post obscure rts games that you like
I'll start with pic related, the War of the Worlds RTS, too bad it's a pain in the ass getting it running on modern hardware
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/jeff-wayne-s-the-war-of-the-worlds-dii
 It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
I've always wanted to play this, but when I tried I got rainbow graphics errors.
there's a guide in the myabandonware website that requires some registry editing but I honestly dont know if it works, I've never encountered the issue
Palette suspender may work for that. It was a tool for the original Age of Empires. There's a fixed up .exe for War of the Worlds that can get it going on at least an XP machine as well. Not sure about post XP though.
this thread set me on a quest to play it and i did, fun game killing AI nests of artillery as OP martians
you want to get dxwind, google for dxwind settings for WotW
this needs a remaster so fricking bad
It can't even get a rerelease
Couldn't agree more. I fire it up every 6 months or so to blast some humans. Love it
Dark Colony
I loved it until I realized greys and humans had identical units, just different sprites.
Since someone mentioned it, anyone got recommendations running and playing it?
are you having any issue in particular? Scrolling is a bit too fast for me, but otherwise it seems to run fine, even the cinematics worked ootb
I'm good now, watched a guide and figured it out.
Thanks anyways anon, happy Easter will try and bag a few grays by the evening.
I really like Warzone 2100 because of how you can build your own vehicles with the modular construction system.
Not obscure at all
Had never heard of it until now
based warzone enjoyer
but yeah it isnt that obscure
Is this the only RTS ever that allows you frick-back arty spammers with counter-battery radars?
bump
Company of Heroes always has some counter battery mechanics
Does Clonk count as a RTS https://youtu.be/oGaDdRk7pC4
There is a WWI game made in the Blitzkrieg engine that is pretty obscure too, its impossible to pirate because no one bothered to crack it
I got filtered by the pathfinding being so shit, the rest of the game is amazing tho
become a hero
https://store.steampowered.com/app/361380/World_War_I/
>build your own vehicles with the modular construction system.
You might also be interested in this then.
I need a full list of games like this - others I know like that are:
>Impossible Creatures
>Earth2150
>WarZone2100
>Metal Fatigue
>Metal Knight
>Reflux / RoboRumble
>Tribal Rage (technically as you can make your own vechicles from available presets, or improve both infantry and vechicles with extra gear)
>KKND2 - although it only has 3 designable unit chassis per faction, but I'm still gonna let it count
>Parkan: Iron Strategy (if you count Battlezone clones as RTS)
The later ones that i
listed have unit equip system for different weapons and armors, and IIRC some of them have loot mechanic. Also, cavalry uints are made from avaliable horses and warriors.
>Golden Horde
>Ancient Wars: Sparta (+ expansion)
>Alexander the Great
I guess that's close enough. But the systems in them were junky and not really balanced, with heavy unit rush being a to-go tactic. Devs have put Sparta no steam and updated it dor modern systems as "definitive version", i don't know if they fixed anything mechanics related.
>Ancient Wars: Sparta
Damn that looks really interesting
Desynced looks promising, a mix of rts and factorio. Every unit and building is just an empty chassis, and functionality comes from modular addons, the same ones fit on both vehicles and buildings. Though the RTS part is barebones right now, there's no enemy to fight.
Forged Battalion
War Inc is another obscure RTS with customizable units
also has a neat stock market simulation between missions
nice i played this back in the day. bit buggy but ahead of its time
Warbreeds also
what game is screenshot?
Missing ww3 black gold. But it's basically an earth 2150 reskin
You can't make your own units in BG, if I remember the way its techtree worked correctly
While not strictly a strategy game, Space Rangers 2 has an RTS "minigame" where you fight using fully customizable robots
There is nothing wrong with Emperor's Testament. The campaign missions were fine, and the story was written on all the stuff Krank worked on before leaving. In fact, it did more to tie in the game into Vangers than the og.
Jurrasic Primive War,
you equiped your cavemen with different weapons
By lategame, the magic tribes ended up being the most powerful, if you kept training your wizards. Admittedly it took a while for them to become strong. The easiest to play were, IIRC, the beastmaster tribes.
And Original War had some modular vechicles and is still going strong with mods on Steam.
The guy who designed it went to make Board games, and is responsible for Mage Knight and Through the Ages a story of civilization.
>Reflux / RoboRumble
Holy shit. Thought I'd never find this game again. I was absolute shit at it as a kid.
this but moded into the 2150
https://www.moddb.com/mods/nep-new-earth-project/downloads/nep-v20
It's literally free to download on Steam. Even gets updates from time to time.
I want to get back into Warzone2100 but I feel tired just having to redo the early mission.
I'd love to start from the third base.
The latest versions of the game let you start a campaign directly from the 2nd and 3rd Acts. You get a decent clump of veteran units so its doable.
Thanks for telling me.
I remember reading there's a version that can be modded with better graphic, is it the steam version?
Steam version is a piece of shit, just download from the main website.
There is a graphical mod pack that adds HQ models for most of the early to mid-game tech. I don't know if the pack was finished or if its still in limbo. I'm sure you can find it on the forums, it did cause some performance hits during large battles though.
I will assume you mean this website
https://wz2100.net/
Not like there's likely to be others
Team rocket R's
Has anyone got a proper download for the game but with music and all the shit patched?
there are patches that work but afaik getting the music to work is almost impossible
the cutscenes are very kino
and the martian voices are top notch
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAcvVnSyPNQsAJYNwh206ymGbDCHsiU2M
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX0jSFrWx1v1UwP8Ve3lvo7xbYGJLcUab
Darwinia's pretty fun. Luv the music.
Darwinia's kino
Used to love this game, devs went on to make Prison Architect.
Also made DEFCON
Interesting looking game, that's for sure. One of those interesting out there concepts, same with Creeper World series.
Also, this thread is going to shit, so might as well post my obscure strategy games in another one.
AvP: Extinction is a cool game.
That looks awesome
Man the alien franchise has so many cool products, they just suck at executing.
I've always wanted to play that. How the frick do you do that in this day and age?
PS2
Soldiers of anarchy hands down
>10 years after a pandemic caused by a manmade virus kills off most of the population your ragtag groups of army guys emerge from their bunker to fin the world ruled by gangs, fanatics, and scientists, so you help locals, then go after the source of the porblem with cold war era equipment from humvee to hinds
Also after replaiyng it countless times and even using its built in map editor to harden stuff, i only recently eralized i can change the rsolution form 800x600
this looks pretty damn neat anon. i'm playing myth 2 now but i think i might try this one next.
make sure you get the patches, it allows you to pause the game and issue oders in that time, which is essential for ambushes and to deal with frickup-cascades
By chance do you know any other games of this type with persistent between-mission base/upgrade elements? the only other i know of was xcom
can't say without having played it first, sorry. but there are some xcom clones around, you can check on those. i'm glad to hear you say soldiers of anarchy has a mechanic like this though, it was one of the most satisfying parts of xcom for me
Blitzkrieg 1
Galactica 2 was fun for awhile. The end game devolves into fleet death balls though. Also kiting the big evil fleet until you can make enough ships to fight it.
Stellaris before Stellaris was born. Game was absolutely banging back in the day.
Literally nothing compares to IG2. Suffer with me.
Metal Fatigue and KKnD aren't like Earth 21x0 games. Haven't played the others but I doubt they are similar enough.
Although to be fair, Metal Fatigue and KKnD are great in their own ways.
>Metal Fatigue and KKnD aren't like Earth 21x0 games.
I only included them for the (very rudimentary in case of KKND2) "make your own units out of modules" aspect I dig very fondly - would also include Mech Platoon in there if it wasn't so simple and clunky due to being a strategy game made for GBA (but then again there was at least 1 RTS made for the original GameBoy of all things so whatever)
Metal Knight: Mission - Terminate Resistance
An old chink strategy game I used to play as much as CnC & RA1 when I was a kid, very deriative of other RTS of that time 2bh - but the modular unit design (simillar to WZ2100 & Earth 2150) helped it to stand out a little more from the rest
Imperium Galactica friends. Our suffering is legendary... they took pic related from us and if that wasn't enough they delivered that Nexus Jupiter Incident shite.
The rage still burns inside me.
Nexus is good for what kind of game it really is, although proper refunding for replacing components would be nice. Otherwise yeah.
Well, there's Haegemonia which is kind of halfway between IG an Nexus, you fight over planets in star systems, and control individual ships which you can customize, just like in IG. No ground combat though.
I remember its beautiful station explosions
This game was my childhood. Still play it to this day.
That game is indeed the closest thing we got to Imperium Galactica 3. It was even developed by what remained of the original team that didn't part with Digital Reality.
looks fun
It's more of a tactics game tough. Closer to Commandos then C&C I'd say.
finishing a mission with more tanks and helicopters than you started it with
>not mobility killing every vehicle to grab their ammo too
also, mission secrets:
1) you can get a sniper, GAS (seekers car, after completing the mission); ammunition for the humvee (before the blockage)
2) a free humvee if the GAS doesn't leave the city being looted
3) A wolf vehicle in a hanging container next to the slaves; Children near the slinger boss's estate tell you where to look for a free humvee
4) you can grab 2 MD-500s from TFR (If you side with claw). bust the back wall and shoot them before they take off; weapons are hidden in front of the TFR base; there is a humvee on the outskirts of the city
5) you can capture 2 more MD-500s (get them before they take off) and do not forget to pick up the ON-58
6) you can capture the mi-8 from NOI (after completing the mission. only in unpatched versions sadly); there is a fortpost near the nuclear power plant (from where 2 t-55s and 2 IFVs arrive), there are a couple of boxes
in it. also, theres a lot of tanks with sub-caliber ammos on this map, so catch them all.
