What are some games that are basically a bit of RTS and a bit of city building? Where you can play for hours against the AI just doing your sim city stuff, but it's not outright a city builder? If money runs out from the map in an hour, that game is pretty much out.
Games that I played:
-Stronghold Crusader: pretty much exactly what I wanted
-Supreme Commander: one of the best examples. infinite money from metal mines, shield domes are comfy, possibility for long range strikes from your base, etc. These two games are really the only near-perfect matches.
-Empire Earth 2: unfortunately most of the campaign missions are timed and not comfy, but skirmish can be fun
-AI War Fleet command: very unique game. was great fun at first, but then got repetitive and boring fast
-Age of Empires 3: unlike AoE2, this one lets you generate infinite resources with buildings (except trees)
-Rimworld: loved it but the ratio of combat to town management is a bit off, looking for shorter games now
-Evil Genius: combat is just too simplified
-Settlers series: same
-Dawn of War: great games with infinite resources, but base building is just too simple
-Battle for Middle Earth: infinite resources, but again after you built a few buildings the sim city part is done
-Perimeter: the design is really close to what I want. unfortunately in the campaign almost every mission is timed, so you can't really sit back and turtle at all
-Black and White 2: RTS is just too simplified
-C&C series, RA, Tiberian Sun: bases can look cool with walls, but money runs out and then AI is basically dead.
-Homeworld series: loved the mobile fortress theme, unfortunately resources run out fast
>Supreme Commander: one of the best examples
Hm, I thought you have to extensively capture points to gain resources to win otherwise your enemy would overwhelm your turtle base.
Nah vanilla AI is moronic, you can turtle initially and outproduce AI by building power and mass generators even if you completely give up on map control.
Depends on the map, really. Some of the skirmish maps (especially user created) are turtle friendly and most of the resources are near the starting points.
You can turtle against the AI easily.
Turtling against a human player is suicidal, they'll quickly gain a colossal economy advantage over you. But the AI is dumb as shit.
Don't listen to losers on Ganker. While you do need to capture territory, a turtle can quite often win in supcom by creeping outward from their base(s), taking reclaim from failed attacks to increase defenses amd territory. A destroyed defensive structure or unit on a line that holds can be reclaimed for 80% its cost, and you get 80% of the metal the enemy just smashed headfirst into your line. Just need to remember that turrets are meant to supplement a defensive force not be your primary defense. You still need loads of units to turtle, just keep em close so you can recycle and be scouting so you can be ready for whatever the enemy plans on cracking you open with.
The enemy brings resources to your doorstep, huh. I guess that's one way of mitigating one of the biggest disadvantages of turtling.
Maybe try Rise of Nations? The AI will harass you a bit early, but a good strategy against the AI is to focus heavily on city-building (about 4 or 5 cities worth of full econ buildings) and research. There are three ways to win: have 70%+ of the map within your national borders, having a sufficiently higher number of wonders than your opponent, and capturing the enemy capital. I would suggest not putting the ultimate age as the final one as you learn the mechanics because getting hit with nuclear ICBMs when you're not ready is no fun.
Late game you get that SupCom sort of deal where you produce units infinitely.
NTA but Rise of Nations is really fun for that, yeah. The only issue I've experienced is that at some point the ages seem to pass by way too quickly due to the way it's balanced if you turtle and optimize your economy you blow past later ages as the only thing slowing you down at that point is research time.
Also some minor text file editing might be in order to disable the more unfunny mechanics like Doomsday Clock or Missile Shield.
Yeah the balance of the economy is weird. You start out at a reasonable pace, then you need to multitask like a motherfricker for a while, after which you just keep pressing tab and clicking upgrades in the right order until you have infinite money. This makes things like plunder resources feel a bit weird. They're a drop in the ocean once you start raiding for real.
