RTS noob recommendations

[jamman]

Hi,

I like the idea of getting into a strategy game on my pc, but my pc is not very powerful and I'm very much a noob at strategy games in general.

Any recommendations of good and easy to get into browser strategy games or PC games would be helpful,

thanks =)

 

[General Twinkletoes]

Dawn of War is pretty casual, very easy to get into, and a lot of fun.

Age of empires/mythology series are great. My favourite is mythology. Historical battles with all sorts of fancy myth units

And then if you want something competitive you could try starcraft 1 if your computer really sucks, 2 if not, but you probably shouldn't do that if you're very new to RTS games. It's tough.

AoM and DoW are both fantastic, very fun, and very easy to get into, but don't have as much depth as starcraft. Still great, especially if you're new to the genre.

 

[CAPTCHA]

Anyone playing Red Alert 3 at the moment? I'm new to it and just played my first match.

My rank: -
Opponent rank: 12756600

Opponent brought his A game and a crushing defeat ensued. Now I don't really feel like playing against randoms.

 

[DazZ.]

Age of Empires Online is free to play and from what I've heard fixed it's pay to win issues recently.

Can't hurt to give it a shot.

 

[jamman]

I want to run starcraft 2, but my pc does not meet the minimum requirements on:

Video Card
Minimum: 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better

I have:
GeForce 6100 nForce 405

If i run it on minimum graphics requirements will I be ok?

 

[itsthesheppy]

Medieval 2: Total War is a great game that should run just fine on a middling computer. It's what got me into RTS in the first place, in fact.

 

[JWRosser]

I haven't played any particular recent RTS games, but I loved Age of Empires 1 (and the expansion packs).
If you want a more modern setting, Command & Conquer is generally a pretty good series.
Or, if you want fantasy, the Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth series is a lot of fun. Additionally, you can download mods for all of these to make the games a lot better.

 

[Pedro Russo]

One RTS that is quite scalable is Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion or Command & Conquer 3 + Kane's Wrath.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

One RTS that is quite scalable is Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion or Command & Conquer 3 + Kane's Wrath.

I just want to say Sins is a very good game but it is more of a 4x(more so in its pacing and map style) than an RTS so depending on fast paced you(The OP) wants the games I might give Sins a miss. It can be quite slow and I'm not sure I'd call it newb friendly but I wouldn't dismiss it without seeing a Let's Play or something on it to see if you like the style and pace.

Populous: The Beginning is a good but old RTS game that is a bit of a pain to run as you need to close explorer.exe. That said it is quite newb friendly. Dawn of War 1 and 2 along with the Battle for Middle Earth games can be quite newb friendly.

The only thing I would say against them is in DoW 1 playing skirmish you need to get used to teching up(researching upgrades so you can build more buildings and units and upgrade exist units) quite early as the computer gets vehicles relatively early on almost always. It does follow a more Traditional RTS structure. Online is non existent for this game.

DoW 2 does not and is almost exclusively focused on units, territory control and how you use them as opposed to building an economy with a self built base. Also the online versus players is usually quite fast paced.

BFME games are also good but against the comp at higher levels you need to be expecting and early and constant rush of a ridiculous amount of troops.

Edit Also the person below me reminded me of the CoH games and I will also recommend those games as they are quite good and easy to get into. Similar style of play as DoW 1.

 

[sextus the crazy]

company of heroes relative slow pace and good campaign make it good for new players. Also, it still looks beautiful after 6 years. shouldn't be to taxing on your computer, either.

http://www.videogamer.com/pc/company_of_heroes/system_requirements.html

 

[Aeshi]

Multiwinia is a pretty basic (and cheap) RTS that you might want to look at, you can get the demo off of Steam if you have it.

 

[G32420NL]

was going to suggest supreme commander forged alliance but that is a heavy game, really open and easy to get into though. same for world in conflict but again: reasonably recent specs required.
i'm afraid company of heroes isn't going to be a pleasant experience on a 6600gt, let alone 6100

mm, well like someone already suggested, command and conquer.
Age of Mythology is fun but may take some time to get into.

 

[skywolfblue]

I want to run starcraft 2, but my pc does not meet the minimum requirements on:

Video Card
Minimum: 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better

I have:
GeForce 6100 nForce 405

If i run it on minimum graphics requirements will I be ok?

Probably not.

I could recommend Starcraft 1 + Broodwar. They're ancient so they'll play on anything. But the pixelated graphics on HD screens can be ugly. While the story is awesome the gameplay is pretty boring, no unique or really whacko mission objectives. And the mechanics are really outdated by now (the pathing AI is terrible, control groups are limited to only a few units).

It's one of the big "classics" of RTS, but not nearly as "new guy friendly" as SC2, so your mileage may vary.

[edit]I forgot to mention: You might want to try Homeworld and Homeworld 2 as well. They're pretty intuitive with a really compelling story and awesome ships.

Only sticky part for new folk would be the fact that your fleet carries over from mission to mission so if you beat a mission but most of your ships got wiped out you might not be able to beat the next.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Total Annihilation with it's first expansion pack: The Core Contingency. Runs on somewhat every pc.

 

[Dectomax]

Jagged Alliance 2 is pretty damn awesome - make sure you get the 1.13 mod for it too - adds a huge amount of items to the game.

 

[direkiller]

I want to run starcraft 2, but my pc does not meet the minimum requirements on:

Video Card
Minimum: 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better

I have:
GeForce 6100 nForce 405

If i run it on minimum graphics requirements will I be ok?

you have 1gig of ram built into the card?
if so geforce 6 series should do just fine

if its a on-board graphics i would not even try though

Edit:

Recomandations Relic are RTS gods so Dawn of war or Company of Heroes

Sins of a solar Empire would probably just run on your comp and is not a bad game if you don't mind long games

Total war as well

 

[GundamSentinel]

I'd recommend Age of Mythology or Warcraft 3 (plus its expansion, the Frozen Throne). Both colorful, vibrant games that aren't too difficult to learn. They're the games that brought me to strategy games and I really enjoyed them. Fun, memorable campaigns and good unit choice.

I'd say Homeworld as well, because it's just a great RTS that hasn't aged too badly, but compared to AoM and WC3 it's pretty tough (the mechanics not as much, but the campaign certainly is).

 

[Rtoip]

My personal favourites are Age of Empires 3, Age of Mythology, Command & Conquer series (apart from 4 which completely misses the point; 3+KW would be the best I think, but maybe you would like some of the older titles). As earlier recommended Dawn of War 1 is quite good.

Personally I don't like the territory control, micromanaging clickfest type of game-play (like DOW 2), I prefer to gather resources, tech and build (Age of ..) or roll ungodly amounts of tanks across the map (C&C). It's probably impossible outside of casual game anyway, but I don't really like the heavily competitive play in RTSes (that's why I don't like Starcraft even though it would fit the base building kind of RTS).

There are far fewer RTSes than you might think and most of them quite old already. Practically nothing gets released now.

 

[The_Lost_King]

Warcraft 3 was what got me really interested in rts's. My first rts was wc2 but I love wc3 plus with the map editor multiplayer is really fun.