Your favorite jewel of Real Time Strategy Game

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

Age of Mythology! Unleash the Kraken on your enemies!!
Mwahahahahahaahahaa...
*ahem*
It's pretty good fun

I loved the part where the siege of Troy was won by your handful of 12-headed Hydras while all the Greek heroes where playing table games at their basecamp.
And the Laser Crockodiles with their UberPharaohChuckNorrisRebornClone was quite refreshing as well...

 

[maddness666]

Starcraft is vastly over rated. In my opinion anyway.

The true jewel in the crown of real time strategy is Total Annihilation.

 

[Gabanuka]

Age of Mythology for me. One of my first PC games and its still fucking awesome, I still play it occasionally, mainly just so I can say this

 

[Arina Love]

Ground Control 2 one and only RTS i played for over 25 hours total. Still think it's best rts i played.

 

[Killertje]

If you like Age of Empires, but want more upgrades you should check out Empire Earth. It's basically AoE, but you begin in the stone age and end in the future. There are around 12 ages and technically it's possible to use nuclear bombers on someone who has just invented the crossbow.

Also don't even touch Empire Earth 2 and 3, they both suck.

 

[Eckhart Vlaming]

Age of empires 2!! Warcraft 3 (because of all the user made content on battlenet, the normal gameplay is meh)

 

[rockhard556]

warcraft 3 for all the community maps

 

[GundamSentinel]

homeworld

You'll probably get in trouble for a one-word post, but yeah, I'd say Homeworld as well.

Great gameplay, great story, great music, great atmosphere (loved the battle chatter), great ship designs (Kadeshi multibeam frigate FTW). It was a game that just worked.

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

[...]There are around 12 ages and technically it's possible to use nuclear bombers on someone who has just invented the crossbow.
[...]

This does sound like fun. Not for the crossbow unit of course but they don't get the joke anyway (the probably only get enlightned).

Back on Topic:

Ground Control?
Populous 2?

 

[Da Orky Man]

Most fortuitous fellow forum-(ab)users I'm not talking about the "best" RTS game you know. I don't want to read Starcraft 200349 times here.
Personally I like the RTS-genre in general. I'm quite into it and thus I want to know If I missed some great games that are special and deserve mentioning...

Let me give an example...
I think Supreme Commander is worth noting. Especially for the late endgame Superunits that really drain the ressource and are a very fun to command. Like the huge green Flying Saucer with Independence Day dumbassobliterationyoufoolgotpawned Ray of Death or the superduperhalfwayacrossthemaprange Artillery Siege Cannon. Oh on a side node, huge Ships with Spiderlegs and an armored Tank that is a moving Vehicle Factory are nice too.

I never liked the flying saucer thing. Sure, it could dish out damage, but it had to be literally flying on top of the target first. And it was about as tough as a sparrow with brittle-bone disease against AA fire.
And the Ultra-long Artillery Death Thing is just ridiculous.

Anyway, I'd like to nominate two. First, Age of Empires 2. Simply for being a brilliant, deep strategy game that got me into gaming as a whole.
Secondly, Homeworld. A space-strategy game, the first to do fully 3D movement and combat. Brilliant storyline, hauunting atmosphere, and the third mission has one of the saddest scenes in gaming history. Sadder than FF7.

 

[lRookiel]

Its definitely gotta be Populus, Sacrifice or Starcraft.

All really fun games, also sacrifice was underrated and not known enough.

 

[weker]

Nup, it was born out of a RTS for sure, but DotA games have more in common with games like Magika, monday night combat, bloodline champions and even WoW Arena than to SC. I mean, you can say exactly the same, top down view, almost identical controls, possibility of multiple unit control, hundreds of tactical choices out of half of those and they are certainly not RTS.

I hate to say something as vague as this, but in this case is about the feeling, for example, portal and half life 2 were almost the same in every aspect but in the feel, first person keyboard + mouse games with guns, with some physics puzzles and enemies shooting you, but they are not nearly the same genera. In this case you can't tell a RTS fan that DotA games feel the same as the latter, at least i will never see it that way; at any rate for me DotA are arena based games with leveling and items.

"nup...than to SC"
I assume you think I meant that MOBA is solely an RTS, but what I mean by sub genre is it's not one of the main key genres, like horror, or shooter. I would not classify Magicka as I don't feel the game allows counters for strategies and doesn't fully allow players to experiance as vast a range of tactics as other RTS, as it doesn't have any focus on map control to the extent that SC has or LoL.
I think I must have mislead you by not separating the first sentence from the rest of the paragraph, as I switched topic from MOBA, to solely about LoL.

"I mean...not RTS"
I would call both Blood line a RTS as well, Magicka leans on it a bit. WoW share some likeness in terms of tactics choice, but doesn't propose enough alternative and doesn't have the focus on zone control. Monday Night Combat I would call a Tactical shooter and possibly add a /MOBA.

"I hate to say ... see it that way;"
Portal and Half life are not good example, as portal works around puzzle solving, while Half life's main focus is combat albeit with a little puzzle solving on the way, but not to the same extent portal is.

"at least i will never see it that way" Are you trying to end the discussion, as posting something like this makes it seem your attempting to kill the convo DEAD .

 

[SidingWithTheEnemy]

[...]
Anyway, I'd like to nominate two. First, Age of Empires 2. Simply for being a brilliant, deep strategy game that got me into gaming as a whole.
Secondly, Homeworld. A space-strategy game, the first to do fully 3D movement and combat. Brilliant storyline, hauunting atmosphere, and the third mission has one of the saddest scenes in gaming history. Sadder than FF7.

In the same way you couldn't get into Supreme Commander, I couldn't get into Age of Empires II. The interface was too clunky and the unit commands were just unfit for my strategic playing.

I watched mission 3 on Youtube, have played Homeworld 2 a lot of years ago. The classical music is really powerful, It's a shame few Games make use of it anymore...

 

[bz316]

The Command and Conquer series. Primarily Red Alert 2. The original Command and Conquer games revolutionized the genre, but it was Red Alert 2 that not only expanded the tactical depth of the series but also added a kind of B-movie charm that made it a tad more light-hearted than previous installments

 

[FPSfanatic]

You probably already know Company of heroes, but if you haven't played it I'm sorry do you want a hug? you missed an awesome game. I would definitely toss it out as a great strategy, earned alot of awards and still has great graphics if your into that. Supreme commanders another good one, supcom2 got alot of flak for changing it up, but I enjoy. makes your units relevant, no matter how late game it gets.
another one I enjoy is total war shogun 2, its got this civ deal where you build up your setup in a turn based mode, but when combat comes a knocking you go rts style. it really gets enjoyable, I've loled so many times at horses crashing into infantry and sending them flying about 20, only for them to get right back up.

 

[vivalahelvig]

Warcraft 3, god i love that game. Wish i could find the disk.

 

[redisforever]

Total Annihilation is good and original. Armies of 500 units each battling each other all at once. Awesome.

Also, I personally love Red Alert 2, mainly because the cinematics are so cheesy and fun.

 

[Cipher1]

End War and Conflict Zone while both weren't exactly smash hits they certainly played quite well on console which was really surprising for an RTS.

 

[tunderball]

I was a massive fan on Empire Earth back in the day.
It was a suprisingly deep RTS with a huge amount of diversity in the way you played as you progressed through the ages. The campaigns were also a real challenge and very interesting.
I couldn't believe how much I loved this game since I bought it for £1.50 about 8 years ago and I still play it now and again.