[tcaudilllg]

Has anyone figured out a way to beat the computer in realtime strategy games, but good? I mean, in Warcraft 2, in particular, I end up with tremendous losses anytime I try invading a city. I simply can't manage to organize my units to any degree of consistency, and they break into a free-for-all with the computer seeming to have an advantage because it can switch characters at will, and turn half my soldiers into critters before they even get to the battlefield. This seems to me very cheap; it's not possible for a human to control his mages this quickly and accurately, nor effectively. It would seem to me better to implement a "time delay" of say, 2 seconds (the time it takes a human player to identify and aquire an onscreen character with the mouse) between character aquisitions by the computer.

Now I know this isn't RPGs we're talking about here (although the lines are blurring somewhat), but it does seem to me relevant to RPG design. (yes?) Oh what they hey I'll put this in off-topic.

How do you guys win your RTS battles? (against the computer, of course)

[Rainer Deyke]

RTS games tend to degenerate into clickfests, which gives the computer the advantage. However, the computer AI tends to be so bad that it needs that advantage, so things even out in the end. Typical strategy for Warcraft 2 against a computer opponent in an even game:

• Get the economic advantage quickly by focusing on resource gatherers, buildings, and upgrades while building just enough military units to defend yourself. (I think towers work fairly well).
• Build a big army of your biggest units. That would be dragons/gryphons if you can afford them, and knights/ogres if you can't. Also get some catapults/ballista and/or death/ knights/mages. 18 units work well, since you can divide them into two groups of 9.
  
• Start you attack with your ranged units. When the enemy responds (preferably after taking significant losses, send in your melee units and crush everything in your path with an overwhelming force.
  
• Alternate strategy using flying creatures: take out his anti-air defense as quickly as possible. Pick off the rest at your leisure.

Personally I prefer my strategy games to be turn-based, which keeps them from degenerating into clickfests. Land of Legends anyone?

[tcaudilllg]

[Nodtveidt]

I have long despised RTS games for this very reason...click-fests. If I want a click-fest, I'll go play one of the millions of crappy-ass MMORPGs that require you do break your index finger with the clicking madness...
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[LeoDraco]

Why, exactly, are we talking about, specifically, a game that is over a decade old? While, admittedly, the RTS genre still suffers, as you all have been so kind to point out, from the whole click-fest problem, it has come a long way from where it stood in the mid-90's; Warhammer 40K, for example, was marvelously done, as was Warcraft III. At the very least, in both games, it did not matter how many units you had and, with the exception of early rushes, it practically did not matter how quick you were to deploy them: what mattered was the composition of your teams. In Warcraft III, you were even limited to how many units you could profitably keep in your army at once, due to upkeep costs (although, after you finish mining all gold on the map, all bets are off). And in Warhammer 40K, you could practically take strategic points with only a squadron or two, if you knew what you are doing.

Pretty much any real time genre you look at is going to degenerate into a click-fest, and the partakers thereof would not have it any other way; take the FPS genre: veritable twich-and-kill action, yet, with the exception of obvious cheaters, you do not hear to many people compain about those games. (On the contrary: most criticism surrounding FPS games revolves around antiquated graphics, network lag, or bad automatic team-balancing, none of which has anything to do with how the player interacts with the game.)

If it makes the nay-sayers of the RTS genre feel any better, the latest and greatest from Chris Taylor is rumored to feature units whom respond differently depending upon how frantically one fires commands at them, as well as to feature more strategy and less tactics.
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"...LeoDraco is a pompus git..." -- Mandrake

[Rainer Deyke]

Although the RTS genre has evolved in some ways, I would have to say that Warcraft 3 is actually worse than Warcraft 2 in this particular aspect. Specifically, the large number of special abilities makes the game more of a clickfest than Warcraft 2 ever was. Playing as Night Elves, I've found that the only strategy that consistently allows me to win consistently (or at all) against a computer opponent is just as degenerate as any strategy from Warcraft 2:

• Build lots of wisps.
• Do not build any expansions. Expansions are expensive to start, make easy targets, and require you to divide your forces.
  
• Do not build any military units yet.
  
• Upgrade the Tree of Life to Tree of Eternity as quickly as possible.
  
• Build Chimaera Roost.
  
• Build lots of Chimaera.
  
• If the enemy has air-to-air units, also get some Hippogryphs.
  
• Take out the enemy's anti-air defenses.
  
• Wipe out the enemy base.

[tunginobi]

Not a big fan of RTS games myself. The way strategy is supposed to work, the real-time element should pressure the player into quick thinking, which is nothing I've ever been against.

The problem is that the interfaces are usually (but not always) large, in order to cater for the many tactical possibilities these types of game present. They're big, and so they're inevitably harder to deal with. The other half of real-time is that the player must react quickly as well, and I find a large interface just gets in the way.

I think I'll just stick with my Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre games.

[LeoDraco]

Which is where hotkeys come into play: most RTS games have ways of side-stepping the interface, which (a) helps reduce the number of clicks one must commit, and (b) increases the speed of gameplay.

