Help me pick an RTS to play

November 12, 2006 6:17 PM

I'm looking for an interesting and fun Real Time Strategy game to play. I love the concept, but have never really found one that I enjoy - too much dirt farming or bizarre interfaces or complex strategies that bewilder my Quake-addled brain.

So I'd like to find an RTS to play. My criteria is that there isn't a whole of peasant commanding or city building. I'd also like to see something that is fairly approachable for strategy newbies and I'd like big huge special effects and tons of eye candy. I have a fairly new system and play a lot of FPS, so I'm not too worried about system requirements.

So what to do and which game to get? Company of Heroes looks good, but the WW2 setting looks a little dull to my scifi/fantasy loving eyes. Warhammer 40k looks pretty good but I've heard that it is fairly hard. The Lord of the Rings RTS looks pretty and the familiar setting might attract my wife to play against me, but it seems to have gotten a bad rap for its actual gameplay.

posted by rks404 to Computers & Internet (32 answers total)

Have you tried the classics? Warcraft and Starcraft.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:20 PM on November 12, 2006

Response by poster: I did try those games and played them a little until the slow base building started to annoy me - hated having to tell each little worker to cut trees, etc. I also found the limited resources to be frustrating as well.
posted by rks404 at 6:28 PM on November 12, 2006

I'm enjoying the heck out of Rise of Legends, for pretty much the same reasons that match your criteria. They've managed to keep the dirt farming out of the way, streamline the interface into an intuitive and consistant system, maintain a beautiful storyline, and put in all the eye candy.

I generally wait for three years or so to buy the new games, but I got this as a gift (I was still working through the Warcraft III expansion when I got RoL). If I knew how much I'd enjoy it, I'd have been first in line the day it came out.
posted by ewagoner at 6:30 PM on November 12, 2006

If you don't mind nuking a few million innocent civilians, I would suggest Defcon.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:32 PM on November 12, 2006

My all-time favorite is Total Annihilation. I still play it on my laptop when I need to kill a few hours.
posted by gwenzel at 6:36 PM on November 12, 2006

First of all, Total Annihilation is a great game, but there certainly is resource management, but no peasants really. You do have to build buildings that gather resources, as well as all the various buildings that create the units.

If you really want to be away from all forms of resource control, Myth (and sequels) are like that. I never really got into them, but basically you get the units you start with and thats it.

Personally, I just picked up the new Dawn of War expansion pack, and it's turning out to be tons of fun. You do have to worry about resources, but it's not the overarching goal. Plus there are lots of robotic machines blowing the hell out of poor little space marines and such. Lots of fun. The original must be only 20 bucks by now, might be worth a shot. As well, the new expansion pack can be played as a totally standalone game (don't need the original).
posted by cschneid at 6:43 PM on November 12, 2006

Homeworld, Homeworld 2, Close Combat 2, Total War
posted by Arcaz Ino at 6:46 PM on November 12, 2006

I enjoyed the first Battle for Middle Earth. Once you figure out the strategies it gets repetitive, but there is a fun game there for awhile, especially for LOTR fans.
posted by meta87 at 6:53 PM on November 12, 2006

Response by poster: great suggestions y'all - keep 'em coming!

And I'm not 100% opposed to resource building. It's just that I'd play Warcraft and my peasants would be generated or finish their tasks and then sit around doing nothing and I'd have to run around and give them orders and it felt less like a wargame and more like a corporate middle management simulator.
posted by rks404 at 6:56 PM on November 12, 2006

Another vote for Total War.

In the tactical game there is no resource managment at all and uses realistic tactics, formations and units.

Total War Rome: Barbarian Invasion is fantastic.
posted by schwa at 6:56 PM on November 12, 2006

The latest Command & Conquer, as well as the Generals expansion pack. You can get both very cheaply, the graphics are good and I really enjoyed the missions. It's also great for player vs player. You can play as US, China or Terrorists, and each is interestingly different enough from the others to make fighting them a challenge.