7) mines are turned off from the terminal in the monastery; there are 3 BM-21s on the map (one without a crew, still at the airfield after clearing all outposts, and one more at the outpost, which is with a free BM-21 before talking to the monks); after the mission, you can capture the ON-58 on which the VIP arrived.
8) on the outskirts of the city, at one of the entrances, there is a t-55; it does not matter where to send bombs, to your taste
9) there are secrets, but they are no longer needed...
Where do I get this and how do I get it to run on Win11?
Bow down to the true no base tactical game, space waifus included
Too bad it doesn't run on modern systems
Man! I really want to play this game but it's imposible
I loved it and the sequel as a kid. Barely ever hear it mentioned ever, C&C:G overshadowed it (and for good reasons) but for a time it was my go-to arcade strategy with realistic aesthetics.
I remember playing this game in school. AI was non-existent. After first huge wave in first 10 minutes of the game computer does nothing to kill you.
One thing that i really liked was anti-air batteries which could obliterate a whole bunch of helicopters with just one shot.
isnt this the twisted metal clone?
idk I've heard people say its not that good but I haven't tried it yet so I cant really say
also I wonder if ripping the models from the game is possible
Syrian Warfare. I dont know why, bud i love that game
Me too, the tense RTS action in realistic setting, environmental destruction, the campaign and memorable characters, the humor, story being respectful towards brave men of SAA.
I wish the devs made more games, id love to see a game set in 2014 Novorussia but thats basically wishful thinking
A couple of russian shills praising russian propaganda wrapped into a game, what a surprise. The game is mediocre shit at best btw.
Name better RTS set in modern day that came out within last 5 years
This tbh. For me, its dream come true, despite all the problems and some dumb stuff in the game.
Just the way you storm buildings, with grenades and shmels preceding Tiger forces charge, while awesome OST plays in the background.
Idk I am not going to google that for you. And I don't see a point in playing mediocre "game" made for clear propaganda purposes.
>This tbh
Couple of russian shills, classic.
>Idk I am not going to google that for you
Dont google it for me, google it for yourself
On top of my head i can name Act of Aggression that came out within last 8 years and was wanna be cnc, not really good neither set in realistic modern day setting. Other than that there also was "Call to Arms" game with was a janky mess and also not very fun.
I cant really think of any other recent RTS set in modern day.
Also Syrian Warfare is slightly above mediocre in my opinion. Its a solid 6.5-7/10 for me and thats good enough, its fun.
Btw this game is not even obscure it's just a concentration of mediocrity, why did you even bring that here russian scumbag?
>slightly above mediocre in my opinion
Yeah sure, let your other guy write some marketing bullshit for ye?
>Just the way you storm buildings, with grenades and shmels preceding Tiger forces charge, while awesome OST plays in the background
>Other than that there also was "Call to Arms" game with was a janky mess and also not very fun
That's funny how you even compare CtA to your cheaply made propaganda trash.
Are you lost from chug?
>russian scumbag
You are mentally ill, this is what twitter overdose does to your brain.
Sure dude, it just happens when someone brings russian propaganda game to a completely irrelevant thrad.
Thread is about obscure games
Syrian Warfare is quite obscure, i dont think it had more than 100 000 sales and isnt discussed almost at all on /vst/.
So now please, demonstrate some mental gymnastics for me why obscure RTS game doesnt fit a thread about obscure RTS games
Obscurity isn't about sales.
This game is not obscure, it's a shit-mediocre tier crap that promote russian agenda, nothing more.
Now scram back catching bombs from drones or whatever trench you crawled out of.
>it's a shit-mediocre tier crap
So is it mediocre or crap? What is even "shit-mediocre"? Something shit cant be mediocre after all.
Btw it sits on 86% positive reviews on steam so i guess most of people that played it liked it and though it was above average. But i guess they were paid russian shill bot trolls or whatever eases your conscience.
>Obscurity isn't about sales.
Obscurity is about how many people played it, if not a lot of people bought it not a lot of people played it. I see you have problems with basic logic but thats given seeing your virulent russophobia
>Obscurity is about how many people played it
Not only that, but also a game that have obscure mechanics. That game has nothing of sorts and made by the book, except with shit quality.
>Btw it sits on 86% positive reviews on steam
As you said almost none played this obvious russian propaganda crap, and those who know what's the game about give it 10/10 without even playing it or promoted via russian internet research agency.
>russophobia
chugger confirmed
Why, do they pay to promote their games here?
Go back to the toilet, zigmantas cuckstinskas.
go back to uhg or to the trenches, the game is an obscure rts
Wow that's a lot of troony seethe
I'm not Russian and I like this game so you are coping and are therefore gay. Please cease your coping sir.
>Obscurity isn't about sales.
If shit won't sell, then how it can NOT be considered obscure?
Oh frick, Golem is the game I was browsing this thread for thinking "shit nobody is gonna know about this one". Absolutely banger design and presentation, even if the balance is completely borked.
Another underrated as frick game. Seriously wish someone would take a crack at making this a PC game with custom/regular games instead of just campaign matches, the races were all different enough to be a ton of fun to play.
>10 resources
How damn unwieldy this system was?
Not as unwieldy as you think, though if you were doing a hotseat game with friends you would basically lose if you spawned at the wrong location. If I remember right almost all of those resources were generated passively by your main base and a few could be supplemented via mines/woodcutters etc, but you could exchange them all at a loss at your market. Most of them didn't really matter you'd just use more of one resource depending on what race you were, sulphur for gen coal for xytex and so on... can't remember of those were the real faction names.
Is this a WarLords / HoMaM clone of sorts?
holy shit I didn't expect to see Golem even in the obscure games thread
mad your jihadis lost mutt?
rent free
hello ukreddit defense force
>id love to see a game set in 2014 Novorussia but thats basically wishful thinking
Every war ends, every war will find its way into pop culture eventually once the it's no longer the current thing. Maybe in another decade. Could have an interesting economic aspect to it as you trade for gear, supplies and vehicles with the other units and the enemy, invent new ways to beg for foreign gibs or raid the old Soviet stockpiles.
>every war will find its way into pop culture eventually
So where's my Cod Wars adaption?
I want one about the Emu War
make it yourself anon
I loved this game but the "rescue the helicopter pilots" mission is just complete bullshit. Having a limitd number of units against endlessly respawning enemies is moronic.
I think that all missions have respawning enemies, i remember one mission where i needed to get on the top of the hill and then retreat, i left one squad at the base of the hill and no joke i think they raked up something like 200 kills because of enemy infantry spawning all the time.
looks like a MoW clone to me
politics aside, pretty much one of the obscure modern real time tactics that is serviceable, gameplay wise. i like that you could keep units/vehicle from the previous mission to the next mission. while infantry combat was quite lacking, the MoW-lite vehicle mechanic are good enough, mission design has it high and lows, but still enjoyable. Tbh im quite biased here and Soldiers : Heroes of WW2 and its sequels has spoilt me rotten for my expectations in Real Time Tactics games released after 2004
it's a good game for Russian propoganda but the israelites have to charge you for the skirmish mode as dlc
The part with the guy calling an airstrike on himself to take out the ISIS grunts made me emotional man, it's rare for a game to do that. I read it's based on real events which made it even more touching after the fact.
Also slitherine is taking credit as developer on their terminator game, I know the NATO cold war is in effect but they did CWP dirty not even crediting them.
On the bright side they set the devs free to make more cat games.
the dev's track record always cracks me up.
>tfw you have to accept russian money and make a kino RTS game so you can realise your dream of making games about kittens
pretty sure they're working on another cat game now.
They received money from the Kremlin to make cat games which they put towards their true passion... modding Men of War
shit game from shit studio
woah wtf why is that guy having a meltdown in this thread
b***h boy having meltdown over a game.
I mean what the hell is going through his head i couldnt even fathom.
Anyway, its a good game, obvious to anyone who has iq over 70 that its a propaganda. Just like CODs are propaganda, and some of them are good.
Now seethe b***h
Inahling ukie farts does that to a westoid.
>vatnik/hohol feud is spreading to the slow boards
fricking slavs, get the frick out of here, go whine on telegram or something, stop polluting the boards with offtopic garbage
It's probably a /misc/yp that got lost on its way to its containment board.
real war rogue states
>shameless WC1 clone
>God awful pathfinding
>Deader than brain dead enemy AI
>Only 3 buildable units and 3 buildable structures
God did I fricking loved it.
Bought 2 copies of this one and borrowed 2 gameboy colors to trade wizards so both carts had all of them
>Use Stealthwiz to cloak all workers
>Build farms blocking entry to base and use invisible workers as gates
>Use wizards to slaughter enemies that can't reach my base until the enemy runs out of resources
Anyone else do this?