I really *really* like how villagers aren't lazy morons in it. That they'll find vacant workers slots by themselves is such a blessing when you're building shit.
im pretty sure you could just click off nukes in the game setup options, no need to remove the final age
Maybe Total Annihilation derivative games? Zero-K or Beyond All Reason? They are like SupCom
Sins of a Solar Empire, Earth 2150 and its derivatives, Company of Heroes, Warlords Battlecry, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Age of Mythology, Warrior Kings: Battles, perhaps some purely defensive games like Creeper World series, X-Morph: Defense, Mindustry, and Kingdom Two Crowns.
BAR is great with defenses. TA: Kingdoms is underrated and worth mentioning too. Also, Rusted Warfare.
>Earth 2150
No, defences are ass in general and even in EftBP if the enemy has access to artillery it'd be over anyway. Heavy tanks are just too good, plasma is OP as frick, air chassis with rockets can easily overwhelm defensive structures one by one due to packing more firepower into the same space and return to get repaired before they are blown up.
And if we're going into TMP territory it's just "lol enjoy eating tactical nukes if you turtle" kind of deal.
All that on the huge assumption you weren't somehow wiped out by 75% armour enemy vehicles in the early game.
I got wiped out by ED mine layers with machine guns early game. Hundreds of them. Swarms that covered the ground far as I could see.
Strange. Probably some new patch messing with balance once again. Back in the day ED's starting tank chassis had more effective HPs than anything else of theirs and 105mm cannons definitely dealt more damage than MGs. Cannons do run out of ammo quicker but that initial burst of damage you get is usually enough.
Also minelayers used to be 500 credits versus 300 for tanks. With machnieguns 200 vs. 300 for cannons.
Ah the Palmer tank, yeah those were cool. I remember playing around with them in the demo.
>Lights on/off
>Upgraded palmers come with dual cannons
>Originally manufactured palmers still their single cannon and didn't just automatically grow another gun
Very cool. I think it's maybe I was so shit at multiplayer that the other guy just decided to meme strat to kill me. I did that in c&c ra2 one time. Other guy barely expanded, I had the whole map and I just swarmed the guy with infantry and won.
palmers come with dual cannons
I was recently reminded via an old guide I've apparently saved for some reason (nostalgia?) at some point that double-barreled stuff does not translate to 2x damage. For everything except regular rocket launchers and UCS plasma, at least in EftBP.
Fricking plasma OP as shit -_-
I used to dislike UCS for being so broken. Then I played TMP where they get AA plasma and AtG plasma on fliers. While LC only got their okay electro and sonic AtGs carried over, and ED got frick all. And UCS also got cannons because reasons.
Christ yeah the AA plasma gun was fricking ridiculous lol. If I remember correctly though it can only be mounted on this weird bug shaped chassis. And buildings as well I suppose. At least there was no dual heavy plasma jaguar with plasma AA.
Yeah the quad cannons, that was pretty random. I defo remember wondering what the ED had going for them after UCS got that. Ultimately I concluded ED still had the ED Day 3 soundtrack. And lasers were still pretty solid. Hopeless vs buildings but melted units.
Spiders, yes. Probably Salamanders too, they're the kind of unit that gets all the weird turrets.
Aren't Jaguars only 50% armor?That side standard turret isn't worth the 25% armor, IMO. Also they're slower than Panthers.
>Hopeless vs buildings but melted units.
No, you just need enough lightbulbs going at it at the same time. I think two upg2 heavies with upg2 standard laser on top for each does the job albeit slowly. But since we're talking heavy tanks now, i.e. 75% armor, then you might as well send 10 of them and watch enemy buildings pop only a little slower than enemy units.
Ah Salamanders yeah those are the bug things I mean. Spiders could mount the AA? Didn't know that, cool!
I remember that 25% armour too, I think they upped the armour to 75% in the moon project. I remember those ultra heavies not being a straight upgrade originally because I went with Khrushchev tanks mostly over Urals because of exactly that. But later I remember them getting that 75% armor and I decided to build only the ultra heavies. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part I could be wrong lol.
