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ninjewtsu posted:I posted this in the game recs thread because I didn't know this thread exists, and no one there answered me, so hopefully someone here can help There's a community-made patch (last version is about a year old) that keeps everything running, balanced, and up to date: https://www.gamereplays.org/battleformiddleearth2/portals.php?show=page&name=bfme2-patch-1.09
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Oct 10, 2018 10:56
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John Murdoch posted:Very close to pulling the trigger on Starcraft 1 + 2 (remastered and complete respectively) for the $30~ they're going for at the moment, wondering if maybe they'll finally be the non-Dawn of War RTSes that click for me. SC1 (and this remains true for remasterd) is very very clunky to play nowadays imo. The pathfinding is horrid, you can only select 12 units at a time, and high-level combat is pretty micro heavy. If you're just playing single player this doesn't matter much, but it'll take a while to get used too. A lot of maps in the campaign are just skirmishes with maybe a wrinkle or two. The story is fine, and holds up quite ok imo. If you try to play SC1 and can't cope with the old poo poo in the ancient engine, I'd recommend switching over to Mass Recall, a remake of SC1 in the SC2 engine. You can find it here: https://www.sc2mapster.com/projects/starcraft-mass-recall A large update is coming "Soon" (tm), but the current version has everything you need. I recently played a couple of maps and it works great and it's really a good copy of the original game in the new engine. SC2 is great. The story is loving terrible, so if you aren't invested in it just skip it if you want. The campaigns are awesome though, the gameplay is really good and there is a strategy-lite layer now where you can add special abilities to your troops, that you can buy with earned cash from bonus objectives and just finishing missions. All 3 campaigns are good; but the first two are completely free to play and will keep you busy for weeks. SC2 multiplayer is also good, and fun to watch. If you're not into hyper-competitive play, SC2 co-op is actually really good and fun.
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Nov 21, 2018 11:16
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The Terran and Zerg campaign of SC2 are free, the Protoss one and the short final DLC campaign (Nova's missions) are not. For Co-op you can play all commanders for free but you cannot level them past 5 (of 15 total). You'll get a bunch of commanders when you buy the 'full game', and the rest are unlocked for 5 bucks each, and they rarely go on sale. So, even if you never play against other players you'll have like a hundred of hours of playtime ahead of you for free, especially combined with mass recall.
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Nov 21, 2018 23:26
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Phyzzle posted:The zerg campaign, "heart of the swarm", is not free. OH poo poo you're right, I conflated two things. When they made WoL free they gifted Hots to all who had bought WoL before. My bad! Also re: coop just go play it on easy, if you play very slowly and just a move your army to objectives you'll win. Once you feel comfortable you can go increase the difficulty. If you really struggle try playing with Stukov, he's designed to be as easy as possible to play. You literally plunk down a beacon on the map and all your troops will move there and gently caress poo poo up.
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Nov 22, 2018 09:57
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AoE3 is pretty bad, as far as I remember. Played it at release, as I was a huge fan of the first two games, but I didn't really care for it. Can't remember really why, but I know I don't have any strong feelings about it.
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Dec 3, 2018 11:16
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have fun watching Frank Klepacki play live CnC tracks for 1.5 hours! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJClbTrY0VE
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Jan 11, 2019 00:07
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AI wars is a very cool game, and it shines in co-op, but you can definitely play it solo and have a great time. My played time on steam is 126 hours, and I played a non-steam version before that for like ~100 hours. About 20 hours of that is co-op with goons, the rest is solo. There were like ~10 goons who played the game iirc, but I haven't played with any goons in years. LordSloth was the main organizer for most games. I might do a write-up of the game soon for this thread, imo it's a must-play for strategy fanatics and the 'sequel' (AI War 2) is more like a remaster, and it's in early access right now.
