I used to play a fair bit of AOE once upon a time, and after finding that all but one form of gameplay ends up in ''hunt the stragglers'' I only ever played in regicide. Theres a king. Kill the king. WC3 has heroes like this, apparantly, though I''ve never played it.

The problem you describe is especially common against a computer opponent - they are generally thick, so the only way to get a decent fight is to give them a massive advantage, and then the only way to win is to wear them down, and then the ending is, like you said, somewhat anticlimatic :/ I used to fight my way to the turning point of the battle and then just quit, even in regicide. Mopping up is boring :o)

The last thing we want to do is give the dominant player another reason to be cautious. If total annihilation is the victory condition, and there comes a critical point at which it becomes inevitable that one side will trounce the other, the game shouldn''t last more than three minutes past that point. Being able to launch an assault that destroys the oppponent''s keep, or being able to strap bombs to your guys and send them in to vaporize enemy units, or otherwise using your obvious dominance as an expendable commodity to accelerate the endgame would be the way to go.

If you''re using the Populous model, why not have a "critical mass" at which you can use some ass-whipping mana poewr to turn everyone on your team except for your little stick-bearer into seeker drones? If you''ve got a 5-to-1 lead on population, then you''ll have enough little bombs to kill every enemy, and your last guy will stick a flag in the ground. Otherwise, you waste all your little men and somebody comes over and kills stick-boy, ending the game badly for you. Either way, the game ends withing a minute of you pushing that button.

Here is a simple way of making the end of the game more climactic. Give each team a set of "reserves" that can only be called upon when certain conditions are met, such has having 80% less units than your enemy. To get rid of mopping up, reveal all your enemies units if they have 90% or less units then you (a version of this was used in Praetorians).

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
The last thing we want to do is give the dominant player another reason to be cautious. If total annihilation is the victory condition, and there comes a critical point at which it becomes inevitable that one side will trounce the other, the game shouldn''t last more than three minutes past that point.

And how do you know it? It''s not always clear. Now imagine game when enemy could do a really nasty counteroffensive in fourth minute, but you''d never know it becose game automatically ended in third minute.
Medieval TW has feature that alowed you finish the game sooner. The same applied to W2.

quote: Original post by Raghar

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
The last thing we want to do is give the dominant player another reason to be cautious. If total annihilation is the victory condition, and there comes a critical point at which it becomes inevitable that one side will trounce the other, the game shouldn''t last more than three minutes past that point.

And how do you know it? It''s not always clear. Now imagine game when enemy could do a really nasty counteroffensive in fourth minute, but you''d never know it becose game automatically ended in third minute.

If the "enemy could do a really nasty counteroffensive" within four minutes, then you obviously haven''t reached "a critical point at which it becomes inevitable that one side will trounce the other".

You see? The problem isn''t that the game lasts too long. The problem is that after you''ve won, you have to spend fifteen minutes chasing his damn peasants around the map and squashing them. That''s a pain in the butt. If it''s impossible for the other guy to make a real fight of it, the game should end soon. There''s no fun in a pure mop-up operation in a RTS game. So when I''ve got a thousand knights in a thousand castles, and he has fifty cheerleaders in fifty shacks, I shouldn''t have to deploy my army to go find all his little cheerleaders and stab them to death, then dismantle the toolsheds, because that''s a lot of time that I''d rather not spend executing stragglers and hacking at outhouses.

Didn''t Command & Conquer do the original "liquidate buildings into people" idea? In fact, some destroyed units like tanks could yeild a half-injured guy.

While it was funny seeing a bunch of mechanics and rifeman running at my GDI towers or Obelisks of Light, it really didn''t help. I always found it prolonged the game even more because it only worked when both sides were fairly decimated.

quote:
Have you ever played a strategy game, beaten your opponent (be it a computer or human opponent) and felt the end game to be somewhat anticlimactic? Or have you been beaten squarely by someone else, and sat watching helplessly waiting for him to finish you off completely?

Critical infrastructure might be one way to go here, rather than superweapons or human-wave attacks. If you provide gameplay where enemies can cut off the head of the opposing leadership, then you may get alot less "mopping up." Total Annihilation had a mode where this was possible: If you destroyed the Commander robot, the game was over. People usually ended up hiding their bots in their base, which lead to savage battles to penetrate defenses and destroy this one unit.