I also loved Total Annihilation, and still play it. There are a bunch of free unit packs still around thanks to fans of the game.
posted by tomble at 7:04 PM on November 12, 2006

Does Populous count? I generally loath modern RTSs, but I remember really enjoying Populous.
posted by krisjohn at 7:11 PM on November 12, 2006

I dislike most RTS games as well, for the reasons you mention. I went through a phase of heavy play when Warcraft and C&C reined, but find most of them tedious now.

I'm a big fan of Rise of Nations, which is the prequel to Rise of Legends (which isn't out for Mac yet). There's farming, but the emphasis is on technology and units.

I haven't played Darwinia, but it has a cult fanbase that love its uniqueness.

Would you consider something put out by Paradox? They're essentially historical wargames played in real-time. They're not for the feint of heart, but I've played several (Hearts of Iron 2, which does WW2 across the entire globe- you play a country, is my fave) and they're all deeply rewarding.
posted by mkultra at 7:27 PM on November 12, 2006

Wait for Supreme Commander, the sequel to Total Annihilation. Already in beta, out soon.
posted by sophist at 7:38 PM on November 12, 2006

Defcon. Everybody Dies.

In the demo mode, it's actually pretty easy to beat the AI; the fun is figuring out how well you can do in preventing your cities from being nuked and killing as much of the enemy population as possible.
posted by orthogonality at 8:46 PM on November 12, 2006

tomble writes...
The latest Command & Conquer, as well as the Generals expansion pack.

Seconded. If you haven't tried it, you should definitely give it a shot.
posted by tkolar at 8:54 PM on November 12, 2006

I really liked Homeworld. It's a 3d space RTS game that involves relatively little building (you build many ships, but there isn't much in the way of buildings). It has an interesting story line too (as far as video games go).
posted by Humanzee at 9:06 PM on November 12, 2006

Company of Heroes is a recent game, and you'll need a fast computer to play it well, but it's FANTASTIC. It's a WW2-themed RTS. The graphics are phenomenal, and the game is a kick in the pants. It has an excellent single-player game which lasts a long time, but the multiplayer is the primary focus of the game.

You have to worry about resources and a tiny bit of base building, but the resources never run out. You're not forced to do things you're not ready to by running out of anything. You get resources by holding strongpoints on the map; as long as you hold that point, the resources flow in without you having to do anything else. (You can put a small structure on a strongpoint to increase the resource rate and make it harder to take away from you, but that's optional.)

All RTSes are about splitting attention and juggling multiple things at once; that's the genre. But CoH (and Warhammer: Dawn of War, its spiritual predecessor) require doing a lot less stuff that's boring.
posted by Malor at 10:23 PM on November 12, 2006

Personally, I'm looking forward to Medieval 2. Mixture of strategy on a continent map, and battles on a tactical map. It's not released until the 15th (ish) of November 2006, though.
posted by porpoise at 10:26 PM on November 12, 2006

(and yes, Warhammer is fairly hard... simply because with all three games, you end up with six playable races, and the various strategy mixes can be a bit overwhelming to a newb. I think CoH is much friendlier... only two sides.)
posted by Malor at 10:26 PM on November 12, 2006

Ground Control II is relatively recent, and fun. It's tactics-focused, and there's no base-building besides manning and repairing pre-placed bunkers and turrets. The resource is allocated based on control of certain positions, and your new units fly in on a giant dropship to one of those positions you control. You don't worry about "casting spells" or such (although all units have two modes, which can be similar, but simpler.) I think it became unbalanced in multiplayer, though.

An older game is Sacrifice. It's a third person RPG/RTS hybrid - you run around as a wizard on the game field and have creatures fight for you, as well as cast your own spells. Almost always, you keep all your creatures with you. Resources are very interesting - you need territorial control and a simple worker unit to get mana to cast spells, while you need the souls of dead creatures to create new creatures. If your whole army gets wiped out but you get all their souls, you're generally fine, but if an enemy kills one of your units and steals the soul you're disadvantaged. I don't know if there's any multiplayer scene for this anymore.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 10:31 PM on November 12, 2006

Sounds like you may really want something like Z. (or here).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:55 AM on November 13, 2006

