What is your RTS background?

I've compiled a (very incomplete and lumped) list of monumental RTS games because I'm curious as to what everyone's background is? Please only vote for games that you've invested a pretty significant amount of time on.

I'm 23 so when I was younger I kind of just played whatever my older brother threw in front of me. That happened to be Warcraft 1, Command & Conquer 1, Warcraft 2, Starcraft Brood War, and Empire Earth II. After Brood War I matured enough to decide on my own games, but I stuck with what I knew: Blizzard RTS.

I've dabbled with SupCom, Dawn of War and Sins of Solar Empire for a few hours but never dedicated enough time to truly get into them. I will say that what I saw in SupCom was mindblowing, especially for how old it is (I played it for the first time only a few months ago). As polished of a game Starcraft 2 is, I'm growing pretty sick of it. I'm extremely excited to expand my horizons and play a more macro oriented game like PA!

You forgot a seminal series: GSC Gameworld RTS! (Cossacks, American Conquest, etc!) ... I was ranked top 5 in the world in American Conquest for quite some time.


And of course, I started with Dune II, enjoyed Command & Conquer and Warcraft (1 and 3, WC2 was awful)... and my true background, Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander / Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. I was ranked top 10 in SupCom for a while, but I guess I grew up and now I play for fun with friends.

In general, I tried a lot of RTSes in my day. Only a few stuck, hardly any RTS had an impact on me like SupCom and Total Annihilation did. Dark Reign was nice, for instance, and Utopia on the Amiga, though that wasn't *really* an RTS. Total War series is fun every now and then, but I stopped with Rome.

Wow Cossacks looks like it was pretty rad in its day. I was only 12 when it came out though lol.

Total War is another series that I've heard nothing but good things about but never played. Rome 2 Total War will be my 6th preorder ever, after Planeraty Annihilation

Overall I'm just ready to try some new styles of games. I would get CoH 2 as well but I hate the WW2 setting. If it were Dawn of War 3 I would be all over it.

CNC, TA, AOE.

The tri-force of my child/adult hood.

None have been replaced in my heart for various reasons, CNC stopped cutting it, SupCom is but a pale shadow of TA and AOE 1 and 2 fit the gameplay better.

this is a good thread

the first rts i got into was red alert, my friend and i would watch his older brother play and then later we would play. more or less the same thing happened with age of empires and brood war. i did briefly play diablo and warcraft but eventually formed my own tastes and graduated to being an xbox brat, crimson skies, halo 2, mech assault.

i played supcom for a few months when it came out but it was rough on my pc. after a long hiatus i came back to the PC for brood war and starcraft 2. about a year ago i learned about Forged Alliance Forever, which i highly recommend. fair warning the competitive learning curve is pretty brutal.

I'm looking forward to company of heroes 2 and pa.

Total war has had its ups and downs, but I'm still forgiving of the series.
Rome: Total War is a total darling of mine and I have decently high hopes for its sequel.

I've never touched Starcraft nor Warcraft, but I've seen enough of them being played to know that they are not the RTS's for me.

I've some limited time spent with C&C: Tiberium Sun

I cut my teeth on Total Annihilation, it being the first game I ever bought when I came into owning my first PC. Relic has been the only other company I've enjoyed RTS titles from besides Cavedog and Creative Assembly. I liked both the 3D Space Homeworld and the 40k Dawn of Wars. Not as much of a fan of Company of Heroes though...

TA is just so amazingly different from all of those other games that it's completely worthy of its own Sub-Genre however.

I can only hope Planetary Annihilation is a worthy addition.

Whoa, really sad how many options I checked off. Id this what my life has become? Work, play, work , play, actually doesn't sound that bad. Homeworld and TA being by far my favorites. :mrgreen:

Well I have to pick all of the choices. I can't belive it but I played all of them. And my rts that is not on the list is Battle Realms.