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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Sandman
I''d like the last fight to be truly apocalyptic. I''d like my opponent to be able to make a decent last stand before I wipe him off the face of the map entirely. I''d like to have tools at my disposal which can prevent the game from becoming a tedious game of hide and seek. I want to finish the game on a high note, regardless of whether I win or lose, knowing that at least I had some fun in the last few minutes of the game.

Consider why a mass battle even occurs: To get one, you need all sides to have enough units and a reason for attacking at one point. The reason''s a bit easier to do in my mind that the units: You could accomplish this by your objective system and create one central location or objective that must be held for a certain time to win the game (like King of the Hill). But this wouldn''t guarantee an apocalyptic battle if the sides don''t have enough units or have any good reason for not bringing them to the end zone.

So you have to ask what apocalyptic looks like. Is it a mass party in the middle where everything left goes at it? Or is it one player sending waves to crack another''s base defenses?

If it''s the former, you could go with some sort of reward-based ritual combat system. Players decide to engage at a certain time or build up enough points or whatever, then duke it out at the end. The whole game would be structured around best positioning for this end phase, which is guaranteed by the game mechanics to happen.

If that''s no good, consider this: The hunt for the last holdout syndrome that''s been well described here is one good obstacle to climactic endings, but I don''t think it''s the chief one. I think the two main reasons are game mechanics that foster attrition, and players with attacks that are not effective enough to deal a deathblow.

The inherent production cycle in most RTS'' is the cause of attrition gameplay, which drags. The fact that the player can pump out new enemies even though you''ve clearly decimated 75% of their base keeps raises their hopes and makes them an annoying, rather than satisfyingly opponent. Even if they can fight, these new stragglers often simply emerge as yet one more thing to defeat.

I wonder if this wouldn''t be solved either by having fewer, more versatile and destructive units, or by only being able to produce a raft of units at any given time (such as only a division or only a regiment at a time). If the goal is mass battles, then get rid of the wimpy straggler fights by embedding mass units in the mechanics. Then you''re assured to have lots of enemies to fight. So rather than a factory that produces a tank, you get a bunch of units each time.


You might also consider tying the production cycles of the sides together (for whatever reason, such as natural reinforcements schedule or some strange sci-fi voodoo). That way, strategy would not focus on who was the best micromanager, but rather who was the better tactician.

While superweapons and hunter-seeker ideas will make the game end, I''m not sure they''ll get the high note you''re looking for, as you''ll just get decimated.

Also, at some point the player needs to be free of any reason to create nats. Nothing would be worse than to have a mass battle with zerglings versus battleships. I''m not sure how to do this, but if there''s a natural promotion system using reinforcements or manufacturing (a tech tree, maybe?), then you might ensure roughly equal units fighting each other.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Actually, if you just had a "clear area" combat command, you could select all your combat troops and have them "clear" the enemy base. Suicide in the competitive part of the game, but if you use it right at the end, it''ll take care of business.

Well, if the most annoying thing is having to look for every stupid unit that the opponent has scattered accross the map, why not put them all in the same place?

A player can use the "Last Stand" button when losing. This calls all of the player''s units to one spot of the map, a kind of a stronghold, where an epic battle takes place when the other player tries to utterly destroy the last remaining forces. It''s very similar to AOE''s "Town Bell" principle, but if you could use it for ALL of your forces (possibly making it safer than just moving them yourself), I think it would give us some really cool and climatic endings

What about a count down timer? If one player meets cetain loss conditions they have 5 minutes to elimate those conditions or lose?
They could be simple like:

Fincial loss conditions
1a)no income generating ability and unable to build a new income generating structure/unit.
1b)OR no production ability
2)AND opponent has income generation and production capability.

Military Loss conditions
1)Destorying all enemy buildings.
2)AND/OR units.


so, if you can't build anything and your opponent can still gather resources and build new things, then you will envitable lose so the timer starts.
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"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

[edited by - TechnoGoth on May 1, 2004 12:17:48 PM]