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Original post by Daniel Miller [...] 1. Most strategic things are obvious when you aren't in the situation, or when you the strategy presented to you. It was not obvious to originally think of it, and it is not alwyas obvious when you are in the heat of battle (and sometimes you simply don't have the time because your opponent is forcing you to concentrate on other things).

I disagree in this situation - it is obvious because its a basic tactic to get somebody to attack the most difficult to defeat target. When the game works to their disadvantage, it just makes it easier to pull of.

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2. Still, there are Broodwar players who are known for their strategy. A player named Lim Yo Hwan (SlayerS_`BoxeR`) innovated a plethora of builds and techniques. He's a brilliant player. He is able to stategize while playing at a blazing speed.

The experts at ANYTHING will be known for things not present for most people because that is what makes them special. Otherwise, they'd just be like everybody else. Still, the experts only have the option to use strategy because they've mastered the rest of hte game and can probably beat everybody else without using any strategy at all.

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3. Broodwar is intellectually challenging in a different way. It is very diffucult to keep an incredible number of things in your head and it is difficult to think so incredibly quickly. So, in reality, you prefer an intellectual challenge that you find easier. Personally, I call your slow-as-olasses-games boring. I like games where you can force your opponent to make quick decisions (that adds another layer of strategy as a matter of fact).

I disagree that it is intellectually challenging. It might be mentally difficult, but there is a big difference between having to figure something out using logic and reason and have to do the same thing over and over to get better at it. I find reasoning more difficult and more interesting, so I prefer such games as chess over such games as CS:BW.

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4. Is chess a high selling videogame? Even if it is, it is the exception, not the rule (unless there are other popular TBS strategy games, and I can't think of any).

I'd bet that it is, since there are companies that solely produce chess products that appear to be doing very well. Even if it is an exception, I'd say that is because marketing has led gamers to like realtime games and thus companies make realtime games. It's hard to have fancy graphics when moves can take a few seconds and are as extremely abstracted as most TBS games are.

Come on, man: it is no less intellectually challenging to think accurately and quickly (and of many different things at once) then it is to think accurately when you have all the time in the world.

The speed even adds another dimension to the game: if you know your opponent is bad at multitasking/thinking quickly, you can force him into a difficult situation for him by harassing him on several fronts. Similarly, if you know your opponent's concentration breaks late game when the game gets more complicated, you can use that to your advantage by trying to drag the game on until your opponent mentally falls apart.

I'm not saying there should be no time limit. Certainly, standard chess is played with a time limit, and indeed it does add more depth, but it doesn't have to involve frantic reflexes as it does in most RTS games.

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Original post by Daniel Miller Quote: Original post by Telastyn Why is exploiting AI not strategy? Do I really need to explain that? Yes, you do. Just because you are using properties of the unit AI to your advantage does not mean it isn't strategic.

Why do boxers not kick each other in the balls?

Why do baseball teams not setup giant fans when they're up to bat to blow the balls out of the park?

Why does nobody like a camper?

Because at that point you're no longer playing the opponent. The game no longer means anything.

Thoe analogies are crazy! It's hard to argue with them because they make so little sense.

Taking advantage of the AI (which is very possible for your opponent to avoid, by the way...) is equivalent to a player camping in a FPS? What? I seriously need help understanding this.


A better analogy would be taking advantage of gravity in a game.

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Original post by Daniel Miller 4. Is chess a high selling videogame? Even if it is, it is the exception, not the rule (unless there are other popular TBS strategy games, and I can't think of any).

I'd be very careful about using "highest selling" to prove anything. The most popular games are casual games like Minesweeper, Tetris and Bejeweled. Sales of Myst, Deer Hunter and The Sims put most popular hardcore videogames to shame. FWIW

And you really, seriously need to look into Civilization!

I probably should have said "popular" instead of "best selling", but my point was that I've never seen any game TBS videogame reach the huge appeal of fast games.




About Civilization: I haven't played a game that particular series, but I've played slow RTS games and other turn-based strategy games (Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars) and they just aren't as exciting or intense.

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Original post by Daniel Miller I probably should have said "popular" instead of "best selling", but my point was that I've never seen any game TBS videogame reach the huge appeal of fast games.

Ahh, so by most popular Turn based strategy video games I assume you must be referring to video poker and video black jack then. Since the number of people who plays those games in a day but all other games to shame.

