything in your planetary empire including how the ships are made hex by hex. Ships can literally be the size of stars which also can be destroyed. Star Ruler 2 was criminally underappreciated; I think people might have just taken a look at the interface (which did look super low budget) and assumed the game was indie shovelware, when in actuality it was a really clever and fun game.
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Sep 27, 2018 02:46
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Thordain posted:Whatever the absurd controversy is over Rome: Total War 2, it reminded me that I skipped that one due to the bad reputation on launch and people complaining about the dlc strategy. I played a ton of Rome 1 and heard that the updates they've made were good, should I get it now? If you like the setting/time period and it runs well enough on your PC, you'll like Rome 2. Go get it on Steam and try some skirmish battles in the 2 hours return window. The Warhammer games are the best 'games' out of the series, just because they are pretty good about learning how to improve/add/remove and the more recent the game, the more the devs have learned. That said tons of people still play Medieval 2, Napoleon, Shogun 2, Rome 2 ect just because they want to play in that setting. Captain Beans fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 02:53
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What's a good 4x for someone who's not really used to playing them? I played Age of Mythology constantly when I was younger, and I cannot stop playing Crusader Kings 2 now, but I don't really know of any good games since I don't...follow strategy games as a genre.
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Sep 27, 2018 03:30
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Captain Beans posted:If you like the setting/time period and it runs well enough on your PC, you'll like Rome 2. Go get it on Steam and try some skirmish battles in the 2 hours return window. The magic and high degree of faction differentiation make Warhammer my favorite but I do miss the Risk-style map. Those damned agents...
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Sep 27, 2018 03:34
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op please merge moba and rts games under the same header tia
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Sep 27, 2018 03:53
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This is making me curious if there is a turn-based moba.
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Sep 27, 2018 04:47
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Atlas Reactor? It was kind of neat when I tried it. I guess it's more of a tactics game than a mobs though
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Sep 27, 2018 04:52
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Mordja posted:Oh woah, Thudmeiser's still active? What's the mod? Apparently so. The mod is "Ultramarines mod: Courage and Honor" - see here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/ultramarines-courage-and-honour
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Sep 27, 2018 06:13
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Bremen posted:Star Ruler 2 was criminally underappreciated; I think people might have just taken a look at the interface (which did look super low budget) and assumed the game was indie shovelware, when in actuality it was a really clever and fun game. The diplomacy system alone is worth some sort of award. Not necessarily the treaties and such, but the crazy running auctions. If nobody else was really focusing on their influence gain you could corner the market on diplomatic power, then try to annex everything your rivals own. Blackmail the other guy, sure. Play an extremely effective vote that gives everybody else blackmail on you, okay. Have snoops gather blackmail on anybody else trying to start a vote, great Have a running battle over who controls the zeitgeist of the galaxy, awesome. The diplomatic win option even gave your opponents 3 major chances to stop you. First and Second when you try to get voted grand poobah of the greatest empire. And a last chance as your influence converts your neighbors in a death ripple.
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Sep 27, 2018 09:26
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Anyone remember Battleforge? It was an EA-published CCG-RTS that later went free to play, then closed a few years later. Basically you built aspected decks (Fire, Ice, Nature, Shadow) and summoned the units and buildings into both PVE and VS realtime battles and it was actually pretty fun. Anyway, I'm posting about it now because there's actually a fanmade revival that launched earlier this month, Skylords Reborn. Well, to be example it's an "Open Stress Test" and when I messed around with it earlier today I kept getting disconnected from the server, but it's something to keep an eye on. Still looks pretty nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW3pA5CsEdI
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Sep 28, 2018 03:37
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Maybe someone here can recommend me some asymmetric warfare strategy games. Games about running an insurgency or counter-insurgency, a guerrilla campaign, that kind of thing.
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Sep 28, 2018 03:47
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Uh, XCOM2?
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Sep 28, 2018 04:32
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VostokProgram posted:Maybe someone here can recommend me some asymmetric warfare strategy games. Games about running an insurgency or counter-insurgency, a guerrilla campaign, that kind of thing. Is Jagged Alliance 2 or Silent Storm too obvious?
