TA certainly introduced a whole load of useful things - mostly small things like the tallying system which took out some of dull parts of the game. I LOVED the commander and the D-gun although obviously you were taking a risk sending your commander into battle in case he got defeated. I didn't really like the sprawling mess your bases became in TA though, and the way the game grew geometrically - the computer is good at building usefully with more and more construction units wheras I get confused tring to build more than a few things at once!

Rise of Nations - is that a new game or an old one? The use of squadrons to make your role more of medium level management - commanding squadrons rather than units - is one of the primary things I want to implement in my game. I think it's rubbish that you spend all your time clicking on units or trying to drag-select a bunch of moving units.

PS - I was going to PM you but you aren't logged in...

another game which has its own uniqueness is settlers 3 (or 4, but ive only tried the demo of that). These games focus alot more on the economy and alot less on the military, but its still alot of fun and quite challenging to keep a nice economy going to produce an army. (Try the settlers 4 demo which you can get for free)

instead of the basic 2 or 3 resources most RTS games have, theres probably closer to 30, and having an fully fledged economy is quite nice to sit back and watch as all the little settlers walk around and do their jobs. You have a forester who plants trees, a woodcutter who cuts them down, a sawmill that turns the logs into planks, which are then used in buildings. A watermill which fetches water from a nearby stream, used with a farm to grow wheat. The wheat is processed by a mill to get flour, which is then combined with water to make bread, which is then in turn used to feed your miners, and im only just getting started lol. Each of the individual resources can be seen as the settlers store them or carry them around to whatever buildings need them.

I HAVE tried some version of Settlers ages ago, but I didn't like it so much. Although I did like Black & White, which is sort of similar in some ways.

I'm most interested in the Warcraft/C&C/TA style 'classic' RTS games, but which have shown some innovation and original features. A big economy-based city-building game is both too big a challenge and not the kind of game I enjoy.

For me the original C&C is the best RTS there has ever been.
There were 4 things that make it great, both of which subsequent RTS games have drifted away from

1) The resource system.
You gathered tiberium, which was not at fixed points on the map, it grew in fields. And it actually grew over time as long as there was some still left, which meant that you could actually nurture bits of it to get more income later int he game. Because you had to go out of your base to eat it it meant that there we lots of early fights over resources. Most modern RTS games you harverst resoures from a fixed point, most of the time you have one of these points in your base at the start, so you don't have to go out of your base until later in the game.

2) Base building.
You actually make a proper base, rather than it being given to you. Your base starts as a mobile unit that you can drive around and choose where to place it. You can then build actual walls to define your base.

3) Fog of war.
In the original C&C the whole map was pitch black apart from the area around your units. As you explore the map, the map is revealed. The way this differs from modern RTS games is that once you have seen an area of the map, it stays visible. This meant that one of the main tactics in the game was making sure your opponent didn't get inside your base. Scouting was important, which also meant that there were lots of fights earlier on.

4) Engineers
Get an engineer infantry unit into an enemies building, it is yours. Later c&c games changed this so that the building had to be damaged, or it took an amount of time to take over a building, but none of these methods worked. No one used building capture as a tactic as it was too much of a micro managing task. The orignal method was difficult to do, but a well timed engineer APC'd into the back of an opponents base through a hole that he left in his defences was devistating.

I agree with you for sure about the first two points, although personally I find the C&C universe a bit dull - I really like the wood-gathering in Warcraft II. In fact I particularly like that in that game, you gather resources in 3 ways:
o Wood is spread over an area and gets used up - plus it actually changes the layout of the map.
o Gold is just collected from a mine - multiple players can gather resource from the same mine.
o Oil requires a special building to be placed over the source for you to collect it.

Quote:

...what other games actually added something other than 3D to the RTS formula?

Check out the Kohan series. Unlike most RTS games, they are not blatant rip-offs of Dune II with a few extra doodads. I played a ton of Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, but there is also Kohan: Ahriman's Gift (sequel with same engine), and Kohan II: Kings of War (3D engine).

you have to try the total war series. Medieval Total war is a great game. Its TBS in the world map and RTS on the battle map.

Quote:

In longer games, most RTS offerings would give players carpel tunnel syndrome, yet Kohan actually allows players more time to plan strategies, watch in awe as battle unfolds and just have fun.

That's afrom a review of the first Kohan game, and it embodies EXACTLY one of the main aims of my game - let you actuually watch the game unfold.

Total Annihilation (+ Core Contingency addon) is the only RPG (+ RPG addon) you ever have to look at. :)

Well, Chris Taylor's Supreme Commander might be worth a try when it comes out, mostly because it's the inofficial sequel to Total Annihilation.


...

No, wait, there is one other RTS (other than C&C Red Alert) that I really enjoyed for a long time:

American Conquest

It's part of the Cossacks series, but had the best game play and balance, and it was remarkably complex (almost like Serf City / Settlers) and still had very action-packed encounters. It was the only game which had a strictly enforced "Peace/Build time" at the beginning of each match, which by default lasted 5 minutes, but could be extended for longer by casual-play lovers (not in the official monthly tournaments' settings, though).

I played it in a very serious fashon, between 10 and 20 games a day, and I was No. 5 of the official world ladder for almost as long as the game lived (last time I checked, I was still in the top ranks :)). Seriously: American Conquest is a very, very good RTS that does a lot of things just perfectly right.

Doesn't even come close to good ol' Total Annihilation, though. (exaggerating, but I guess you get my point ;))

[Edited by - Thygrrr on January 31, 2006 9:15:48 AM]

Check your PM Thygrrr.