Realtime Strategy vs. Turn Based Strategy and MP vs. SP

[Avenoct]

[Edit: This thread was bumped from Alpha-Centauri Strategies, which seems fine by me-Smack]

I'm just curious what we TBS die-hards think of the RTS phenomenon.

TBS=Turn Based Strategy RTS=Real Time Strategy

My Opinion?

Well, I enjoy MP real-time...actually, I was quite addicted to Gemstone and Inferno (MUD's: Multi User Dimensions: Non-Graphical...been around a long time.), if those names even ring a bell with you.

I don't think I'd like MP real-time graphical games as well at this point in their development; They appear to be Inferno-esque: simplistic hack and slash. They also seem to be infested with immaturity, neglectful of the potential community-aspect, creative-aspect, and anything other than a 'Need + Greed' economy.

As to SP real-time: Even worse. Really, games like Age of Empires clearly sacrifice strategic depth for an ability to handle real-time. I found one game that was just caustic in this regard..I think it's called Majesty. It's so clear to me that these games attempted to be strategy, then inserted real-time artificially, and ended up with crud. I know lots of people like AoE, but for me, RTS always runs into the dilemma: more control, or more real?. .

Surely, the tactical control of 100's of units will never fall into a single human's hands. Tactics can be real-time, Strategy can be real-time, but the gaming industry is trying to simulate total theatre-control, which is in opposition to Real-time. There are notable exceptions, which I ask you to list in your replies. I'm not going into details. Obviously in MP, pausing the game to control units is a totally different issue.

Then the turn-based strategy games: In SP, they are king. In MP, we need a new solution. MP games that last for months (years?) are fine, but are only part of the possible plans. It would also be nice to have better options for playing rapidly. If any of you have ever played 'Hot-seat' games, you'll know, they are vastly more fun than PBEM, or at least, a nice alternative. Don't get me wrong, I love my PBEM games. I suggest that it should be a continuum from MP RTS to MP PBEM, all in the same game.

Nuff rants from me. I want to hear what you think!

-Smack

[Mr. President]

I guess I like turn-based games, in part, because I'm better at them. My gaming technique is quite fast for turn-based games but really slow for real-time games. I remember playing WarCraft II against both friends and the computer, and I would still have Level 2 Grunts when they had Ogre-Mages.

Turn-based games feel more like strategy games for me. Using Alpha Centauri as an example, you basically have unlimited time during your turn to decide what to build, where to attack this turn and in the future, what infrastructural improvements you want, and so forth. In real-time games I always find myself playing from moment to moment without any long-term strategy. A notable exception is the Sim series. But then you don't have enemy armies marching on you in those games (except SimAnt).

[Ned]

I've tried a couple of RTS games, and have abandoned them even before I got out of the training missings. I will never buy another one, that is for sure.

Also, I think you hit the nail on the head concerning MP in TBS. Humans take a long time to move. This is why I stopped playing chess some years ago. I just could not stand the wait.

The single problem with SP games is the AI. In computer chess games, the AI is really good. Big Blue is almost as good as the best human player on the planet. I only wish some programmers somewhere will invent an AI engine that can really think, and then have game like CIV be rules that use that engine.

Ned

[Scouse Gits]

The simple reality for me is that I am now too old for real-time orc bashing - I like to think - I'm quite good at that!

[Immortal Wombat]

For strategy for strategy's sake, TBS has to win, but the art of RTS, especially in something like AoK or Cossacks is determining your long-term strategy, while you build up to it with techs, buildings and unit positioning. For (almost purely) military tactics, Cossacks is one of the best games I've seen. There you can organise troops in formations, terrain is 3D, height matters!, there are innumerable upgrades on everything, and organising the economy to win and keep resources is quite hard.

[Father Beast]

RTS games are fun, and I play them occaisionally. And, like wombat says, they often have some strategic decisions and tactical maneuvering that is quite interesting.
But they fall short in depth, because of the neccessity of the focus of the player. THE AI in RTS games doesn't have this limitation, and in rts sp it becomes a race between a player's superior skills and the AI's ability to look at several things at once.

TBS for depth for me. is there anything like micromanaging your beakers to get monarchy in an oedo year in an RTS? Can there be?

[Chris 62]

SP+MP TBS.

Don't care for RTS, because it isn't possible to control all your units ay once. How many times in AOE did you lose units because your attention was somewhere else when the enemy was engaged?
To many, I'm sure.
Plus, being an old dinosaur wargammer, I grew up in the TBS environment.