Are there any lost media RTS games?
I don't know, check the lost media wiki or some forums maybe and tell us. Surprising amount of obscure rts games you can still find on abandonware sites or pirate sites, but probably not all of them.
That StarCraft prototype that looked like WC2 reskin and was teased before the complete rework of the game.
>That StarCraft prototype that looked like WC2 reskin and was teased before the complete rework of the game.
Yeah it's probably best it stays lost lol, it looked fricking awful.
I really want to give Submarine Titans a try, but something about this game doesn't flow. No pun intended.
The interface is pretty bad and unit readability is awful. A large percent of the units being functionally the same doesn't help.
That said, the game _is_ gorgeous. Are you using the fanpatch?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1259380/discussions/0/2254559285375900603/
Yeah, I do. The game does look really good and premise is great, I just can't get into it.
I guess there are a lot of things that the tutorial doesn't explain, like that depth mechanic.
My entire legion of subs got rekt, because the enemy AI kept abusing it much more efficiently then I ever could, because computer.
>but something about this game doesn't flow.
You're not supposed to camp, you're supposed to be very aggressive.
I started the game on one the harder difficulties, and the only way I have a chance of winning is if I build base turrets and slowly expand my circle of base turrets outwards, rushing my garrison of units to wherever the turrets are being attacked so I have local fire superiority. I must be playing the game wrong, it works, but every single mission takes 1-2 hours to complete, and most of that time is just slowly creeping and waiting for the gold extractors to produce enough gold
You're supposed to shut down their resource gathering. Whatever is that base resource evenly spread across the entire map is, it's required for pretty much everything. Corium, I think. But the others work almost as well.
The problem is that computer players start with something in the bank, with a few patches of most resources they need in their base, and with a decent fleet. So you need to juggle fighting off their military subs with intercepting and blowing up their resource gatherers, constructors and mines. Thankfully their fleet rushes to protect their resource things as soon as you start attacking them, at least from what I remember.
So, again, you need to be very aggressive. If you don't want to dig in for hours and then sloooowly accumulate gold from those filtering thingies to trade it for other resources.
As to how you manage to win in engagements with their fleets? Composition and upgrades mostly. Computer players are not amazing, their scripting is fairly limited. If you've been going into a certain path, like lasers or whatever, you'll have little choice but to capitalize on that. The enemy adapts somewhat but they still try to have diverse enough compositions because their scripting is limited.
Manually changing depth for your subs can work too sometimes but don't expect anything like Starcraft tier "micro", the game is blissfully free from that crap.
Fighting near your bases where you have some turrets helps too, as in any other game.
Also you obviously steal as much tech as possible when playing for a human faction. As aliens you just suffer, I guess. Their campaign was the hardest for me. When playing against them the odds are heavily stacked in their favour, probably for creating that scary alien invasion feeling.
Also expect heavy losses in engagements, always. Your goal is to make long-term losses for the enemy worse. Primarily in resource gathering, although a raid crippling their sub production never hurts either.
Went for a refresher course and I can give some better advice now. First of all, just in case, I'm playing v1.0, without any patches.
So, I've first ran through a BO mission on "weak" for a warm-up and it was really easy. Then I forgot that the campaign statistics screen doesn't unlock the next mission after you've won the current so I had to replay the first mission anyway and chose "medium" difficulty. The enemy fleet was about 5 times larger and they kept rebuilding it. This must definitely be one of the things causing trouble for you.
Second, the part about being aggressive very much stands but obviously with enemies starting with like 30 military subs while you get at most 10 forces you to change things a bit.
You must first familiarize yourself with how patrols work (because there are 3 most common types of enemy fleets: patrols; guarding an area; raid). Patrolling fleets will break off to pursue your sub(s) if yours are seen, but if you pull away far enough enemies will just resume patrolling. Also a fraction of a patrolling fleet might just continue towards the other patrol point so you can break off chunks to deal with a large patrolling fleet piecemeal.
Turrets might seem like they are shit but it's only because they have very limited firing arcs (and ranges, usually), and because they have to be put in a line, roughly speaking, while subs can easily overwhelm them by approaching/arranging themselves in a something resembling a quarter of a sphere. But turrets are actually pretty powerful for how little they cost and it shows if you force engagements near/over your turrets. Conversely, avoid engaging enemy fleets near their base defences.
The trick you want here is to bait enemies with some high-value sub, like a Raider, then retreat all the way into the heart of your base while the pursuers go through a wall of light and medium subs above and slightly behind a row of turrets.
You can bait with a light (12 speed) sub but it works less often.
Another very important factor is indeed composition.
For engagements on the smaller scale you want to have light subs even if it's against something like Silicon Escorts. Fast subs take much less damage due to how well they can evade. And as BO you straight up start with possessing stolen Sentinel and Hunter tech, so no reason to ever build more expensive Fighters that have a limited supply of slightly stronger torpedoes which can easily miss. Fighters also having 100 more HPs tends to not save them, in general.
Of course all of that changes after you pump Fighters full of upgrades but early on you just don't have access to them.
But when you have ~20 strong fleets engaging no matter what formations you choose they are going to get bunched up and now even agile subs get in the way of each other and get slaughtered by weapons with AoE, and even just heavy-hitters like Ruby Lasers. You still want a few tagging along, especially if you can bother to corral them to stay on the sides where they can easily change depth.
Another huge force multiplier can happen if you got an enemy trying to squeeze through a narrow pathway, like between rocks and an edge of the map. Again, even without AoE weapons every miss is going to hit a sub behind the intended target and their raid turns into a slaughter.
Obviously you should avoid falling into traps like that yourself, but at least computer players aren't smart enough to bait you into something like that. At least "weak" and "medium" aren't, maybe I'll try "strong" at some point again but I remember them being fairly tedious and if the tendency from "weak" to "medium" is telling me anything, "strong" should be starting with completely ridiculous fleets.
I have Dune 2 on sega genesis. It was my first RTS I ever played as kid.
it's grid based
https://pricklypeargames.itch.io/cold-itzler
did ya patch it?
it allows for pausing and issuing commands, as well as allow setting the pathfinding "rigor" so you trade accuracy for speed.
Without those, yeah, its borderline unplayable and why it was trashed at release too.
Perimeter (there is no sequel)
Netstorm (shame that the attempt at a remake fell flat on its face and died in EA)
>Perimeter (there is no sequel)
It does have an expansion, IIRC.
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
name?
Tzar burden of the crown
Polish screenshot 😀
Damn, I used to play this game's editor mode roleplaying as all the characters at once. Kids can be entertained by anything..
This and Stronghold Crusader too had amazing map editors.
Tzar was cool; polish screenshot
for me it's the Jihad
NTA, but tried this with a patch, and it still doesnt help most of the underlying fundamental problems. pathfinding is worse than most RTSes made around that time, slow unit response time, and for a tactics game, the combat feels basic, no cover system(as long as you get in range and the target isnt blocked by a large wall/building, its a guaranteed hit), 100% accuracy for firearms(so its a matter of who got longer ranges and who has the most firepower focused on one enemy that decides the outcome of a battle), and while i dont demand Gem engine/Men of War tier vehicle mechanics(HP suits me just fine for a game made in early 2000s), the aforementioned shitty pathfinding affects them the most.
ya'll homies don't know bout Arsenal-Taste The Power. My dad actually bought it for me through standard mail order back in the day, from the French guy who developed it.
boomp
Real War.
Fargate
Very under-rated despite the somewhat stunted cut-scenes.
I know it's not true, but I often feel like I'm the only person who played this game. I'd probably do some nasty things for a spiritual sequel with the city building and company formation (since Kohan 2 kind of sucked and the studio is long dead).
Join the club then
The other gays all play in secret for some dumb reason
Kohan deserves to be known far more. I have no idea how people slept on this so much when it came out.
You're asking why a 2d RTS from 2001 isn't more known? It suffered the same fate as Takeda and Gangsters 2 Vendetta - completely overshadowed.
still playing Ahriman's Gift to this day. It's the game I keep going back to when I feel like strategy games are getting too easy. I'm still glad I can play the Kohan games on modern pcs. You just need to drop a dll or two into the main folder to fix the lagging cursor issue. The Kohan games are true fricking gems. They did stuff no other RTS game at the time did, and no RTS game since then has done.
Anyone else unfortunate enough to have picked up this piece of shit?
I was too young to grasp this at the time but it was busted as frick and the mission AI was either impossibly hard and aggressive or completely passive
Frick, pic related
Similarly I made the mistake of getting this game too, which also fricked with me as a little kid because i couldnt yet quite grasp the concept that some games were just objectively bad and there wasn’t anything I was ‘missing.’
Though this one didnt review as bad as America evidently.
Dad owned it and I still loved the game. I have it in box still, battered and worn. I loved playing as the Mexicans because their cannons were big
I remember playing that one and how the pathfinding would absolutely break when you had too many horses on the map
Had some cool ideas for the time though
boomp
have another one
Axis & Allies from 2004, played this game a lot when I was a kid
gets a bit unbalanced but theres mods that makes it a bit fun to play
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/axis-allies-bcl
bump
anotha one
Oh I almost forgot about this one. God I loved to play Japan for some reason. Sad about no Italy thou
lack of UI support for other screen aspect ratios... sovl...