For you Total Annihilation fans: there's an open source version that's actually pretty stable and fun to play (multiplayer with very very limited single player) called TA:Spring. This is probably, however, not the best starter RTS -- the array of units is pretty staggering.
posted by kdar at 4:15 AM on November 13, 2006

Well, if you don't want a modern look, and prefer Medieval high fantasy style, I suggest the SpellForce series. Try it.
posted by Topkid at 6:33 AM on November 13, 2006

i dont know how good the laters version is, but ive always liked the settlers games.
posted by atom128 at 7:17 AM on November 13, 2006

Have you tried the UFO series? I have Aftermath and there is absolutely no resource management. Other good RTS games I have played include Silent Storm and Silent Storm:Sentinels which are WW2 games. One of my favorites is Soldiers:Heroes of WW2.
posted by JJ86 at 7:59 AM on November 13, 2006

Another vote for the Rise of Nations series. My wife and I played nothing else for nigh on 2 years. It's almost a RTS version of the Civilization games. And you can automate citizens if you want.
posted by billtron at 10:08 AM on November 13, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for all the great suggestions! I spent some time looking at reviews for the recommended games and I think I'm going to hold out for Supreme Commander. In the meanwhile, I'm playing Defcon and if I have any time leftover, might give Rise of Nations or Warhammer 40k a whirl.

Thanks again for the help! It's good to know that when I want to waste time playing video games, MetaFilter has my back!
posted by rks404 at 10:09 AM on November 13, 2006

Myth and Myth II don't have any base building and are GREAT games. The fully reactive environment is awesome; the ground ripples when things blow up, enemies will pick up pieces of fallen comrades and hurl them at you, you can shoot your own troops in the back/detonate them/set them on fire, and of course, do the same to the enemies.

The voice-overs are insipring and the levels are a great mixture. The enemies are tough without being impossible. You'll like it, for certain.
posted by Four Flavors at 11:52 AM on November 13, 2006

You could try one of the old hybrid FPS/RTS games like the Battlezone remakes or that old game around the same time as Battlezone, somebody help me here, where you mostly controlled this super-powered tank, but there were also units and buildings you made and controlled. A central tower that had guns you could hop into and control was also a main part of it.

There must be some new ones too.

I agree though, most RTS games seem too much like work. Also the computer always cheats. The part I hated about the first part of Starcraft is that no matter what cool strategy I thought I was dreaming up, the computer always had exactly what it needed to counter it.

Yeah, yeah multiplayer.
posted by sevenless at 3:56 PM on November 13, 2006

I really enjoyed Kohan precisely because of the reasons you mentioned, I hated the intense micromanagement of peasants and I found micromanaging large swarms of units to be rather low on the fun-factor scale.

Kohan's resource system is very abstract, as long as you control cities they automatically give you resources per turn. You can improve them to either allow you to build units or produce more resources, but there is no tech tree and the build tree is extremely small.

The combat is really what drew me in though - you don't control individual units, in fact you are unable to. You control a 'company' of 6 units that act as a single logical unit. The company has a zone of influence, and as soon as its influence overlaps with another hostile company or city it automatically goes to battle, melee units charging in and spellcasters lighting up buffs or healing the wounded.

Companies automatically regenerate near friendly cities, so it's in your benefit to save your own companies through retreating, and to kill your opponent's routing companies with flankers or ranged.

It sounds kind of easy with so little control over individual units, but it actually perfectly abstracts the intense micro of the WCIII/starcraft into just pure movement tactics. Having a ranged company arrive just 2 or 3 seconds late to a pitched battle can cause a frontline that was holding to get decimated. A quick mounted unit with pathfinding can slip through a forest and assassinate support units, but will get thrashed if you guard against it with even the weakest units.

The included AI is very strong, too.
posted by spatula at 2:23 PM on November 14, 2006

Here is the Supreme Commander trailer for the unitiated. This game is going to simply dominate the RTS genre by all beta tester's opinions I have talked to, so I think you made the right choice by following my advice rks=)

Warcraft 3 is my next favorite, suprised it has not been explicitly mentioned.
posted by sophist at 11:24 PM on November 16, 2006