hi guys i am designing a game concept of an rts in my spare time and wanted to know what everybodies favourite is and what features they loved the most and what they wanted to improve on. heres mine. Favourite game: Age of Empires 2 Favourite features: ability to create my own small medieval town and cities. idea of improved feature: since it was done so long ago i would have loved it if they made a newer version and expanded on the amount of soldiers/workers you could construct and add more variety to buildings. So that you could create a huge city with hundreds of different buildings in it and thousands of individually control- able soldiers. sort of like Medieval total war but with the ability to create your own cities. now you! :D [Edited by - emforce on July 6, 2009 7:01:44 AM]

My two favourite RTS games were Warcraft II & Total Annihilation, but I like RTS games for the details rather than big features. TA was cool because of the Commander and because some of the weapons were really cool, but I found it really tiring to play properly. Warcraft I just loved because it was so pretty and colourful - so many RTS games are set in really drab universes. C&C for instance, and StarCraft. In fact the whole reason I never got into SC was that I played the demo and found it so unattractive I had no interest to play anymore.

1. Age of Empires II: fantastic setting, well balanced, deep & varied, with better 2D graphics than any 3D game at the time

2. Homeworld: beautiful setting & story, great control scheme

Easy; Ground Control

Stunning graphics, even now, good story, simple control system and the first game I encountered which used squad based play rather than single unit selection. Couple that with 'the only assets you have are the ones you drop in with' and a real focus on tactical play there hasn't been a game since which is as good.

Mentions have to go out to;
- Homeworld
- Dawn of War
- Dawn of War 2

The latter were also squad based but you could call in reenforcements.

I really liked the level of control over units in Dark Reign. Units had setting for pursuit range, damage tolerance and independence, each of which could be set to low, medium or high. You could apply these settings to individual units, groups of units, or all future produced units of a given type, and different mixtures of these settings would produce varying behaviors:

Take a scenario where you are ordering a unit to go past an enemy unit.
With low independence the unit will simply ignore the enemy and go to the destination.
With medium independence the unit will fire on the enemy as it passes, but will continue to the destination without stopping.
With high independence the unit will stop and engage the enemy. If the unit destroys the enemy (or if the enemy goes far enough out of the way - don't forget there's also a setting for pursuit range) it will continue on towards the destination.

Combined with a pretty good waypoint system you could get some really cool behaviors out of units like patrols around your base that would automatically repair when excessively damaged. You could also set units to scout (explore, try to avoid combat), search and destroy (find an enemy and attempt to kill it; repeat until destroyed (unless damage tolerance tells the unit to go repair!)) or harass (find an enemy, fire one or two shots, move on).

Although the view was fixed to a single, non-zoomable overhead angle the terrain had proper elevations and units calculated proper line of sight so that you could set ambushes or plan sneak-attacks. There were also units that could "phase" into/through the ground, masquerade as terrain objects or enemies, and a very cool high-end tank which could cause a rippling earth-quake which caused damage to buildings and non-tracked or foot units, and due to the change in elevation even messed with line of sight.

Earth 2150

Upgradeable units and fully customizable chassis with a huge tech tree. The game was perfect for strategy. Also limited ammo on certain weapons ruled. Only problem with that was resupplying the units which was a micro management chore. The idea of making a unit with special rocket launchers that had 100 missiles was cool though. Or upgrading it so that certain units had shields to protect against a certain weapon or long range weapons.

If you haven't played the game just imagine that you have a unit building screen and you pick and choose parts and those tally up to a price. You can research new parts and build units. The strategy being you can zerg with weak units or build huge units and destroy the enemy with a few technologically awesome units.

Supreme Commander

On the pure theory side though Supreme Commander probably wins. If it wasn't for the flaws in the way the base building was set up (you had to build 100 buildings while playing) and unit creation (units in the beginning were pointless) and the economy (make one mistake and it could cost you a lot) the game would be my favorite. (Luckily SupCom 2 is fixing all these things).

Some improvements with SupCom would be stronger shields that can temporarily protect a much larger region. I loved building little outposts in SupCom in some of the large maps and setting up artillary to hold fire inside of the shields. Then right when I made my move I'd open up on the their defenses.

Some improvements to the technology tree is that when upgrading units also upgrade the units that are already on the battlefield. Also obviously don't make units that become worthless 15 minutes into the fight.

Also ever since SupCom not being able to zoom out all the way has totally destroyed my feelings toward all other RTS games. That feature rules.

Oh and one of my favorite features in SupCom was the idea of combos in regards to base building. Putting power plants next to the shields made them stronger and such. Upgrading buildings like that is a very sweet idea.

Majesty, the Fantasy Kingdom Sim

I really like how this RTS doesn't give direct control over your units, but instead allows you to place reward flags ("explore" and "kill"). You do have control over the different units you hire, and each unit has its own tendencies. I also really dig the soundtrack. Definitely my fav RTS all time.

Rise of Nations

We'd play this after-hours at work almost everyday. I have several favorite features in this game. I found that it scaled very well with many players. 4v4 was awesome. This was much better than Warcraft 3, which imho is only good 1v1. I also loved having the borders and border-pushing strategy. One of my favorite games was playing as the Russians, who have a bonus to attrition, plus I built wonders that increased attrition even more. All I'd have to do is destroy the enemy's supply wagon and all the troops would die in 5 seconds. I also like the idea of the Wonders -- the first player to build it gets it. Not getting the wonder wasn't your death knell though, since the person who built it often had to take an economic hit to build it.

What would I improve? While the maps were randomly generated (based on a map style), it would have been nice to have a choice to randomly choose a map. We often wanted to just start a game ASAP and not have to decide on a map.

Also, the online multiplayer was absolutely horrible. It was difficult to find a game, and many of the available games were special scenarios or money maps. I am really glad I got to play RON with friends over a LAN, because single player and online multiplayer only left a lot to be desired.

Starcraft: Brood War

The most balanced and playable game yet.

Empire Earth.