>Space Clash
Spanish game i think. I really liked the freeplay in space, trade and diplomacy options, they really elevated the game over other CnC and StarCraft clones.
May i also interest you in
>Maelstrom
The game that Vagners and Perimeter devs made when the lead designer behind them left. That was enough to generate some hype here in Russia, and IIRC game had some interesting gimmicky mechanics, but it went very silent and didn't really make any waves even back home.
>War Front: Turning Point
Setting wise, first Red Alert but set in alternate WWII. Gameplay is closer to Generals, but it had the ability to control a single unit.
>Sombras de guerra: La Guerra Civil Española
I think it is the only game about Spanish civil war besides wargames. At the time, they say, it caused some outrage in Spain. Other than that, very standard RTS with kinda cartoony graphics. The dev's previous one, War Times, was a WWII-themed Generals ripoff, and had way more international success.
>Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War
I think the last honest attempt at AAA AoE killer with very troubled development.
>Ancient wars: Sparta
And other games by World Forge - expansion to Sparta, Golden Horde and Alexander. Probably the last batch of notable Age of Empires clones. Very comfy looking.
>ParaWorld
Another comfy looking euro RTS with dinosaurs from the times of genre's twilight.
fricking S+ post anon, great stuff, very thorough
Weird to me that it's not more popular.
Not sure how obscure it is but I enjoyed Heroes of Annihilated Empires.
Feel like it could find a new fanbase with a GOG release.
I liked it. it was sort of fantasy Cossacks. Not surprising considering it was made by the same people.
I also remember playing the campaign but I must have been doing something wrong because especially the latter part it was a lot of hero only missions, but your hero just wasn't strong enough to kill more thana small group normally and I had to cheat more levels.
I'm sort of disappointed they never made follow up game because they left a bunch of sequel hooks implying it's earth in the future and there's time travel involved or something. It wasn't great but I don't like getting left hanging.
It looks like it is just extremely niche and german speaking. It even has its own big mods.
>Ancient Wars: Sparta
Yep, remembered playing it before way back. I remembered using its instruction booklet to do a basic army presentation in Humanities. Real love to list and look at the Spartan, Egyptian, and Persian factions, especially how all of them look visually distinct in red, yellow, and blue respectively. I liked their unit equipment system, and how their worker units can scavenge enemy weapons, despite their limited gold/wood resources. Thanks for the find!
>Setting wise, first Red Alert but set in alternate WWII.
I can't remember much about it but I do recall all 3 factions had cool superweapons but the Allies' one was just a shield generator. And that the guy who replaced Hitler really loved big guns and airships and guns that belong on a railroad.
And that the Soviets used molotovs to barter. Wish there were more alternate WW1 and WW2 games out there like this game. Iron Harvest was too short and lacking for me.
My favourite mission
Thousands of crates
>that one US mission where you defect
>if Joan is in your party when you meet Lisa Lawson, she berates your decision but lets you defect
>if Joan is not in your party when you meet Lisa, she agrees to defect with you
She definitely had hots for John. Also, fun thing is that you don't even need to add Joan to your party - she'll join you regardless, except a bit pissed.
SunAge
An RTS with semi-modular unit design, multipath campaign, and a functional stock and investment system that unlocks various bonuses. Shame it's virtually impossible to get working.
i bought the physical discs over a decade ago and have never got it working.
I remember infantry being kinda shit, because a) it was fragile; b) it cost money, which you had a relatively limited supply of, instead of ore, which you got in abundance during a mission.
I can't believe we don't have a new version of Populous based on 3.
>Kaya!
>Kaa!
>1 or more men go into a hut, more men are produced
>Men are subordinate slaves to the only woman in the entire tribe
This game is a feminists wet dream. Fricking kino though, all the cool spells and shit were really fun back in the day. I remember some of the levels being pretty brutal though.
>This game is a feminists wet dream.
You have it backwards, on the purpose it appears to be a feminists wet dream but if you look deeper it's not.
>All her spells/mana, powered by men
>Can only reincarnate when you have men
>Men are a more valuable resource, shamans are expendable
>She gets locked in a cage and needs the men to come and save her
>All her spells/mana, powered by men
Oh frick that's right! It's men in the huts yeah? I vaguely remember having a bunch of men in huts and trying to one woman army the other tribe.
are you familiar with From Dust?
this game creeped me out hard as a kid
You must've been one of those colossal homosexuals as a kid.
Anyone play Urban Assault?
Haven't played Machines:Wired for War in ages, and I somehow doubt it holds up as well as my younger self remembers it. But it had some neat ideas at least.
It's open sores now: https://github.com/NightDive-Studio/machines
The engine, at least. Assets you download separately, but I'd expect fans to eventually replace them with higher resolution free alternatives.
How do I go about playing KKnD?
Do I want to use the open source project?
KKND as it is works perfectly fine under DOSBox. However, there is not much point of using it since KKND Extreme adds Win95 support and skirmish, and works flawlessly on at least Windows 10, with mounted CD images providing music and videos. Well, at least it works on my machine (tm). With some hex tinkering, it can be made to run at any resolution you want (i wouldn't suggest the HD mods posted on Steam and IMDB since they are outdated and don't work), but the maps that are smaller than your screen (and nowadays, that's most likely all of them) will give you artifacts, so keep the modded .exe alongside original and switch between them.
>Do I want to use the open source project?
OpenKrush? It looks alright but it is an OpenRA mod and is probably akin to playing original Quake episodes through some multiplayer-focused port with all its bells and whistles that are irrelevant in SP.
>However, there is not much point of using it since KKND Extreme adds Win95 support and skirmish, and works flawlessly on at least Windows 10, with mounted CD images providing music and videos.
Right, playing through the human campaign right now and the iso does have to be mounted to watch the cutscenes and I guess listen to the music too.
>widescreen
I'm used to playing in low res after playing through the original StarCraft recently but KKND's maps seem big enough, I usually use 1600x900 resolution would that be an issue?
>OpenKrush... OpenRA
Yeah, that's why I asked if I should even give it a shot.
>I usually use 1600x900 resolution would that be an issue?
1920x1080 was on every third map or so i think. So most likely it won't, but i didn't test it.
I'll give it a whirl then, see how things turn out.
I'm doing alright so far, had difficulty with the mission to wipe out the mutie settlement but I got the hang of it.
>it was 2unfair4me
That might just be the 90s, difficulty can ramp up as a campaign goes on or seem fixed against you in some missions of expansion packs.
>playing through the human campaign right now
Also godspeed anon. I gave up on 13th or 14th mutie mission, it was 2unfair4me even with a secret unit.
interesting
i've never meet someone that played and like war wind like me, i guess the aesthetics were too alien for most
It gets mentioned from time to time in obscure games threads. I think I've seen it talked about in /vr/ as well, but not completely certain. Ought to be a few other anons who like it.
I still want someone to make a War Wind that has proper unit AI and no crashes
I only played the demo of the sequel - how do these games play out?
I heard they're a bit like Battle Realms
It's up for free on GoG. I still have my physical copies of War Wind and War Wind 2 sitting around, even if I can't use them anymore. Always loved them, warts and all.
Trying to reverse assets and levels. Sprites are fine, just palette for few of them needs to be "guessed".
Made some progress in understanding terrain tiling and features/props placement. Entity ID-spite-frame translation tables are probably inside EXE, so it's easier but tedious to remake them manually. Stock map editor helps, but can't do important things like terrain edit. WW2 level format is complete clusterfrick compared to WW.
I can render terrain tiles and features now.
Always loved map large maps in WW (WW2 have smaller maps, so it sucks). If somebody would create custom game engine, maps could be X times larger. In addition, despite maps are flat, they have fake rock ridges, fake high and low lands, it could be possible to try to generate real height map with some smart algorithm or even AI.
Interesting, I though some last campaign maps are same, but they actually have differences.
>despite maps are flat, they have fake rock ridges, fake high and low lands
Reminds me of 7 Kingdoms in that regard...
Any game where you need to pray that a "correct" unit decides to join your forces is a strong hit-or-miss methinks, both Dungeon Keeper(2) and Majesty also suffer from this conceit
You do know that in both DK games you not only decide what can join by building appropriate rooms, but can also throw unwanted critters back into the portal? Or even sacrifice them in a temple for some combinations.
War Wind 1 was nice. War Wind 2 with random units hired from cantina was bad.
Oh shit, I remember playing it.
I know that one, therefore it's not obscure.
Yeah, units have roles and all. Some are tanks, others are melee/ranged damage dealer, and you could fiddle with options so that upgrading an unit meant they got a minion, so they went from groups to small armies.
Honestly pretty cool, even if the building system meant you didn't use all the units you could since you needed to stack buildings per quarter.
interesting
Vital Device
Korean RTS that takes place inside a human body
That's a weird looking Starcraft mod
Rasetsu
Japanese RTS based on hero units. Instead of multiple squads of small units, you control one squad of very powerful units
I sure as hell dig the Gigeresqe designs
Gives me Gyver suit vibes
Malvinas 2032
Argentinian RTS about the Falklands war. Kinda sucks.
