Recommend me a PC RTS

Q

Quartz-1

Supreme [H]ardness
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May 20, 2011
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Origin / EA have again bollixed C&C3 for me, and really the time has come to move on to another, more modern, Real Time Strategy game. So, please recommend me one. I'm primarily interested in playing against the AI rather than against other people. Definitely not looking for a MOBA. It should have a good campaign to teach me all the units.

Supreme Commander doesn't seem to like my PC for some reason. I'm not interested in Anno 2070 due to Ubisoft's DRM - unless they've removed it, of course - and I prefer a more combat-oriented game anyway.

Is there no alternative to Starcraft?
 
Some of my favorite RTS games of all time:

Age of Empires II (and the HD Steam remake)
SupCom 1, FA and 2
Warcraft 3
Rise of Nations
Company of Heroes (I haven't had a chance to play #2 yet)
SC 2
Rome and Rome II
 
Company of Heroes 2 is pretty solid now. Still prefer CoH1 over CoH2 though. The AI is very challenging in both games.
 
I've read Fantasy Wars is pretty good but I haven't had a chance to try it,though it's an older game. Also, Spellforce 2 is really good, but again it's older and doesn't have widescreen support.
 
MrGlobe said:
Some of my favorite RTS games of all time:

Age of Empires II (and the HD Steam remake)
SupCom 1, FA and 2
Warcraft 3
Rise of Nations
Company of Heroes (I haven't had a chance to play #2 yet)
SC 2
Rome and Rome II
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I played AoE for a very long time, but the unit limits really irked me. Warcraft 3 was excellent fun. Supreme Commander 2 doesn't appear to have a decent tutorial: there's one training map and then you're launched straight in. I've not played the others. But I'm really looking for something new, spiffy and fun.
 
I've not been huge on RTS games in a while, but the classics like Warcraft 1-3, Age of Empires 1-2 and StarCraft are some of my favorite games. Probably the last one I got into was Company of Heroes and I loved it. If you haven't, you can pick it up for a song. Still looks great and is a ton of fun to play.
 
I've heard some accounts of Wargame: European Escalation is somewhat of a under the radar title that is pretty good. I can't confirm this though with any first hand experience.

Not sure how old you want to go (you did list Supreme Commander though) but you could look into World in Conflict is an option.

Although you seem to want a very massive scale game (judging by the unit limits option and you liking CnC), so those two might be less interesting to you. Same with the other big recent release in CoH2. Perhaps a Total War game? Although that isn't really the typical RTS with unit/base building.

One issue though is you want to play skirmish mode against the AI mostly? Something to consider is how the AI functions/behaves would give a different impression of game. For instance from what I remember playing CoH 2 beta the AI isn't all that interesting. You seem the same issue persist in Relic's last game as well (DoW II), due to the nature of the game play combined with how the AI thinks it just isn't very satisfying and are terrible at a direct open fight and as such also try to avoid this. Unless it's been changed since then (I wouldn't know)? Compare this to say Supreme Commander, the nature of the game and how the AI is designed is better suited and provides a better experience.
 
Crusader kings 2 = all kinds of awesome. plus playing coop can be crazy fun. be warned it take a bit of getting used to. probably takes about 5-8 hours before you have a decent understanding of wtf your doing.
 
Original DoW and all exp. - WA, DC, SS. Accept no substitutes! Have good tuts that walk you through step by step with narration.
supcom+FA - they have an endless tutorial that you can spend hours in practicing build orders and unit production
W:EE is broken in my findings, they cant even manage to get the left click, right click working properly. not worth my time. Cannot recommend.
 
I was a master level player in SC2, but I only played around 100 1v1 games. I played over 3000 AI games though... so +1 for SC2. There's AI matchmaking (matches you with other players against AI).

FWIW, I still play AOE2 and AOE3 against AI fairly regularly.

Sins of a Solar Empire - not really a fast paced RTS, but it's worth a look. It has no campaign but it has tutorials. Every match feels like a campaign.
 
I'm still playing Red Alert 3. Many people dislike it but I think the balancing is perfect and the AI can be very challenging in skirmish matches.
 
Off the top of my head:
  • Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne
  • Starcraft 2 and Brood War
  • Red Alert 1
  • Red Alert 2 (can't be said more than enough times... best Westwood RTS before EA killed off the series post Red Alert 3.)
  • Civilization 4
  • Civilization 5 and Brave New World and Gods and Kings
  • Age of Empires 2 HD
  • Age of Empires 3
  • Age of Mythology
  • Rise of Nations and Thrones and Patriots
  • Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (completely underrated game, needs a sequel)
  • Supreme Commander 1
  • Supreme Commander 2
  • Anno 1404 (I still play this a lot)
  • Anno 2070 (Pretty decent sequel)
  • Empire Earth (prepare yourself for a long ass game)
  • Company of Heroes
  • Company of Heroes 2
  • Sins of the Solar Empire, Rebellion, and Trinity
  • Endless Space
  • Total War Shogun 2
  • Homeworld and Cataclysm (... awaiting patiently for a sequel)
  • Homeworld 2
  • Sword of the Stars (if you can get multiplayer working since the servers are shut down, tell me...)
  • ... will add more when I can remember them...
 
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Any of the Sins of a Solar Empire games are amazing!
Homeworld 1 + 2 are sweet.

Go get the Forged Alliance Forever Supreme Commander community lobby program and play the BlackOps mod, it installs automatically when clicked on and is a ton of fun. Supreme Commander with the forged alliance forever lobby is rebalanced and has tweaks and bug fixes beyond the official patches. Get the firey explosions mod to, makes it a whole new game!
 
klljm said:
Go get the Forged Alliance Forever Supreme Commander community lobby program and play the BlackOps mod, it installs automatically when clicked on and is a ton of fun. Supreme Commander with the forged alliance forever lobby is rebalanced and has tweaks and bug fixes beyond the official patches. Get the firey explosions mod to, makes it a whole new game!
Click to expand...

This.
You said Sup Com "doesn't seem to like my PC for some reason"..? I would recommend giving it another try (maybe reinstall fresh) and use the awesome free Forged Alliance Forever client - faforever.com
 
What does your computer do when you try to play Sup Com FA? They have patches that fix some problems (not official patches).
 
Skillz said:
What does your computer do when you try to play Sup Com FA? They have patches that fix some problems (not official patches).
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, I couldn't remember so I reinstalled it from Steam and it now works fine. I guess I'm sorted!
 
Company of Heroes (the first) and Sup Com are my favorites from the last several years.
 
Opie said:
Company of Heroes (the first) and Sup Com are my favorites from the last several years.
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That is my list as well. The only other rts game I could possibly recommend would be the war-hammer series. Thats it though. It is an under served genre now.
 
I am playing Company of Heroes 2 and it is good. Also, if you haven't already then Starcraft 2 (both versions) are good. If you are looking for MP RTS then I am not the right person :).
 
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