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Jan 29, 2019 22:21
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AI War: Fleet Command So, AI War is not a classic RTS. First off, it's possible (and borderline necessary) to pause the game at any point and give orders, just like Baldur's Gate or something. Besides that, on the surface the game plays like a 2D space RTS, similar to Sins of a Solar empire. Constructor bots build your structures and static defense. You build ships from production structures; ships can move around a system, and you use wormholes to warp to different systems to attack enemies or shore up your defenses. Each system houses resources and all sorts of goodies. They're the terrain of this game.  Each map is randomly generated at the start, and the entire layout of the map can be made visible, or hidden in the fog of war. Scouting is a big part of the game, and mainly focuses on finding important systems to take over from the enemy. Until now it sounds like a pretty standard RTS, but AI war is a wholly different beast, which I'll try to explain. The goal & your enemy The goal of each game is to kill the enemy's home command station while keeping yours alive. Sounds simple, but there are a ton of wrinkles. First of all, the game is very asymmetrical. You play as the remnant of a human empire, down to the last system and only a few million people still left. The enemy is a galaxy spanning AI who is magnitudes more powerful than you are (Actually, there are two AI enemies who work in tandem!). The difference is so vast that the AI actually does not care about you at the start of the game. You can't just fly to the AI home world to kill the home station. First off all, there's an entire galaxy filled with defenses in the way. Secondly, in a standard game the home system is guarded with shields, and the generators are spread all over the galaxy. You will need to take down all generators before you can assault the enemies home system. The AI is pretty passive if you leave it alone. The activity of the AI is measured with a progress meter, which is basically the most important meter in the game. The meter starts at zero, and ticks up slowly over time, and ticks up a large amount if you take certain actions against the AI. Taking systems, hacking their systems, destroying generators, the list goes on. If the progress meter reaches certain treshholds, the AI will tech up and it will send larger and more dangerous fleets to assault you. This makes the game a giant balancing act right from the start. You will need to assault the AI and take their stuff to tech up and gather resources, or you'll never be able to crack the final defenses. On the other hand, if you expand fast and hard the AI will come for you with all it's might and you're dead before you know it. You'll have to pace yourself and go for strategic targets, and decide what parts of your empire to defend and what parts to let go in case you bite off more than you can chew. This balance keeps the game interesting all the way to the end, and even if you're very powerful you'll always need to be careful, because the AI is always stronger and has basically infinite amounts of troops to send your way. Playing the game AI war is a huge, huge game, both content wise and time wise. A single match can easily take 20+ hours to play, and I think I've only truly finished a single game in all my hours playing. The game also has a shitton of ships, structures, defenses, and non-player factions to play around with, especially with all the DLC installed. To start off with, you have two main types of ships you can produce: fleet ships and starships. Fleet ships are your bread and butter. You start off with fighters, bombers and missile frigates, and they have a rock/paper/scissors type of deal going on. You can use research to get more powerful versions of these ships later on, and there is a cap on how many ships you can make per tier (around 200). This means even the most basic ship will still be part of your fleet later on, because you'll want to max out your fleet whenever you can.  Starships are massive specialized vessels, and you can only make a few per tier. There are a ton of different types, like flagships that boost the attack rate of the other ships, carriers that spawn small attack craft, plasma bombers, riot ships (to slow down enemies), shielders, the list goes on. They are expensive and cost a lot of time to build, but are durable and important. There are a ton more ships to find, unlock and research in the game. Each ship and tier you unlock will increase the size of your fleet. It's not uncommon to control thousands of individual units in your fleet. The AI uses the same basic ship types, in huge quantities. Large battles will bring most PC's down to their knees while 10000+ individual units battle it out. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOLRs9q_mdI&t=52s Besides ships, static defenses play a large role. Constructor bots build them, and you use them to defend wormholes from invading AI forces. There are also all kinds of special structures like forcefields, armor nullifiers, ion cannons, the list goes on and on. The economy is simple at face value: each system has some metal nodes you can exploit, and they'll give X metal per second. Everything uses energy, and each system supports a single power plant to power your stuff. Each system that you colonize can also provide 3,000 knowledge which is used for unlocking research (mainly new tiers of ships and defenses). As all resources are directly linked to systems, this means you'll have to take over systems to get a larger force, which will piss the AI off, which will lead to larger counterattacks, which will lead to you claiming more systems to become more powerful, ad infinitum. The gameplay loop is described in a few short points on the wiki: Explore and gather intel with scouts Capture territory for Metal, Energy and Knowledge Gain more power by capturing production facilities Reduce AI progress by destroying Data Centers and Co-Processors Destroy the core shield networks Invade and destroy the two AI Homeworlds So what now? Go play it! This game is amazing and one of the best strategy games of all time imo. If you want to read more there is an LP on the archive: https://lparchive.org/AI-War-Fleet-Command/ The wiki is good: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War:AI_War This is a nice tutorial series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcAc0D5-R4 The sequel is in early access, it's more of a remaster really, but far from done. Go play the original and support Arcen, a very good games company (mainly run by a single dude!).