Damn i like finding obscure stuff like that. Like that homebrew spanish Amiga platformer when you are fighting yanks at Cuba in 1898, or Azerbaijani FPS about Karabakh war.
>Azerbaijani FPS about Karabakh war
Lolwut?
This one kinda feels like a cartoony version of Codename Panzers (and is pretty much just that actually)
FPS about Karabakh war
>Lolwut?
And another one:
While Mandalore has given it some attention, I still think this game is not really appreciated for what it is. There are not a lot of official LoTR strategy games so while BFME and WoTR are nearly the same (ignoring BFME having more factions) WoTR is focused on individual units, like Warcraft, instead of battalions. So each unit feels that much more unique, their flaws and highlights are far more visible. For instance, the ranger (giant sword) is really cool, the Nazghul who are elite units that require a hero, are also fun to use, and give a reason to built Shades, a feeble scouting unit otherwise. But then you have stuff like the goblin spearmen and human horse riders who are meant to be massed and as such don’t have a lot of unique abilities, nor do they have formations like in BFME.
Kid me loved the design of the evil faction in general, I always felt like it had more personality than the Free People
By a Romanian Game Studio (affiliated with Proton, if you know about that shooter). Main appeal is Fog of War being permanent and as such, light being a valuable resource. There’s 4 races, 3 aliens (hive mind that combine basic drones spit out by a living moving HQ to create new units and buildings, “generic Protoss”, and Living Energy Constructs) and Robots controlled by a Human explorer.
Other than the Hive faction being interesting to play and multiplayer being maybe not dead, the main reason to get this game is its main menu theme, which I’ll describe as “cool if you like synth”
Oh yeah, it’s called Nightside
For me, it's Rising Kingdoms. Cozy sprites, very comfy music. It came out after Warcraft 3 and copied quite a bit (different armor/weapon sources, heroes etc) but it has a lot of innovations:
1. Heroes don't level up at all - to learn new abilities you have to spend glory (a resource which is earned only by killing enemies). Glory is also needed to construct houses which increase unit support - so you have to choose between either of those.
2. No mana - abilities are strictly on cool down (can be improved by collecting consumables)
3. Every map has colonies of minor factions - trolls, elves, dragons etc. If you kill the guards, you'll get access to their troops and a global unique ability (for example, trolls can give you a cannon that basically paradrops three trolls in any point on the map or additional gold income, dragons have a portal teleporting your army to any of your bases, vision of the whole map or a designated bomb run etc)
4. Generally very entertaining skills and abilities . E.g. human wizard of the bow can on spot transform 4 swordsmen into archers and vice versa or create ice domes that protect shooters inside but allow them to shoot enemies, wind rider can learn gallop and make cavalry literally trample and knock out enemy troops etc.
This may be the game I was looking for. Is there some dinosaur-like faction?
I rember playing something like that some 15-20 years ago. It was a demo and I remember there were A LOT of races, and some of the races being kinda bug-like, another being dinosaur or dragon like. I also remember the campaign being hard, and that when you started a game you had one main unit (like the mage in Age of Wonders), and that there were both a world map and then a game map where you played. I honestly don't know if I'm mixing two different games together, but I remember for sure bugs and dinosaur races.
maybe one of the warlords battlecry games?
>warlords battlecry
Mmh I don't think so, it wasn't in 3D from what I remember. I think your main "hero" (I don't know if it was a hero or "you" like in AoW) could have different skills, like necromancy or something like that, but it was so many years ago.
sseth has a video on that
Rising Kingdoms has such a great OST.
I had some nice ideas
>can equip the same troop type with different weapon tiers
>Weapons would wear down, putting an emphasis on logistics
>Fields would also exhaust forcing you to rotate them (actually i don't remember if they regenerated over time)
>You are not limited by an arbitrary pop cap but by how much food you can produce (soldiers consume food over time and running out of it makes them lose HP)
I put emphasis in the "had nice ideas" because the execution is very tedious. Soldiers do not re-equip worn-out weapons, fields aside from the one near your HQ spawn very far away and there is no other 'warehouse' building. In fact, resources that you cannot access by land are entirely inaccessible to you.
All in all i kinda liked it though
I'd murder to play pic related again. Not that good but it covers some really obscure battles like Hurtgen or the non-Bastogne parts of the Bulge. Last mission is a b***h though, I barely beat it as a dumb 12 year old.
Lol this game is hilariously easy to break, you can easily disable AI tanks and force the crew out and then crew them with your own infantry units
Some maps were dragged out for hours because i can just murder everything the map thrown at me while i'm supposed to lose
>312
312
Probably already posted but Syrian Warfare is quite good, Men of War lite in modern setting, and a unique one at that.
Badly needs wasd scroll
Dunno how obscure, but I don't see this pop up very often outside its wacky battle of the sexes concept
>that games ending would be so problematic today
take me back
So, uh, has anyone played Treasure Planet: Battle of Procyon?
Apparently it even has a mod pack:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/etherium-forces-modpack
Oh yeah, I played that and remember loving it.
It's got a sort of 'kiddie,' UI style, or maybe just felt that way on the tiny resolution of my old monitor, from the screenshots. I remember the UI elements and mouse cursor being outlandishly huge. But it's actually a fairly competent game all in all. I'd rather like to play it, or something like it, again.
I was honestly dumbfounded when I saw it when I was looking at what was available during the spring sale, of all things a /vst/ vidya by Disney and based on Treasure Planet of all things.
Nice to hear it's good, anon.
I haven't played it since I was like 14, so I'm sure some of it is nostalgia goggles, but I remember it being pretty good, yeah.
I vaguely remember having a blast running a fleet that was mostly torpedo sloops by volume. Frick cinematic broadside exchanges, I'm going to drive up, explode you, and leave.
Which, I now realize, I'm still basically doing in Nebulous with those frickin' OSP rocket clippers. Some things never change.
It's like homeworld but worse.
Either way I love it for the story.
So turns out I have never replayed the game on Win7. And despite looking quite good (normally) it has 8bit graphics. Which means everything looks fricked now.
Is there a known solution for this?
Turns out a quick search gives a fix that doesn't even require extra tools or something like that:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:DirectX/DirectDraw_troubleshooting
Wasn't expecting something that simple.
I tried installing this, but every time I insert to CD1 and try installing it, it tells me I need to have the Human CD (CD1) even though I already have it mounted. I tried mounting the Martian CD as well and nothing works. Anyone knows how to fix this?
Can it be the order of CD drive letters problem? Old games usually had lots of trouble dealing with optical drives that have drive letters past the first one. For example, if you have a HDD as disk C, then 2 optical drives (real or emulated) as D and E, some old games would only work at all if the CD they're looking for is on disk D.
The problem is I am using a laptop and there's already an internal HDD that's using Disk D. So I have no idea how to fix this, if there even is a way to fix this.
>and there's already an internal HDD that's using Disk D
Do you mean a DVD drive maybe? Having more than one HDD does not affect this. Don't know about new Windows versions (8 and later), but on 7 it was still possible to change drive letters.
>Do you mean a DVD drive maybe?
As in the D: Drive slot is taken by an HDD. Pic related. Sorry if I sound like a tech illiterate, I might be misunderstanding here.
That's not a problem, yes. Past D there should be an E and possibly an F too. E is most likely your built-in DVD, if your notebook has one. And then F is the non-physical DVD drive emulated by WinCDEmu. If that is how things are, you need to swap E and F, so that WinCDEmu's emulated drive is E and physical built-in DVD drive is F.
I don't have a built-in DVD drive, I have an external one which I am not using at the moment.
I did for a while have Civ 2 on E: because the game wouldn't launch without it being mounted. But I removed that and mounted War of the Worlds CD1 on E: and it still doesn't work.
I did vaguely see on some old forum someone said that War of the Worlds' CD1 only works on D:, which would be a big problem if that's the case.
>I did vaguely see on some old forum someone said that War of the Worlds' CD1 only works on D
Huh. That's rare but not unheard of. Yes, some old games did require the CD to be on D specifically. Which sucked massively for those of us who had more than one HDD or just partitioned their HDDs into several partitions. Today virtual machines solve this fairly easily, and this is probably the most cost-effective (cost meaning time and effort) solution for you.
Good idea, thank you. I'll do it through a VM. Is there a good tutorial for using a VM? Last time I used one I more-or-less did it blind with only a guide for basic installation.
From what I remember, all VM programs worth anything let you either install from a physical disk or from an image of one. The disk obviously needs to be a bootable one (which Windows installation disks are), so you either select a physical DVD drive when creating a new VM, or point it to an image which will be mounted into an emulated DVD drive. From there it should be the same as installing onto real hardware except even easier because you need no additional drivers and such.
And if the game is known to run in DOSBox it might be even simpler, with an existing step-by-step guide being available somewhere.
What is 3d objects for?
And to clarify I am using WinCDEmu to mount the War of the Worlds CD, I have an external Disk Drive but I am not using it in this case, nor right now.