TA and the first SupCom, of course. Also Homeworlds 1 and 2, Metal Fatigue, Warzone 2100, and (nobody judge me for this) Outpost 2. Hey, what, I liked it.

Supreme Commander all the way. Althought it got to the point where I was spending problematic amounts of time for it.

And then there is ofcourse the meta-time strategy Achron which never really got off the ground Altought my brain liked it. But one can always hope that in the theme of time travel the hype might happen post-launch.

9 out of 10 isn't bad, I hope?

You guys played all of those games for an extended period of time? That's pretty damn insane

I mean, I've played Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Sins and SupCom but I didn't vote for them because I spent a minimal amount of time playing them compared to Blizzard and Westwood RTS...

Knights & Merchants
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Earth 2150
Age of Empires II
Star Trek Armada II (and fleet ops)

I think half of my time was spent in KaM only because it took ages to accomplish anything.

TA was the first REAL RTS I played and it hooked me bad. C&C and Red Alert came later. Then StarCraft. Loved the story. Not sure if I played Warcraft 2 before or after StarCraft. Then Red Alert 2, WarCraft 3, Supreme Commander and FA.

AoE 2 I played a ton. The first empire Earth too though I thoroughly hate the cheating AI in it.

Rofl, I know I must have wasted a lot of my life on RTS considering I checked every box! No wonder my friends feel overwhelmed when I play with them.

Hi,

The first game I've played on the PC was C&C. I was sold.

Here's the list of all RTS I've played in my life. I will point out the best of them.
And I will add the demos, too.

Dune II (a few weeks)
Age of Mythology (a few hours)
Age of Empires (a few years)
Anno (don't know what title) (A few days)
C&C Tiberian Dawn + Addons (a few years)
C&C Red Alert (rules.ini rules :mrgreen: ) (a few years)
C&C Tiberian Sun (I was realy disapointed) (a few weeks)
C&C Generals (a few days)
C&C Tiberium Alliances (about 20 minutes)
Starcraft (about a year)
Dark Reign (a few months)
Earth 2140 (a few months)
Akte Europa (don't know, if there is a non-german titel) (a few days)
KKND (a few weeks)
Warcraft I (a few days)
Warcraft II (a few months)
Warcraft III + Addons (only singleplayer) (a few months)
Metal Fatigue (a few hours)
Dawn of War I (not bad, but I don't wanted to play RTS at that moment) (a few days)
Total Annihilation + Addons (about 10 years!!!)
Supreme Commander + Addons (about 5 years!!!)
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms (a few days)
M.A.X. (a few days)
Stronghold (a few weeks)
Cossacks (a few weeks)
Warzone 2100 (a few weeks)
Z (a few days)
Ground Control (a few weeks)
BattleForge (a few days)
Commandos (a few days)
Battlezone (a few weeks)
Empire Earth (a few days)
Dune 2000 (a few days)

Demos:
Dawn of War II (a few hours)
Total Annihilation (a few days - over and over again)
Supreme Commander II (a few hours - later again, but it was'nt better)

I think that's all...

I'm not very good at RTS games, but it makes fun.

Despite being interested (obsessed) with the RTS genre for most of my life, The first one i ever payed was supreme commander 2, Xbox version last year...

And thats pretty much it.

Starcraft + BroodWar
Age of Empires
Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty

Bought Sins of a Solar Empire from a going out of business Circuit City as an impulse buy, after which I deeply regretted it because I had no idea how to play.

So you were fascinated with it but never decided to try it out until now? Go grab some food. You've got work to do with some other RTS games.

I absolutely love the game, I played it for like 40 hours which was enough to learn how to do everything and make Titans.

However, I couldn't keep playing it; the game just felt like a void. The matches took way too long (That's the nature of 4X though) and I was accustomed to the quick matches of Starcraft 2.

Matches between like 10-50 minutes are ideal for me, any longer and I tend to lose interest :/ I am willing to extend that a bit for PA, but hopefully they do strike a nice balance with average game length for multi-planet games.