It's a shame we don't see fun/interesting mechanics like earth 2150 lasers anymore. Lasers doing 0 damage but they increase the temperature of things which pop when they get too hot.
It was just a guess about spiders. I've only started replaying EftBP and haven't replayed either for a long time so I don't remember TMP tech tree very well.
Yeah, and capturing being enabled by first disabling something is pretty much unheard of as well. Shame LC's electro destroys a unit quicker than it disables.
LC don't even have a means of capturing disabled stuff.
They got a "building grabber" in TMP, which I'm pretty sure is just a regular repairer so it should be able to capture disabled enemy units and structures. Really strange how TMP fixed almost everything wrong with LC, barely did anything for ED (even though it was mostly fine), and made UCS even more broken.
In Spellforce 1 you're forced to turtle because the AI always starts at near max capacity and usually out levels you. You also have to kill enemy scouts or build in a place they can't find you, because if they report your base too early it's GG. The AI will eventually notice it's scouts are missing and start invading. They still ramp up the invasions as the level progresses too.
It gets absurd in the expansions, though. You don't even get towers in the beginning, so you need to get really creative with how you're going to defend your base without running out of resources.
I remember having to literally build towers to the enemy base to beat levels as this game went on. Shit was so hard. And it would only get harder if you didn't finish the level early.
I remember almost getting to that point but never quit being there. I never played the 2nd expansion, though. In every single level my strategy was to just turtle, hoard resources all game, make an army of entirely the strongest unit (maybe some ranged) and then blitzkrieg one of the enemy bases.
>pic
>You don't even get towers in the beginning, so you need to get really creative
I don't remember the expansions much, but as long as you have PC the ubertank and frickton of priests healing him, you can spend everything else on whatever attack force you want. I, too, fell for the tower meme at first. White hands I do remember having some of, true. Not sure why. Probably they still had enough range to reach the PC or maybe could keep healing the priests when they're low on mana due to using other spells.
I was a healer tank on the first expansion. It wasn't enough without kiting. I distinctly remember a level where they shove 2 golems or ogres that are both higher level than you. There were no priests on most of these levels you start as dark races.
Are you me? This whole post resonates with me.
I used to spend ages building "superbases" in some of these games. I still have the save files from some of them although doubt they'd work due to version incompatibilities.
Tib sun was comfy for breeding viceroids.
>Tib sun was comfy for breeding viceroids.
It was a strange feeling reading about so many other people doing this as well. I thought I came up with something unique as a kid.
Same lol, it was unique within my friend group though and I'll bet it was unique within yours.
Why did you guys never play the game? Was it lack of a PC or did you just prefer drawing?
Back in the 90s I was a child and my parents had a Mac. We got like a monthly shareware cd which had demos for stuff on it and cnc was one of them I think.
I made a ton of WC II custom maps though, usually just sprawling tower defense-esque human cities.
I was banned from playing games until I was in Highschool
>Same lol, it was unique within my friend group though and I'll bet it was unique within yours.
I only had one friend who played TS. He was the one who introduced me to it and lent me the disc, so I felt like a genius when I came up with and I showed him visceroid farming.
I got your autism beat. I never played any CnC game as a kid apart from the original demo. I would use graph paper at school and plan out bases in a game I never fricking played.
Frick, i even tried to play a scratch built pen and paper RotJ era Star Wars game with some friends in grade school. Glad I got better after that.
>I would use graph paper at school and plan out bases in a game I never fricking played.
Oh my feels. I was also like this as a kid. Reading pc gaming magazine over and over...
>I would use graph paper at school and plan out bases in a game I never fricking played.
I did this too. I didn't even have friends who played PC games. I just visited a parents friend's house and their kid showed me a level editor in a game. I didn't even know what the name of the game was but would draw out all sorts of levels based on what I remembered.
>Oh my feels. I was also like this as a kid. Reading pc gaming magazine over and over...
Me but Nintendo power.
