Vote for the best RTS here

[brad1995]

now i'm gonna hide some text

I see what you did there.....

[txfirefighter]

why will you not use steam?

whats the hate towards the online game things (whats the proper name for them?)

[1337]

No real hate there (just said i wouldn't use it probably)
I just prefer having an old-fashioned dvd. I tend to buy and resell them, just keeping the ones i really like^^. I thought that reselling steam games didn't work...

I also had some personal bad experience with their customer service (that in the end cost me a 50€ HL2 key), so if i can avoid it in the future i will

Anyway i already had H5M&M plus exp. so i don't really need this steam keys
Just put the give-away in there since we were talking about strategy games

How come Age of Empires didn't get the absolute majority of votes i'm shocked

[toaster Assassin]

Just re-casted my vote, Empire earth is such an enjoyable game. Currently, my brother and I are locked in a desperate struggle to reclaim the northern part of the map that my brother had originated from. Currently he is camped outside of my lands, thanks to blue team. (Damn you blue team, damn you all to hell!) Epics in EE1 take a long time to reach (compared to two), longer + great ton of content. I believe that the EE series deserves at least one vote because of EE1 alone. AOE is a great series, but sometimes you just need to kill cavemen with tanks. (Come on, a raft with a guy throwing boulders is not a warship, they are just asking to die )


Also, I as well prefer a physical copy of the game, rather then just electronic. (Cause I grew up old school gaming).

[txfirefighter]

ah. well i cant argue here. i like the idea of steam or desura. indie gamers can get quite a good following from there.

[Blxz]

I agree with txfirefighter, steam and similar download services are allowing all kinds of games to be produced. While I may not like any single company I like the service and the offshoot benefits. Kenshi would never get funding from a bigtime narrowminded developer. It's too ambitious...too Daikatana.

The thing between now and old school games is that technology has really moved on. People who demand high level graphics means that development budgets get cut. Read articles with quotes from the Final Fantasy 13 makers. An entire games worth of content was cut because in the end it was too hard and big and expensive to make the models for everything.

While this means that these big scale JRPG's might be dying out (might make some people happy), there is still potential for similar scale on smaller, less graphical intense systems or for this to be done in 'retro' style. Check out breath of death VII and Cthulu saves the world for some examples.

In short, the way things have progressed means that without digital downloads all games would regress to a single point. A black whole of gaming in which they can get the majority of people to buy regardless of the actual quality. (omg, please no more popcap games. I hate the casual gaming market)

[txfirefighter]

this is why one of my favorite companies is Runic (torchlight.)

they still, in my opinion, make games that are pretty to look at as well as a good story behind it.

programs like steam and desura could have saved companies like pumpkin studios and their awesome game of warzone 2100. to me its the same idea as Nooks and Kindles. while you do have to shift through some crap, you will find a indie author that has written a killer book that big publishers said no to.

[1337]

I've restarted playing Battle Realms recently. Found the cd while doing some cleaning
Anyone here played it?

I find the way to create your army pretty unique^^
you just get peasants at fixed intervals, then you can send them either to the fields or send them to a specialized building that will train them:
eg. send a peasant to the barracks and you get a close-combat fighter
send a peasant to an archery-thingy and you get archers
and here the twist:
send a peasant to the barracks and then your new fighter to the archery and you end up with a new mix
makes for very interesting choices and strategies you'll have to think about

add to that a samurai theme and other unique or less unique features (you get karma points for killing that you use in upgrades, buildings can burn down, you have to water fields or the rice won't grow, you can actually mount horses or use them on the fields, ...) and you end up with a very enjoyable game.

Taking your painfully trained 20-30 dragon-samurai to battle mounted on (hardly caught) horses and falling into a wolfs-clan ambush in the woods will be very intense (and cool)


Edit: here a screenshot from the dragon units
http://imageshack.us/f/117/battlerealms ... 08dz4.jpg/

[toaster Assassin]

Blxz said: A black whole of gaming in which they can get the majority of people to buy regardless of the actual quality. (omg, please no more popcap games. I hate the casual gaming market)

In my opinion, content should be before graphics. (Thats where the indies come in) But there is competition between game devs and the first thing that people will see about their games is the graphics. So the graphics will attract more buyers then the actual content.(Which means graphics for bigger games will have more money allocated to it). I do agree however, that the use of digital distributions will allow the little devs to get more buyers (and places like steam/desura will give publicity to little devs). However, big devs should follow example and allocate more to content then graphics.


Sidenote: casual games seem just too simplistic.

[txfirefighter]

on the graphics/gameplay:

i think its a fine line really. some indie games with amazing story line are in ancient atari graphics which, i feel, stinks. it turns me off of those games. you definitely need both.

take project zomboid. awesome game with a soon to be awesome story. ive bought it and play it but the graphics (at least in the alpha) took some getting used to.

[toaster Assassin]

Dwarf Fortress, great game but Is kinda hard to play in its original GUI.

[Blxz]

It is a very fine line. I find the KoToR games to be a great set of graphics. No where near spectacular and a lot of work could be done but they are fairly simple by modern standards and still quite elegant. The story is well developed for the kind of game that it is and overall its good. I could settle for more KoToR style graphical games and fewer Crysis graphic games if it meant the content would pick up.

Dwarf Fortress will never make the main guy millions because it is too hard to get into. The interface is rubbish on a plate and the graphical display is....well its dwarf fortress. And this detracts from the gem of a game underneath it in a big way. People who put in hard hours to learn it and appreciate it tend to absolutely love the game. Who knows what would happen if the dude (i've forgotten his name) tried to be a little less 'hardcore' and took it beyond what it is?

So yeah, graphics and interface and presentation are hugely important. They don't make up for a lack of content but they do allow you to experience the content to it's fullest extent.

EDIT: I actually want to be slightly on topic here also; Kenshi, if it ends up being what Chris has set out, will hopefully strike a very good balance. While the graphics are simplistic now and will improve, they don't need to go massively beyond what is already being presented. If they were released as they are (but with a degree of polish to stop jutting edges and the camera falling through the ground) with all of the promised content then the game would be great. Giving it Crysis style graphics would not add to the game at all and would mostly just come at an unnecessary processor cost. If only some of the really big developers could pump out a few games like that...

[txfirefighter]

well said, sir. well said.

[toaster Assassin]

Agreed. Too big of a time consumption.

[wazupwolfff]

I played Empire Earth at a friends house once as a kid and thought it was amazing. Does anyone have any idea where i could get it? (safetly online, or a common store in the US)

[1337]

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-EEGE/empir ... ld-edition
Don't know about stores in US but gamersgate has 'em all.

It makes for many fun parties LAN being obviously the best but even over internet it's fun to play

[toaster Assassin]

At http://www.gog.com.

all games on Gog.com cost roughly $5.00 - s10.00 USD and they are legal. All of them are DRM free and can be transferred via flash drive. Gog.com is where I bought my copy of EEI

http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue

[wazupwolfff]

thanks i believe i saw Gog before but i wasnt sure if it was legit or not.