A friend and I are hoping to spend a little casual gaming time together online this weekend. In our college days we’d play AoE, Starcraft, and similar.
We’re not necessarily masters at this type of game, but it’s fun to explore a map, research and develop, build armies of interesting units, and see what happens. And employ some strategy of course.
I’ve got AoE via Steam, and while it’s playable, the graphics don’t play all that nicely with modern high resolution monitors.
So, I’m wondering if there’s something more current out there that’s:
Multiplayer RTS
Allows for slower-paced play (obviously, with no AI we’re in control of that to a large degree)
Doesn’t have bleeding-edge graphics requirements (I’m running on a laptop with a GTX 1050)
Starcraft II? Old enough to not be demanding, new enough to work on modern machines. Not at all slow-paced if you’re playing on the ladder of course, but if you’re just playing your friend that wouldn’t be an issue (unless he insists on doing zergling rushes every. single. game.)
I’m curious what you mean about the AoE graphics not playing nicely. By coincidence, a friend and I decided to research a good RTS game to expand our gaming repertoire, and we separately concluded that Age of Empires 2: Definite Edition via Steam was the clear favorite game to dive into. We’re playing it a lot, and it works beautifully for both of us. My friend has a mega-res, multi-monitor rig, and he uses it well. (Note that there are tons of graphics mods you can switch on and off. One I know he uses adds more range to the view zoom. He scroll-wheel-zooms in and out when micro requires it but mostly keeps it at a nice middle ground.)
(ETA: Actually, maybe you simply do mean AoE, in which case the solution is to go to AoE2:DE. It’s excellent and the online community, wiki documentation, etc. are thriving.)
Yeah, my friend just pointed this out, with its release date of this time last year. I’ve been running I guess an older version of AoE2 (Age of Empires II (2013) on Steam). The graphics on that version don’t scale appropriately. The HUD/menus/control panel are all tiny, even when changing the screen resolution.