Please post a tactic or strategy from a real-time or turn-based strategy game and I''ll add it to my game and when it''s finished, you''ll be one step ahead. Create.

Panzer General: trade land for time

battered units on the front line can move behind into new positions, and start regrouping, resuplying, getting reinforcet, and entrenching the new positions. As the enemy finally starts to be able to deploy all his force against the front line, widthraw the last units from the front line. The advantage is that now there is a new front line where these units can start defending again. The enemy has to move his arty forward again, sooner or later he''ll have to resupply too, and these delays will give even more time to reinforce the defence.

The main advantage of this tactic is keeping the bulk of the defence force alive, even ready for a counterstrike.

you do realize you cant just "add" tatics and stratagy to game, and that the rules of the game plus the units abilities affect stratagy.

My favorite RTS tactics:
1) Red Alert II: Repair IFV''s and Tanks
Create an attack force comprised of IFV''s (Infantry Field Vehicles) equiped to repair other vehicles, and tanks. The IFV''s "repair lynch" any vehicle showing damage- thus allowing the tanks plenty of time to blow away baddies at will (also allowing them to become more powerful, quicker, through "rank promotions") When near the enemies barracks and defences are immobilized, deploy an engineer one of the ifv''s, take over the barraks, and start producing engineers. Take over the base.
2) RAII: Aircraft Carrier Onslaught
When the enemy''s base is near the water, create a force of Aircraft Carriers. The AC''s create 3 "f14''s" that fly, shoot off two missles each, and fly back to reload. The AC''s have a limitless supply of f14''s, though take time to replace destroyed ones. Target 8 or 9 AC''s at the air defence for the base (all at once)- the base won''t be able to knock them all out of the sky before its defenceless. Then take out the base at will.
3) Warcraft II: peon/peasant invasion
Use your basic workers to create multiple town halls near resources, and continuously create more workers. Those that aren''t deforesting the map or leeching gold mines dry are creating endless walls of guardtowers

Of all the things that you should include in an RTS... please, PLEASE, put in lots of base defences. There''s nothing I like more in a good RTS than watching wave after hopeful wave of wouldbe conquerers being mowed down by automated defence systems.
-Tok


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*Howdy Kids, Do /YOU/ know what time it is? It''s tangent time* -Baldor the Bold

To anonymous:
I''ll worry about how to integrate the ideas.

My hope is to use a genetic algorithm, at least in some
instances. Besides other methods, I''m considering how to
implement subsumptive architecture and emergent behaviour,
but that stuff is usually applicable to groups(ie the units)
and not a central command ai, ooooooooooh...maybe two different
enemies will have two different ai''s(the oooooooooh... is a
brainstorm).

Thank you all for the replies so far.
I''m surprised no one mentioned it, but don''t worry about
setting(fantasy, military, space, etc.). What is applicable
in one may have counterparts or lead to a brainstorm.

That being said, the game will be military/industrial(but
without the workers) with an interesting mix of World War II,
modern(Gulf), and sci-fi.
There will be spies.
There will be X of units(things to command, not types)
if you play it that way.
I don''t know if I should say how many are possible.
How many is too many?
Still, strict peon pumpers will be defeated.
The script language will do any command that you can give to a
unit and should be able to create as good an ai as the player
can script.
There will be satellites and they will shoot back.
There will be command lines, I don''t know if that''s new or not
but don''t worry, there''s always scripted ai for when units get
cut off behind enemy lines.
Diplomacy is an issue.
There will be large robots.
There will be Listening Posts and you should use if you want
to know from where and when the enemy comes.
Commanding will be as easy as an RTS(point and click)
provided the mouse code works.
There will be nuclear weapons and long range missiles.
Learn how to do recon or...Actually I don''t know what will
happen if you don''t do recon, but more importantly, neither
will you. That''s a pretty good line.
Sorry anti-fog of war people, but I wanted to get this as
realistic as possible.
I love programming, I''m getting excited just thinking about
this game.

Tok, you will like it.
Also, you happened on a ''real'' tactic I indeed plan on using.
From the second tactic you posted, it''s called
''defense suppression''. Used a lot in Vietnam, saw it on
several documentaries.

Diodor, brilliant man, that''s real strategy and something
that there needs to be more of in games.

Formations, I can think of one, you have four groups,
left flank, right flank, center and reserve. Formations
are welcomed as well.
I swear there was something else I was gonna ask, but I can''t
remember. What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? Oh well, moving on...wait, I was thinking about starting
a new thread on the matter......... .... ... ... ... ... ...

How important should rank promotions be? I currently don''t
have them implemented, but it wouldn''t be too hard.
Also, what attributes become better or should become better
when rank goes up? Accuracy for sure, I''ve played that.
Agility is a characteristic of my units, but it''s currently
on a unit type basis(tanks have one value, planes another)
and describes the likelihood of being shot.

Create.

Ok, its not specifically from an rts, but here goes:

Ever heard of the battle of Rourkes drift, in which around 100 british soldiers held out against thousands of zulus? The zulus had recently destroyed an enourmous british army just before attacking Rourkes Drift, despite having inferior weaponary. They basically charged directly at the Brits with a smaller force, and were obviously beaten back. As the Zulu's fled (or so the brits assumed), the brits pursued them. But the bulk of the zulus were situated on the flanks, concealed from the brits. When the brits went bettween these two flanks, the zulus attacked simultaineously from both sides and slaughterd them. This tactic was called, in the film Zulu, 'The Horns of the Bull.' I've tried it on various RTS games but with none of them offering a conceal option, it's never worked. It'd be cool if your game could incorpoarte real tactics such as that.