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Jan 30, 2019 00:27
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Yeah, I can see those problems. Never really got into their other games because of that. Ai war really rewards the time you put in it imo, but the learning curve is steep!
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Jan 30, 2019 19:13
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VAL7Epn3o
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Feb 27, 2019 21:13
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIXK3fRx4Zo
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Apr 14, 2019 13:28
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relic had/has the best ideas and made the most fun games, but polish was never their strong suit. blizzard is the diametric opposite: bog standard ideas but amaaazing polish and balance.
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Oct 24, 2019 23:37
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Seconding the ai war 2 recommendation! For ten bucks it's a no brainer.
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Oct 25, 2019 10:30
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Yeah it's way simpler, in a good way. From the wiki: quote:A Note To Players from AI War Classic and some other changes: quote:In general, AI War 2 is not as micro intensive as classic, and many things have been removed due to redundancy, clutter, or making things easier to understand.
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Oct 28, 2019 00:02
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yeah, a 4 new civs and 3 campaigns. The AoE2 youtubers are already showing off the game, like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkFJNKk3IFc
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Nov 10, 2019 21:32
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most aren't really fun imo, really sloggy missions that take ages to finish, and a lot of missions have gotcha moments half way through so you basically have to play 'em twice. Grinding down well built enemy bases takes ages. I much prefer skirmish games so you can actually raid the enemy a bit at the start without running into cannons, castles, and archers behind a double layer of walls.
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Nov 22, 2019 20:25
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boy, those are the roughest campaigns you tried, yeah. El cid, Mongols, Tamerlane, atilla, Portugal campaigns are all a bit more fun imo. Scots campaign is the tutorial, and France is the first 'real' campaign but still basic as hell. Aztecs are weird because of the no cav and gunpowder thing, which makes grinding down enemy bases and hunting down stray units a pain. Didn't really try the newer ones (africa/asia).
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Nov 22, 2019 22:02
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https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Francisco_de_Almeida
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Nov 24, 2019 16:37
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It is! It's built on the Spring engine:https://springrts.com/wiki/History posted:The Spring engine is inspired by the game "Total Annihilation" (TA) by Cavedog Entertainment. TA, released in 1997 is the best RTS ("Real Time Strategy") game "of all time" according to Gamespy.
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Dec 20, 2019 20:15
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SC is still going strong though? C&C basically died when EA took over Westwood, but SC2 is still one of the biggest e-sports in terms of prize money at least. See https://www.esportsearnings.com/games
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Feb 2, 2020 20:20
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Yeah, no games truly die anymore, but AoE2 is one of the more active retro games. Twitch viewer counts are pretty wild for some older games. AoE2 (definite edition) has ~5k viewers at the moment, close to Wind Waker (3k) Super Mario World (4k) Max Payne 2 (6k????), Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (6.1k), old school runescape (~10k); and soundly beat by super mario 64 (20k) and warcraft 3 (40k, but it just released the reforged edition).
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Feb 2, 2020 21:00
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There are currently 300k sc2 players daily on just the 1v1 ladder, so not counting coop or single player which are even bigger. That completely and utterly eclipses any aoe2 player counts.
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Feb 2, 2020 22:00
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aoe2 DE is really good, all the streamers/youtubers who've played the original for thousands of hours switched over directly with no real complaints after the initial patches.
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Apr 15, 2020 09:28
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This is a pretty active and decent replay analysis channel for Total annihilation: https://www.youtube.com/c/TotalAnnihilationReplays
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Jul 11, 2020 12:04
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avoraciopoctules posted:I decided to buy a new desktop computer to celebrate finishing grad school, and I'd like to play a big fancy RTS or Action-RTS hybrid to put it through its paces. I like flashy magic and single player story campaigns. Looking back, I have the greatest amount of nostalgia for Warcraft 3, Rise of Legends, and Armies of Exigo. I currently play Sands of Salzaar and Warlords Battlecry 3 a fair amount, since my old laptop can actually handle 2D isometric battles. The last 3D RTS I remember playing was Divinity: Dragon Commander. I bounced off of Total War: Warhammer pretty hard, I think my main complaints were about the story and running out of spells in battle. I'm not looking for challenge, but I am willing to take on difficult games if the spectacle or story are engaging. go play starcraft 2 if you haven't yet, it's still loving good and the multiplayer and the first meaty campaign are free! fresh AAA RTS dev is pretty dead overall unfortunately. The only one that comes to mind is Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak; it's really good but kinda slight. No real basebuilding, but excellent combat gameplay. seconding CoH 1 and 2 and DoW 1 and 2, including all expansions. They're great. Avoid the newer total annihilation/supcom-likes, like Planetary Annihilation and Ashes of the Singularity, they're real bland. If you want to get into Total War games: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai is one of the best in my opinion.