Massive Assault Phantom Renaissance, turn based strategy game
Insanely terrible voice acting (Russians speaking broken English) with a plot that is essentially the Soviet-Nazi's led by Joseph Hatter versus the Democratic Not-America Free Nations Union Alliance.
But the game is actually fairly fun, with a competent (but not excellent) AI and a shit-ton of game modes and scenarios to play. The main "world war" mode is fairly unique with the players fighting over a planet to secure nations, but 1/3rd of those nations are a faction's "secret ally" that can, at any time, declare allegiance to the player and switch sides even if that nation was taken over by the enemy.
>Massive Assault Phantom Renaissance
The same studio developed Galactic Assault Prisoner of Power, it's an adaptation of Brothers Strugatskiy's novel "Inhabited Island".
It's also a wargame with day/night cycle, naval, land and aerial combat etc. There is 4 factions:
>Land of Unknown Fathers
Has a versatile rooster of units, specializes in tanks. Their infantry's morale is also heavily affected by (portable) psy-emitters.
>Island Empire
High-tech faction with marines and amphibious submarines
>Khonti
Have great artillery and aviation
>Barbarians
Lots of cheap high-morale (mutant) infantry
came to this thread to find childhood games I would play at my uncles house. I never knew the name of the games but I found a bunch of them lol
I played this game to death
Atari just bought Nightdive studios so you might see a remaster of this soon
>Atari just bought Nightdive studios
Is this good or bad?
>An ever-increasing number of older titles now entirely dependent on a closed source proprietary engine owned by Atari to run on modern systems
Atari *WAS* old enough to be fundamentally christian. I should have known they got their limelight back because of this!
>KEXengine running an RTS
Please God no...
Any of these have a great campaign? I crave a good RTS campaign. Big bonus if there's frequent plot-related voice chatter, little in-engine cutscenes and such.
Paraworld and Impossible creatures have. Paraworld even has its own modding scene whch adds previously unplayable faction etc.
play star trek armada 1 and 2. great campaigns with a good story.
I miss armada 2. It's the one game I can't get working on Linux, even with lutris/bottles 🙁
Does the gog version work on linux?
No it's the one I was trying. Its worth trying though it could be specific to my hardware or distro. I do see a lot of others with the same issue though.
The game starts and looks like it'll run fine but when it gets to the menu the whole game becomes confined to a small square at the top left of my screen. I have tried various tweaks, including changing the resolution to no avail.
I guess your last option could be using a VM with Win XP. Or try using fleet ops and the classic mod (which lets you just play A2)
Hmm a vm! That's a good idea. I have qemu all set up already for work which includes a clean windows 10 vm. Will give it a shot! Thanks anon.
You're welcome, anon! Once again, if Armada 2 doesn't work, use fleet ops and the A2 classic mod with it. That's what I do on Windows 10. I want to swap to linux some day so lemme know how the VM works!
If you end up getting fleet ops to work, here's the A2 classic mod. https://www.moddb.com/games/star-trek-armada-ii/downloads/a2-classic
recently replayed it on hard. My very first rts and first introduction into Star Trek. my 10 year old self started on a journey with that game.
I'd love to do that. I remember that first borg mission being quite tough. How is it on hard difficulty?
naa that mission is very easy even on hard. just have your ships stay inside the green nebula on green alert and assimilate passing cargo ships then send them to be dissasembled. easy as cake. now the last 2 missions are a whole other story...
This. Armada 1 & 2 have campaigns that are fully voiced, have cutscene things, etc. There's also Star Trek Bridge Commander but that isn't like a traditional rts. The GOG versions of these games should work and I suggest keeping all of the sound options like music, voices, etc enabled.
Recently I've discovered a pretty interesting game called Dawn of War(not Warhammer one), an unreleased caveman RTS by SouthPeak Interactive that got available somewhere around 2015 I believe. It's something between Stronghold and Warcraft with some weird and unique details.
You control a bunch of cavemen that you can assign roles to, like gatherers, builders, warriors etc. Inactive units can be set to thinking(global upgrades) or praying(mana for spells). Every unit has a set of stats, strength, speed, intellect and spirit, determined somewhat randomly and it can't be changed.
My favorite part is unit production. You get new units by literally breeding. Your units are divided on men and women, and you need to select one man and one woman, and build a hut for them to frick in, and they'll be producing you new units. I think parents' stats affect their children so you'd want to choose ones with the highest statline to breed, but I'm not completely sure about that as it's still pretty random and this game has basically no documentation anywhere. Other than breeding, I think the only significant difference between men and women is that men can become heroes(strong melee unit) and women priests(attacks with longrange magic, gives more mana while praying). Also units can die from old age.
Has other cool stuff like T-Rexes eating your villagers, firebreathing Moai towers, limited terramorphing, pretty nice voiceacting and more.
Though the game is old(supposed to be released in 1998) and feels unfinished, I was able to run it on Win7 without any major problems. Minor inconviniences include dumb unit AI with bad pathfinding, sounds looping and completely disappearing sometimes, little to no info about controls or how things work(throwing pots by holding ctrl).
So far I've only completed like 2/3 of the first campaign(there are 3, one for each race) so I'm sure there are things I'm yet to see, but I recommend checking it out.
>My favorite part is unit production. You get new units by literally breeding. Your units are divided on men and women, and you need to select one man and one woman, and build a hut for them to frick in, and they'll be producing you new units.
This reminds me of Saga: Rage of the Vikings, which has the same system of unit productions. One difference is that you can have units of various races under your command and nothing stopping you from paring human with centaur, dwarf with giant, troll with elf ect.. I always found it peculiar. There wasn't like a genetic stats, it was just a coin flip what race offspring will get.
Also the game had pretty dope intro:
>(there are 3, one for each race)
What races are there? Can you play like a dinosaur people or something?
There are Cro-magnon, somewhat advanced cavemen, Neanderthals, unga bungas, and lizard people.
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dawn-of-war-clo
https://www.old-games.ru/game/download/5335.html
Both links should work fine.
I haven't seen any discussion of it unfortunately, a few comments here and there at most.
Thanks anon
Got a link or something? Preferably to where I can both read discussions and find a DL link
>My favorite part is unit production. You get new units by literally breeding.
Fancy a bit of nookie?
Maybe you guys can help me. I've been looking for years for an RTS my neighbour used to have back in what must have been the early to mid 2000s. It was some kind of Warcraft II clone and neutral animals just walking around the mao featured prominently. I am not sure if they served any gameplay purpose, but I think I remember there being penguins among them, even on maps that didn't feature any snow. I've looked through abandonware sites and gog but never saw anthing that looked like what I remember.
frick yeah, I remember launching the demo as a kid just to listen to the music from the main menu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-StmWEpRPrI&list=PLBEDA9B455A583C43&index=17
>build a power plant
>Power Up - Merry Christmas !
What did they mean by this?
Blood & Magic, anyone?
(inb4 using wraiths is bad style)
Played the crap out of this back in the day. Jank as all frick, but still enjoyable. I remember like Runestone and Arbor Lodge units the best and also being annoyed that I couldn't convert more neutral creatures. Game would have improved and been more D&D with a unit leveling system though.
Most obscure game in the thread
>Players move through a series of worlds using a small number of sentient humanoids to build small bases and to stun, kill, research, and ultimately breed a variety of animals. Plants are also important, as different plants can be grown and harvested for different purposes. Players must use the various plant and animal species available to them (as well as hybrid animals) to deal with different environments, enemies, and tasks. For instance, a crab is a good armored defender, while a mule is a perfect detritus transporter. The two can be bred to form a creature that is well armored, but also suited to mule work. The more a particular species has been studied and created, the more effective future individuals will be.
Made by Bullfrog.
Also relatively rare but not as rare honorable mention to Impossible Creatures
Anyone play S.W.I.N.E.?
Thinking of picking it up but I know next to nothing about it.
I got this for free as a kid and it's got a lot of charm to it. Even on the easy campaign I remember it kicking my ass though, enemies will show up with more advanced tanks than you pretty soon so I'd say go for it if you're looking for a challenge
I remember the TTK on units being incredibly long.
World War III: Black Gold, one of my favorite rts games as a kid that I finally beat recently, it plays very similar to Earth 2100 series and usually goes on sale for extremely cheap. It's about the globe suffering from a huge shortage of natural resources in which three major powers (the US, Iraq and Russia) strive for power. Altho the US just invades Iraq, Iraq capture a nuke and erase D.C. while the Russians just fight insurgents in their country. I love this game tho.
>Altho the US just invades Iraq, Iraq capture a nuke and erase D.C. while the Russians just fight insurgents in their country
holy shit, is this where Activision got the idea for the Modern Warfare series from?
This was my first RTS when I was a kid, I didn't discover Earth series until waaaaay later and was so utterly fascinated by the idea of designing your own units or the chemical weapons to capture enemy vehicles or electronic warfare that disables unit control, shit was so cash. Or the eco base map/combat map russians had, I miss the time when older RTS games used their own little gimmicks instead of being varying degrees of starcraft clones.
Also making silly maps in the editor, for whatever reason I gave more attention to trains than anything else.
Does the Earth series have trains?
Long shot, but back when I was a lad I play a RTS that had robot factions in the early 2000s.