[The Commodore]

Just my personal feelings, but I see no reason why one can't like both. At least, if you have enough time...

Commodore skips off singing "Ha, ha, I have no job, school is easy, la-la-la.

[Vlad Antlerkov]

SP realtime and turn-based.

I'm not very big on MP gaming...

[Adalbertus]

Ned,

You are right with your complaint about the AI. While CIV2 had (for me) quite a tough deity level (I usually play Emperor), Thinker on SMAC is so easy for me that I probably will switch to Transcend and don't believe it will be too hard. You see: I skip a lot of micromanaging.
But there is a simple reason for it: Money. The possibilities increase from game to game and the AI simply can't keep pace. Chess has wonderfully simple and few rules, and so it is much easier to create a tough AI. And Deep Blue is off competition: It is created by a company which never has been suspected to be poor and when the project has been started, they also employed researchers with the only goal to get Nobel prices. With success. And deep blue got trained by the best chess player himself until it won first. And now, Kasparow simply runs out of ideas Deep Blue has not yet copied for itself.
So I think, one thing one can learn of the otherwise desastrous CTP2 is designing a game with a flexible programming language (which was the most brilliant idea in CTP2, IMHO) and some AI for the average players, and let the diehard fans improve the AI themselves. The benefit simply will be hundred dollars off shelf price. Of course, less bugs and a better support. And the diplomacy should do at least something.

Adalbertus

[Urban Ranger]

The AI in the 4x games are so far rule based. This is distinctly different from Chess, which uses a positional evaluation algorithm of some sort. I feel that it should be a good system to adapt to the stretagy games.

[Blake]

I may as well add my 5cents, I happen to like both RTS and TBS, and feel SP and MP both have there place. (my vote went with 'other', due to a lack of 'all good' option).

My post is mostly about RTS games

RTS games which I particullary enjoy(ed) are:
Total Annhilation and TA:Kingdoms, both had excellent interfaces for ordering units around, and very good graphics, so what if they devolved into long range artillary / nuclear duels or unit swarm slugfests... (One of my most memorable games is when I had a form of nuclear cold war in a large multiplayer game of TA, I had a massive stockpile of nukes and anti nukes (tho I was bluffing about having massive numbers of anti-nukes, bluffing is a big part of RTS mp), and my friend had a massive stockpile of nukes and anti-nukes, after nuking the lesser players off the map we were in a form of stale mate, which ended when I launched all my nukes and overwhelmed my friends anti-nukes, my friend launched all his nukes back at me, and about a hundred nukes later I was the only player left on the map - large scale nuclear exchanges are fun for the whole family )

I liked all the westwood RTS, except Tiberium Sun.
Dune2 and C&C were great fun, RA was actually generally worse than C&C1 (. Dune2000 was the best of the C&C engine series, offering pretty good AI and a nice mix of units. (but it's also much newer than C&C and RA....) ) Dune3 (Emperor of Dune) ran too slowly on my machine to give it a fair trial.

The only good thing about Tiberium Sun is it provided the engine for Red Alert 2, which is a truly great RTS game, indeed my favourite. Several times in RA2 I have defeated much larger armies using a few units and a heap of wit, indeed the sheer number of creative tatics in RA2 makes it great fun in MP. It also has a fairly solid (if rather short) SP experience.

For me, what makes a RTS bad is everything which is AoE2.
AoE2 bought complexity to new heights, with 5 resources (food, wood, stone, gold, housing) dozens of ways to aquire such resources, hundreds of units, technologies and upgrades over a dozen or so civilisations, units in play could be 50 or so villiagers and hundreds of military units. How anyone is supposed to play and enjoy AoE2 is beyond me, altough I also know people which really like extreme complexity in an RTS. Starcraft is simialler, altough slightly less complex, with only 3 resources and a smaller set of units.

Things which I like (or dont like) in an RTS:
Simple resource model: My two favourite RTS's RA2 and Total Annhilation: Kingdoms have just one resource, some people get a thrill out of micro-managing hundreds of peons, for me it's a chore I can do without. (especially in MP).

Simple / functional interface: Always a good thing, TA has one of the best interfaces around for ordering masses of units/buildings. The warcraft/starcraft interface leaves much to be desired. AoE2 has an acceptable interface (basically what starcrafts should be). RA2's interface is somewhat tied in with the slightly abstract game mechanics, it is the easiest to use and involves a minimum of clicking.