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Jun 9, 2021 21:32
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ninjewtsu posted:i really want a modern RTS that doesn't follow the starcraft/warcraft micro design and doesn't have a hard pop cap (or at least not a frustratingly low one, let me have over 1k units!). i don't think there's really any options besides planetary annihilation? game's pretty fun but the single player AI is just frustrating to play against and i'm getting tired of trying to wrangle people into playing this somewhat unpopular game with me, is there anything else? total war
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Jun 10, 2021 21:09
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that's looking cool! https://twitter.com/CompanyOfHeroes/status/1415010653903937542?s=20 Even seems like there's some sort of Total War like global campaign map going on. Relic has only made a single lovely RTS all these years, so I'm really excited for this one!
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Jul 13, 2021 19:21
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i had a couple of real fun nights with the cohbros a decade ago, A+ would recommend e: oh poo poo this pre-alpha also contains the turn based campaign, this feels really like total war e2: they also added a real time pause in the battle maps where you can give orders, like total war look at this 
Samopsa fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 20:19
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ninjewtsu posted:now i'm mad that "factorio, but you can build the bugs and each side has 1 player solely dedicated to controlling the bugs" isn't a real game mindustry is this but it's single player
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Dec 30, 2021 16:17
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literally this big posted:strategy games are a genre that are heavily dependent on lots of RNG I don't know if this is really true! You could argue that the ur-strategy game is chess, or go. Both contain zero randomness. The most successful esports strategy games (SC1 & 2) feature almost zero rng. The biggest one is hit chance in SC1 (1/256 of shots in general and 45% of shots on high ground/covered units miss), the rest are very very minor and only come into play at the absolute top level, like larva/scv/creep movements, the (extremely minimal) random attack delay, and the fact that terran add-ons are placed to the right so your starting position matters a tiny bit. Other popular strategy games do often have more randomness at play, but not often directly influencing combat. E.g. aoe2 randomizes monk conversion time and archers have a percentage based hit chance, but that's basically it. The other big thing is map generation ofcourse, but that is a single point of randomness per game (with possibly a big impact on the game). Warcraft 3 did have more rng, and this carried over to mobas. I'd say there are barely any games decided on rng instead of skill/decisions. Other games e.g. from relic (company of heroes and dawn of war) have a ton of rng, but were never big in esports, and had small communities even at their peak. I think heavy rng really kills competitive strategy play. Why would you invest a lot of time and effort into a game where you could lose by being unlucky, regardless of your strategy and tactics?
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Oct 29, 2022 12:45
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ZearothK posted:If you don't care for PDS games in general Stellaris is not going to be the one that changes that. It is one of the most spreadsheety of them all. in my experience it's the opposite because stellaris starts small without a shitton of systems to juggle straight away. Also the flavour of events, exploring, etc are cool and paradoxically feel way more small and direct compared to other games, even though in stellaris you're traversing the universe instead of a country or continent. Also, you can just let the AI manage a ton of your planets and do decently, and just fly around with your exploring vessels and make decisions on techs, non-terrestial buildings, diplomacy, civics, and war. Most importantly though: setting matters and imo it's the best modern space-empire building sim. Worst thing: the shitton of DLC's, like all paradox games. Thankfully you definitely won't miss em the first few times around.
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Nov 3, 2022 19:34
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The only two that come to mind are Empire total war and ultimate general: gettysburg.
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Mar 29, 2023 13:55
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feller posted:the joke is that it was suggested as a revolutionary war game oh lmao that's a mistake yeah Tbf, I'm from Europe. The tiny slapfights on your "new" continent are obviously insignificant compared to the glorious campaigns that took place here; telling them apart is very difficult for poor old me
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Mar 31, 2023 09:29
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