You had a commander bot that built the base and the factions were quality vs quantity. It came with two dises for both factions, but I can't for the life of me remember the name.
It was Z
https://store.steampowered.com/app/275530/Z/
Gruntz, a puzzle/strategy game where you move a bunch of clay golem creatures called gruntz (duh) across various map hazards and enemies. There's also a skirmish mode where the objective is to defeat the other players by getting a unit into their fort. There's evidently still a small, dedicated community, and there's a map editor for custom levels. You might require some workarounds on newer systems.
The basic resources are goo, used to make new gruntz, and tools, which comprise weapons, toys (traps used to distract enemies and sometimes make them wander into hazards) and bricks you can use to repair your fort or block certain paths. You constantly generate goo and random tools in skirmish but they have limited reserve slots, so you have to choose whether you want to keep a tool for an upcoming grunt or scrap it for something potentially better.
You have to get pre-placed resources on your own in the campaign, and can be pretty tight on timing sometimes so it's easy to softlock yourself if a specific tool user dies too early, but there is a checkpoint system and a literal suicide button that kills all your grunts if you fricked up. There are also secrets in every level.
Time to start suckin!
What is this, a grid-based StarWars RTS that isn't GB?
How the frick do I run this in Anno Domini 1011.5x2?
this was my 'cnc at home'
I've said it back then and I'll say it again: having the wells be depleteable was a mistake. Also having more faction variety wouldn't hurt either, and what exists already could do with being less subtle.
Does this count?
>41 days later
I played this game very briefly as a kid and can never remember the name of it. Thanks anon, have one of my own.
Only Germans know about Thandor
Is that any good?
That's a blast from the past.
I don't know if it is good, but for some reason there were ads about this game on Bulgarian TV. I guess some telco network was using a tournament as marketing...cannot recall.
Anyone else played this?
No idea why but it doesn't look like a real game to me at all
Yeah, I hated the difficulty as a kid. Also had in in Czech dub along with Warcraft 3, good times.
nice
32 player online was cool but i had no fricking clue what I was doing
highly recommend dark legions.
better than the old school archon/ultra games.
Act of War.
Much less obscure now than it used to be.
had plenty of fun mechanics, like capturing PoWs for extra income. Wish it followed the books a bit more, with experimental planes and that one time they massacred an entire camp of mexican immigrants
This game is REALLY weird for me, because the camera feels way off when it comes to air units. It isn't zoomed out enough, so they end up always being at the top of the screen when they are technically at the center.
I had a lot of fun with that game in LAN, one of the best games of the CnC-formula imo
Is this obscure enough? I remember everyone I knew were talking about this game non-stop back in the days... until Warcraft 3 came and steal their thunder.
While groundbreaking, Battle Realms doesn't have custom map tool like WC3 World Editor. Instead of rectifying this with Battle Realms 2, they went on to make shoddy book license LoTR game and slowly went bust.
Still don't understand why they didn't make BR 2. Money issues? Or are the devs actually moronic. Well good riddance. They remove LAN from the steam version back in 2021 citing "secruity issues" lmao.
A mix of RTS & RPG
you pay for units using milk
gotta make cows for it, but they gotta eat grass that disappears after (don't remember but I think it was growing back)
you can upgrade your units, there are also heroes
everything in medieval dark-ages slavic setting but with quite a lot of humor and a bit "sugary" style
Polanie 2 or how you dirty anglospheroids call it: Knight Shift (it's on GOG)
>Americans got some stupid cowtapult cover
>Yuros got sexy goth babe cover
Yeah, no wonder I missed this shit.
Is Fuga /vst/rategy?
I like Golem Gates for two reasons. One, the campaign AI actually knows its shit and it can be tough to win. Two, its almost like a Blame! RTS and for that alone I simp for it. If only it was just, like, more. There's not enough and it probably won't get a sequel.
>literally one of the best PG clone for java mobiles since 2006
>actually lets you to invade Poland as both German Reich and Soviet Russia
>had a DS port and a Steam remake
I honestly got no idea if it counts as obscure, just wanted to remind people that it exists
Damn, never heard of this title, and I've played tons of java strategy games. There are also lots of java strategy clones like Revival (Civ), Age of Heroes (HoMM), Townsmen (Settlers), Rise of Lost Empires (Warcraft), etc. My go to game was Oregon Trail.
Persian Wars
bump
feels like a toehoe mod or something, i love it
>Alice
I'MMMM GONNA GOOOOO
Anyone played Spellforce or Dungeons and Dragons: Dragonshard?
I have been really into hero-based rts games recently.
>Anyone played Spellforce
Or course. It is only semi-obscure. Also it got a proper 3rd game released not that long ago but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
i liked dragonshard a lot but that might be just because i'm a d&d dork and enjoyed exploring the (at the time) new eberron setting. had some similarities with the kohan series iirc
Not that anon, I've talked with a guy who recommended Dragonshard and he sad that it has this cool feature where you pick something akin to upgrade paths for units. You can either have fewer but more powerful units or more but smaller/weaker. But I think that also determines what the units can do so it's not just a pure baskets with eggs balancing game. I really should drag this game out of my backlog. I even have the CD images already.
good concepts, but each of them poorly executed
For me its Axis and Allies(2004), made by the people who made the Kohan games.
Empire Earth isn't really obscure just old and somewhat forgotten after the trainwreck that was EE 3
>made by the people who made the Kohan games.
lol I instantly recognized that interface
Yeah its basically Kohan 2 : World War 2 Boogaloo with a Risk style campaign map
Seven Kingdoms 2.
.mp4
check out Earth 2150 and 2160.
Three factions, Putin-monarchy eurasian empire, USA ran by pentagon AIs and super science and enlightened ladies from the moon.
Earth will explode so factions fight for resources to build a colossal space shuttle that will save their nation('s best elements) from inevitable fate.
Units are modular, so you can strap a heavy laser on a light tank chasis or a heavy tank chasis and maybe equip it with plasma shields or not. Same applies to buildings.
Earth 2150 is slightly better than 2160, despite being worse looking and clunkier.
Campaign in 2150 is glorious, 2160 is rather unengaging.
I really recommend this.
> Three factions
> conservative nazies
> cybernetic inhuman freaks
> utopian quasi-religious ~~*pacifist*~~ amazons
This trope just works.
Hmmmmm not really.
>Eurasian Dynasty
Ruled by tsar and military elite, definitely totalitarian, has heavy internal propaganda but it doesn't have any of racism vibes, more like fascist cult of the state.
>United Civilisied States
The humans aren't modified cybernetically, they are just amerifats who developed strong enough AIs because they were too lazy to govern by themselves, some part of the campaign focuses on (you) the player, who's either a minister of defense or some colonel, realises how deeply the state is fricked when chief pentagon AI goes rogue. Their combat units are all robots.
>Lunar Corporation
Here you are 100% right, though the "quasi-religious" part is executed through "extremely sciency" way.
More or less with some deviation from the trope.
Alright, I admit it
I know what movie you mean anon. Who do you think I am if I posted two of polish-made obscure RTS games, of course am pole myself
Also the lore for LC faction being 99,9% femoids is a subtle dab on a certain cult-classic feminist dystopia comedy film made during the PRL-era that's a little hard to get if you never seen it
Yeah, I remember watching this as a child. At the time some lewd scenes were cut from USSR version.
>Three factions, Putin-monarchy eurasian empire, USA ran by pentagon AIs and super science and enlightened ladies from the moon.
LOL no. Read the manual.
I've lost the manual more than a decade ago. Enlighten me, mister
What are those blue shields protecting from energy weaponry you can equip the vehicles with, then?
UCS is a runaway experiment in a governance using a lottery system as its basis. There the officials, elected for a short term only, relied more and more on computer systems. Eventually the computer systems became capable of running everything without human input.
The war of 2140 happened due to a mistake one of the rare programmers who still tried to improve the computer systems made.
The PC of Escape from the Blue Planet's UCS campaign is the President of UCS, as can be seen in the messages you receive in-game.
ED are remnants of staff from a strategic missile base Irkutsk III. The commanding officer, a general by the name of Siergiej Zugij, eventually became the first ED Khan. Due to population shortages and pollution they went to Mongolia and assimilated into the local population. Zugij himself has married one of the daughters of a local tribe chieftain and took a name Yaga Zi Khan. He became the leader of what was soon to be ED in 2059. He is long dead by 2150 and Vladimir II is probably his descendant (I doubt a more pure blood Mongol would have a name like that).
One of the regional commanders you receive correspondence from all the time is called Zugay Shakt. Obviously some remnants of the absorbed peoples to the west of Mongolia exist but after almost a hundred years it's one big melting pot.
Your ED character is a colonel (at first).
The story of LC starts from birth of one John Fisher in 1976. He dreamed of space travel and extraterrestrial colonies for mankind as a kid, became something of an inventor but he didn't really have the patience to do it himself. So he found 10 wealthy individuals and convinced them to finance his project. He became the head of what was dubbed Lunar Corporation in 2002. By 2014 LC has taken over NASA and in 2025 it began construction of the first orbital city.
In 2040 the work on Orbital City II was suspended due to war on the surface and everything was poured into Luna Project, the first settlement on the Moon.