Edited by - Focus on December 5, 2001 6:47:34 AM

I think the tactic Focus suggested is a good one. Especially if you have units that can camo or hide in some way. Then give them a certain chance to be spotted by AI or not.

Thank you Focus.
I actually have heard of that battle, or at least of one
similar.
Also, it''s called a pincer maneuver and there is a way
for units to hide in my game.

Create.

The greatest problem I would see when using tactics that require a certain "line of sight" or, in a word, visibility... is how to represent to the player that your unit is in fact hidden. Fog of War would probably be the easiest way to do this (only you would have to implement a much "softer" FOW, as opposed to blacking out half or all of a section of map.

Okay... HERE'S a thought: (I love brainstorming, too!) In RTS, on of my biggest beefs is the "attack THAT one" problem. Let's drag up some old WarcraftII memories... That is, say you do have an enemy force in the middle of the screen- for the sake of example, let's say they're in a clearing. Now, to the left and right of this clearing are two thickets of trees- each full of your troops. For the sake of arguement, someone DOESN'T bellow "We're under attack" and some run out into the clearing to get their butts whooped (if only t'wer true...)
[[[EDIT: I'm trying to expand on a problem I see with the implementation of the pincer/bullhorns tactic, given current algo's for target selection. Trees in WarcraftII are in fact impassible to all ground units- but let's just hypothesize, shall we?]]]
One of the nicest features RTS has come up with, is associating a group of units to a certain number key- in this case, the group to the left is 1, and to the right is 2. So... it's time to attack... you put your mouse pointer over your enemies... hit 1, click left (attack), hit 2, click left... then watch as ALL your troops go target that one lone peon who happened to come along with the orc horde. In the Case of WarcraftII, your footmen are running AROUND ogres shaman, getting their ears boxed in in the process, in a desparate attemp to get at that suddenly-popular peon you happened to click on out of the masses.
See the problem? And, I'm glad to say- I have found a fix for it- and an improvement to selection algorithms. Comments, please:

Isn't it funny, that in every RTS the selection pointer (usually a circle/crosshairs of some sort) is always the size to select a SINGLE unit? That you have to drag a rectangle to grab a few of them? Play with shift or ctrl to make sure you get just the right ones? I always hated that. Now, how I figure I would do it... if the mouse is moving a speed- in this case, quickly- instead of drawing that 1-square (let's assume iso) we're drawing a selection circle that covers a 3x3 area (or more). If you click the "select" button, you select every unit that falls under that circle, all at once. If, however, you slow down the mouse motion (your homing in on something), it shrinks to a 2x2-sized selection circle. If you stop dead over something, it shrinks to a 1x1. (Single selection) Basically, the selection icon is drawn in variable sizes, based on a) the speed of the mouse, b) some configurable variables like "selection circle scaling speed"
Hmm... now that I'm thinking about it... that would work really well. If you wanted to select a whole group of your troops, all clustered together somewhere- you move your mouse in quick circles around them ("inflating" your selection icon), and hold down the selection button as you "paint" them all selected. Oh, that's another thing- I hate the "drag box" approach with a passion- it should be a leftdrag to "paint selected" approach.
Hmm... sorry RolandofGilead, not entirely a tactic... and for that matter, probably off-topic- but an interesting method of mouse control... ?

In the case of our friend the peon- well, we would move the max-sized mouse pointer over to the leftish side of the horde, click 1, zip over to the right side, and hit two... each side of the horde is painted as possible targets- (whats the sense in targeting a single unit, anyways???) and your units charge, attacking whoever comes first.

I would LOVE some commments to this! (oooo... hurt me, hurt me!!!)

-Tick, Tick, Tick, Tok

Edited by - Tok on December 5, 2001 11:04:22 PM

i am ap above, i will again reiterate the futility of creating an RTS this way. if this is meant for ai strategy, then great. otherwise you are severly missing the point of RTS games which is to develop stratgies on the fly as required by the situation. most text book stratgies have serious flaws when applied to computer based combat since there is no moral (though attempted), camo is sorly lacking since you cant outfit the troops/armaments with specific colors, most damaga done to weapons is not locational, you cant dig trenches or modify the landscape, computer ai to be anywhere efficent needs to know where the enemy is (though on this respect they are starting to have only the info the player would have), no such thing as food or supplies (well most rts have "supplies" via the ore or forest which becames use to build things), etc.

features that woudl be helpful:
1. ability to have split screen windowing to help with troop organization.
2. if you have satilites, then they shoudl be able to photograph areas of the battlefield without the fog of war (you odnt need top make the imaging realtime instead just have it take a snapshot of the area and show the player that so they can have guesstimates of what things look like)
3. recon have the ability to place remote cams (a la tribes) for better viewing of the enemy (i dont know how the gragics will be done, but if 2d drop this idea since it may to difficult to add)

many of the above features i mention are ussually not added since they allow the player to have view of more then one place at a time and thus increases network bandwidth.

fog of war can be implemneted liek in xcom, you only see the enimies that are actually in yoru line of sight (but you can see the world that is in your area or you have been since you map it as you go)

just another word of advice, be careful with gentic algos since they can require much training before perforoming well, and you will have to do that training (or at least ppl you trust).