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Thoe analogies are crazy! It's hard to argue with them because they make so little sense. Taking advantage of the AI (which is very possible for your opponent to avoid, by the way...) is equivalent to a player camping in a FPS? What? I seriously need help understanding this.

Let me ask you this is exploiting the faults in the AI any different then waiting at spawn point in a FPS with a sniper to kill respawning players as soon as they appear? In both cases you are exploiting flaws in the design that could not be avoided.

The fact of the matter is the more units a player has to control simultaneously the more they have to rely on the game AI to take of them. If a flaw in the AI means that an opponent can send of construction unit and draw all your units fire means that player's will exploit this flaw to win the game, just as if there was a bug that allows you to make a battle cruiser indestructible as long as clocked unit was in the same space.

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Original post by TechnoGoth For all you RTS fans out there what are your thoughts regarding Passive and Active abilites? Passive abilites are abilies that once a unit aquires them they are constantly in use such as the ability to attack while cloaked.

Passive abilities is just a way to make the tech-tree deeper.
I mean since these abillites are always turned on, and they are "bought" at some point in the game, they are the same thing as getting a new production building with a better unit. (unless you already have alot of un-upgraded units alive). So in this way they don't alter the way a battle is fought, but only gives a strategic choice weather i want to use such units in battle or not.

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Original post by TechnoGoth While active abilites are abilites that have to activated in order to be used. They may have recharge delay or consume power such cloak which makes a unit invsible but constantly drains power while the unit remains cloaked. There is a second element to active abilites and that is should the units be allowed to active them themselves or have to be order to do so? Lastly are there any abilites that people have seen in other games that they though where either overpowered or underpowered and why?

Its hard to compare rts's to turned based stratey games, since rts's have 2 basic resources, money and player time, while turned based only have money. (Where money could be ore,gold,gas or whatever).

Player-time will have to divided between base building, scouting, and unit micro-management, communication between players, and strategic planning and so on. In each moment of the game there is a strategic / and or tactical choice to be made on what action to do next, or is it to expensive in player-time?
A player that is fast at any of these actions will have more time over for other things, and in a sence have more "player-time". The most important way to gain more player-time is to improve on the interface shortcuts, and mouse-clicking skills.

The importence of player time can however be diminished by lowering the speed of the game. If the speed is lowered enough, even a really slow player has time to perform all actions he wants. This leads to that the gap between skilled players and unskilled players decreses.

Active abilities cost time, time which i could have used on other tasks like managing my base, or making several more exact, but simpler orders in a battle.
In this way the harder it is to use a skill, the longer time it takes a player to use a skill, the greater the effect of the skill must be. To balance the effect of the skill against simpler actions.

What im trying to say is that there is a price for each action/skill performed. This price must be balanced with effect of the skill.
You pay in either player-time or money.

So any skill that does something extra must either take some extra time to perform, or can only be performed by an expensive unit, or cost money while using. It can also be balanced with delays, and so on.

I myself play starcraft/brood, and have since the day it came out.
I think its extremly intresting to see how new strategies formed when players got better and better skilled, and how new strategies were discovered that would have been impossible to have used in the beginning of the game. Its amazing how one unit that was useless in 1.0 (dragoons) went to be the backboone of protoss armies in 1.4, because the attack range was increased from 5 to 6. How several new strats became avaliable because terran dropships got a speed increase.

// TechnoCore

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Original post by Daniel Miller Taking advantage of the AI (which is very possible for your opponent to avoid, by the way...) is equivalent to a player camping in a FPS? What? I seriously need help understanding this. A better analogy would be taking advantage of gravity in a game.

That is perfectly correct. RTS unit AI operates on a consistent set of rules which are simply game mechanics. It is only because we normally attribute some kind of intelligence to freely mobile objects that the misnomer 'AI' is applied to RTS units. Their actions can be wholly determined from a command given to them at any state of the game. Just like FPS characters move downward when they walk off a cliff.

It is no more exploitation to pull a focus fired unit away from the enemy in an RTS game than it is to aim below a falling player in an FPS game.

Just like chess grand-masters, expert RTS players spend most of their time learning/memorising patterns, so that they know exactly what to do in a particular situation without having to think through it again. The reason an expert RTS player wins a match against another expert is because they had the best response to a critical situation. The same happens in chess.

But while both chess and RTS games are played by minds iterating over recalled patterns, RTS games require some manual dexterity to execute patterns while chess does not. So I wouldn't say that there is inherently less strategy in RTS games, but simply that one needs quite a lot of physical skill to compete at a strategic level.