It’s meme autism but not real non functioning relationship autism. I would love to understand where it comes from though.
cleaned out boxes from my dad’s
notebooks that look like excel spread sheets done with ruler and pencil
>>I tracked the imagined recruitment, loses, and resources of the Rebels v Empire
>>DBZ power levels from fight to fight
and invented stats for 700+ pro wrestling movies
>>I was 9-12 years old
Apparently I really liked derivatives. I loved the change in numbers and the reversal of smaller numbers beating bigger number if they had a better growth rate over time.
Today I love strategy and resource management games.
Good thing to know i wasnt the only one.
I remember playing against my little brother and making a big fricking walled off supervillain base that couldn't be penetrated because he was too slow to do anything and only used 1 harvester. I wouldn't attack him and would instead try to kill him by breeding an army of visceroids in his excess tiberium and watching him fight for his life against them.
Lmfao absolutely based.
>1 harvester
My friends were the same, took them ages to make the connection between more harvesters is more money.
My game
It's basically Stronghold "Siege That!" mode. No timer but a resource limit.
But you eventually come back to your old castles and build over them.
A major chunk of the RTS playerbase was like that I'd say.
The more casual players who tried to build cool bases, got stomped, tried city builders, got bored, and abandoned the genre.
>The more casual players who tried to build cool bases, got stomped, tried city builders, got bored, and abandoned the genre.
I always had an itch for something that is a mix of RTS combat and also city building. It's always either one or the other, and both genres are pretty boring after a while. Closest thing I got was Dwarf Fortress, but even then if you start stomping too hard you stop getting invaded.
Factorio scratched that particular itch for me. It gets pretty hectic with the "rampant ai" mod.
The bugs weren't interesting enough to keep me hooked. In Dwarf Fortress you had a variety of enemies and could engineer clever ways to get rid of them. Plus some dropped loot. Even the shit tier "goblinite" could be melted down and made into starting armor or stuff to sell. In Factorio it just comes down to make sure your turrets get bullets or your lasers have enough energy.
The only real interesting thing I did with Factorio's combat was managing my pollution cloud by strategically building stuff in a way that the trees would absorb most of the pollution and wiping out enemies that would become a nuisance later.
Yeah they're not particularly varied.
I still had fun cooking up somewhat automated ways of mass extermination.
>10 Spidertrons set up a small outpost in the middle of biter territory
>Has train station with flamethrower turrets and walls
>Supply train is auto called to bring supplies and oil for the turrets
>Once oil reaches 50% full a 4-16 artillery train is automatically called in
>1600 shells of pure death delivered to everything in range
It's a sight to behold.
I always had this dream of a game that's something between Transport Tycoon Deluxe and Blitzkrieg.
Or like, maybe W&R:SR and Wargame. Essentially a total war simulator.
>A major chunk of the RTS playerbase was like that I'd say.
The more casual players who tried to build cool bases, got stomped, tried city builders, got bored, and abandoned the genre.
That's pretty accurate.
I used to be like that but then I played deserts of kharak and actually had a blast playing the campaign and some AI skirmishes until I was able to beat 2 hard AIs at once.
>The more casual players who tried to build cool bases, got stomped, tried city builders, got bored, and abandoned the genre.
Me except I just went back to single player RTS and never played city builders
RTS was a whole package where you had a bunch of things to do as you handled base building, resource collection, unit training, research, exploration, defense, offense, spatial planning, transport, medivac, ammo supply...
If you liked doing only some of these activities, you now have a much broader selection of games that only have the stuff you want and typically expanded with more depth (or simplified for a more relaxed feel) so there's little reason to go back to plain RTSes which now have to solidify their position as competition-oriented games.
