I realized I didn''t make myself as clear as I wanted in my last post...that''s what happens with 4hours of sleep I guess

What I meant by a turn/real time element for a game was to do something like this: Set up a planning phase for both your resources and logistics, and then an overall battle plan for your units, then go into real-time mode for a pre-determined amount of time. One game that I thought was very unusual was Man O War. It was turn based, but within each turn, it was real time. During the planning phase, you gave orders to your ships of the line, and they followed through with the orders. Once the orders were issued however, you could only command your personal ship. I thought this was very realistic.

I think something like this needs to be implemented in RTS''s now. Have a turn to formulate equipping your forces (logistics), and to make sure you have the capacity to equip your forces (resources). And actually, the strategic phase will also be when you mobilize and commit your forces. A commander never sends out forces hodge podge willy nilly style.

I think the AI algorithms for units has to vastly increase before these ideas can be implemented however. Units must be able to have some autonomous capacity so that the player doesn''t have to micro-manage everything. The ability to set aggression, and give limited planning beyond pathfinding also needs to be implemented. Nothing bugs me more than a unit attacking another 5 times as powerful, simply because that unit reached it''s attack proximity range. It should be smart enough to know when it is outclassed, and retreat appropriately (without you the player having to hold it''s hand and tell it what to do).

I''ll tell you 2 RTS games that I loved, but for very different reasons.

The first was Dark Colony. I swapped it from a friend for another game originally. When I first started playing I thought it was such a lame game. The graphics were nothing much, and there were so few units! After getting into it though, it turned out to be a great game. There were only a few units per side, which meant that they all had to be used in combination, and used as they were designed to be. That added a whole ton of strategy to the game. Resource gathering was a minor point, and pretty even, meaning that you had to use real strategy to win. The enemy were hard as nails, you couldn''t just go rushing at them. You would have to mak edecisions of where to defend with your few units, and where to set traps etc. One of the best things though was the day/night. The humans could see far and well in the day, but their sight was greatly reduced during night. For the aliens it was the opposite, this meant that you really had to take in the time of day as well when planing raids. You could attack mid-day, and scurt passed aliens if you were careful, to dive into their base, destroying a building, then retreating. When it was night, you would get a real sense of fear as you never knew when the aliens would come, and from where. When they did come it was always hard to spot them. Units really mattered to you, as they gained experience, and you could often afford very few, most of the time you would retreat from battles to keep your units to fight another day. Base building was very simple as well, so most of the game was diverted to strategy. It might not have been realistic, but it was a damn good strategy game.

The best RTS I have ever played though was CloseCombat (3 I think). I played campaigns multiplayer with a friend, it was just brilliant. Your units would really change in importance depending on the terrain so you always tried to keep a balanced force. If you bought all tanks, then when you played in a city, a few infantry squads could wreck you. AA guns were good at wrecking tanks, but once spotted, they were likely to be destroyed by artillary. Squads had morale, and they might now always follow an order. If they felt their target would wipe them out, then often they would not attack. And often they would be forced to take cover in ditches from machine-guns. It was just great though, no base building/unit production. And the battles could always go either way. If you had the stronger force, in no way did that mean you would win. Enemy units were always hard to spot as they hid in holes and ditches, and units in buildings were sick, a machine gun emplacement in a building could wipe out squad after squad, so you would have to try and locate it, then sneak some soldiers round the back. LOS wasn''r just a circle round the unit, but where they were facing. Anyway, it''s the best RTS I''ve ever played, strategy meant more then anything, and there was a lot of realism in there as well, in the way that your men acted.