Holy shit, autism. None of the verbal diarrhoea you wrote contradicts anything in his short descriptions.
With the start of the war in 2048, everyone from Orbital City I was moved to Luna and all contact with Earth was cut off. Luna was governed by 10 people on the Supervisory Board of LC, and Fisher was voted in as the first President.
After a period of strife due to dissatisfaction of living conditions (the majority of citizens were wealthy on Earth or their descendants and living arrangements on the Moon were rather harsh), things stabilized and Fisher's son, Nathan, was elected a second President. They have developed a maxim "a man's worth as an individual is based on the benefit he brings to the society". School graduation involved a test that determined future occupation deemed most beneficial to the colony.
A cavern complex that turned out to harbour an alien base, discovered in 2061. It lead to LC's now trademark anti-gravity technology. The research complex later became a city, Luna II. In 2098 study of this alien base lead to invention of magnetic shields. Initially used for protection from solar radiation for space travel and for the by then long ongoing Mars terraformation process, they were modified to protect against all kinds of weaponry and thus allowing to use much lighter and more agile vehicles. But in the first combat experiences on Earth the shields did not work as expected and this is why LC has to modify them again to protect against in-game energy weaponry.
The "sisterhood" and the general abundance of women everywhere is not explained in the manual. I only remember anons talking how that is a reference to some Polish movie.
You play as a UCS commander that was "donated" to LC along with the alien vehicle in hopes of creating an alliance.
And I really don't get how you could mix up one of the core concepts in the game where the standard chassis can't accept a heavy turret with the sole exception being UCS heavy rockets for most standard mount points.
That was only an example anon, it's autistic to pick on such detail. I don't fricking remember which chasis accepted which weapon, the point is that there is modularity.
Ok so how that deviates from UCS being Americas ran by AIs and ED being post soviet depressive military totalitarism?
With LC the manual probably fricked things up since LC in the campaigns is clearly portrayed as female dominated.
>USA ran by pentagon AI
>it goes rogue
>its name is ~~*GOLAN*~~
Aj~waj!
>The "sisterhood" and the general abundance of women everywhere is not explained in the manual.
It was explained in the polish one at least - IIRC low gravity of moon somehow made in-utero development of XY embryos super-wonky and the mortality rate of newborn male babies was like one-in-million without reaching adolescence compared to female births, so it was decided by to abandon all sexual reproduction in favour of cloning only females
It's the sequel Earth2160 that went full Sexmission in regards to LC faction lore development
>Aj~waj!
Oy-vey
>so you can strap a heavy laser on a light tank chasis or a heavy tank chasis and maybe equip it with plasma shields or not
I didn't even intend to read the rest but this is just painfully fricking wrong. And there are no plasma shields in the game. What the frick are you, a bot?
Polanie 2 / Knighshift
RTS with elements of RPG, similar to Warcraft3 in that matter, with aesthethics similar to Dungeon Keeper.
One of the units is mother in law, which makes your workers work faster (not on the pic, obviously)
played this a ton back in the day. the only resource being milk was... novel.
palisada jak ta lala
Picrel. 3D space RTS's are my favorite genre of game.
Was it any good?
Someone should to create a past bin with all the names in this thread to put in the OP
Anyway, for me it's arena wars
I hated that game
If anyone decides to do it, use rentry instead of pastebin.
I can't even recall the title now, but there was some shovelware RTS in early 00s that had you manage a gold-rush settlement. The two resources were wood you could chop and gold you could mine/pan, while having to hire gunslingers and riflemen to defend from other mining outposts.
It was fun to play but I can't recall the title for shit
A*M*E*R*I*C*A*: No peace beyond the line? Didn't ever play it but saw in stores back in the day.
>an RTS set in the Old West
>made by Germans
LOL.
>>an RTS set in the Old West
>>made by Germans
>LOL.
Germans seems to have some borderline unhealthy level of fasciation about Old West
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_May
Yeah, and ossies had a subgenre of a western of their own with Gojko Mitic bein ghe closest thing eastern bloc ever had to american action stars.
Wait till you see the shit that poles managed to pull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sat-Okh
I cannot believe this isn't Warcraft™ !
I wonder what game that was inspired by. Must be pretty subtle to not be immediately obvious.
I bought that actual years ago. It feels like the developer has been flying by the seat of his pants and has no clear vision for his game, am I wrong? He's got like half a dozen different human factions, some of which almost completely identical, and also dwarves and goblins, but only one subfaction of each of those. It just feels so aggressively half-baked.
Wait a sec, this is a ripoff of both AoE *and* WarCraft?
It was called FreeCraft before, then they got a C&D from Blizzard
This game used to be good but the bloat made it insufferable.
I was young and could never figure out how to be competent at the game. I'm assuming it is obscure but really it was only me and a friend who played computer in my area growing up so I have no way of knowing.
ok so interestingly the universe/bigbang is cuz of 2020 when a mathematician/super intellectual fabricated time and space and shaped time during dual singularity at the full stage of the infinity of time.
so like basically the earth is the way it was required to be for all people's storylines so far until some things get fixed cuz otherwise it wouldn't have existed
Didn't want to make another thread just for this question:
There's a game I remember playing with a friend (can't really ask him) and I barely remember anything about it, but I'd like to revisit it.
What I am sure of:
It had dancing sword unit(s)
It had some sort of demon (possibly flying) unit
It had units listed in rectangles at the bottom of the screen, but I don't remember if it was in some castle mode like in HOMM or if it was all the time.
What I'm not sure about:
I think units would reach high numbers (like millions and more) but there wouldn't be so many on the map
I am not 100% sure it was the same game but I remember being annoyed that I couldn't control my units properly. I was used to Starcraft and Warcraft and in that game you didn't just grab your units and right click them somewhere to move them.
The more I'm trying to remember, the less I seem to remember...
Bump also
There is a dos strategy game similar to Colonization but i dont remember it name. You start with simple Caravel and you need to establish colony. Pls help bros
Stalin vs Martians. You fight cartoony aliens with 30s soviet army and occasionaly a giant dancing Stalin.
Devs tried to do a sequel, calling it Stalin vs Martians 3. It didn't go well so they reorganized and are now making Stalin vs Martians 4 (but it is a twin stick shooter). Meme game that are plentiful nowadays but not so much back then.
boomp
Armies of Exigo
Better than Wacraft
I wonder if mods count? Remembered two playable human faction mods for Universe At War. Real swell to see them in action and surviving against the Hierarchy. Novus, and Masari.
There's this one RTS I played decades ago, there were humans and aliens, the aliens had to harvest resources from various neutral buildings scattered about the map while the Humans could recruit from those buildings, any idea what I'm thinking of?
did anyone else play pic related?
>feed your peasants
>right click
>cattle
Now that was the shit back in the day. (still pretty damn good to be honest)
The voice acting was great throughout the whole game. So full of character.
I still remember seeing the ad for this game in my PC Gamer magazine. God those were the days
Frickin demo discs were the spice of life
Owned it. It was really fun.
Yes. It's fun and I plan to re-visit it soonish.
if anyone is looking for a good wild west rts, its Westward II
if you want a caveman + dinorsaur then BC Kings is good. might need to wear nostalgia goggles idk
Anybody know an old (maybe german?) RTS game, where you controlled a group possibly moronic viking-ish settlers? Kind of reminded me of JoWood's The Nations. Every settler had their own name and I think likes and dislikes.
I remember it was a huge pain in the ass to get them to do what I wanted, especially when it came to combat. The art style was very bright and cartoony.
Cultures series maybe?
I RP'd this shit so hard. I kept track of the people, made sure that Rofl the villager gets to marry his redhead childhood friend and they get a nice house on the lakeside and he becomes a fisherman and shit.
I tried to play the game "properly" but honestly it's kinda janky and warfare is annoying.
Yeah it's been over 15 years since I last played it but I occasionally remember it for how chill it was. I don't remember it being jank but very micro intensive and tedious. Cool to play a map every week or two but finishing one or starting over after the previous one is too damn tiresome. Still one of my favourite childhood games, but it must be really bad if I noticed it even back then. Making equipment and manually making warriors sucked
goddamnit, yes! thank you anon. big love.
I've had this pic for years, only now do I bother googling it to know what it is from.
...and I guess they re-released it with improved graphic from the look of it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/840390/Spacebase_Startopia/
They made a Star Trek RTS in the TOS movie timeline. It has a very nice music by Jeremy Soule.
Never really played it because i was too young, but i fondly remember watching work bees building the structures.
I'm trying to remember some game where you don't directly micro your units, you just order where they go and what they do or something like that. Older game (at least 15 years old, maybe 20+).
Might be Majesty, it's basically the poster child for the concept of an indirect control RTS.
>the poster child for the concept of an indirect control RTS.
That's Dungeon Keeper. Majesty came out about 3 years later.
Hmm I'm honestly not sure. It's giving me the "familiar but not sure why" feeling.
I'll have to get it and try it.
Does this count?
Cant get more obscure than non-games/simulations
I wish this game got a modern clone that removes all of its jankyness, and actually made the research of colonist QoL facilities non-detrimental to the gameplay instead of the way it was originally handled due to oversimplified morale system…