State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

I know, I know, it's almost juvenile to ask such questions, but since Dawn of War II, Starcraft II and Red Alert III are on the horizon...with End War looking to take the genre a step in the voice-commanded direction...after the massive scale that Supreme Commander showcased, the merciless World in Conflict multiplayer bouncing around the net...with a new iteration of Civilisation upon us...

...it feels time to ask a simple question: What form of strategy do you most enjoy, if any, and what titles stick in your mind and press your buttons while you press theirs?

For this withered geezer, it's the Homeworld franchise. Nothing beats it. No other game, of any genre, has had the awe-inspirating, vast, melancholic, subtle, beautiful vibe to it that Homeworld does. The debut title is a thing of utter timelessness; still playing as sharp today as it did almost a decade ago, and STILL looks brilliant. Cataclysm, the in-between side-story, telling the tale of a system wrought by the appearance of a mysterious Ancient biomechanical plague, introduced things like Mothership weapons platforms of unparalleled destruction. And finally, Homeworld 2...simply put, upped the ante, gave the series a technical upgrade, both in terms of gameplay mechanics, controls and interfaces. It is a tough, unforgiving and utterly awesome title.

Homeworld. I want more.

Runners up:

- Achtung! Spitfire
- Merchant Prince III
- Ground Control
- UFO: Afterlight
- Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

Thoroughly Enjoying ATM:

- Anno 1701: Dawn of Discovery
- Panzer Tactics DS (in utter love)

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Warcraft III
Starcraft
Myth
Myth II: Soulblighter
Warcraft II
Civilization IV

Can't think of any others I played and really liked.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

The Warcraft franchise. Anything else is uncivilized.

Age of Empires is pretty good too.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Hey Angrist...did you play Myth III: The Wolf Age? I got it for five bucks, but never got around to playing it. I heard it just didn't cut the mustard in comparison to the older games. Shame, really.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Starcraft
Age of Empires (One and Two, my computer doesn't really run three, and mythology was, wierd.)
and currently Sins of a Solar Empire.
Rise of Nations was alright, felt a bit different but was pretty fun.
Rise of Legends is wierd, but an interesting change sometimes.
Empire Earth is pretty good, but feels clumsy, especially the aircraft system for some reason, and the space expansion was just odd.
Battle for Middle Earth is ok, but the heros feel far to strong.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

I tried it, but the game had just changed too much. The first 2 levels were terrible.

But I know there are enough people who love it...
I'll stick with Myth II. :) The snow level with the huge (but slow) enemies armies is epic. Especially when you don't let 1 of your units die. :D

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

RTS - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War series

TBS - Civilization 2

The perfect combination of both - Total War series

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

RTS - Age of Empires II

TBS - Civilization IV

Unfortunately since then I haven't had the money to buy computers like I used to, but will eventually be able to buy some of the more recent ones. First on my list is AOE III, which I have looked at longingly for what feels like years now.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Ah, almost forgot Fire Emblem. FE7 is amazing!

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

I can't stand RTS but I really do love me some Fire Emblem, and that's about it. Advance Wars I like for the first dozen or so missions but then I get so frustrated and stressed that I give up.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Fire Emblem and the original Final Fantasy Tactics.

RTS games are too fast paced for me.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Oh, the first Advance Wars was good. :)

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Starcraft
Advance Wars
Fire Emblem

The basics

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Real War, the RTS that got me into PC gaming. It was pretty bad compared to other RTSes at the time, but it's the only one that I really knew of, and it was extremely awesome to me. Command & Conquer Generals was also a favorite of mine. Other than that, Advance Wars on the GBA kept me up late for many a night.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Oh, Conquest of the New World! My brother and I grew up with that game. We still play it once every 5 years or so.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Oh definitely WarCraft 3.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Mmmmmm, RTS is one of my favorite genres.

C&C: Red Alert 2
Rise of Nations
C&C 3
Supreme Commander
Homeworld 2
Rise of Legends

I liked to play Warcraft 3, but never really got good at it.
I absolutely love the C&C universe. I could put every C&C game up on that list, but I restrained myself.
Starcraft was also a good game, but I never really got into like a lot of people did.

And yes, I am absolutely dying to play C&C: Red Alert 3.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

I have no idea what a TBS is, but I assume it's "time based strategy".


My two favourite, for both, would be Rome: Total War. The "overworld" is a time based strategy, while the battle maps, are real time.


But other ones are:

RTS: Age of Empires II, Age of Empires III

TBS: CIV III (I want to get Civ IV so much)

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

TBS = Turn-Based Strategy. But, I guess time has a lot to do with sometimes, so it works for me.

I'm going to add Enemy Nations and Battle Realms to the list. Wonderful achievements.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

EDIT: Oops, Pylon beat me to it. Ah well.

Turn-based strategy, such as Civilization. In Civ, you get to move your entire turn while the computer waits, and then the computer gets to move its entire turn while you wait, and so on.

Real-time strategy (ala Age of Empires) is one in which every player is playing all at once, things happening in real time. When someone attacks you, you don't wait until your turn to react -- you react as soon as he attacks. And so on.

I guess you probably know all that, but it's fun trying to explain it.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Oh I forgot my TBS games.

X-Com 1, 2, and 3
Silent Storm


Good stuff. Makes me want to play them again!

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Silent Storm - that was awesome. Really good stuff right there. You're spot-on, Yoda.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

How is that game, anyway? I've been considering buying it.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Yeah, if only I had the specs to run it. If it runs a PC that can run Homeworld (one that doesn't have an actual 3D accelerator), then I'm sold on the idea. I loved the developer's original Sword of the Stars.

There's another!

Sword of the Stars! I loved that one! The ship creation was great.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Hang on, I'm missing one of the greatest RTS games to come out in the last few years!

SOCOM: Tactical Strike on PSP. Awesome stuff. Really awesome.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Hells yes.

I can't believe that nobody else has said the X-Com series. That is widely regarded as one of the best TBS games ever.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

I'm a Jagged Alliance 2 fan, when it comes to TBS antics.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

It's really excellent, at first I diddn't like it so much beacuse all the races felt similar, but I kept playing anyway and started to micromanage my fleet in combat and pay more attention to the special abilities and such, which made it about a hundred times better... The first time I used Guardians to repulse the enemy fleet, so amazing. It's kind of more about Macromanaging your fleet and defenses and economy, which makes it feel more like a game of risk then anything, until the combat starts. Really nice graphics as well, and no stupid CD keys so LAN parties are awesome. The community are realeasing some good mods for it to, so it has lots of potential to expand, even heard there is one guy working on adding more races. The only mod I have on right now adds about 12 or so new planets. It can be kind of long though on multi-star maps... My internet is slow so I haven't got a chance to try online multiplayer.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Starcraft.

End of story.

But, I've had bouts with Age Of Empires 2, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Age Of Mythology, and Total Annihilation.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

How could I not mention Metal Gear Acid 2?! Flunk should berate me for doing so.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

I forget Masters of Orion 2. Damn that was a fun game.

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

Great sig, birdman. All the Sbarro's near me closed down:( They had the best sausage pizza...

Re: State Your Favourite RTS or TBS...
 

...hey, I'm now rather immersed in a little indie title known as Starship Tycoon. And as far as strategy goes, this one is a real grower. It's just such a homespun legend of a game. Creating a quasi-Cunard Line in space. Cargo-hauling, civilian transport, the works. Great fun.



Looks a little boring to the untrained eye, but like all the subtle greats, it's a real winner.