I think casuals like me enjoy all of those things in combination, but put more emphasis on the city building/resource gathering/army building aspect over the "win the game ASAP" aspect. Obviously people playing online are gonna do just that, and there's no real way to make a separate game mode that somehow enforces the casual playstyle. So casualgays need to stay on single player, period. The only problem with that I see is that new RTS game design (like AoEIV) focuses much more on the competitive aspect for MP games and don't really consider the unprofitable casualgays and their single player experience. Keep in mind AoEII was developed assuming most people are gonna play single player against AI even if they play MP through LAN or MSN Game zone as had been the norm with RTSes at that point. Which isn't the case anymore
Indeed. The whole "win the game asap" is fricking boring to me. I remember hosting 2v2s on c&c generals on a big 8 player map which had a shitload of resources. I would get crap from some players because "it's not a 4 player map". These are the frickers who would almost always try to rush with a Jeep/heli and a few rocket guys, fail, then rage quit.
The big long epic battles were the fun part for me. Quick rushes suck. I think supcom has some nice rules that can be enforced to tailor the game to a slower build up playstyle.
Turtling is just a reaction a coping mechanism for being bad at multitasking.
I don't want to simulate my job when playing vidya
tbqh eco-ing up is my coping mechanism for being bad at multi-tasking. I will fight for ground, and I will slowly lose it, but as long as I'm managing my economy more efficiently than my opponent than typically I will eventually be fielding forces too overwhelming for him to beat, even with the greater combat losses and gradual loss of territory.
Doesn't work against people who can develop their economy equally as well but still multi-task, of course, but those are rare.
I honestly dont think this exists. Stronghold? Used to love that game until i met someone who asiaticclicked the frick out of it and never built bases and was extremely good and we used to play online. I realized i wasnt playing the game "right" and if i wanted to be good it didnt actually have much to do with any kind of defensive structure.
>C&C series, RA, Tiberian Sun: bases can look cool with walls, but money runs out and then AI is basically dead.
I used to leave my ps1 on overnight to let ore regrow with my impenetrable megabases and wake up in the morning to jump-start the ai using spies to show what they were building, then forcing them to sell unnecessary buildings until they got a new ore harvester and start the game up again.
They Are Billions. If the base game is too slow/fast, chinks love making convoluted tower defense maps.
>stronghold
I wish there were games like this but you have to build a beautiful city instead but also be able to defend it and go to war against the enemy town
Or maybe like a turn based game like TW where you can build your city on your turn but you only get resources each turn or whatever
Riftbreaker
Every time I play this game I get to the volcano planet and quit because of the cancerous meteor showers
They destroyed cultivators, still kinda annoyed.
Apart from that it's incredibly simple. Fun enough but if you want any sort of depth, this ain't it.
Weapons are fun to use and watching swarms attack your solid gunwalls is comfy.
What did they do to cultivators?
I'm just kinda bummed they never figured out how to overlap fluid pipes...
what do you mean destroyed cultivators?
my only problem was, that on the main map my base would spazz out and I would need to reset it, cultivators included. if you build optional bases the cultivators work perfectly fine
Turtlescape. Upgrade your shell. Use foliage and natural hollows as cover. Out-wait your enemies through patience and determination.
although it's old as frick , Utopia
Anno series. Most anons will recommend Anno 1800 but I feel like 1404 is just fine if you're playing by yourself.
>-Empire Earth 2: unfortunately most of the campaign missions are timed
WHYYYYY--!?
Dungeon Keeper 1
Dungeon Keeper 2
>Dungeon Keeper 1
Defences are powerful but either deadly to your own minions, or still weaker than high-level minions of your own.
>Dungeon Keeper 2
Defences are ass.
You get breached in both anyway.
What about Settlers 7 Rise of an empire?
Lots of building.
BAR: Beyond All Reason
Even when nukes come out you can keep tanking them with anti nukes for an hour
>Rimworld
You can definitely mod the game to be vastly more about base building, but I understand that finding that balance is a bit of a pain to figure out, especially with every major DLC added.
creeper world 3/4. Building resources are infinite, some campaign missions have time constraints, but there's a ton of single scenario maps and cw4 even has daily missions which turn into a long buildup if you don't rush.
and whoever else mentioned Creeper World, CW4 is the epitome of cozy. most maps are a war of attrition but once you get a level initially set up you can just take your time. very satisfying game
CW4's penultimate campaign mission was a massive pain, but apart from that it's definitely the most chill Creeper World
I love playing Creeper World... up to the point in every single mission where I've clearly reached an equilibrium and will inevitably win without a single surprise but lots of slog.