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Sep 28, 2018 04:33
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Mordja posted:Uh, XCOM2? For XCOM it's true story wise but I'm not sure it really counts at a gameplay level, since the tactical fights are more or less symmetrical and the aliens don't really have a strategic game. As an alternative suggestion, maybe AI War?
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Sep 28, 2018 04:41
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ Zero-K is a remade TA and not poo poo like PA. Also free
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Sep 28, 2018 04:48
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Zero-K's very much its own thing now, not just a remake. And it's on the Spring engine which has a lot of great new functionality but I could never quite get into it. Speaking of, might have a write up for TA tomorrow.
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Sep 28, 2018 04:55
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Similarly to Zero-K, I ran across Rusted Warfare via Chrono.gg a while back (they still have free copies in their coin shop) and it seems to be a very indie take on the TA/Supcom style of RTS being made by one person. https://store.steampowered.com/app/647960/Rusted_Warfare__RTS/ VostokProgram posted:Maybe someone here can recommend me some asymmetric warfare strategy games. Games about running an insurgency or counter-insurgency, a guerrilla campaign, that kind of thing. More on the grog side of things but there's Vietnam 65 and Afghanistan 11. I've only played Vietnam 65 but I feel it was plenty accessible for a war game.
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Sep 28, 2018 05:12
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Hey, how do I play Endless Legend? I love it since the factions are so different and they're not just +1 production, +1 fish like Civ leaders are (though I love Civ5), but that variance in faction design makes me feel like I never know if I'm ahead or not.
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Sep 28, 2018 07:46
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Bogart posted:Hey, how do I play Endless Legend? I love it since the factions are so different and they're not just +1 production, +1 fish like Civ leaders are (though I love Civ5), but that variance in faction design makes me feel like I never know if I'm ahead or not. Endless Legend has a lot of different approaches depending on a lot stuff. Even more than in Civ, it's about figuring out what resources, and especially what factions are near you. You need a very different approach against the various factions. Most of it only matters in multiplayer, though. If you're playing single player, it's more about the faction specific quests. Once you get established the AI factions don't really compete against you, and will pretty much leave you alone. The faction quest chain is what's likely to get you into a war sooner or later, and at that point you'll figure out if you did good enough. The faction quests are actually interesting, well written, and kinda where the single player meat of the game is. Getting the early game snowball rolling isn't that different from Civ, except for the 1 city per region rule. Place your cities carefully. Your city districts get bonuses from being packed next to each other, so don't sprawl them around. Scout for quests from the independents, some of the independent quest rewards are dumb good. Here's the killer move: save up cash and buy a hero that's good at governing, and put them in your capital/strongest city. If there are Cultist heroes for hire, holy balls buy them before anyone else can, they will explode your city with riches and splendor with the governing skills they get!