'Scissor paper stone': Any RTS which has a unit described as a counter to another unit is bad, IMO, balance should be on a more subtle level than "build this unit to counter that unit". This syndrome also tends to make units less versatile, RA2 units are all highly versatile, ofcourse certain units are "better" for certain roles, but no unit was made for a single role. This makes bad investments harder to make, and allows for improvisation & creativity.

Redundant units: Probably not a good thing, altough I did enjoy Total Annhilation, which had dozens (hundreds?) of simialler units, then again the unit set was reduced dramatically in TA:Kingdoms, and I enjoyed that too. In RA2 units are carefully balanced to be useful throughout the entire game, the lowly infantryman can still be a viable force when high tech tanks are out in force. RA2 takes almost extreme action to prevent redundancy, this can put players off, especially AOE2 cronies.

Critical units / structures: I like RTS games where certain buildings or units are critical to success / survival, they make (fun!) risky sneaky strike operations pay off big time, and make it easier for the underdog to claw his way to the top again. Basically a game is more fun if your base has vunerabilities. (highly expensive fragile items also count for this...)

Lots of units vs expensive units: Is it more fun to have 100 cheap weak units or 10 strong expensive units? Dunno, but when you have to order every single one of the around I'd prefer less anyday. AOE2 is terrible when it comes to having to build hundreds of units. (while 4 apolypte tanks can be a formidable force in RA2). Also my clunky old computer tends to handle less better than more, and less units means less network traffic in MP games. (despite this somehow AOE2 network games run better than RA2 network games, westwood network code seems to be fairly shoddy).

Unique factions / civilisations / races / nations: I like this in any strategy game, altough it makes balance more difficult it definetely adds to the game, allowing a greater set of units / strategies but without making the game more complex. But it's pointless to just have different graphics and *slightly* different stats for the different sides units (as in Warcraft and, to a lesser degree Starcraft). Different sides should play differentely, providing a new experience which requires development of new strategies.

Tech trees: Ugh, these have no place in an RTS, I feel having a building pre-req is sufficent without requiring researching stuff too.

Unit upgrades: Ugh, yet more complexity, your armies should be made stronger by using a better mix of units, rather than enhancing the units themselves, in the end unit upgrades add next to nothing to the game, because all players upgrade all there units.

Random events: I like these, in moderation, especially when the player implicity triggers the random event (iow picks up the crate). In RA2 crates are always good, and give all sorts of stuff, on average they also give slightly better stuff to weaker players (crate popping is a viable strategy in MP to claw your way back up after being mostly annhilated). Being hurt by random events invariably annoys the victim, I dont miss the baddy crates from RA1 at all.

Options: For the love of Miriam's god give game options to the player, when things like superweapons or random events are involved it's nice to be able to turn them off, that is without hacking the game files. Some games are so perfectely balanced under all circumstances for all players that the ability to turn off certain things isn't required... real games aren't that well balanced. Thankfully most RTS games do give such options.

Well, that's probably slighty more than 5c worth, I think I'll stop now

[Urban Ranger]

MUD's are not really TBS games. First of all they are RPG-based, having nothing to do with directing a group of units. Most importantly, however, people play MUD for the social dimensions, chatting and/or building their own areas.

[Rasputin]

Give me MP any day.. i just love the social interaction it bring swith it rather than jsut talking to my computer all day

[Master Marcus]

I like both ( well, mostly TBS ) , and I'm eagerly awaiting what can MoO3 is going to deliver as an extensive TBS including extensive Real-time combat. Only TBS can offer the necessary time to a perfectionnist player for making meticulous moves.

However I found myself surprisingly addicted to the revolutionary RTS "Sacrifice", whose fabulous melting of varied genres and gameplay ( say a solid mix of action,strategy,RPG,fantasy, and quick military commanding ) will be studied and copied believe me. The only RTS I clocked 200+ hours. Of course that's not beating the 350-500 hrs of gameplay I invested on Civ2, MoO2(still running) and SMACx(still running).

[gwillybj]

Only Single-Player Turn-Based for me, thank you very much .
I live all day in the Real-Time Multi-Player living world of retail sales .
My game-time is my refuge, my escape, from that near-chaos, where I am able to sit back and think through my next move , with no consideration at all for immediate thought or split-second reaction.
Oh, yes, definitely, Single-Player Turn-Based for me .