Because the creep never gets any stronger, after all the intervalls have fired.
Creeper World 4
Thread's full of gigachads, but my Black folk how could you forget Rise Of Nations: Rise Of Legends?
Oh yeah that was the shit. I remember how incredibly cool those bases/cities looked back then all I wanted to do was just build a massive city in every game. Some missions took me literal hours to complete because I wanted to build stuff and create huge deathstack armies.
>Chill out turtling like frick with a massive uberbase spanning the entirety of the map
>unit caps
>game slows down after X amount of items on the map
Rimworld.
I like this playstyle against AI and I do this in American Conquest.
>most resources come from mines which need to keep being upgraded to increase production BUT never run out
>forests are also infinite
>infinite population as long as you can keep building the houses
>garrisoning units in buildings makes them into little bunkers your soldiers shoot out of
>long-range artillery lets you bomb the enemy before they even get to your base
>no walls, defensibility depends on the killzones you set up for the AI with bunker buildings, soldiers and artillery
>huge map and large territory to control to keep your mines from being captured
Just a good concept of a game all around.
Anno maybe? Depends on the game but RTS elements are very light and usually you just sit around and build your city. In Anno 1800 you build a city and then build some coastal defenses and ships to defend your trade routes/islands.
M.A.X., at least in skirmish mode. More of a base builder than a city builder, but technically infinite resources, virtually infinite research, an absurd number of buildings and units, ect... AI is utterly braindead on any level and will just throw a few scattered units against your defenses, leaving you to build forever. Plays better in turnbased mode than RTS mode though.
I wish this game wasn't engine-level broken. I'm still so mad.
it has a memory leak, yeah. If I recall correctly the GOG version ships with a memory extender or something but it's obsolete, you can strip it off and put a better one on and play without crashes. Don't remember any details or urls, sorry, it was years ago when I worked it out. Getting the game to run properly was more fun than playing the game.
Maybe you can fiddle with DosBox settings too.
Rise of Nations allows you to turtle up to a point. Play as the Russians - they're made for turtling. Use light cavalry to destroy enemy supply units and have the increased attrition rate on home territory kill the rest off. The caveat is that this works until planes, cruise missiles, and nukes enter the picture. At that point you need to be proactive with your military since you can be targeted from a huge range. And while you can defend against planes, cruise and nuclear missiles will still hit. It also lacks walls so a mobile defense will be needed at all times, static defenses are not that good and can be outranged by artillery which the AI always builds.
Cossacks 1/3 let you build very powerful towers and walls (until the enemy gets mortars anyway), but you will need to expand for mines. Although the market game is insane, you can sell food and wood and not need mines against an AI.
Just play Stronghold, why are you autismos always overthinking the most inane shit
You know you're in /vst/ right???
Because he already played Stronghold, are you moronic?
>are you moronic
not him but yes i am
Did anyone manage to get into Stronghold sequels?
It feels like the first game and Crusader have the gameplay down just right and the rest of the games feel a bit meh.
Mindustry
Thanks for recommending Creeper World 4.
It pretty much feels like a clone of Perimeter that I played before, except that it's comfy and lets you build without rushing you with time limited missions, which fixes the biggest problem I had with that. Great game.
Majesty Gold HD.
Trust me, it's awesome.
I really couldn't get into it. Econ feels bad, there are no real defenses and your town is completely exposed with monsters rampaging through it, plus the campaign has some bad difficulty spikes.
Is there any reason to play Beyond all Reason over Supreme Commander?
They're different games but I guess performance?
>They're different games
It's literally a clone of SupCom with nerfed T3/TX, fewer factions and no mod support