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Sep 28, 2018 19:01
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Effortpost incoming, my first ever on these forums Something Awful.com. Please notice me sempai! What is TA? Total Annihilation is a 1997 real-time strategy game designed by Chris Taylor of the long defunct Cavedog Entertainment. Two similar factions, the ARM and the CORE, battle it out over separate 25 mission campaigns, a skirmish mode and online multiplayer. A pair of expansion packs were released not long after, The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics, the former of which added a bunch of new units while the second one was basically just a mission pack. Total Annihilation is available on Steam and on GOG, should work out the box with Windows 10, and even supports native widescreen, possibly even 4k, which is crazy considering its age.  What makes TA special? Warfare on a massive scale: With over 150 units and buildings at launch, TA featured more aspects of warfare than any game before it, or arguably since. Battling over land, sea and air, you could crush your foe with a gunship-supported army of tanks and robots, you could build a massive artillery base and shell them back into the stone-age, you could launch a surprise attack from sea with an assortment of ships, hovercraft and underwater tanks. Core Contingency expanded these concepts even further, adding a third technology level to the eponymous Core and letting them build the mighty Krogoth, a huge, one-man army mech, and allowing the ability to construct an entire base beneath the waves. Macro>Micro: Though you could actually take out the AI's Commander with a small squad of starting units if you were quick enough, TA's focus was definitely on production lines and army composition over APM. The game uses a very unique resource system, where you're constantly gaining metal and energy up to what your current storage can hold, and construction drains from this pool at different rates, depending on what you're building. This means you can't actually really run out of cash, and all $ is generated from a variety of static buildings, but you can definitely stall out your economy if you aren't mindful. The game also isn't balanced around a simple rock/paper/scissors system; for example a vertical-launch rocket will always do a lot of damage to whatever it hits, but first it has to hit. Which leads to...  A fully 3D battlefield: TA might not have been the first three-dimensional RTS made, that distinction probably belongs to some obscure European title. But it was definitely the most notable one at the time. Though presented from a top-down perspective, every object in the game, every unit, weapon, or terrain feature operated under a consistent physics model. This meant that an artillery cannon's plasma projectile could miss its intended target but still hit and damage whatever was behind it. Tanks would struggle getting up steep hills, giving merit to the individually weaker Kbots. A heavy laser tower surrounded by walls could remain practically impervious to anything with a low arc of fire, while being able to fire over protection due to its height. This 3D gameplay extended to its LOS system; mountains and forests could block a player's sight, making radar and sonar stations and absolute must. The music: Jeremy Soule's first major composition, TA's soundtrack also nabbed him his first industry award. It's a dynamic, sweeping, orchestral affair that waxes and wanes accordingly. Seriously, listen to this poo poo!  Modding Custom content was encouraged and supported from the very beginning of TA's release, leading to the creation of literally thousands of individual units, maps, balance mods, new races and total conversions. There are mods that turn the game into WW2, into Star Wars, into an original space RTS. It boggles the mind. Most everything can still be downloaded from the Unit/FileUniverse, too.  Development continues to this day; TA Zero re-imagines the Total Annihilation universe, emphasizing factional asymmetry and adding an entirely new, alien race, while Devolution contains only a few additions and aims to make sure every tool has its purpose. But by far the largest, and most active mod is Escalation.  Total Annihilation Escalation adds a slew of high-quality new units over every tier, over every front, rebalances the entire game, and pushes the engine to the limit. Its got bubble shields and teleporters. Certain units and structures can be upgraded. Tier 3 has been expanded with a full arsenal of powerful, pricey new toys, and a game-ending (temporarily removed  ) fourth tech level was added. Its sheer scale and variety is absolutely insane, and Escalation's become the de-facto way to play TA online. The latest version came out around a month ago, with balance patch on the way, after which the dev plans to wrap up T3, make the naval game more enticing, and add even more ridiculous T4 juggernauts. The future of TA gently caress if I know. Wargaming acquired the license a few years back and Chris Taylor worked with them for a bit, subsequently left. He's currently working on something new but there's nothing on that yet. There have, of course, been numerous Total Annihilation "successors," commercial and otherwise, but I won't touch on them here and I never really liked them anywhere near as much as the original. Despite my love for the game, it does have a few issues that prevent a revival: pathfinding can wonk out at times, the AI is very simplistic and just sends constant swarms at you, and the netcode isn't great. Currently, multiplayer games are all played through GameRanger, so there's a barrier to entry too. There's still a small, but active community over on https://www.tauniverse.com the surviving hub for all things TA. I should mention that one guy over there is working on his own , open-source engine for the game that's basically aiming to replicate it instead of doing its own thing like Spring, but he's just one man. Still, I highly encourage everyone to buy TA and play skirmishes and mods because it's still the loving best. 
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Sep 28, 2018 22:02
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Would it be worth importing my writeup of Age of Empires 2 here? That thread's probably going to get lost to history and since it's tangentially relevant i'd prefer if it lived on in some form in a more general thread. In either case, I might consider writing up some of the old Impressions Games city builders.
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Sep 28, 2018 22:25
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Mental Omega for Yuri's Revenge would be absolutely amazing if you could save your drat campaign mid mission. Last I played you couldn't.
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Sep 28, 2018 22:31
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