Searching the Perfect Modern RTS

The Game Room
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Hi all, I am new here, but from what I’ve read so far I’d like to ask for your guidance in a matter of great importance: gaming! :stuck_out_tongue:

I am looking for my next PC game, but I have a history, as we all do. Mine has been a hell of a ride in RTS gaming, as I recall. Here it goes.

It happens to be that I was introduced to RTS gaming by Age of Empires back in 1997 and then StarCraft in 1998, right at the jump of centuries… I was 13 in 2000 when I bought my first game, Total Annihilation: Kindgoms. It was awesome. Then I went to some rare expo here in Venezuela (these things are not common here) were I heard about Dark Reign 2. It was awesome too. I remember listening to Limp Bizkit’s “The Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Favored Water” album while playing, and begining to learn my English at the same time back then. The Age of Kings came around that same time, and I loved it, though I never got into multiplayer, sadly.

Anyways. By that time Blizzard had announced WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos, and I could not avoid checking for news every week. I remember going to my mom’s office and not being able to stop reading the story of the game. I loved the game. Well obviously, I bought the game as soon as it came out in 2002, and playing it in Battle.net was amazing. Then of course I played the expansion, The Frozen Throne, in 2003. I am telling you all this so you can know my background in gaming. Arround those same years came out Age of Mythology (for which I was a beta tester) and Command & Conquer: Generals (which I loved in spite of it being made by EALA… I didn’t know the mess I was getting into!).

Well it turns out Generals left a really good impression on me, and so it was that EA Los Angeles announced The Battle for Middle-earth, based on the boom of the trilogy of the films based on The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, the master of high fantasy. I liked it very much, in spite of the build plots and its limitations. After all, it had a lot of material from the movies, it was like a fourth one! This was in 2004. I have to say here that I love movies like these, including Gladiator, Troy, The Last Samurai, Braveheart and all those… I guess I have a thing for mythology, history and high fantasy :smiley:

Anyways, my history is nearing it’s end (thankfully), I only have to add that it was in summer 2005 when EALA announced The Battle for Middle-earth II that I got really excited. I guess my fate was sealed, because I got so addicted to this game I could not get off it, for good or ill. Of course, they only wanted the money, but I liked the first game, so I played this one as soon as it came out in 2006. And that was the year. The year I got stranded at. It turns out that I have not played any new games since then, or at least not in depth.

Well, that’s it, that’s my story. A sad ending, as you can see.

So, now that you know my background, you might be able to recommend me something, some new stuff to get high on! OK kidding, but I would like to start playing something fresh, something that has come out in the years after the release of The Battle for Middle-earth II (my doom). 2007, 2008 and 2009 is the time range.

Thank you all in advance! :smiley:

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It’s funny that you posted this since I JUST installed Age of Kings on my netbook today. I missed that game. :smiley:

If you do want to give multiplayer a whirl, there’s an option. Alternatively, did you ever get “The Conquerors” expansion pack for it? That was a really solid expansion.

Age of Empires III was crap, sadly. You got so many bonuses from the homeworld that it just ruined the whole strategy element of the game.

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Also, I see C&C Generals, but I don’t see any of the Red Alert or Tiberium Sun games. I don’t play new RTS games, but there’s a lot of golden oldies that seem to be missing from your list!

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Yes, they are missing indeed, but I am looking for something new, not to go back to the past… The games I listed are like a path to me, and now I would like to carry on with it with another new game… I was thinking Company of Heroes or Rise of Legends. And then maybe StarCraft II!

I did get The Conquerors, but didn’t quite like it, the part in the Americas and all. And I remember trying out Age 3… it is sad Esemble got that crappy stuff out, and then Halo Wars, and then they where shut down =(

Although I hear there is a successor, Robot Entertainment, and they have not one but two projects underway =)!

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I feel a little foolish suggesting this, but…why not just stick with what you’ve got for a couple of months and then get StarCraft 2?

Though if you’re dying for something else in the meantime, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (Not Dawn of War 2, I can’t speak for that one, beyond that it’s apparently VERY different from the RTS ‘norm’) is still relatively recent (Or at least, it has expansion packs newer than BFME2) and I had a blast with it. It’s highly thematic, fairly rapidly paced, and does enough things differently to keep it fresh. If you can, get the “Platinum edition” which includes Dawn of War, Winter Assault, and Dark Crusade. I have heard some fairly negative reviews regarding the final expansion pack (Soulstorm) though those may have been redressed in a patch.

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Get Starcraft II. Everything else is terrible (even the other Blizzard games). It has something for everyone. Finely-tuned competitive gameplay, a story mode, gimmicky minigames for giggles, and team vs. AI for the not really gamers.

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Supreme Commander! or Dawn of War (2 sucks, 1 rules).

Starcraft II was a snorefest. It’s like, didn’t I play this a few years back?

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To expand:
Supreme Commander is essentially the old school Total Annihilation (the sci-fi massive-battles original, not the relatively slow Kingdoms) game with better units, physics, and ridiculously larger maps. You will need a hefty machine to play it right, though–if your computer is from 2006, you’ll likely have to turn down the unit caps to a 4-player 500-units-per battle to make it playable–even then it’s playable, it just slows down the game clock. It’s VERY strategic over tactical, maps are huge and so are the endgame units.

Dawn of War 1 is everything Starcraft/Warcraft SHOULD have been–morale, squads, low unit caps so every unit counts, great leadership and upgrade trees, and a focus on zone control rather than mindless resourcing and base-sniping.

Another in the same vein is Company of Heroes, which is bar none the single best WWII/historical in general RTS I’ve every played for the fun factor. All sides have similar basic units, but each side gets a choice of three tech trees to specialize in, and the different sides have different historically-appropriate mechanics (Germans, for example, can pre-train units to make them better and more expensive, whereas American units are cheaper but can only get battlefield experience to level up.)

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Company of Heroes is my favorite RTS game ever*. It’s not a clickfest to see who can manage their unit’s skills the fastest or spam out the most units. You manage relatively few units but how you select which to make, how you position them, and how you coordinate with other units is of critical importance.

It looks beautiful, it’s very intuitive (you may not know what a Dongbat Space Monkey in some random RTS game is good at or what it’s for, but you understand what a tank destroyer or a flamethrower does), and it’s generally just very well designed.

  • Actually, Warcraft 3 might be my favorite game ever because of its good support for free for all matches, which is what I massively prefer to play, and CoH doesn’t support that style of gameplay at all. But if you like the typical RTS 1v1/2v2 setup, CoH is awesome.
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I like team games better, myself. And I really hate any RTS where the build order matters (which rules out everything Blizzard makes, at least on the pro level–I still love me some Warcraft III at LAN parties except for the fact that they don’t play with me anymore since my regular 2v2 partner and I cleaned house in a 2v6 a few years back).

Really, it’s either CoH, DoW, but preferably Supreme Commander for me. Supreme Commander in particular does up to 8-way FFA if that’s your poison.

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I agree that CoH, Supreme Commander or DOW are the top of the list for quality suggestions that fit your criteria. I did enjoy Rise of Legends quite a bit too. I was a RTS addict as well, I played well over 5000 games of Starcraft… However, very surprisingly, I played probably 25 games of Starcraft II beta before losing my desire to play again. I’ll probably still try to get into it again after it is released, but it was kind of too similar to the first to get me to have a Starcraft relapse for the 50th time.

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Rise of Legends was fun for me, to an extent, but I much preferred Rise of Nations and it hasn’t aged well, let’s say.