And, with the exception of the whole infinite lumber thing, I mostly am not impressed with the Night Elves. Except for the most perfect unit message in the whole game: "I'll use my 'Human' call to attract the enemy: 'I'm so wasted! I'm so wasted!'".
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"...LeoDraco is a pompus git..." -- Mandrake

[tcaudilllg]

[LeoDraco]

[tcaudilllg]

LeoDraco, you take things waaay too seriously.

I don't even know where to begin my response to you. Your arguments didn't actually respond to my own. Indeed, you cast my argument as an opinion, as opposed to logical conclusion. (and it is the latter)

A game creates suspension of belief when you feel that its world is self-contained, and runs on its own rules. You see the characters in an overhead view, 3rd person game, and you accept the view as a window into their world. Slowly, you let yourself become immersed in it, and their story becomes yours. The two worlds become as one, until the game ends.

Having to struggle with a huge keyboard interface that doesn't take place on screen (and is therefore not a part of the game world) crafts a dividing line between the virtual world and the real one, and frustrates the experience. I am referencing, I should note, single player, story-driven play here.

I never suggested that RTS is designed to simulate real combat; I said it was designed to simulate real strategy, which is conducted with archetypes. (heavy units, fast units, long-range units, gatherers etc.) All RTS is based on archetypical elements, just as real strategy is, and just like all games are. We have archetypes in RPGs: the rogue, the wizard, the knight, the elemental spell, the hp-draining/poison status, the live character, the disabled character, the optional boss, the last boss, the scripted boss, etc. In fact, I've seen these archetypes so many times in RPGs that I can usually learn a new RPG right off the bat and complete it from beginning to end without dying, because I know what to expect. People call it cliche, but cliche doesn't really exist. All that exists are the archetypes, because they are parts of the mathematics which you use to make the game playable in the first place.

For a RTS to get real strategy right, it must faithfully reproduce the archetypes, not the physics. Paying attention to how quickly you produce orders is a poor appraisal of strategic worth.

I've been reading up on history, into how the most successful conquerers defeated their enemies. It turns out they usually didn't simply have superior armies. Indeed, victory in war was never a matter of resources nor even of armaments. Because in every war, only a fraction of the participants are the true fighters, and that fraction eventually become casualites. Once that fraction is exhausted, the honor of war vanishes from the host, and victory goes to the side that can logically and emotionally differentiate itself from its opponent, because the will to fight is gone, but the will for soldiers to be themselves remains.

Napoleon tapped into this feeling against his enemies. He had rapport with the enemy. So did Caesar, so did Washington, so did Hitler. That's why they won.

When that element emerges in real-time strategy--indeed, in any virtual strategy--then we will have arrived strategically.

[LeoDraco]

[tcaudilllg]

If must phrase an argument, LD, phrase it in logic, not vitrolic attacks.

Indeed, you've made little argument thus far. Your only prerogative has been to discredit its maker. Bad form.

Well then, considering my first arguments must be valid (as you are unable to oppose them logically), let's move on to your new "arguments".

You conclude I have misconceptualated reality, yet you do not describe how I have done thus. Please elaborate, and use logic to display the accuracy of your opinion. Perhaps I should better beseech you to... present definite truth.

You say that the analogue between television and overhead views do not exist. You are right. However, have you ever looked down from the top of a mountain? The brain processes overhead view scenes as analogues to the perspective provided by looking down from above. So experience reconciles the onscreen image with reality and the "window" effect is acheived.

You were not aware that Shigeru Miyamoto made his games with this idea in mind?

I have no problem with using the numeric keypad to control a videogame character. Nor do I have a problem selecting FPS weapons with the top row of numeric keys. I made my argument against the usage of QUERTY keys (like 'b' for bloodlust) in RTS games, not against using the keyboard in general. Quit distorting my position.

When I mentioned "real combat", I wasn't being so specific. Take context into account next time.

Do you not see correspondence between tanks and any kind of "heavy unit"? Workers in a factory with gatherers? Strategic archetypes, all of them.

"Your latter sentence has practically nothing to do with your former; " That was an implicit personal attack. Stay on topic. I'll share a secret with you: whenever I'm communicating with you, my mind has a tendency to randomly blank, and I lose my train of thought. It just happens, that's all I know to say.

"Pardon? With the exception of Washington, most of those guys died an ignoble death; Napoleon was beat by the Russians (sort of; that had more to do with weather, but who cares?), as well as the British; Caesar, while victorious, was murdered by those he thought of as compatriots; and Hitler, as far as most speculation puts it, was killed during the invasion of Berlin, on the loosing side of his war. Where did you get your history from?" What does that do against the argument they had rapport with their enemies on the battlefield? I'm talking about when they were conquering, not being conquered. Context makes that clear.

Peer review? Can you not see it in front of your face!? Context man, context.

[LeoDraco]

[Nephilim]